Make parenting wine?

Okay, maybe I didn't make wine. I've made whine for sure, but it's not common and readily adjusted so it's not bad.

I've been hearing lots of wonderful parents saying how they're struggling lately. I won't pretend to have it all sorted out myself, but I can honestly say that our struggles are few and related to a brief issue. Not to say life is perfect, but it's pretty awesome. :)

Okay, back to the wine. I've been looking at the whole picture that I can see and one thing I see in common for these wonderful moms is imbalance. So, it trying to find a way to say it, I did some searching. First, I checked wikipedia. I liked that description (follow the link to check it out yourself, I'm not copy pasting the whole thing), but since it's not cited, I wanted to keep looking. It does all sound very familiar from my philosophy classes in college (one of my majors for those who didn't know) but I wanted cited materials at this point. I don't want to offend anyone but when I'm asked to help, I want to in a constructive way.

So, next is dictionary.com. There we go! Bingo! That's what I was looking for!

"3. mental steadiness or emotional stability; habit of calm behavior, judgment, etc."
"8.(in winemaking) the degree to which all the attributes of a wine are in harmony, with none either too prominent or deficient."

There's the wine.

All attributes in harmony with none either too prominent or deficient. Yes, that's the definition I was looking for. Having the emotional stability and habit of calm judgement goes a long way in getting all the attributes in harmony.


Parenting wine is maturing in my house.


Our baseline is that we have a good balance of meeting everyone's needs and some of each person's wants. Hubs and I each have adult communities that we're connected to and that feed our needs for not completely relinquishing our pre-parent selves. We also have communities with kids that feed our needs to connect to other parents so we're not feeling isolated in our parenting. Sparky and Spunky have friends that they see regularly and who's company they seem to enjoy. 

We all have activities that we enjoy and get to be a part of. As a family and as individuals we have activities for each of us and things to keep us occupied, but we also have plenty of time to spend together doing things as a family. Even just the simple playing around the house things. Sparky and Spunky get time with their parents as they want it for the most part (occasionally they have to wait a few minutes) but they also get time to play independently as they please.


2007 and 2009 vintages from our cellars will be absolutely wonderful, I'm sure of it.