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Hi, I’m Kayla! I’m a mom of three sweet toddler tornadoes who have taught me that parenting is one great big oxymoron. My life is controlled chaos, full of contradicting elements, ideas, and thoughts! If you enjoy stories of real moments and raw parenting, then you’re in the right place! Thanks for stopping by!

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Any kind of love note is good for the heart… but a surprise one from your kid? Now that’s the kind of love that’s guaranteed to make any parent’s heart sing. . “Mommy loves me this I know. For she always tells me so. She loves and cares for me every day. She even finds time to play.” . #controlledchaostruths #wordsofaffirmation
Today at Target, my four-year-old daughter insisted that the only reason she loved and needed this giant candy bucket was because it was shaped like a big cute pumpkin... It clearly had nothing to do with the fact that it was half the size of her body. Clearly. And so... despite my little girl’s sweet, happy smile and strong, compelling argument, I still didn’t let it come home with us. Such a mean mom, right? Thanks a lot Target. My love/hate relationship with you continues... 🤣🤦🏼‍♀️🙄
Everyday around 3:30, I watch my daughter run off the bus with an excited and exhausted smile across her face. Home sweet home! It sounds like the start to a sweet story, right? Yeah, no. It’s not sweet. It’s actually a mess. A daily mess. An overwhelming, exhausting, confusing, physically and emotionally draining mess (for both me and my kiddo!) and if you’re a parent with school-age children, I bet you too are familiar with the chaos of after school meltdowns, especially around the beginning of the school year. I recently read an article that described this new chaos as ‘after school restraint collapse’. Turns out, our kiddos aren’t crazy. They’re just collapsing (and rightfully so!) because they’ve had to be ‘on’ all day - listening, reading, sharing, working, paying attention, sitting still, following directions, following a schedule, and following the expectations of everyone else around them for the last seven hours of their day. At surface level, what we see is an emotional, reactive, whiny, needy, moody child who has lost complete control… but a deeper look (and a little research) actually reveals a more thorough explanation. Our kids have lost complete control because they’ve spent their entire day having to practice self-control. They’re not bad, they’re just finally home and ready to ‘turn it all off’. Interesting point… So as parents, what do we do? How should we react to this evidence-based need for our children to decompress? Should we really just let it happen and look the other way? Certainly not. Here’s what the research suggests we can do: We can ease up a tad. We can give ‘em a little grace. After all, when we’re at our wits end and overwhelmed with a long day, isn’t that we want for ourselves? Grace, understanding, compassion, patience? Rather than expecting our kids to sit down and start their homework, perhaps we could offer a brain break instead. Rather than feeding them with a thousand questions about their day, maybe we could just feed them a snack. Rather than giving demands to clean their room or help with chores, maybe we should just give them a little down time instead. ...(continued in 1st comment)...
Fall is for pumpkins and gourds and candy apples, warm drinks and cozy sweaters, the most heavenly scents, and best of all, this knee deep corn pit that my kids begged to never leave! No doubt, this local farm brought ‘sensory bins’ to a whole new level! While we’re on the topic of fall, I have a confession to make - I pretty much love everything fall unless it contains the label, ‘Pumpkin Spice’. (Gasp!) It’s true… I’m not a fan. Who else is with me? Are you ‘team pumpkin spice’ or ‘team everything but’?
Publication #4 with @scarymommy is live! I recently wrote about a conversation I had with my own mother regarding my 6-year-old daughter’s school work. In it, I described how my basic human instinct as a parent and as a mother was to instantly defend my daughter, but as a result, I almost missed a valuable lesson. Leave it to my momma to keep me in check, even at the age of thirty-two. Check out the link in my bio for more!
Currently accepting any parenting hacks, tricks of the trade, or favorite food accounts you follow that will help me find ways to encourage my kiddos to eat more well-balanced meals… My 6-year-old daughter created a grocery list yesterday and it read as follows: . Grocery List -Peanut Butter -Jelly -Cookies -Reeses -Popsicles -Princess soup -Ice Cream -Honey -Waffles -Corndogs -Uncrustables -Popcorn -Cap’N Crunch See that? Not a single vegetable or real protein on her entire ‘wish list’… At first glance, I totally thought her list included roses (awe!) but when asked, she very matter-of-factly explained that it said Reeses, “the candy, mom!”. Clearly the key to this girls heart is not pretty flowers. It’s peanut butter and chocolate... and allllllll the sugar and carbs. Help a momma out, friends!