Currently my boys (ages five and two) are having a slime fest, giving me five minutes of peace to jot down at least a few lines before the two-year-old will have a meltdown over which color slime he can taste. (Update: The slime has already been smeared on the carpet and both of them are blaming the other!) .
I’m the researcher mom. I still have the excel file from five years ago, before we became parents, comparing different strollers on a pro-con list. Needless to say, I have no regrets on my decisions afterwards, and Mountain Buggy Nano is, hands down, the best travel stroller in my experience. I always have 4,367 browser tabs open and everything from sippy cups to bicycles need to be reviewed and ranked before I click “Add to cart.” However, after five years, these products have been replaced with parenting books. Maybe I secretly hope to find a magic potion hidden somewhere between the pages of The Whole Brain Child and No Drama Discipline, or at least figure out how to talk to my child, so he will listen. For all I know, he may already be working on his own memoir after observing me read Educated with such curiosity.
My name is Muzna Sarwar, and I’m really excited to be part of Detroit Moms Blog as a contributor. Motherhood has been a unique journey for me. When my oldest was four weeks old, we learned that he has hearing loss. He was aided with hearing aids when he was three months old. His hearing loss is what connected me with my first-ever mom/parent tribe: MI Hands & Voices. If it weren’t for them, I don’t know where I would be today. Presently, I’m actually a board member, and we help families who have children with hearing loss. Our journey of raising a hard of hearing child has been nothing short of whirlwind. I don’t know what the future holds for us, but we are absolutely blessed to be part of this remarkable child’s life. I may be his mother, but his resilience has taught me a lot more in last few years than I could learn in a lifetime.
My faith and strong support system around me is what keeps me going. Parenting is hard for sure, but without any sugar coating, being a special needs parent is like entering this paradigm where everything around you may seem similar, but your journey will still be uniquely yours, and you may or may not find people who can relate and understand. My religion is what gives me the steadfastness and the positivity to deal whatever challenges and trials will have been there or will be in future. However, we are also blessed to have family and friends around us who are always there for us when needed. My children are extremely lucky to be growing up surrounded with so much love and support. When it comes to family, they literally have everyone wrapped around their tiny fingers. Their grandparents just need an excuse to drop everything down and be there for them; I mean, if you hear my two-year-old crying, chances are he’ll be sobbing for “Dada” (paternal grandfather), not Mama!
I’m married to a guy straight out of Canton. For him, zip code 48188 and ESPN.com is where life is, except for obligatory in-law visits and forced vacations. We met over skype almost eight years ago through his cousin in Pakistan who thought she was doing him a favor! Unlike him, I’ve been all over the place, including spending a major chunk of my life in Pakistan. Oklahoma also has my heart because that’s where my family is, and all these years later, I still rock my OK license plate and refuse to change it. When it comes to life, we both like to be behind the scenes. I’m always behind the camera, and he’s always behind a screen. You may not always see us, but with the right clicks (of planning and pictures), we’re making it work just fine!
I absolutely love interior design and thoroughly enjoyed the process of decorating and DIY-ing our first home that we moved into two years ago when my youngest was only two weeks old! I’ve recently started sharing my love for all things interior and DIY on Instagram and am still getting used to myself being so public! Baking is another one of my passions, and my husband still tries to convince me periodically to turn my hobby into business, so he can retire early. (Yeah…probably not happening anytime soon!).
Lastly, in a perfect world I seriously fantasize the idea of homeschooling them; some days I even consider unschooling. So if one day you find out that I actually took the plunge, don’t be surprised! In my head I’ve prepared for it so much, but I’m just having a hard time pulling the trigger and going with it. I would also like to add the disclaimer that I don’t have it all together at all! In fact, one of my biggest fears is that if I take the plunge, I won’t be able to handle it. So yeah, I’m winging it too; these days, it is one Insta worthy capture at a time with promises to show you behind the scenes in my stories! For more Musings, you can follow me on Instagram or Facebook.
