Friday Features: ‘A Little Bit Of All Of It’ And ‘Smiling Like Sunshine’

A Little Bit of All Of It is a beautiful, compassionate blog written by Julia about, well… all of it. She describes herself as a ‘mommy blog’ with a little bit more. In my view, she’s selling herself short – there’s a lot more to A Little Bit of All Of It.

In October, for example, Julia hosted a series of posts for National Pregnancy Loss and Infant Remembrance Day, and the posts she featured were… gut wrenching, heart stopping, and touching… probably not ideal for reading when you’re in your third trimester. There was another series back in July on adoption and the posts in that were equally emotional and touching, and provided a deep and intense insight into both giving up, and adopting a child.

More than just a blog about her day to day, Julia provides an outlet for women from all sorts of backgrounds and experiences through her pages. You can learn so much about the human experience by following her.

Amidst all of that there is ‘normal’ stuff too. Julia blogs about food and shares recipes, she writes meal plans – something I’ve never been good at – and is another of those mother-bloggers who have time to read real books – the type with pages!

The post that resonates with me most at this stage of my life as we prepare Ameli for not sleeping next to me when Squidgy comes along, is How our Co-Sleeping Relationship Ended.  Julia writes:

I never anticipated having to re-learn how to sleep without her beside me…. There are still plenty of sweet night moments to experience with her (and my husband laughs that I actually am excited when she wakes at night). I know that our co-sleeping days will always be an extra special memory to me though and I will definitely miss them.

Oh, Julia, I long for the day I no longer get woken by kicks in the back… and yet I dread waking without that little face muzzling into mine.

A Little Bit of All Of It is a lovely blog, full of real life experience and compassion, and owned by a mama with a huge heart.

Smiling Like Sunshine is written by a mama I’ve had the privilege of meeting in real life. Not only is Isil a fellow volunteer on the Natural Parents Network website, but she only lives one town away from me! While being passionate about attachment parenting, Isil blogs about natural family living, early years education, play, food, literature, music, design and cinema.

Isil hosts a weekly Book Sharing Monday linky where she reviews a children’s book, along with pictures and quotes from it. It’s a fantastic place to get the low-down on what’s good and what’s new in the children’s book market if you need inspiration.

Similing Like Sunshine masters a skill I do not have: short blog posts. She posts images, quotes and links to other sites. She posts bite sized chunks, easy for readers to follow. It’s refreshing and I often find a lift, a smile and a reminder in the things she shares.

Isil also has a series of posts on playroom inspirations that make me yearn for a big house with large rooms – there’s so much imagination you can pour into a child’s room… if you have the eye, the money, and the creativity to do so. More than just dreaming about introducing these things into her children’s lives, however,  Isil regularly motivates me with the play based, Montessori-based learning she does with her children. I’ll be honest and say my excuse with Ameli is often that she’s too young for my ideas, or my ideas are too advanced for her, but in reality I just don’t like cleaning up, so I feel a bit guilty because her youngest, Derin, is a few months younger than Ameli! I am keeping a watchful eye on the Montessori activities posts though, for inspiration, motivation and a little bit of an introduction to home education.

I hope you enjoy these bloggers as much as I do. They inform my thinking, colour my days and are such a valuable part of my life.