family

Happy Third Birthday, LIttle Bird

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Photo: Young boy in a sweatshirt with bear ears with his back to the camera; Text: Happy Third Birthday, Little Bird!

My younger son has always been little, despite wanting to be big. He shoved his way into the world three-and-a-half weeks early, being born at a mere five and a half pounds. He didn’t pass zero percent on the growth chart until he was a year old. And he’s the baby of the family. So my nickname for him is Little Bird.

Little Bird just turned three years old.

In the spirit of Sandra Boynton’s classic board book Little Pookie, where the small pig’s mom tells them 10 things she knows about them, here are ten things I know about Little Bird (as written to him, as in the book) on the occasion of his third birthday:

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Applying What We Teach Our Kids to Ourselves

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Text: Applying What We Teach Our Kids to Ourselves Photo: White child on a bike holding up his arms at an intersection

“Mama, [kid’s classmate] told me he was stronger than me,” said my five year old, nicknamed Sprout. “But I’m faster than him.”

“Well, you can tell him that you’re faster than him,” I responded, then immediately regretted it. “Actually, no. That wouldn’t be a good thing to say.” One, I had no idea if my kid was actually faster than the other kid. Two and more importantly, starting a comparison war was going to lead to nowhere good very quickly.

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What the Articles About Childhood “Back in the Day” Get Wrong

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Text: What the Articles About Childhood Back in the Day Get Wrong (Photo: Young girl being carried by a man in a backpack carrier)

“Back in my day, kids roamed the neighborhood without supervision and nobody had these fancy birthday parties,” says yet another article about how childhood was different “back then.” While the world has changed for the good and the bad, I feel like my children’s experience isn’t all that different in some ways than mine or even my mom’s. Looking forward, it’s different in so many good ways as well.

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Why I Knew My Fiancé Would Be a Great Dad

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Why I Knew My Fiancé Would Be a Great Dad (Photo: White man snuggled up against a white boy in bed with the covers pulled up to his nose)

Holding the hand of a little girl with my fiancé holding her other hand, I thought, “Perhaps this is what having kids is like.”

That’s because the little girl was not our daughter. She was one of the three girls that were part of the summer camp where my fiancé, Chris, and I were volunteering. To be honest, those three girls were the entire summer camp. But they were more than enough. Besides being the first kids to break my heart, they gave me a peek into what my fiancé would be like as a father.

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Discovering Spring in the Wintertime of Parenting

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Discovering Spring in the Wintertime of Parenting. (Photo: Adult holding a child with kites in the background against the sky)

A flutter of wings in the dark glided through the sky, just barely within my sight.

“I think that was a bat!” I exclaimed to my four-year-old son as we walked from the car to the house.

Another dark shadow flitted by. Then another.

“The bats are waking up!” he yelled.

Although it was bedtime, I lingered outside with him. As he danced around like a springtime sprite, I sat down on the grass. I stared up at the moon, glowing behind the fog of a cloud. The shadows of deer moved among the gravestones in the cemetery behind our house. My son regaled me with tales of the bats coming out of hibernation and the geese flying back to their homes. The signs of spring. All may not have been right with the world, but there was a little peace in that space, at that time.

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How Moms Can Reduce the Mental Load that Leaves Us Sick and Tired

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

How Moms Can Reduce the Mental Load and Emotional Labor that Leaves Us Sick and Tired. (Photo: White woman holding her head with one hand and a crying baby with the other.)

When I faced going back to work after my maternity leave, my husband and I faced a very real and common challenge – how to balance household management and the mental load between the two of us.

I’m a “doer” at heart while my husband, Chris, is much more laid-back. So taking everything over was a legitimate risk for me. The mental burden of being a mom is very real, whether you embrace the role of being a “keeper” of everything or find it smothering.

Our situation had an additional twist on it. That’s because Chris was going to be taking on a role that 29% of moms hold, but only 7% of dads do – stay-at-home parent. Because I would be working outside the home and he wouldn’t, I could not be the de facto household manager. It wouldn’t be fair or practical.

So we had to find a balance of duties, both in terms of physical chores and management. Since then, we’ve learned to reduce my emotional labor and mental load as a mom. (Unfortunately, most of these don’t apply if you’re a single parent.)

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The Bond Between Brothers

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The Bond Between Brothers. Watching my children together illustrates the sibling relationship for me in a way that I didn't have as an only child. (Photo: A one-year-old and four-year-old looking at a packed dirt road.)

“Siblings are who you share your childhood with,” my husband commented, as we talked about possibly having another kid.

“I never thought about it that way,” I responded. Tilting my head, you could practically see the classic cartoon lightbulb above it. As an only child, that aspect of having a sibling honestly never occurred to me. But now, years later, I see its truth reflected in the relationship between my two young children. Even at one and four-years-old, they have a bond different than I’ve ever experienced.

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