- November 27, 2024
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Her kids splash through puddles at James Holland Park, and Erin James calls after them to stay out of the water.
“What did Mommy tell you about listening today?” she asks. And 3-year-old Alan looks at her like he has no idea, then he jumps up and down until puddle water takes over the bottom half of his cargo pants.
“There’s really no such thing as a perfect parent — at all,” James shrugs. And that’s exactly the point of her blog on the “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” website, which has more than 200,000 readers. The movie by the same name was released Friday in theaters.
A mother of three, James has been a contributing writer on the site since February 2010. At one time, there were 100 featured bloggers, but when that sample got scaled down, James said, she remained one of the top picks, which she attributes to the diversity of her topics.
In her blog, “Mom E and the Joyful Three,” she writes about crafts and makes her own recipes. She tells stories about her day. Her posts are varied, like any given day of any given parent in the world, she says.
James doesn’t write an advice column; in fact, she openly admits that, when it comes to parenting, she usually makes most of it up as she goes along. So, instead, she talks about her kids, which opens up a forum for readers.
“I was nervous about my third C-section (and) having another child, and the moms on there are so great,” James said, half of her attention diverted to her children, who chased each other around the park’s pavilion. “You make a lot of friends, lifelong friends, really. It’s really kind of a beautiful thing to come together over the Internet.”
She first got turned on to “What to Expect … ” after now-5-year-old Myley was born with a hole in her lung. For the month that she was in the hospital, James found support in an unlikely place: her computer.
“If you can’t sleep at night because you’re nervous,” she said, “there’s always someone there to talk to.”
James never went to writing school. She “barely passed” high school, even, she says. But soon after starting, she realized that the site was about community, not classroom experience.
“You have to learn to find your audience and speak from the heart when you’re blogging,” she said. “It should be about what you’re really like, and your family. … I write what I feel, and I hope that there’s someone out there who can learn from it.”
She even once wrote a “mommy reflections” column about losing 120 pounds in 12 months. “I am a firm believer that you should always have some kind of goal in mind,” she wrote in that particular post. “I choose to be a happy mom, a healthy example. I choose to love, live and learn.”
“What to Expect When You’re Expecting” author Heidi Murkoff helped her lose the weight, James added, by emailing daily words of support and advice.
“When you have someone helping you like that,” James said, “you want to do the right thing, instead of just giving up after having one wrong day.”
An 11-year Palm Coast resident, James has always wanted to be a writer. She even had a voice recorder when she was little, with which she recorded ideas for her first planned novel, “A Summer’s Rose.”
She still believes one day she will be a published novelist. Writing stories, she thinks, is what she was born to do.
And she would also like to have more kids — but not right away. She’d like to enjoy the weight-loss first.
For now, James has a job at the Kangaroo gas station, which she loves, because she gets to interact with adults all day. But the rest of her time, she writes. And she tries to be a mother.
“I don’t ever want to seem like I know what I’m doing a mom,” she laughed, as 7-year-old Sage handed her a flowery weed. “You’re going to make mistakes as a mom, and not beating yourself up is so important. Everyone’s the best mom in some way and everyone’s the worst mom in some way.”
At the end of the day, for her, parenting comes down to embracing every style, as long as its backed with good intentions.
“Religion and motherhood, for me, are like two peas in a pod,” she said. “I want (my kids) to grow up and be what they are, not what I want them to be.”
Pulling a hot purple skirt back over her daughter’s soaking wet shorts, she laughed and said, “See, this is really what my life is like,” as Sage and Alan drip puddle water and yell in the background. “It’s better to get them in their natural state.”
To contact James, email momeandthe [email protected].
