Name: Heidi Stephens
Child(ren)’s names and ages: McKenna 12, Dillan 8, Ashlyn 5, Hannah 3
Where are you originally from? I was born in Salinas, CA. We moved to Monroe, GA when I was 4…all my happiest childhood memories are there.
What is one of the funniest things that’s happened to you as a mom? With four kids there are so many! (“laughing”) I swear all the funny moments have happened during potty training!!
One of the worst? McKenna got really sick when she was 4 weeks old. The doctors kept giving us a different diagnosis, she got sicker and sicker. Finally one night I took her to the ER, they ran tests and found out she had pyloric stenosis (the muscle that lets food into the intestines was completely grown shut). They had to do surgery right away and later told me that if I had waited another 24 hrs she probably wouldn’t have made it. I cried for a month! (Seriously) I was a new Mom and really scared.
What are your favorite hobbies? Reading. My husband calls me his bookworm. Knitting, I can do a mean knit stitch, but any other stitch renders me hopeless. Maybe knitting isn’t so much a hobby as it is a work in progress! I also like to do a bit of drawing and painting.
Tell us about a day in the life of Heidi: I wake up at 6am (groggy, grumpy & off balance), jump in the shower (quickly), wake up the kids (except Hannah, she is last), make the kids a quick breakfast (cereal one day, oatmeal the next), make lunches (pb&j one day, ham & cheese the next), get the kids dressed (find shoes…I know I should do it the night before!), fix everyone’s hair, oops… forgot to get dressed…just kidding…hee hee!!
Get Hannah up (this could go really easy or really not…she’s 3), load everyone in the car and head off to school (hope Hannah stays in her car seat), come home and make breakfast for Hannah and I, time for some preschool fun with drawing and flash cards, do a load of laundry, pick up around the house, make Hannah lunch, do another load of laundry, put Hannah down for short nap, eat lunch, read a little, do another load of laundry (not kidding), get Hannah up and play for a bit, take out ingredients for dinner (what am I going to cook..ugh), pick up kids from school, listen to kids yell and fight all the way home because they are tired and grumpy (hope Hannah stays in her car seat), help kids with homework, start on dinner, thank goodness my husband is home, finish dinner, eat, get baths/play, put kids to bed…whew I’m exhausted! (“laughing” I know it’s a huge run-on sentence!)
My favorite moments are: 1) Dinnertime. We all sit down and eat as a family every night. This is our time to laugh and talk about our day. 2) Bedtime…another day survived.
How do you like to de-stress? Reading. I would do it all day if I could.
What’s your favorite place in NWA to hang out with the kids? We love Fast Lane!
Favorite NWA date night activity? I love just going to dinner and a movie, NWA has so many good restaurants to choose from!
What’s the best advice you received as a mom? I can’t remember where I got this advice, but it was mountains vs. mole hills. If it’s a mountain then you are allowed to stress and do what you have to in order to fix it. If it’s a mole hill, just let it go. I have kind of broken it apart: Mountains – issues that will keep your child from growing up to be a civilized human being with good morals. Mole hills – everything else! :o)
Something you never would have guessed about motherhood? The amount of love you feel. It’s so overwhelming how much that love changes you…everything about you! I see the whole world differently as a Mother.
One word to sum me up … kind.
