I am mom to 2 awesome boys (8 and 2, respectively) and my husband and I are wanting to expanding our family for a third time. With our last son, we tried for a year before finally conceiving. I'm here to tell you that getting pregnant in your 30s is completely different, and oftentimes more challenging, than getting pregnant in your 20s.

The best thing you can do to prepare for your pregnancy is make sure you are your healthiest you possible. That means eating right, maintaining a healthy weight, being active and taking prenatal vitamins.

(c) 2017. Walk Run Repeat.

Prenatal vitamins are not only essential for your growing baby, but also for making sure your body has the essential vitamins missing or needed to get pregnant. I typically don't do well with tablets or capsules, but Spring Valley makes a gel vitamin that is super easy for me to get down. If you absolutely can't take capsules, there are tons of gummy prenatal vitamins on the market.

Now that we are definitely on the road to baby #3, I have stockpiled my cabinets with prenatals and incorporated them into my morning routine. Here's wishing us luck!

I'm ready to end this search of finding the perfect school for our son. I will talk about our school journey in another post and why we chose to homeschool, but right now I'm going to focus on our recent quest of finding a school to enroll him in.

School classroom

Let me start this post by saying my son does not have any learning abilities or special needs. Our decision to homeschool was by personal choice, and residual trauma from a horrible Pre-K experience (a bad teacher with no patience for 3 years old = drama!). In the last year, he has expressed interest in attending "real school" (aka public school). We aren't completely against the idea, but we definitely want to empower him to make decisions so, our journey began.

I have viewed, met, and spoken with teachers at public, private, Montessori, Christian, you name it - and one thing's for certain: every school is different. From the school calendar to the teaching method, everyone has their own way of doing things and that's pretty darn cool. In fact, we actually prefer Montessori schools over all of them but given some of the recent meetings, we're still not quite sure.

I'm sure many of you are saying, just put him in a school. Generally speaking, its just that simple but its not. We are fully involved, hands-on parents and quite frankly, schools just aren't what they used to be. You really truly have to spend time getting to know the school and especially the people that work within them. My parents were totally engaged in every aspect of my schooling all the way through college. I SO appreciate them for serving in one of the most important roles: my advocate.

We as parents forget that we are advocates for our children so it is our job to speak up when we need to it and to rally the troops when its time to put a plan in place. This next school year is going to be a dozy for us in a number of ways but I am fully committed to making the best possible choice for my little guy.

Every time I do a #motivationmonday post, I think of the Kelly Rowland song, "Motivation." Not necessarily for the lyrical content (because believe me, she is NOT talking about the gym at all), but rather the title. Any way, I digress...


This weekend was particularly motivating to me in several ways. One way was physically. After attending the Summer Slay event hosted by Fit While Brown, I am reminded of just how serious I need to take my health and lose weight. I've been slacking on this but I really need to step it up if I'm going to have baby #3 (another post about this later).

The second way I was motivated this weekend was professionally. I had lunch with a colleague on Friday and she reminded me just how much and how important is it that we as women continue to fight the good fight for equally and entrepreneurship. I could literally do an ENTIRE post on that conversation because it was so moving and resonated with me so deeply that I came home and got back to work.

And finally, the last way I was motivated was financially. My contract at work is up on August 24th and while I'm sad/frustrated/scared and everything else in between, I reminded that we should all make an effort to be financially responsible. It's made me much more focused on my next steps and really listening to that little voice inside that's saying, "everything will be alright."

What's your motivation?