Coffee with Christina (May 2024)

Pour a cup of coffee and let’s dive into some random thoughts I’d share if we were having coffee together!

Thoughts On My Motherhood Journey

On Caroline’s 10th birthday I shared some feelings on Instagram about motherhood which resonated with many of my readers. I loved reading all of the responses and wanted to re-share in case you missed it and experienced similar feelings…

I started by saying how much I absolutely love the ages of my kids right now — (almost) 9 and 10 years old. Even though it’s difficult in different ways than when they were little, this phase of life has felt so exciting, fun, and rewarding. YES, tweens can be spicy, dramatic, messy, expensive, challenging, and it’s a constant rollercoaster of emotions. But at the same time, they love spending time with us, are SO fun, and are growing into people that make us the proudest parents in the world.

But the motherhood and parenting journey is a wild ride. And to be honest, I didn’t love the baby stage.

My kids are 14 months apart and I struggled so hard in the newborn/baby phase. All of my friends were having babies around the same time and it felt like everyone but me wanted to freeze that infant stage forever. Meanwhile, having two under two was one of the hardest times of my life and I felt ashamed that I wasn’t wishing for time to slow down! Granted, we were simultaneously drowning in hard things (my double mastectomy with several subsequent surgeries, Thomas’s rare eye condition which also required several infant surgeries, we were grieving watching my dad lose an ugly battle to cancer, Matt was busting his ass building his law firm, and I was climbing the corporate ladder and running Carolina Charm at night.

While I loved my babies fierce and there were countless amazing and joyful memories with our happy squishy babes, the days were long, we were exhausted literally ALL THE TIME burning both ends of the candle, and constantly anxious around their health and safety.

However, as my kids grew my feelings (and confidence) began to shift and I started to hit my parenting stride. Over the years, I seem to love each stage even more than the last. It’s such a joy seeing their personalities, friendships, and interests evolve. I love talking to them about important things, family movie nights, traveling as a family, taking them to do adventurous things, holidays are the best, and I especially love the relationship they have with each other. (If you are in the trenches with kids super close in age, you will LOVE it when they are older.)

All this to say, it’s OK to not love certain stages of parenting. And if you aren’t treasuring every moment of the baby phase, just know that big kids are SO AWESOME and there is light, sleep, and so much fun at the end of the tunnel!

House Projects

We recently had our home painted and I cannot believe how much of a difference a coat of white paint has made! Prior to moving in we had a lot of stucco repairs done on the exterior of our home. Matching new gray paint with 30+ year old paint was impossible and the various gray touch-ups looked like massive wet stains around the outside of the house which drove us crazy!

We had been looking forward to tackling this project and knew it would make a big difference to the exterior of our home, but the impact was far greater than I anticipated. The white paint shined up the outside so much and I absolutely love how it turned out.

With each project we’ve tackled over the past 20 months, I have fallen more and more in love with our home. When we purchased it, I had very little connection to it and worried it would never feel like “us.” While it’s taken a tremendous amount of work to get there, each project has made it feel more and more like home to us.

Here’s the before…

And here’s the after! We painted the exterior White Dove, the trim is Alabaster, and the door is Boothbay Gray. I can’t wait to add some planters!

My Probiotic & A Hair Loss Update

One year ago I shared an update on my hair loss experience. I AM TERRIFIED I’ll jinx this, but at the same time I want to shout it from the roof tops…I think my hair loss has finally stopped! Well, I still shed, but it’s a normal amount now, not the kind that makes me cry in the shower.

For more than two years I literally tried EVERYTHING — tested tons of products, saw my dermatologist regularly, had lab work done, began hormone replacement therapy, cut out gluten and dairy as much as possible, started tons of supplements, significantly increased my protein intake, focused on improving my gut health and there’s probably more things I’m forgetting. The problem wasn’t growing hair — all of the things I was doing were actually working and I could see so much hair growth. It was keeping my hair.

Anyway, about two months ago I noticed a significant decrease in my daily shedding. Again, so scared to share this because I have NO idea how this happened or if it’s permanent, but the only thing that changed around the same time was my probiotic. I was previously taking Ritual Synbiotic and switched to Seed DS-01 Daily Synbiotic after doing some research and I absolutely LOVE it. This is NOT a sponsored post, and again, I’m not even sure I can attribute my hair loss to my gut health supplement, but I’ve tried numerous probiotics over the years and this one has been highly effective even in areas beyond my hair.

Seed initially stood out to me with their capsule technology which protects the probiotic from stomach acid so it makes it all the way down to your lower small intestine where it provides the greatest benefit.

It’s not inexpensive and requires a subscription, but it’s very high quality, you can purchase a 6 month supply at a discount — and I firmly believe it’s worth the cost. If you are looking to improve your gut health and want to try Seed, you can receive 30% off your first month with my referral link!

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