Welcome

to the mat leave mom

Launched in 2018, offering unfiltered advice for parents and expecting parents on baby care tips, traveling with toddler tips, easy child-approved recipes, and DIY tutorials, this site aims to make parenthood a little bit easier. You will feel at home here if you love traveling, cooking, and crafting. In my small corner of the digital web, I’ll be sharing my best tried and tested parenthood secrets, as well as in-depth articles designed to help cultivate a life of balance, self-identity, and happiness in the circus act we call parenting. 

Get to Know Me

My Happy Place

at the gym

Birth Chart

♈︎ Aires

coffee order

long black

Favorite place

Portugal

favorite tv to binge

Gilmore girls

secret talent

piano player

Hi I’m Alexis

First and foremost, I am a mom to a fiercely independent three-year-old and a highly energetic one-year-old. When I am not in the state of being a mother, I am pursuing my master’s degree in Information Architecture and interactive design. I am a former architect in training specializing in documenting maximum security prisons. Most importantly, When I had my daughter, I took one-year maternity leave and, upon my return, was transferred to the interior design team before being ultimately made redundant. Mid-pandemic, I found myself at a new firm on the industrial team. It wasn’t long after I became pregnant again with my son. I waited as long as possible before telling them, only to be transferred, yet again, to the residential team.

Life in an architecture firm.

Architecture school was hard. Becoming a mother was harder. Working for MEN is impossible. I started this blog after Kirra was born when I was lonely and missed using my intellectual brain. Now, after two kids, I barely have time to remember my past self let alone type up a blog post on food, travel, and DIY costumes. But the truth is, I am torn wholly between working full-time again in architecture or making a career change into interactive design and information architecture. Although architecture is a field I deeply love, I sacrifice family time with long hours and zero flexibility. Maybe it was the year 2020; perhaps it was being locked down in Australia that cut off seeing my family for nearly three years. Whichever reason it is, I am reflecting on the messy truth of motherhood again.