Real Moms – Making it Up As We Go by Lisa Valentine Clark

Okay ladies, listen up. I have read plenty of parenting books. I have a stack of them I only got half way through because I felt like crap after reading them.  I tried to implement what they said and it didn’t work.  There have been a couple that I have loved and learned a lot from.  But nothing compares to this book that I just started reading called Real Moms: Making It Up As We Go by Lisa Valentine Clark. If you haven’t ever heard to Lisa Valentine Clark speak you need to.  She is Hilarious!  I wrote about her funny comedy series she was in called Pretty Darn Funny!  If you get a minute after reading this post, go watch them! They are so funny!

Real Moms: Making It Up As We Go

My Thoughts:

I have been that stressed out mom that has looked for all kinds of books to help me be a better mother. I am only halfway through this book and I want to shout from the rooftops to every Mother I know to get in their car and drive to Deseret Book and buy this book. Or get online and buy it, but that might take to long! You need this book….yesterday! The way that Lisa Valentine Clark writes is exactly how I feel.  The way she talks about parenting, motherhood, being a wife, keeping a clean house, and making it up as we go makes me feel like she knows me!  Kind of creepy I know, but you will understand when you read it!

Being a mom is not easy. In fact a lot of the time it is downright hard. Why is it that we love it so much? Because it’s what we have chosen to be our life.  I truly would not change my job for any other job in the world. Lisa says it like it is. She doesn’t sugarcoat it. She talks about how hard it is, how wonderful it is, how crazy she gets when her house is messy, how hard it is to see your kids grow up but yet be kind of excited for the time when you’re not cleaning up after everybody. This book is exactly how I have felt about being a mother for the last 11 years.

A few months ago I was having a very down day. I woke up and I didn’t want to do anything. I felt grumpy, exhausted, and like I pulling me in so many different directions that I felt paralyzed. I didn’t want to do anything. I tried to express it to my husband who kindly said, “well you have to, you’re the mother” and then lovingly walked out the door to work.  He really is a kind person and has every intention to help me out. Maybe because he didn’t coddle me, but was straight forward with me was what got me up that day. I got up and I did all the things I was supposed to do and I ended up having a great day.

I love my job as a mom, even if I am making it up as I go half the time…or all the time! I could underline 95% of her book with quotes that I love. Things she said that make me feel so good about mothering and being a mom. I think we is moms put so much on ourselves.  High expectations of ourselves when in reality we don’t shouldn’t.  Way easier to talk about then actually do. What we need to do is just be us. We are the perfect mother for our OWN children. We as mothers need to stop comparing ourselves, and looking at all of our faults while looking at others wonderful qualities. We need to see all the good qualities in ourselves and what we can contribute.  This book will make you laugh, and make you cry happy tears because it will make you feel good about the way you are mothering.

I think so many times in our lives we read or hear about what other people are doing fun in their life, we see other peoples facebook statuses or Instagram status about things they’re doing with their family, and we compare and think we aren’t good enough. We even read some blogs that might make us feel like we’re not good mothers. I’ve been there I have like a hundred blogger friends that I totally look up to now and have come to realize that just because one of my blogger friends is good at crafting, and another one is way good at cooking, it doesn’t mean I’m not or even that I have to be.  It’s okay if I’m not excellent in those areas. I am who I am. I’m the perfect mom for my kids. Sure there are days when I yell at my kids, feel like running away, or eat all the chocolate on the house because I think it will help me feel better.  I also LOVE, LOVE, LOVE most of the days that I get to be with my kids. I have a great husband I get to work along side, and we help each other out in so many ways in this parenting thing!

We have to work at this mothering thing every single day. There is a chapter in the book called “All The Things”.  She talks about how us mothers really do “all the things”. We have to do the money, the cooking, the cleaning, the organizing, and the homework, you name it we do it!Why? Because we love and care about our kids. We care about raising little humans to be good adults, although it breaks our hearts to think that one day they will be adults and out of the house.

I laughed cried through a whole chapter of hers that was all about not comparing ourselves to others. She goes on to talk about how there’s huge battles and debates between breastfeeding or bottle feeding; having babies with an epidural or without an epidural; if you let your kids wander and explore or if you keep them a little bit closer by your side. We need to stop being the judge, or comparing ourselves to what others are doing. If you don’t like who you are then you need to change for you, but if you don’t like who you are because you’re comparing yourself to everybody else then you need to change your own attitude and love yourself for who you are.

Motherhood isn’t easy, but it is a wonderful thing that God has blessed us with. He’s there to help us every single day. Today I woke up at 5:45 to a crying baby, I gave him a bottle and he so nicely puked it back up on my shirt.  Next he poured his cereal all over the kitchen floor, and then our disposal broke. I could have totally had a negative attitude all day, but I just smiled through it. (which doesn’t always happen by the way!)  My husband and I laughed about all the different things that happened just in one morning on his day off. Thankfully it was his day off!!

I was talking with my kids today about fate, and the Wheel of Fate so often referred to in Shakespeare novels. We were talking about how God knows where we are and what we need in our life and he knows when hard things are going to happen. Fate isn’t just sitting there blindly turning the wheel on us to have good and bad days. We have good and bad moments all day long. It’s our attitude of being a mother and taking care of these children of ours that makes it so we can get through the hard things and enjoy the good things.

So,  I’m not just telling you that you need this book because Deseret Book sent me a free book to review. I’m telling you, GO BUY THIS BOOK because I love it, and if it helps you even half as much as it has helped me, you will love it!  Buy it for a friend that is struggling, buy it for your sisters. You will not regret spending money on this book. I’ve been reading it as I’ve been walking on my treadmill every morning. It makes me happy. It makes me feel like I’m already a good mother…which I am!!.

Product Description

I didn’t have gold shoes, and I didn’t have time to go shopping, but I thought I could just spray-paint some heels I owned that I never really wore. I spray-painted them and tried them out for three hours at church where they held up perfectly. I felt pretty good about myself. “Suckers who buy gold shoes when they could just spray-paint them,” I thought, congratulating myself for my frugality and my foresight for testing them out.

As moms, we improvise. We get along. We make things work. And we make a lot of things up as we go along because, let’s face it, no manual is ever going to cover all the bases a real mom needs to touch. But if laughter and perspective and a renewed energy to face the day are what you’re after—if you too are a “real mom”—this is the book for you!

LISA VALENTINE CLARK graduated with a B.S. in English from Brigham Young University. She was part of the sketch/comedy troupe “The Garrens” in Provo from 1995 to 2000, and co-founded the theater-as-improv troupe “The Thrillionaires.” She has done a variety of voiceover and acting work in independent features, including “Gracie” in the award-winning webseries Pretty Darn Funny,” which she also writes and produces. Lisa spends most of her time in Provo with her husband, Christopher Clark. They are the parents of five children who seem to make up a unique comedy troupe all their own.