5 Things Making Me Happy Right Now + Shopbop Sale
Reading poetry with my kids: I grew up with a dad who loves poetry. I had an “aha” moment sometime early on in Lincoln’s first year that Ben didn’t have to memorize + recite poetry to our kids, I could (it sounds SO silly in retrospect but I had always just pictured a dad doing that and, with Ben writing me poetry early on in our relationship, I had always imagined him as the poetry dad). Over the last few months I’ve picked up a few kids poetry books and it has been so fun seeing how much the kids enjoy them. We usually end bedtime story reading with poems but we’ve also just been reading them throughout the day (mostly when I need to sit down for a few minutes). Sitting on our blue couch, two kids snuggled in close, excitedly arguing about which poem to read next is one of the moments I want to bottle up. Sometimes motherhood is exactly the dream I imagined it would be.
I’ve linked our two favorite poetry collections below. The Shell Silverstein is a classic but of all the kids poetry collections I’ve thumbed through in book Stores, “A Child’s Book of Poems” is my favorite collection. It has a a lot of well curated classic poems from famous poets that lend themselves to beautiful illustrations and children. There is a good mix of long and short poems and it includes some of my all time favorite verses. Lincoln loves this one as well.
Febreze wall plug: I finally plugged in the Febreze wall plug I’ve had sitting around for a few months and it makes me happy every time I open our front door. In our small apartment, any smell lingers. If I cooked with onions the night before, I can tell when I come home from the gym the next day. If Ben is back from a workout and hasn’t showered yet, I can tell. If there are bananas sitting on the counter, I swear our whole living room smells like bananas. So having a fresh, light scent each time I come in the house has been so happy (and such a relief while pregnant + extra sensitive to smells).
Book Club: I quasi hosted book club this week (a friend hosted at my apartment) and it was nice to curl up on my couch and be surrounded by friends, discussing something beyond on children or husbands or school (I LOVE talking about children + parenting, actually, it is just also nice to talk about something else).
Book clubs this last year have forced me out of my regular reading habits, dumping me into many more worlds of fiction than I’m used it. Fiction, it turns out, is not useless (ignorant me). I enjoy reading fiction but before this year (and “The Read Aloud Family”) I had chalked it up mostly to entertainment. Granted, I ranked it as more productive entertainment than watching Netflix, but not actually productive like reading self-help, parenting, or non-fiction (why non-fiction, I’m not sure). The fiction has helped me relate to, understand, and meet characters + personalities I might otherwise not – those with really different life circumstances, backgrounds, mental health issues, and families than I do. I feel more empathetic and less judgmental and that makes me happy.
Workouts: Getting back into exercise after a first trimester off has been slow. This week, though, I’ve committed to just going to the gym and my mood + parenting before the gym and after the gym is SO different. It was a good reminder that just exercising for my sanity (and my children) is worth it right now. It is also an interesting thing to exercise regularly while your body gets less functional and larger (pregnancy is awesome! but this time around at 16 weeks I feel the same way I did with my first at about 30 weeks. ligament pain. abdominals. pelvic floor. all the things).
Shopbop Sale: And speaking of workouts – I dug out my maternity clothes two months ago but I CANNOT find any of my maternity workout leggings (probably because I didn’t put them away with my maternity clothes because I wore them for 6 months post partum). And so I finally ordered new ones from the Shopbop sale, along with a handful of other maternity pieces I’ve been eying. The thought of that box, en route, is bringing me an embarrassing amount of happiness right now, and not just because it means I can ditch the workout leggings that are suffocating me at the moment.
Have you shopped one of Shopbop’s tiered sales before? The more you spend, the bigger discount you get. I really like this sale because SO many things that don’t usually go on sale are discounted. Shopbop carries brands from Madewell to Chanel with lots of great finds in between. I use the sale to buy high-end jeans at a discount and great quality shoes I’ve been wanting for awhile. The discount works on their sale items as well so you can get an even better price (there are a few brands excluded from the sale).
Not looking to spend $800 to get the full 25% discount? Me and some friends went in on one order so we met the minimum (you can also return items and they honor the discount of your original purchase total).
My favorite picks from the sale are below but I’d recommend checking out AG jeans, cute sneaker options, classic black bags, and the sale section!
And if you’re pregnant, you can snag some workhorses for your maternity wardrobe here.
