I think the question feature that Instagram rolled out a few months ago is one of the more fun things they’ve ever done, both because I like seeing other’s answers, and because I’ve enjoyed answering questions myself! Much like my annual survey, it’s also helpful for EFM research purposes: given the chance to ask anything, what are y’all most curious about?

The topic that sparked the most interest in my last question-answering burst was on self-care. It’s not really a topic I’ve delved into here, but as usual, I have thoughts! :)

The original question: What are some of your favorite ways to incorporate self-care?

Y’all already know I don’t go in for many of the “classic” self care practices: I think baths take too long, my nails chip immediately after I paint them, face masks don’t do anything for me, I don’t like massages… basically, I’m a beautifying curmudgeon. (Though if I had unlimited funds, I would totally get a weekly blow-out… just saying :))

I think self-care is so much broader than its current buzzword status might have us believe, though. For me, it’s less of a list of things to work into my days or weeks, and more a strategy of putting together a life I love, one that I don’t feel like I need a respite from. As much as possible, I build my life from things that energize me instead of drain me, which often means cutting things out more than adding things.

So, what do I consider self-care?

— Evening walks with John. The combination of moving my body, clearing my head through conversation, and connecting with my favorite person will always be the ultimate in self-care for me.
— Hiking, a.k.a. walks in the woods
— Walking through a beautiful neighborhood (bonus points if it has historic homes and lovely gardens)
— Reading
— Writing, here on EFM or otherwise
— Connecting to the Lord, whether through prayer, worship, scripture, or Write the Word
— Seeing a fun project through from concept to completion (like my first day of fall scones – bonus points if I get the warm fuzzies from blessing other people!)
— Going out to eat at a favorite spot
— Date nights in and date nights out
— Watching a movie or show with John (the catch is that we have to both ONLY be watching, not multitasking!)

Many of these boil down to seeking adventure and beauty as often as possible, in as many ways as possible. To make room for those things, I circle back to the second half of the formula I mentioned above: cutting out things that drain me. When I’m caring for myself well, I don’t feel burdened by a to do list, I don’t feel like I’m wasting time on things that don’t matter to me, and there aren’t tasks I’m dreading looming over my head.

I don’t always succeed at this, but I do have a three-pronged strategy for lessening the burden of the more mundane parts of life:

— First, like I mentioned above, I cut out or batch as many undesirable tasks as possible. I grocery shop just once a week. I get by with the bare minimum in cleaning. I generally don’t binge watch shows, and I try very hard not to spend mindless time scrolling on social media. I make several day’s worth of lunches in one evening.
— Second, for anything that has to stay on my plate, I try to make it as enjoyable as possible. In the words of Mary Poppins, “in every job that must be done, there is an element of fun!” :) I turn on music while cleaning. I work in the yard side-by-side with John. I listen to podcasts while running errands.
— Third, if there’s just no way to make something “fun,” I do my best to think of it as part of my calling, something that can either be seen as a burden or a privilege — and that choice is mine.

My parents modeled for me that certain duties are just that – duties. There’s no point in railing against the unfairness of taking out the trash, because it’s just a part of life, and you’ll make yourself a lot more miserable if you gnash your teeth every time you have to do it instead of just doing it. (I feel like I’m literally quoting my Dad here, ha!) I do my fair share of griping, let’s be clear, but I’m much happier when I just dispense with the task at hand as quickly as possible.

And aren’t we lucky to have lives and families and chores to attend to? I have a daughter, so I GET to make lunches for her. I have a house, so I GET to clean the bathroom. With that mind shift, some of those undesirable tasks almost turn into a form of fulfilling, satisfying self-care! Almost :)

I’d love to know, what does self-care mean to you? How do you practically carry it out or make time for it? I would love to hear!

Choosing a name for another person has to be one of the most thrilling and also nerve-wracking parts of parenting. Because of this, I love hearing about how others chose their kiddos’ names, and I’m happy to share more about our son’s name today!

As cliche as it sounds, John and I set out to give both of our littles names with roots and wings. By that I mean we hope their names will anchor them to things of value, and aim them toward things worthy of aspiration. For June, we hope her name will remind her of her family story, as well as the beautiful story of America. Shep’s name is also a reminder of his family story, and of our faith.

Before we found out the gender of our first baby, we decided we’d name her June if she was a girl, and John if he was a boy. We stuck to that once we found out about baby number two. To me, naming our son John is a reminder of the story from which he comes – one that’s far from perfect, but filled with people who try, who have integrity, who are kind and smart and humble and face challenges and pick themselves back up again and again. As crystallized for me in this essay, I strongly believe (and research backs up!) that one of the best things we can do for our children is develop a strong family narrative.

From the essay:

“The more children knew about their family’s history, the stronger their sense of control over their lives, the higher their self-esteem, and the more successfully they believed their families functioned. The “Do You Know?” scale turned out to be the best single predictor of children’s emotional health and happiness… Dr. Duke said that children who have the most self-confidence have what he and Dr. Fivush call a strong ‘intergenerational self.’ They know they belong to something bigger than themselves.”

You all know how I feel about confidence! :) Naming our son John gives us a ready opening to tell him about the rich history of our family, starting with a contingent of Johns:

His grandfather (John’s Dad), who grew up on a farm in Ohio, earned his Ph.D., traveled the world testifying against counterfeit drugs, and writes the sweetest notes in birthday cards.

His great-grandfather (my grandfather), who served in the Army, milked a farm full of cows at the crack of dawn every morning, raised six children, was married to my grandmother for more than 50 years before his passing, and sang in his church’s choir every Sunday.

His many, many greats-grandfather John Ayer, who in 1665 founded my family’s farm in Connecticut, which is recognized as one of the oldest continuously-working family farms in the state.

And of course, there’s my most beloved John. What gave me great comfort when I thought about having a boy was all of the remarkable men I know and love, the most important being my husband. If our son shares even a few characteristics with him, he’ll be well-poised to take hold of the life that is truly life.

As much as we were settled on naming our son John, we also knew we didn’t want to call him John in daily life. For his middle name, we wanted something that pointed to our faith, and quickly settled on Shepherd. Though we considered many individual figures from the Bible (John’s favorite being Stephen, for his remarkable testimony), none were as compelling as Shepherd, which for us points to some of the most beautiful characteristics of God and his Son. Jesus as the good shepherd is gentle, humble, honored for his obedience, a diligent and hard worker, and a protector.

There are so many stories in the Bible using the imagery or figures of shepherds, but I’ll just touch on one more: the shepherds in the story of Jesus’s birth. How amazing is it that God chose a group of no-stature shepherds to first share the news of his son’s birth, and how beautiful that they responded with great urgency, “glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen.” What a powerful prayer for our Shep!

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that both John and Shepherd are classic choices — simple to say and familiar to the tongue — and in the case of Shepherd, not terribly common. Plus, I think June and Shep go together nicely :) Plus plus, I love that I can keep wearing my J necklace in good conscience!

Friends, I’d love to hear: does your name have a story behind it?

Friends, this is our sweet John Shepherd! He arrived one week ago today, on Tuesday, July 31 at 12:06pm. He was a bit longer and skinnier than June, measuring 7 pounds, 3 ounces and 20 inches long. We will call him Shepherd or Shep :)

Our prayer throughout this pregnancy was for a healthy delivery, a healthy baby, and a healthy mama. We graciously received all three, and have been delighted by God’s goodness to us in all things since then. Shep is a dream, June has been the best big sister and most patient girl, and John — well, as always, he makes it all possible and everything more fun. I can’t wait to share more, especially about his name – hopefully later this week!

Thank you, as always, for all of your love, friends! We love you!

Howdy, friends! I’ve wanted to write this post for awhile, and Prime Day seemed like a good time to do so… but then life and work and getting ready for a baby and all that happened, and here we are a day late! Still a few hours left to snag a deal if you’d like, though :)

We bought our Amazon Echo on Prime Day two years ago, and I’m the first to admit I was NOT in favor of the purchase — I didn’t think it was necessary, and I was wary of the effect it would have on our home. I’m also generally reluctant to add new technology, fancy gadgets, or services to our life because I feel like once you have them, it can feel impossible to go back to NOT having them, should you ever have to.

But, this was one instance where I acquiesced to John’s wishes, and a few days later, Alexa took up permanent residence in our kitchen. About a year later, we added a second Echo in our bedroom, a gift from John’s parents.

I’m happy to report that two years on, I’m an Echo fan! I feel like we’ve barely scratched the surface of her abilities, but they’ve been fun to explore. Here are a few of the ways she’s added value to our family’s life so far:

A mostly-unrelated photo from John’s birthday celebrations this weekend!

First and most importantly, we use her to play music. Before getting our Echo, we used a laptop, which (needless to say) did not have the best sound quality. It was also a bit of a clunky system, with the result that we didn’t listen to music as much as we’d like to. Now, it’s easy to turn on a Spotify playlist (hands-free!) while we’re prepping a meal, dining, doing dishes, cleaning, or playing in the living room, and I love how this adds to the feel of our life together!

My absolute favorite musical addition, however, has been the “Jazz for Sleep” playlist on Spotify. We’ll ask Alexa to turn it on when we head into our bedroom to start our nightly routine, and it has the same effect as the turn-down service in a fancy hotel. I know it sounds silly, but it’s been such an awesome life upgrade – the perfect way to wind down for bed. (Seriously, if you don’t take anything else away from this post, try this tip!)

On the flip side, John will often ask Alexa to play music to wake me up on a Saturday morning from the other room – I never know what I’m going to get :)

We use the Echo’s timer daily — for cooking, yes, but also for creating transitions for June between activities, as necessary.

We also use her as our white noise machine overnight. (This took a little bit of figuring out — if you’d like to try it, say, “Alexa, tell oscillating fan sounds to loop.”)

Our final most common use for our Echo is the shopping list function. It’s easy to add ingredients on the fly as we run out of them while cooking, for instance, and easy to access on the go via the app if we forget to check the list before shopping. On a related note, we have used her to buy items through Amazon, but only if we’ve ordered the item several times before and have confidence she’ll order the right thing. (Actually, the only example I can think of is Water Wipes, which we clearly have quite the track record of in our order history!)

Aaaand that’s about it! (Aside from playing Jeopardy!) No exploration yet of the smart home features for us, though I’m intrigued. And aside from our Alexa but on the same topic, the only other “new age” technology I can think of in our home is our Brava, which we’ve been really happy with. (Though I’m disappointed that Oliver hasn’t attempted to take a ride on it yet :))

To wrap things up, one of my initial concerns with having an Echo was that the way we speak to Alexa would teach June wrong ideas about how it’s acceptable to speak to a human. So, we try to make the extra effort to say “please” and “thank you” when making requests so as to model the right patterns for her. Seems like a small and kind of strange effort to make, but I think it’s things like that that can have unintended consequences if we’re not careful.

So there you have it! I’d love to hear: do you have an Echo in your home? What do you use it for? Were you an early adopter, or nervous like me? :)

P.S. Affiliate links are used in this post! And Echos are 30% off for Prime members through the end of the day!