There are few surprises more wonderful than a handwritten letter arriving in the mail. It reminds me that a hip mom takes the time to encourage other hip moms. So thank you, fellow hip mom, for making my day with your handwritten words of encouragement!

Hip mom Rule #11: Aromatherapy Anyone?

I grew up with one brother and three sisters. Our house always smelled very sweet from an exhaustive amount of hairsprays (remember the 80’s teased hair? That required a LOT of hairspray for four girls), gels, mousse, perfumes, and candles. We were all accomplished athletes, but we were careful to apply Teen Secret to our underarms and pretty smelling lotions to our newly shaved legs. You would never guess from walking into our home that we had just spent an accumulated 10 hours in the gym.

Now I live with a husband and three little boys. The sweet smells of lotions and perfumes have been replaced by the not-so-sweet smells of sweaty play, dirty feet, experiments gone awry, and potty-training accidents.

One day after a long spell of too-cold-to-open-the-windows weather, I was hit with an odor so pungent that I searched for nearly an hour trying to find the source of the mysterious and ghastly smell. After furtively searching room after room, I began to realize that the smell was not localized to any one space. The entire house smelled like sweaty little boys! Where was the calming, relaxing scents of days gone by?

In spite of the cold, I opened the windows, turned the ceiling fans to full power, packed up the kids, and headed to Target. I bought three new, very powerfully scented candles (in my favorite scents, of course). Then I sauntered over to the beauty section and picked out new bottle of lotion that smelled like eucalyptus and not like new babies. Just because I have baby lotion on hand doesn’t mean I have to use it!

When my husband arrived home from work later that day, he walked in and gave me a long kiss hello. “It smells so good in here! You smell so good!” he exclaimed. Mission accomplished.

Just because I am a hip mother of three rambunctious and energetic boys doesn’t mean my house or I need to smell like one, too! So think about those scents that helped define you earlier in life and reintroduce them to your new life as a hip mother. You might be surprised at how effective a little aromatherapy can be.

Hip Mom Rule #10: Change it up

Children and adults alike thrive on routine. My kids know that after lunch, it is naptime. I know that after lunch it is naptime. In some ways, we both look forward to this quiet time in our house and we seldom fight over it because it is just the way the day goes.

Routines that work are seldom tinkered with. I play with the kids in the morning. I work from home in the afternoons while they sleep. We go to the park or the library when they wake up from their naps. Dad gets home. We play outside. We eat supper. We pick up. We go to bed. There are variations of sorts every day, but mostly we stick to our routine.

My house has also become routine, though I admit that was less intentional. One day while looking around my home, I realized that even though I had moved to a new state since my second child was born, the furniture layout had remained mostly the same. When our first son started walking, we changed the furniture around to accommodate his newfound talent (and to protect some of our more-loved possessions). Three years later, the floor plan was still in place, accommodating another walker, protecting the same loved possessions. There was no real need to change it again, so we didn’t. I had even hung the pictures in the same pattern as they had been at our previous home.

Then one day, as my kids and I were looking at pictures of the last three years of our lives, I realized that I had stayed much the same, too. When Joe was born, I had gone for the ever-important new mom makeover. I changed my hairstyle to meet the needs of my new, busier lifestyle. And that was the last time I had bothered to update my look. I had kept up well enough with new clothing styles, but the me of three years ago and the me of today were distressingly the same. Same makeup, same hairstyle, same routine for getting ready in the morning. No wonder I was feeling a little bored as of late! I was so used to my routine that I was routining the joy out of daily living!

Never one to take such a self-revelation lightly, I started combing through magazines and searching online for a new hairstyle that would still fit my hip mom lifestyle but would breathe a little new life into my look. Then I chopped off six inches of hair. “Cut quickly before I change my mind,” I told the stylist.

When I came home from the salon, I changed up the furniture in the living room and in the office. Not a major home makeover, but enough to alter the physical landscape of my life. I even switched up the routine for my boys. What a difference little changes can make in our outlook on life. They have something different to look forward to and I have a new perspective and a fabulous, new hip mom haircut.

These are the feet that inspire the hip mom rules. These feet aren't usually this clean.

Hip Mom Rule #9: Go it alone sometimes

I have always said that exhaustion makes everything seem worse, and when you’re exhausted, the last thing you have the energy for is making time for yourself to relax. You work harder and harder to meet the demands of your children, your husband, your family, his family, friends, social obligations, school obligations, work obligations, church obligations, obligations galore! We get so exhausted from stretching ourselves so thin that we often neglect time for the most important person.

After the birth of my second baby, I found myself resembling an exhausted mom more than a hip mom. My husband, being very astute (and a little tired of my grumping), determined that what I needed was a little time away from the family. “He’s exactly right!” I thought to myself as I envisioned myself taking a weekend or even just a day away to shop, have dinner at a hip “no kiddies allowed” restaurant, and not have to answer a single “What are you doing, Mom?” question. “That would be wonderful!” I replied to him. “I could really use a little time away.”

“Okay, I’ll watch the kids tonight so you can go to the grocery store by yourself for once – totally unencumbered by the kids,” he generously proposed.

Um, what? The grocery store by myself? Not exactly what I had envisioned, but I did take him up on his kind offer. As I walked the aisles crossing things off my list, I realized that I REALLY needed a break, and running errands without the kids just didn’t count.

So I planned an afternoon away. I left the kids with my husband. I wore one of my favorite shirts, pulled from the “don’t let the children touch” clothes. I spent an hour in the car, listening to hip mom music, not Veggie Tales. I splurged on a mini-shopping spree in a store that generally frowns at me when I walk in with two kids. I enjoyed a non-rushed supper (where I didn’t have to tip 30% to compensate the mess my kids had left the wait staff). Then I drove home and reflected on what it was that was making me feel so wonderful at that exact moment. It wasn’t that I had left my children and my husband behind. It was that I had been able to spend some quality time with somebody else that I really like but hadn’t had time for lately. Myself!

Motherhood can be a drain on your relationships because there just isn’t enough of you to go around. But, if you take time to meet up with your hip self now and then, you just might find yourself with more energy for others, too.

Hip Mom Rule #8: Hip Mom doesn't equal Supermom

Sometimes it is really hard to not feel like you are falling seriously short of the mark. Let’s face it – the myth of supermom is not always a myth. There are women out there who can show up at a function with their wrinkle-free clothes, lipstick in place, homemade brownies, and impeccably dressed children. It is hard to not feel inadequate, inferior, and not very hip when in the presence of these wonderwomen. So to make up for our inadequacies, we lesser-superwomen tend to keep our mothering failures to ourselves.

Which reminds me of a less than super visit I once had with our pediatrician when I had an almost three year old and a one year old. I had decided to schedule both well-baby check-ups back to back because I knew several hip moms who had strongly suggested it as a great time saver. Great. Good idea.

I changed the boys’ clothes, put a fresh diaper on the baby and helped my older son go potty. We had been fairly successful with potty-training that week, so I decided to brave it and allow him to wear his “big boy underwear” to the clinic.

The nurse showed us into the office to wait. Just as the door was being pulled shut behind the retreating nurse, I noticed that my older son was peeing on the doctor’s office floor. We’re not talking a little tinkle here. Gushing. The puddle on the floor was spreading to massive proportions. Mortified, I changed his clothes as quickly as I could and then started mopping up our lake of pee. I furiously worked the spot with paper towels and then sat down to access the situation. You definitely could still see the spot. I looked at the door – there was no telltale shadow of the doctor approaching. I furiously mopped at the puddle some more. After three more times of watching the door, mopping the floor, and flying back into the chair to look nonchalant, the doctor walked in. He looked at the puddle. He looked at me. He graciously turned toward the kids and started the appointment. A massive temper-tantrum, torn table sheeting, and a sticky doorknob later, we not-so-quietly exited the building.

I have never felt so mortified and alone. I held my composure until I got to the car, and then I broke down. I must be the only mother who has destroyed an exam room and been dumb enough to leave her almost potty-trained child in big kid underwear, right?

Eventually I told a hip friend, you know – one of those wonderwomen, my gruesome tale. “Thank God,” she replied. “I thought I was the only one that had ever happened to.”

Well, those things do happen, even to the hippest, most pulled together moms around. So we’re not superwomen. Sharing our failures as well as our triumphs makes us more real, leaving room to be more genuine. Don’t feel like you always have to have it together. You would definitely not be the first mom to fear receiving a “please switch clinics as soon as possible” card in the mail.