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If I only had 5 things to do every day, one of those things is always December daily, and I didn't carry my planner around to mark the things off as I accomplished them, I'd just make myself a to-do list at night on a post-it note and save the pictures and stickers and fancy pens that run out in a week for scrapbooking.
This hobby is so bizarre.
Also, drink every time she says deco. -
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I really wish this planning craze had a different name. It's like a bizarre sticker book with some semblance of to-do lists, except Jen doesn't actually DO anything.
I admittedly don't get it. She's got to be spending at least an hour a day on this, acquiring stickers, putting them in the book, writing on the stickers the exact same things she had already written down on post-its. She doesn't carry it around with her to check things off on her to do list as they get done, she just checks everything off at the end of the day. Then at the end of the week, adding a couple of pictures and more stickers. Are you supposed to keep your planner and look back on it in the future? Because I don't understand the point of looking back on your list of five whole things to do, especially since they are inane things like doing laundry. "Oh look! That's the week I did laundry and we ate tilapia and here's a picture of CC sitting on the floor." Turn page. "Oh look! Another week of doing laundry and eating tilapia and CC sitting!"
Why not have an actual to-do list planner, and just scrapbook with all of the stickers? -
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See, I think Jen wants friends, but she's so socially inept that she can't have any. She wouldn't put anything out on social media if she didn't. She wouldn't start her videos with "hello friends" if she didn't want to have a million friends.
The difference is, as most of us know, it's incredibly difficult to be friends with a self-centered person. She wants people to care about what she's doing and what she's saying and what she likes, but she doesn't want to care about anyone else, she doesn't want to hear what they are up to and what they have to say. Because of that, all of her attempts to make friends have failed.
The family members are stuck with her as long as Don is married to her, so they have to put up with her. Friends don't have to put up with nonsense. -
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I think that Jen has gone through a hell of a lot of change - for her - over the past year/18 months and it's pretty clear that she's very uncomfortable with herself and her life right now. She went from 9 hours a night of sleep to...whatever she gets now. Prioritizing silly things like "pack time" with Don and the dog to having to nourish a helpless human. She used to vlog her whole life, throwing it all out on the internet and getting headpat after headpat every day, to being relegated to an occasional Instagram post and video about inane things like, "Here's my Christmas decor." Running is gone. I can't remember the last time she mentioned working out. Visiting Utah has seriously been cut back. No trip to Disney lately. No trips anywhere out of the ordinary except for the llama convention. Long baths and shopping trips appear to be gone.
Now she has a (presumably immobile) baby who relies on her for everything and a husband who used to make her lunch and dinner and now is (presumably) out of the home all day and actually working. I really don't think she wanted to be a mom and I think she's trying to make the best of it. And I think the reason there are lots of selfies with CC is so Jen gets residual attention.
This would be a perfect time for one of the original Jen videos, where she'd just talk into the camera as if it was her therapist. It would be crazy interesting to hear her admit that her entire routine for the past 5-10 years got completely upended and she's just fumbling around her life trying to figure out what to do. Remember the Las Vegas trip with the manicurist? Lots of snippets of her telling the internet how she got out of her comfort zone and stuff. That would be amazing right now. -
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Houston, we have activity on the planner IG. It's a video of Jen rubbing down some kind of pouch that EC gave her to hold her planner. It's....uncomfortable to watch.
Also, I don't understand why her planner needs a pouch. She doesn't go anywhere with the thing. -
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I think Jen's house "style" has always been what fascinated me the most about her. She acts like a child, wears Snoopy and Winnie the Pooh and gets a balloon at Disney World, yet her front room looks like a funeral home and the rest of her house is just very - channeling Tim Gunn here - matronly. It's not classy, it's just blah.
I feel like Suzanne took Jen under her wing when she married Don and I'm going with the theory that was mentioned that Suzanne helped decorate the house. This isn't a girl who sat around watching HGTV. (I'm a year older than Jen, got married about the same time, and I lived for shows like Trading Spaces on TLC.) Then Jen just started collecting tchotchkes because the girl loves her some clutter. It's interesting that that front room is relatively devoid of tchotchkes and extraneous stuff, mostly just furniture and the bar, and that's where the fam and the parties tended to be.
The girl was never a real homemaker/housewife. She was a trophy wife. (Which leads itself to the theory that Don is actually gay, because Jen isn't much of a trophy.) Didn't cook, didn't clean, just primped herself and spent money and played hostess when company was over.
I'm holding out hope that CC will write a tell-all, because it's clear there's WAY more to the family, and the extended family, than we ever get to see. The behind-the-scenes must be incredible. -
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I find it hard to believe that the queen of planning and the queen of research can't figure out how to research new recipes (and/or easy recipes, if she despises cooking so much) to plan her family's meals. Has she never heard of Rachael Ray's 30 minute meals?
I grew up in a house that had a meat, a vegetable, and a starch most nights. My mom just sort of mixed and matched. Chicken, pork, beef, sometimes pork chops, sometimes pork loin; sometimes chicken legs, sometimes chicken breasts. Our starch generally came out of a box - mashed potatoes, scalloped potatoes, Rice a roni, out-of-the-can crescent rolls.
My family is pescatarian, but we only eat fish 1-2 times a week at most. I don't plan; I go grocery shopping a couple of times a week and buy what I want. 95% of our meals take 10 minutes to make, with the exception of things that go in machines that I don't have to babysit, like beans and rice (we switch up the beans and the seasonings, and I usually put veggies in the beans.) I freeze extra beans, and when I have a variety, I throw them all in a pot with some veggies and make meatless chili. Other usuals in our house - pasta with different sauces, baked potatoes with broccoli and cheese, stir fry, Mexican, breakfast-for-dinner. If we make fish, it's generally broiled with a sprinkling of Old Bay, a green vegetable, and sweet potatoes or quinoa. At least once a week, we'll just make big salads for dinner.
With how much Don is into his meat, I don't get how she can't throw a pot roast or a pork butt into the crockpot. That chicken pasta nonsense that Don made all the time was nothing but boiled pasta, baked chicken, and frozen vegetable medley. How is that hard to plan? Bake chicken breasts one night, have them with some kind of vegetable. The next day, cut up the rest and put in pasta, or make chicken salad, or make a salad and put the chicken on top. It's not brain surgery to figure out how to stretch meals so you can use the leftovers. -
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Check Target - they have phone chargers for $3. That's where I got the one I use the most. I recently got a slightly larger charger for about $30 on Amazon, to use when camping because it holds a TON of charge. How Jen manages to find these stupidly expensive things is beyond me.
Also, it's because of stuff like this that we have put the kibosh on exchanging gifts outside of immediate family. (My dad refuses to stop doing gifts, so we literally hand him a card with cash while he literally hands us a card with cash. It is the dumbest thing ever.) I kept making it abundantly clear that our house already has too much stuff in it, and if someone feels the need to give us something, please make it an "experience" gift. I.e. A family pass to the zoo or the aquarium, or a $20 Starbucks card with an invitation to join that person for coffee, but that time spent with others was what we valued, gifts are unnecessary. If you're going to give me gloves because I live somewhere cold, I'd rather you just give me nothing, because it shows that you HAVEN'T thought about the gift at all.
So, no more gift exchanges for us, and it's made our lives a lot happier. We do stockings for the kids, $40 max for each (and they always get new underwear and toothbrushes and socks in their stockings, so about half is stuff I'd be buying anyway but they think it's exciting to get it in their stocking), they get each other gifts that cost no more than $20, everyone has fewer headaches from my stress over all the clutter in the house and them having to figure out what to get rid of to make room for more things.
I cannot imagine being part of a family like Jen's, having to buy crap for people who can afford whatever they want, just because that's the custom. -
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A few pages behind, but had to comment...is there some sort of timeline for Jen's hobby obsessions? Girlfriend sticks with nothing for very long. I'm never not amused that women who have so little to plan and/or document spend so much time decorating books designed to keep their lives organized, but I can't even hate watch a sticker haul. Utterly bizarre nonsense.
How many actual crafts have been done in that craft room? Surely someone has put together a master list of hobbies that have been dived into and then discarded. Jewelry pillows, knitting those little puffs for a blanket, even her running medals are in that room. This planner sticker nonsense has GOT to go. -
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I'm a mom of three, so I know that life can be crazy some days with a baby at home, but when Jen has to reach this hard to find five things to put on her to do list, it's either indicative of time management problems or she legit does fuck all. When you have to plan meals and then it takes you two days to write the grocery list even though you've gone to multiple grocery stores, multiple times during the week, you're obviously doing something wrong. -
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CC's 9 month appointment had to have been recently. I'm going to bet that the doctor was concerned that the kid can't pull herself into a sitting position, can't roll over, and can't crawl. Add that to her seemingly being behind verbally and it's a problem. When she was eating, she was not using the pincer grasp. (I could be wrong about that, someone please correct me if I am, but I don't ever remember seeing her just pick up one thing at a time between two fingers. It was more of a "pick up a handful and throw it near my face" kind of motion.) I don't think we ever saw her pass an object from one hand to another (although I may also be wrong about that.)
It's one thing when a baby is behind in one area. I had a very verbal baby that took her time learning to walk. I had a very physical baby that took her time starting to talk. (Didn't help that she was in a house with two very verbal kids...it was hard for her to get a word in edgewise!) When one area is developing, sometimes another has to take a backseat. But being behind in multiple arenas - gross motor skills, fine motor skills, verbally, that is indicative of a developmental delay.
The problem is that any casual viewer of Snapchat can see that Jen is the reason for this delay. That kid was always on her back, or in some contraption, or a pile of food was placed in front of her rather than just a couple of tiny things to pick up in her fingers. She was destined for failure.
More than likely, with intervention, Cheets will catch up and won't be going off to kindergarten unable to walk and talk. But in the meantime, it sure is embarrassing for Jen to have to admit to the Rosses that her kid is behind when Theo is probably doing everything ahead of schedule. It's even more embarrassing to have to admit that to her "fans." Of course, it would be the perfect time to grow some self-awareness and admit that she should have done x, y, and z with Cheets instead of...whatever else she's been doing. Instead, I'm sure we'll get Jen's recommendations on toys and clothes that you should buy for your baby, rather than things to do to help them develop. -
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Funny that she got sent eyeshadow and says that she doesn't wear brown colored eyeshadow anymore.
uh, whut? -
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I think she'll come back to Snapchat the second Cheets is actually crawling. And then she'll be all, "Oh, she's been crawling for MONTHS!" -
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Team Iowncare here!
Also, I went down the Vlogidays rabbit hole because of this discussion. Made it to a video where she's brushing the mop and saying that she gets her to stay still because she trained her from a very young age that staying still during brushing is how things are done.
Me thinks she trained CC in a similar manner. That's why the kid doesn't crawl or roll over. Until Jen snaps CC rolling over (both ways), getting herself into a sitting position (not being plopped down by Jen), crawling (we've never even seen her on hands and knees, have we?) and/or pulling herself up on furniture (get that party dip!), and/or saying mama or dada, I'm team parent-induced developmental delay. Show us that you read here, Jen, and give us proof of your mobile baby. -
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I love when planner people write about planning in their planners. The fact that Jen has to write down that she's re-upping her commitment to "planning" just goes to show that planning for her isn't about actually doing anything, it's about putting stickers and pictures into a notebook.
Votes taken by Identifying as Single Mom |