Allison Cooper

The day that we brought our second child, Blake, home from the hospital was one of the happiest days of our life. We lived in New York City at the time and only a few blocks away from the hospital where I delivered her, so my husband strapped on our…

The other day I did something that we jokingly call “pulling a nutty” between my mom and sisters, but I’m sure you have your own name for it in your household. It is the moment when mom loses it because, well, there are a million and one reasons…

If we want to put a lable on it, I'm what I would call a high-functioning mom with anxiety. It's a condition that doesn't lead people to check in with “how are yous” or give me extra support, because I seem generally pulled together and happy. But I…

I’ve never really been the mom who has monumental “a-ha” moments. I'm more the mom having the “oh crap” moments followed by a very belated "oh riiiiiight." And like so many moms reading this right now, I tend to go to sleep at night harboring…

Dear mom who starts everyday hoping not to get that call from her child’s school, I know that you feel nervousness bloom in the pit of your stomach whenever you check your email, and are struck with worry whenever the phone rings, scared about what…

This month, I turned 32. I think in most cases, with age comes wisdom and I’ve learned a lot during these 32 years I’ve been on Earth. I’ve become a mom, a wife, and a business owner, and have learned to balance all of those thing while still being…

Earlier this week, I had a pretty intense deadline. I woke up and practically ran to my French press, ushered my older son out the front door for the bus and began mad typing at the keyboard as soon as I possibly could. Mornings are always the time…

There are days where I wake up with our alarm clock in the morning and struggle to get out of bed for no rhyme or reason. I move slower on these days and allow myself to take more time than necessary to do whatever tasks on my list that day —…

A few weeks ago, we set out on a family trip, flying from New York City to Texas for a long weekend. My husband and I thought that we had everything so incredibly under control that we actually fist-bumped each other in the airplane aisle as we…

The other day, I put my daughter down for her nap, poured the now-cold coffee that I had reheated about 10 times and still didn’t have a second to drink, refilled it with the tiny little bit of red wine that was left in the bottle I found in the…

About a week after Christmas, after coming home from traveling to see relatives and getting settled back in our apartment with all the kids' new toys in tow, I started to kind of not feel like myself. Something just wasn’t right. I was exhausted,…

Motherhood is both an amazing and a really eye-opening experience. When we first give birth to a new baby, we have these really incredible and often times really high expectations of ourselves, but then the whole experience humbles us really…

Hello friends! I’d like to introduce myself over here as Allison Cooper, mother, writer, blogger, lover of leggings, coffee and HIIT workouts. I love my kids more than this world, but it's also true that sometimes I count down the minutes until…

My mom swapped kids with other moms, hosted a weekly playgroup, and had carpools aplenty. She also had both sets of grandparents a phone call away as well as well as a whole list of neighborhood moms to instantly come to her rescue in a moment's…

I never expected to be a Pinterest-level mom. I don't worry as much about what other moms think of me, but I do worry what my kids think about me. This past Fall, I wanted my kids to have the pumpkin and apple-picking excursions that made it feel…

Have you ever ruined a vacation? I've come close. Earlier in the year, my family and I took a last-minute trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. My husband had been away for the entire month of August for military training and, while he was away, was…

I vividly remember the first moment that I experienced a health scare as a parent. My first born was only 18-months-old and sitting in his high-chair as my husband and I chomped down what I had made for dinner that night: broiled flounder. (I was…

Here we are again. It’s that special time of year when Elf on the Shelf starts to pop up in everyone’s Facebook news feed and you get an insider’s glimpse at all the (admittedly hilarious) trouble that the super-creative, Pinterest moms have created…

Accepting my post-pregnancy body is hands-down one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. It’s something that I still work on every single day. During my first pregnancy, I was 20 years old, so I managed to bounce back quickly. In fact, I…

I sat in my parent's living room as my kids toddled around a place they hadn’t visited since Christmas. My husband was away for a month-long military training many, many states away and I had traveled to Pittsburgh from New York City so that I could…