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Thursday, April 28, 2011

Giveaway! "A Fairy Godmom's Book of Reminders"

A few weeks ago I did a post on wanting to find a great devotional geared towards moms. Although I did find some great ones on Amazon, I wanted to visit my local Barnes & Noble and have a peek inside of them in person before buying one or the other. Can you believe that I went to Barnes and Noble last week but got sidetracked looking in pastry books, and books for Ilah, that I totally forgot to go to the Spiritual/Christianity section! Gotta go back.

But recently I was blessed to receive a book called "A Fairy Godmom's Book of Reminders", written by Julie Wheaton and Patrece Powers. When I opened up the first page, I just couldn't put it down. I read half of the {127 page, 4 Chapter} book in one sitting and finished the rest of it up over the next several days during my nightly quiet time {which of course happens after Ilah is in bed}.

Although it's not written from a Christian perspective, this book is full of practical, humorous, straight-forward talk - and inspired advice - on navigating the path of womanhood as it winds its way through motherhood. I found myself highlighting sentences and paragraphs to refer back to when life seems a little unbalanced, overwhelming, or when I'm frazzled about one thing or the other. No doubt, motherhood is a beautiful thing, but it also requires a lot of sacrafice, patience, and multi-tasking - with a side of daily love! We want to give our best every day but what happens if we don't? Is our life seized? Sometimes we make things harder on ourselves and just need to remember to embrace this great place in life that we're in, realize that rough days and easy days rotate, and that each day we have the ability to not only give to our family, but also to ourselves too.

Here are some things that I took away from this great read:

- If we moms share anything, it's the experience of change.


- When you allow yourself to become a mother and think of that as growing into and creating your new self, you have a much easier time. You don't come from a place of expectation and demand; rather, you focus more on observation and intuition. In developing awareness, you find confidence.


- Life is not a dress rehearsal. We make our own choices, and we live the real life. As the current commercial says, "having a baby changes everything". Allow the changes to occur.


- As parents, something we can always share with our children is to be authentic human beings. Our children need us, as parents, to live as true to ourselves as possible. We need that for ourselves as well.


- Take a moment to focus on what you love about yourself and the new things that you're doing as a mom that you never dreamed would be a part of your life.


- Recalling the early days of dating/marriage: Going back to "the way we were" is an image. We can't go back any more than younger couples can advance forward to where we are now.


- In your husband caring for your child/ren: There's more than my way to care for our children. Our styles are different, but the priorities are the same.


- The more I begin with myself, the more I find my children joining me. Being myself is more important than being mom; being myself will take care of being mom.


- Participate in the experiences that are in front of us.


- We believe that we can choose what kind of mom we will be ahead of time: Stay-at-home mom. Cookies and milk mom. Working mom. Single mom. Married mom. Yet we don't choose the kind of children we will be mothers to.


- Even if we decide how our lives will look like after we become mothers, we're only guessing. What we do know is that we signed up for the experience of motherhood. As we face each experience, we instinctively know what we want from that experience.


Great nuggets! The book is filled with them!! And the last chapter 3 is to the Dad's!


Mother's Day is just around the corner and this book will make such a wonderful gift for a woman in your life who is a mother, about to be a mother, or is planning to be a mother! You can look inside the book and buy it on Amazon here or directly off of the authors website {for $12.95 +$2.00 shipping}.


GIVEAWAY!!
***YOU ONLY HAVE UNTIL MONDAY TO ENTER!!***



The author of "A fairy Godmom's Book of Reminders", Julie Wheaton, is giving away 2 books to two readers of my blog. All you need to do is leave a comment letting me know why you would love to have the book on your nighstand! Note: 1 entry per person. If you leave more than one comment, only your first comment will count. The winner will be chosen on Monday, May 2nd! Giveaway ends at 5:00 pm EST so get your comment in before that time! The winner will be posted here, and will also be emailed - so be sure that you have a valid email address on your blogger profile or relay it within the comment section. The winner will have 48 hours to respond, or another winner will be chosen.
Giveaway open to US and Canadian residents only.

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