Before most families are awake, Michelle Lyman is already in motion – balancing Ironman training, blended-family parenting, and the everyday joys and challenges of raising a five-year-old in the Colorado mountains.
Michelle had long hoped to have a child of her own when she met her significant other, Thad. He brought twins from a previous marriage into her life, and together they later welcomed a daughter, Ryder, who is now almost five.
“It’s been a dream come true for me,” Michelle explains. “It brings a very different dynamic to a relationship–blended families, which I feel like are more common now.”
Michelle says there’s a challenging part to a blended family, especially when the twins are seniors in high school and their daughter is only five. “The difficult aspect is you have one set of rules when there are two kids that are older, you kind of have to set down this whole other group of rules in the house for the younger child, and it’s very difficult because kids, especially at the four or five year age, want to emulate their older siblings.”
Despite the age gap and different parenting styles, Michelle knows what works for some families doesn’t work for others. But she’s found that finding fellow parents who have similar parenting styles can be beneficial to talk through things.
Michelle is currently a stay-at-home mom, having lost her job in advertising shortly after COVID hit. She plans to go back to work in the fall, when her daughter goes to kindergarten, but does some work currently for her significant other’s ski and bike shop in Breckenridge, where the family resides.
“I enjoy the fact that I get to parent and make the rules and spend time with her. I know what she’s learning, and I’m aware of her activities in a day, whereas sometimes when you send them off to daycare, you just don’t know exactly what’s going on,” says Michelle.
Because of that, Michelle has been able to let Ryder participate in a multitude of activities including swimming, gymnastics, ski and snowboarding lessons, soccer, and French lessons. Michelle feels like a good balance of learning the fundamentals of life and being a good person and learning the things taught in school is important for children.
“So I feel like when she’s at home, you have the autonomy to do those things and kind of go with the flow a little bit, but have a structure as well and really just keep an eye on your child, make sure they’re growing up healthy and getting fresh air and all that stuff,” she says. Michelle adds that living in Colorado is the perfect place to create the balance of learning and getting outside to enjoy the ski town and activities they live near.
The best piece of advice Michelle says she ever received was to just take a deep breath. They told her, the second you take one, perhaps things have changed.
“Don’t get so worked up about stuff, because once you feel like you’ve gotten in a rhythm, everything changes. And it is so true that you blink and it changes,” she explains.
Michelle says kids evolve every day, every minute, every hour. She knows that learning to ebb and flow is important because things that seem big now might not be that big shortly in the future.
Her advice to parents is similar: Take a deep breath. “I would also say it’s really important to take a little time to yourself. And I know that’s really hard when you’re in it, but even the three hours I give myself a month with other moms without our children around is amazing, but you can learn so much from what other people are doing, and it can morph how you parent,” Michelle says.
Every month, Michelle and about 20 other local moms meet for dinner to chat. There are around 160 women in the group, but every month, different people will show up for dinner. She has been organizing this meet up for a year and a half and calls it Mom’s Night Out. She believes it is important to lean on other Moms and take some time for yourself.
“Because sometimes you just need to bounce some ideas off others, sometimes you just need to laugh or cry,” Michelle explains. “But a little space to just take everything in can put it in perspective.”
Michelle says she found this especially helpful when dealing with the tiredeness. “Becuase sometimes when you’re in it, you lose focus and you don’t even realize how exhausted you are.”
When training for her two Ironman last year, Michelle pushed the envelope, getting up at three or four in the morning to workout and train before getting kids to school or getting her daughter ready for activities.
Her trick to make it work? Organization. Although Michelle will admit she did not sleep as much as she should have and has trained her body to work on very little sleep, she says you have to face every day with a plan.
With the joys and challenges of raising a blended family, Michelle says it’s important to “trust your tribe and trust your instincts. You can learn a lot from the other parents you are around.”
Favorite date night… Red Rocks.
Words that describe your family… crazy, grounded, fun.
Favorite genre of movie or television show…cooking show.
Favorite food…sushi or ramen.
