Raising Jordans

Well, it has been more than a hot minute since I have popped up around here. Two and a half years to be exact (can someone please tell me how that went by so quickly?).  I guess I should start explaining myself, huh? Two weeks after my last post, we made the gut-wrenching decision to say good-bye to all our friends who had become family and pack up Brooklyn life. In a handful of weeks, we loaded everything into a Uhaul, and set our GPS to the PNW.

The next years held some of the most emotionally trying seasons I have walked through. I moved back to Canada, while Jay remained in the states.  He set up shop in a Cap Hill studio in Seattle, and I moved back into our house in Victoria. We started the juggle of living and working in two countries, catching each other when we could.

We both landed careers we thrived on. We had a house with the ocean at the end of the road, and a city apartment -the best of both worlds. The romance of flying to NYC, or SoCal, or Colorado for the weekend to catch up with Jay wasn’t lost on us. But in the midst of all that excitement, we were in the thick of infertility. We had started our treatment in NYC but felt pulled home as things began to escalate. In hindsight, I think I half expected our two country set-up to be fleeting and temporary. Surely, we would defy science by making a baby on our road trip back to the coast. But it took us many, many months (18 to be exact) of long distance, doctor’s appointments and heart-shattering losses to finally build our family. In that time I lost my voice. I lost a lot of things during those months, but what I lost the most was my ability to put myself out there. I closed off and turned in. I kept writing and freelancing and creating and teaching. I just stopped sharing.

But that is about to change. Mostly thanks to all of you who bore with me, and loved me, as I grappled with how to find my footing. And also to those who I have only recently met with who have gently, kindly encouraged me to breathe life into this space once again.

As you can guess, we did it. We made a freaking baby, Y’all. And guys, let me tell you, he’s the coolest baby to have ever been created by us. He has made every blood draw, every episode (and there were a lot of them) of public crying, every near success, and every loss, worth it.

Getting pregnant with Anderson didn’t flip a switch and put back all the pieces that had been shaken loose. It took me time to trust the viability of my pregnancy and time to ease into motherhood to feel whole again. But sometime last fall I began to feel like Renée again. I had been back in my kitchen, but this time with a new tiny palate to develop. People started asking how I got my 6-month-old to eat collard greens and could I send them my recipes? (the answer is luck, and at some point, I am confident he will refuse to eat anything but cheese because he is in fact, a child). A few casually suggested I revamp this space. Instead, I started an Instagram account to dump the recipes quickly and efficiently.

But man did you guys blow me away. In a handful of weeks, I began connecting with people left, right, and center.  Messaged began landing in my inbox asking how to get your kid to buy into learning their alphabet. I can truly say that you were the final push I needed to get back to feeling like me and feeling confident in sharing my heart and passions again.

So with that in mind, this space is once again live 🙂 For those of you who are new to this space you can read a little more about us here. I have decided to leave all the old content live too (no matter how embarrassing I feel some of it may be). So you can hunt around for all the old recipes, and ed focused resources.

But the new stuff will be different and reflective the growth I have gone through in the interceding years. I am a newbie in the parenting realm so you won’t find me on a soapbox around here. But I will be in the trenches muddling through, just like every mum. But as I do, I will share any of the activities I do that buy me 15 minutes in my day.

And if there is something you want to see, or you need for your family, let me know! I am still freelancing in k12 and corporate spaces and designing curriculum during nap times. It’s my favorite hobby 🙂 So whether you need something to help your kindie master their numbers, or working on an L&D project at work, drop me a note.

Thanks for being patient. Thanks for encouraging me to be brave and share my passions. Thanks for being you Y’all. You’re the best.

P.S. Photos by Carissa Marie Photography &  Rachael Alexandra