Time of Our Lives Book Review

 After I had my son, I went through a pretty long reading slump. Despite my lifelong love of reading, I just couldn't find it in me to pick up a book, let alone finish one. I kept trying to push through and find a book that I loved, though. I didn't want to lose that part of myself but I was having trouble finding books that I connected with. 

But then I found some new booktubers on YouTube and got some really great recommendations (particularly Hailey in Bookland). Through finding those booktubers, I discovered so many wonderful books that I had never heard of. Suddenly, I was devouring books again and I rediscovered my love of reading. I started to feel like my old self again and I was so grateful not to have completely lost the part of me that loved to read. 

But of course, not every book is for everybody and I was going to eventually find a book that I didn't completely mesh with. Time of Our Lives by Emily Wibberly and Austin Siegmund-Broka was that book.

 

The premise was really interesting to me. The story is about Fitz and Juniper who are both complete opposites in personality and circumstance. Juniper was from a large family and wanted nothing more than to be on her own, as far away from her family's hold and influence as possible. She was confident, intelligent and focused. Fitz, on the other hand, had a mother who had the gene for early onset Alzheimer's and was crippled by his fear of the disease. He had seen his grandmother go through it and worried every day that his mother's memory would start slipping away. He felt like he had no support from his older brother about his mother's care and was socially withdrawn and anxious. He was determined to go to a school close to his mother so that he could care for her the second that she got sick. 

This story currently has a 3.6 out of 5 star rating on Goodreads, which normally would deter me from picking it up. Reading a book is a commitment; If I'm going to be spending hours of my time invested in a story, I want to know that it's going to be worth that time. But because I watched my own grandmother suffer with Alzheimer's, I felt a personal connection to this book and decided to pick it up anyway. Unfortunately, it was a minor part of the story, as his mother is barely in the book and when she is, it's during a phone call or text message exchange. 

The whole book takes place over about two weeks and the insta-love trope just isn't something that I can get behind. Fitz also goes through a complete personality change as soon as he meets Juniper. Almost all of a sudden, he goes from an awkward, self-conscious teenager that's barely even spoken to girls to being confident and flirtatious. While I know that people can change, it doesn't happen that quickly and I found that to be unbelievable. 

This book also lost points because Juniper had a boyfriend at the beginning of the book. Had I known that, I wouldn't have picked this book up. She never physically cheats on her boyfriend but she starts developing feelings for Fitz way too quickly. She claims to be in love with her boyfriend but he's easily forgotten about and she's barely heartbroken over their breakup. He was a great boyfriend and treated her well throughout his time in the story, so I felt bad for his character. 

Overall, I was just disappointed. This book touched on the complexity of familial relationships, which I appreciated but I wish that there was more discussion about Alzheimer's. I know that this writing duo has written many popular books together, so maybe I'll pick another one up one day. 

I gave this book a 2 out of 5 stars. Have you read this book? What are your thoughts?

-Chelsea 

Be Present

Yesterday, while I was outside pushing my son in his swing, my mind kept drifting. I kept thinking about all of the things that I needed to get done. I needed to go to the grocery store. I needed to fold laundry. I needed to unload the dishwasher. And who knows how long I was distracted by all of those thoughts before I was brought back to the present. 

And as my attention was brought back, I realized something: I was stealing my own joy. I was so preoccupied with whatever chores I needed to get done that I wasn't allowing myself to enjoy playing with my son. And that hurt my heart so much. 

Once my husband and I decided that we were ready to start trying for a baby, it was all that I could think about. All I wanted was to be pregnant. The thoughts were especially prevalent because I watched kids for a living. I couldn't wait until I was raising my own kids. So every month that passed when I wasn't pregnant brought me a lot of sorrow. I couldn't understand how I could want something so bad and it could elude me so easily. I wanted to be a mother more than anything in the world. 

And yet, yesterday, there I was, pushing my son in the swing and it was like I wasn't even there. These types of moments, where my son's laughter filled the air, were the moments that I was looking the most forward to when I dreamed of pregnancy. Yet my mind was elsewhere.

I'm currently living my dream. My husband and I just bought a house. I'm a published author. I'm able to send my son to a good school. I have a strong relationship with my family. I have everything that I wanted, especially my most important dream. I'm a mother but I have a tendency to not let myself enjoy it to the fullest. My joy and attention were being taken away from me with thoughts of life's most mundane moments. 

So as I snapped my attention back to the present moment, I told myself that I needed to stop and smell the roses. I needed to enjoy these moments to the fullest possible extent. These moments with my son mean more to me and will continue to mean more to me than anything else ever will. More than a clean house. More than folded laundry. More than anyone or anything. 

I realized that when my son is grown and I'm an empty nester, I won't ever reminisce about how much laundry I folded or how many dishes I washed when he was growing up. And neither will he. He'll remember riding his scooter on our back patio and swimming with his Paw Patrol pool toys. And I want him to remember me being there with him, soaking up every precious second that I had with him. And I want to remember these moments vividly, not through a haze because my mind wandered to my to-do list. 

People say all the time "don't blink because you'll wake up one day and your baby boy will be a man". I can honestly tell you that nothing would make me sadder than if I fell victim to this cliche and I missed my son growing up. I have what I wanted so desperately that I could barely stand it: a happy, healthy child. And yet I was wasting precious time with him over something as trivial as laundry. 

It's so easy to get caught up in what you think you "should" be doing. But I understand now that I'll always have laundry to do and dishes to wash. It's a fact of life. But what I won't always have is time, especially with my son being so little. He's only little for a little while. And I don't want to miss out on what I so desperately craved because life got in the way. Or rather, I let life get in the way. 

It's my choice how I spend my time and how I think. And I choose to be present. I choose to enjoy living the dream that at one point felt impossible. I choose to be a present mother rather than strive to be a "perfect" one. 

-Chelsea