No trip to New Mexico is complete without a visit to downtown Santa Fe. If you’re looking for culture, art, sounds, and food, downtown Santa Fe is the place to be. Surprisingly, even though I live 45 minutes south of Santa Fe in the Albuquerque metro area, I don’t visit Santa Fe all that often. After my most recent trip with some family members, I decided that needs to change. This year, my husband and I hosted our family for the Holidays. On the day after Christmas, we decided to take a trip to downtown Santa Fe. Our plan was to shop, see a few of the local historic spots, and then have lunch ..read more

Howdy, everyone! I’m a little behind on this one-year anniversary post, okay, approximately two months behind. But it’s better late than never, right? So, I completed one year of blogging on November 29, 2021! Yayyyy!  As I was trying to figure out why my Google Adsense ads completely disappeared for the past few days, I was logged into WordPress and thought I might as well start this post. All I can say is that I’m pleasantly surprised I’m here more than one year later, still writing, still chugging along, and still thinking about Native Mommy Lawyer. I’m feeling so many positive emotion ..read more

Growing up on the Navajo reservation, alcoholism and alcohol abuse were always taboo subjects in my family. When it came to the subject of alcohol, conversations were always ‘hush hush’ and I never understood why. It was not until I began to face my own alcoholism in my 20’s that I started to understand the elusiveness of alcohol and its effect on my people and reservation life. Why was alcoholism in Native families so pervasive? For a long time, I have known about and have been affected by the stereotype that Natives are more likely to be alcoholics. Indeed, there have been past studies that ..read more

I’m not really sure that the title of this article matches my progress on the blog in the past month. Let’s just say that Native Mommy Lawyer itself has been chugging along without its owner lately. We’ve accomplished 11 months of blogging even though I didn’t do much writing or much of anything on the blog this past month! Despite the fact that my blog has been on autopilot, I’m happy to report that numbers are steadily increasing. So far, with a couple of days left in October 2021, the blog has had an increase of users and page views by 20% from the prior month. Woo hoo! This is great news f ..read more

I often feel that I’m stuck between two worlds and two juxtaposing parts of myself. In my heart, I am a kid from the Navajo reservation. In my daily and present life, I am a woman that has built a career as an attorney in a larger city away from the reservation. Reconciling the past is not easy. In order to build my career and live the life I’m in today, I’ve had to sacrifice a lot with my family, my culture, and the reservation life I grew up in. At fourteen years old, I moved across the country to go to a private boarding school in Pennsylvania. This was monumental for me. Although I would g ..read more

Native Mommy Lawyer hit its 10 month-versary on September 29, 2021. Even though Native Mommy Lawyer is doing better than ever, I hardly noticed this 10-month milestone. Unfortunately, the topic of this article and update is losing motivation to blog. I never thought I would be in this place of losing motivation to blog. Even before I started Native Mommy Lawyer, the idea of writing and sharing blog posts with the world via the internet was a dream. Despite all of the uncertainty and pain it caused, the Covid-19 pandemic was a unique blessing in that I finally had the time to follow through wit ..read more

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I accepted the fact that I might get stretch marks during pregnancy. For many women, stretch marks are a sign that your body has gone through the process of creating human life, which is a beautiful thing. In this article, I discuss my personal favorite pregnancy lotion and oil combo to prevent or minimize stretch marks. This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. Surprisingly, I didn’t get any stretch marks during my first pregnancy. A big part of that is probably ge ..read more

When I think about potty training, I have to shake my head. Our first attempt at potty training our 22-month-old was definitely a roller coaster. Even though I made sure I was completely ready and ‘informed’ as a potty trainer, it just wasn’t my daughter’s time to be potty trained. This article is about our second attempt at potty training. Admitting defeat and putting my daughter back in diapers after the first potty training attempt was a very tough parenting decision. We went through three full weeks of ups and downs before throwing in the towel. As much as I felt that she was exhibiting po ..read more

Overall, I had a great first pregnancy with my daughter. The first and second trimesters were fairly symptom-free. My third trimester was a little rough and seemed to last forever, but I got through it. My second pregnancy has been very different. This article is about first and second pregnancy differences. During my first pregnancy, I remember having a conversation with my mother-in-law, who has four boys. She told me that every one of her pregnancies was completely different despite having the same sex each time. Her symptoms varied widely from one pregnancy to the next. Since I had a prett ..read more

Even though we will have a toddler and a newborn in early 2022, I have decided not to purchase a double stroller. I’m not against double strollers at all, but it doesn’t seem like the best fit for our current lifestyle. This article is about easy alternatives to a double stroller. When I first brought up the idea of getting a double stroller to my husband, he was adamantly against it. His reasoning was that they are expensive, they are big and bulky, and there were viable alternatives to a double stroller. Overall, I didn’t disagree with him. Realistically, how long would we actually use this ..read more