Good Morning mamalode friends!! Cortney Dewaele @cjdewaele here to take over your day! ~ a little about me~ I am a mom to four young kiddos. Connor is 7, Derian is almost 6, Emmett is 4 and Madelyn is 18 months. My hubs Josh and I live in a small rural town in southern Manitoba, Canada. We are a pretty average family just doing the daily grind of kid raising, working and trying to stay sane. ? I hope you enjoy following along in our day today!! P.S that picture is me just after I woke up this morning. The baby decided sleep was for chumps last night so I’m feeling pretty tired. Let’s see how that works out for me on this no school day. ?

A post shared by mamalode (@mamalode) on Apr 6, 2018 at 8:04am PDT

Lunchtime. Or really any mealtime is generally chaos. Any other mamas feel me on this?? While this picture I just took seems pretty calm, let the record show I had just put the food in front of them. That usually gives me about 30 seconds of peace. Haha One of the very best mom hacks that I learnt was to eat lunch AFTER I get my kids settled in to nap or quiet time. It’s the only meal of the day I’m guaranteed to eat in peace without distraction, noise or milk spills. T-minus 30 ish minutes till quiet time. I can do this!!!

A post shared by mamalode (@mamalode) on Apr 6, 2018 at 10:01am PDT

Truth time: first this is me in my natural element. My nearly six year old bought some fancy butterfly hair clips for my birthday and then styled my hair. He thought I looked beautiful. And I believe him. ? As moms I feel like we so often are incredibly hard on ourselves. I know I sure am. Even doing this mamalode takeover today has caused me some stress. What if no one likes me? What if no one wants to follow my personal account after this? I don’t have anything to offer. So many women who do this takeover have a cause, a job, or something they stand for to promote, advertise or just give info on. What do I have? I am a simple mom. I don’t work outside of the home. I use essential oils and occasionally share them with people so I guess I have that, but it’s not much. This list could go on and on. We are so hard on ourselves and desire so much to be valued and appreciated by our peers and those we look up to. So how do we do life when we feel not good enough? How do we do life when we do feel good enough? Because it changes frequently doesn’t it? Some days I feel like I’ve got all my ducks in a row and others I feel like I have squirrels and they are at a rave. ? I think the key to this Momming thing is to surround ourselves with people who do support and encourage us. The best thing Is when we have people to just do life with. Whether that’s a group chat of fellow Mom friends that has an ongoing open dialogue about whose kid pooped where and when or if it’s full of profanity’s and venting about the kids who won’t nap. If you don’t have those friends in your “real life” I encourage you to seek some out online. Heck, this IG account is basically made for moms to connect with other moms. And if you feel like it, hope on over to my personal account (@cjdewaele )and we can chat in between wiping boogery noses and dirty butts. ??? Keep fighting the good fight fellow mamas. We got this!! ??

A post shared by mamalode (@mamalode) on Apr 6, 2018 at 10:53am PDT

#2 and #4 the bond they have is just incredible. They are each other’s favourite person and they miss each other terribly when they are apart. One way our family is a little different is that #2 has a different biological dad then all the rest. The back story is as complicated as you can probably imagine, and the day to day life of it all is hard on all of us. With that being said, every other weekend #2 goes to his pop pops. 50 whole hours. And we count them down one by one. Nothing feels quite right when he is gone, a whole chunk of our hearts are missing. Today is the start of that 50 hours. We are 10 minutes in and I’m ready for it to be done already. Any other parents deal with this? How do you handle it?

A post shared by mamalode (@mamalode) on Apr 6, 2018 at 2:10pm PDT

Time spent with just one kid at a time sure is special. My oldest. The one that made me a mama. He has a heart of gold and asks enough questions to tucker me out before breakfast.

A post shared by mamalode (@mamalode) on Apr 6, 2018 at 4:40pm PDT

Cheers mamas! The kids are in bed and we survived the day. Time for some wine!

A post shared by mamalode (@mamalode) on Apr 6, 2018 at 6:46pm PDT

Goodnight mamaloders!! Thanks for following along with me today! Thanks to these lovely little bottles of oil i’m going to be fast asleep in no time. They staying asleep part, however, that depends on the baby. If you want, feel free to jump on over to my personal account @cjdewaele and follow along for some entertaining antidotes and some occasional hard felt truths about my life. May you all get a well rested sleep. Hahaha who am I kidding. We are moms, that basically never happens! Just think, in a few short hours, we get coffee again!! Mmmmmmm coffee

A post shared by mamalode (@mamalode) on Apr 6, 2018 at 8:45pm PDT