Spreadsheetmom
Motherhood Honestly
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by Jana Lieblich
About The Blog
I am a single mom of four incredible children: Garin 13, Catherine 8, Graham 8, Miles 6, and the sweetest pug in the world, Fitzy. Having these four children has been the greatest blessing and also the greatest challenge of my life. Surprisingly, motherhood has allowed me not only to utilize, but hone and perfect many skills that I had prior to becoming a mom.
I have always been organized. I think I was born that way. However, raising four kids on my own has forced me to take my skills to a new level. Even as a trained chef, I now cook faster and better than ever before, thanks to my hungry brood. I have always been an avid amateur photographer, but now with the greatest subjects on earth, right under my very own roof, even my photography has improved. Lastly, I love to write and these four little beings have given me more material than I could put down on paper or a computer screen), in a lifetime.
My goal in creating this blog is to be able to share my stories, photos, recipes, tips, and life lessons with the world.
About Me
My name is Jana. I am a mom of four kids. I had my kids on my own, without a husband or partner. Pretty brave, people tell me. It's all I know, so for me it's not brave at all.
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I hadn't planned on having children, but God and my beloved OB/GYN had different plans for me. It was Dr. Daly who put the idea in my head, for which I will be eternally grateful. Once I embarked on the journey of becoming a mother, I thought two had a nice ring. Two children would more than ample, for a single parent. Once again, God had a different plan for me, so instead, I ended up with four.
Fertility is still far from being an exact science, so you get what you get, and what I got was a soccer team. My journey has been challenging, especially when they were tiny and I had three under three! However, over time, I have bolstered my skills as a mom and as my children have grown and matured, things have gotten a bit easier.
Nonetheless, I find being a mother to be the hardest endeavor I have ever embarked upon. I have never worked so hard, agonized so much, nor experienced such self-doubt, since becoming a mom. I have heard Oprah, who is not a mom herself, say that motherhood is the hardest job on earth. As always, that woman knows what she's talking about it!
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I am a Los Angeles native but have lived on the East Coast at various times in my life, as well as Europe. I have an undergraduate degree in psychology from Smith College, an MBA from UCLA. and a Culinary Arts degree from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA), in New York. I have an incredibly varied job background, giving me a lot of additional skills to the ones I acquired through my formal education. But even with all my education and life experience, nothing, I have found, prepared me for the unique challenges of this job, called Motherhood.
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My kids are now school-aged, so I decided to embark on this new and exciting chapter of writing and blogging. I enjoy cooking, reading, photography, knitting interior design, fashion, traveling, organizing, exercising, and learning new things. When I have free time I love spending it with friends, being near the water, shopping and seeing every great movie I can.