10 Things about Guru Louise

You guys already know Guru Louise. But we never really properly introduced her to you. She's pretty awesome. She's written a whole bunch of guest posts (she has the little red-headed boy) and helped us with Hookers and been our very good friend. Kate is very busy with work and kids these days and not able to write as much, so we asked Louise to come on board as our Mommy in Residence. She's already part of the MommyLand family, now we're just making it official.

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Since I’m going to be Mommy in Residence here in Mommyland I thought you might like to know a few things about me and what brought me to Mommyland.

1. I have two amazing, adorable, hilarious, loud, whiney children. The older one, J, is a 3 year-old girl and the younger one, P, is a 1 year-old boy. They are 22 months apart.
2. My husband and I have been together for ten years and married for the last five.
3. I’m a young-ish mom, meaning I had both my babies in my 20s. Kate regularly teases me about this. For example, when I mentioned I was reading a new book she asked if it was written by Beverly Cleary or Judy Blume. (Snitch.)
4. I have a graduate degree in Child Development. This means I know a lot of theory about little kids and how to communicate with them in a healthy, productive way. This information is surprisingly hard to access when you find your children have ripped open ten packets of instant oatmeal and dumped them all over the kitchen floor while you were peeing.
5. I don’t live near Kate and Lydia. In fact, I live in a completely different region of the U.S.
6. I didn’t know Kate and Lydia before they started writing this blog. I’m their creepy internet stalker friend! I started reading the blog after my son was born and I felt like I was losing my damn mind from sleep deprivation. Someone sent me the post Lydia wrote about The Blur and it was amazeballs. Then I went back and read the entire blog from start to finish. I was elated to find women who were writing about motherhood in a way that didn’t make me feel bad about myself, like the other stuff on the interweb. I wrote them a few fan emails and pitched them a post idea and we became friends in Mommyland and real life.
   
7. I’ve had the distinct privilege of hanging out with Kate and Lydia in-person. I can attest that they are even funnier in real life than they are on the blog. Lydia's van does look like a big white tampon and Kate really has a wall of stilettos in her closet. It’s all true, people.
8. I have a photo on my phone of Kate wearing sneakers and yoga pants (I’m not kidding) at the playground pushing my infant son in a bucket swing and it kills me each time I look at it because they both look sublimely happy.
9. After the Grand Hooker Experiment Lydia hand-painted a small canvas for me that reads ‘We Can Do Hard Things’. When she handed it to me she gave me a meaningful look and said, “This applies to ALL the things in our lives, Louise.” It is proudly hanging in my dining room, despite the fact that it is wildly inappropriate and it looks like it was painted by a 5 year-old.
   
10. I’m so, so happy to be here!

[Editor's note: The whole "we can do hard things" mantra really belongs to another blogger named Momastery who was our Yoda/Spirit Guide through the whole Helping Hookers project. And she agreed with us that given the nature and title of our little project, that "we can do hard things" was the perfect battle cry for it. xo, Lydia]

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