Stop and Smell Your Children: Laugh and Enjoy the Little Years - Softcover

Spina, Leah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1629038342 ISBN 13: 9781629038346

Publisher: Next Century Pub, 2015

Synopsis

Ready to laugh about motherhood and be encouraged? Tired of feeling overwhelmed and stressed out in the baby and toddler season? Need some fresh vision and perspective so you can enjoy―not just endure―your young children?

Stop and Smell Your Children: Laugh and Enjoy the Little Years offers moms-to-be and moms of young children short, real-life parenting stories that encourage and inspire. Leah Spina, mother of three children ages five and under, and former journalist, unleashes humor and perspective for tired moms who are parenting the “little” years. From the excitement of the positive pregnancy test to morning sickness and the banes of pregnancy, to childbirth, babies, toddlers and new parent struggles, the stories will make you laugh and see beauty in the chaos. Each story also includes thought-provoking takeaways to help busy moms gain a fresh outlook.

Strangers remind us that our children will be small only for a short time and to enjoy each moment. But then we return to the wild reality of parenting young children! All-night crying sessions. Never-ending laundry. Every-three-hour feeding schedules. Diaper explosions and projectile spit-up. Teething. Potty training. Yes, we enjoy our children, but we’d also like to enjoy a shower that lasts more than two minutes, or a meal that isn’t lukewarm (if we’re lucky). The truth is, pregnancy and parenting young children can be hard at times. But it can also be one of the best chapters of our lives, if we can learn to laugh and change our mindset.

Young children are one of life’s greatest gifts. Each page of this easy read will help you truly enjoy the “little” years!

About this title

From the Author:

Hi! I'm Leah Spina and I'm a mother of three children, age five and under. God bless me. My white-haired strong-willed son Samson is five-years-old, big-eyed baby doll Esther is two-years-old and we are enjoying our little baby Hannah. Six years ago I married the love of my life, David (who is a far more patient parent than I). We live near Dallas, Texas where everything is bigger and better, y'all. I'm a former journalist of a national newsweekly magazine, although now I mainly read the adventures of Curious George and Clifford the Big Red Dog. My Amazon Best-Seller book Stop and Smell Your Children: Laugh and Enjoy the Little Years, encourages parents of young children to enjoy, not just endure, new parenthood by changing their parenting perspective. Caring for two young children while writing a book was harder than, well, potty training. (If you have not yet potty-trained your child, it's harder than calculus and requires the patience of an ant building Rome.) There's no way you can write when a toddler is screaming at you to wipe their bottom, so I only hacked away after my children went to bed, heavily caffeinated. (So if my jokes don't make sense, give me a break.) When I'm not smearing Desitin on a tiny rear-end, I love to sing Broadway, suntan on Italian beaches and ride horses. I'd love to meet you but it probably won't be for another five years when my children are older. Ha! But, seriously, I wouldn't trade this season of little ones for anything. I hope my real life parenting stories help you laugh at the chaos that is young children and enjoy your darlings. These are truly the happiest days of our life, if we have the right perspective! Let's laugh and enjoy the little years.

From the Inside Flap:

INTRODUCTION
I have two small children as I type these words. When we brought our second child home from the hospital, I started to lose it. My house looked like a bankrupt daycare, I changed my dirty, child-dominated clothes four times a day and I never left the house except to get the mail--and that was on a good day. 
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Parenting young children can be like a never-ending circus: the messes, the needs, the interruptions, the toy chaos, the emotional toddler, the crying baby, the diaper parade. I hated the person I was becoming. I snapped at the people I loved the most, my husband and children. At night I sobbed to Dave that I was barely surviving each day and praying I could make it through the next one. I wasn't enjoying my children or my life. Something had to change. 
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That something was my parenting perspective. I was desperate and determined to smile and laugh in the midst of the chaos. I didn't want to just survive these years; I wanted to enjoy them. While I couldn't change my circumstances, I could change my perspective. Each day I started to search for extraordinary, ordinary parenting moments. I started to see humor instead of defeat in the diaper war.. Now I try to treasure each day with my little ones as a gift to savor instead of a duty to endure. 
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I wish I could come clean your house for you, take over baby night duty so you could sleep eight glorious hours, cook you a hot meal and clean up your kitchen afterward, watch your kiddos so you could enjoy a long uninterrupted shower and take care of your laundry with a Mary Poppins snap. (Unfortunately, I can't because I'm too tired to do it for my own family. Ha!) But I can offer you my stories--the nitty-gritty details of my new parent struggles, the lessons I've learned and the perspective I've gained that has forever changed me as a parent.. 
Perhaps tonight you'll read this book after you tuck away your little angels and then tomorrow you will discover your own extraordinary ordinary parenting moment. Maybe after your toddler spills milk in the car, you will laugh instead of cry. Perhaps you will stop to kiss your baby while changing a diaper.Your children will only be small for a short time. Laugh and enjoy the little years!
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I wrote this book during my children's naptime--the golden hours. when they were asleep simultaneously--and after their bedtime. I tucked them in, kissed their button lips and stumbled into the kitchen to down a six-ounce Starbucks DoubleshotEspresso in 2.5 seconds. I then trudged upstairs to the demolished playroom and collapsed into my old black office chair and booted up my laptop on a desk decorated with Sharpie-marker drawings. I could have waited five years to write this book,but then I would've forgotten what it was like in this crazy but magical season of parenting little ones. And I never, ever want to forget!

About this edition

• Publisher: Next Century Pub
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1629038342
• ISBN 13: 9781629038346
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 182