A Gift for Mom! 🤍

Girlfriends, they’ve done it again. Our beloved Target just continues to get better. Recently Joanna Gaines announced her home decor line to be sold exclusively at our local bullseye locations. And now we hear this news: stores across the country are getting an overhaul—a remodel with newer, better layouts and features. And new stores built from the ground up will look quite different from the Target stores we’ve loved these past years. We will soon be pushing our red carts full of diapers and crying babies through aisles with modern flair and more conveniences than ever before.

Called “the next generation of store design“, Target realizes it must stay ahead of the curve. With more and more shoppers buying online, they must reimagine the “new Target” as one that caters to both online and in-store shoppers. “Our guests still love shopping in Target stores—we’re known for creating a sense of inspiration and discovery that can’t be replicated online in quite the same way,” says Target CEO Brian Cornell in a recent article on Target’s corporate website. “So while we are investing heavily in digital, we’re also doubling down on our stores to offer guests an elevated experience, and at the same time ensuring fast, easy pick up for online orders—giving guests every reason to keep coming to Target.

Oh, Target. Like we need a reason to keep coming to see you.

Shoppers will notice one major change right as they walk in. New and remodeled stores will feature “two entrances—one that inspires with displays of our exclusive brands, seasonal moments and more. And the second’s all about ease, with quick Order Pickup, grab-and-go food and a wine and beer shop.” What a smart idea—now shoppers can choose the right door for their needs to make shopping more efficient.

And in keeping with the trend of online shopping and convenience, shoppers will see more self-checkout stands and new lanes for those who’ve ordered their items at home. “Outside the ‘ease’ entrance, guests will find dedicated parking spaces for our Drive Up service, where team members will bring online orders out to guests’ cars,” the article reads. 

But by far my favorite new addition is a nursing room for moms. Knowing full well that their primary clientele is women with little ones in tow, Target realizes that often those moms needs to feed their babies. As a mom who breastfed in the car and in public bathrooms more times that I can count, I am so grateful to see private nursing rooms as a primary feature in the new Target design. Although I am beyond my breastfeeding and diaper changing years, I know what it’s like to need to feed your baby while out in public. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Target, for realizing that moms deserve a comfortable, clean, and safe place to feed their babies. Thank you for saying to us moms that we don’t need to go to the car or bathroom when our littles get hungry. Breastfeeding moms will appreciate this addition more than any other new concepts, designs, or additions to your stores. 

The new-age Target stores look sleek, modern, and more convenient than ever. And no doubt moms will love them. You just keep on doing your thing, Target. And we’ll keep coming back. Deal? (Just don’t take the Starbucks out of mine!)

 

So God Made a Grandmother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Order Now!

Karen Johnson

Karen Johnson is a freelance writer who is known on social media as The 21st Century SAHM. She is an assistant editor at Sammiches and Psych Meds, staff writer and social media manager for Scary Mommy, and is the author of I Brushed My Hair Today, A Mom Journal for Mostly Together Moms. Follow Karen on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/21stcenturysahm/, Twitter https://twitter.com/21stcenturysahm , and Instagram https://www.instagram.com/the21stcenturysahm/

I Never Got to Meet My Grandmother on This Side of Heaven

In: Living
Old black and white family photo

Grandmother, I never met you this side of Heaven, but I feel as though I have. Your pictures, scattered throughout my mother’s home, tell your story. Born to a woman who came to this country alone when she was just 16, you would be the youngest of four, with two sisters and a brother. Your short, dark, straight hair clings to your little face, a line of bangs neatly combed high on your forehead. You couldn’t be more than three years old as you sit on a stool at your sister’s First Holy Communion. The black and white photo makes...

Keep Reading

The Hardest Part of Divorce Is Being Away from My Kids

In: Living, Marriage, Motherhood
Woman in driver's seat

I’ve written several times about how divorce has allowed me to find myself again, and how that version is even better than the one I was before I was married. All of that is still true. I am happier than I’ve ever been. More confident and sure of myself. I understand my emotions and how to handle myself when things get tough or scary. I am more grounded and calm than I’ve ever been. Truly, I have come out on top. I’ve received comments about how happy I look, how I’m “living my best life with kids only half the...

Keep Reading

My Dad Gave Us Something Money Never Could

In: Living
Family smiling in posed photo

I was talking with my dad the other day about an upcoming Disney trip with our kids. I told him all we planned to do while we were there and how excited the kids were. He sat and listened, taking it all in. And then he said something that put a lump in my throat. “I’m so glad you’re able to give your kids the life that I couldn’t.” He went on to say he still carries some guilt–that he wishes he could have done more, taken us on trips, given us experiences he couldn’t. Hearing that broke my heart....

Keep Reading

Dear Daddy, I Wish You Could See Yourself As We Do

In: Living, Marriage
father with two young children

The side of my husband who is hardest on himself usually shows up late at night. The house is quiet, the kids are finally asleep, and the day has done what it always does—taken everything it could from both of us. That’s usually when it comes out. The voice in his head that tells him he’s not doing enough as a father. Not present enough. Not patient enough. Not good enough. He doesn’t say it lightly. He says it like someone confessing a truth he wishes wasn’t true. Like he’s already measured himself against some invisible standard of fatherhood and...

Keep Reading

Mothers and Stepmothers: Who’s on First?

In: Living
Little girl looking through fingers

The roles. The expectations. The unspoken, undefined rules. The hurt feelings no one wants to talk about. It could be a scene from an old Abbott and Costello routine: “Who’s on first?” Motherhood is rarely clear-cut. And if you’ve ever tried to navigate life alongside a stepmother—or as one—you know how quickly things can become complicated. Add a stepmother to the mix, and suddenly it’s a relay race where no one’s quite sure who’s holding the baton, or if anyone wants it. This isn’t a story about winners and losers or choosing sides. It isn’t about who is right or...

Keep Reading

Do We Really Want a ’90s Summer?

In: Living
Girl holding popsicle

The year is 2026: we’re inviting thousands of strangers to get ready with us, threatening our own deaths on a lot of different hills and, if you’re a millennial mom, determined to have a ’90s summer. Some top to-dos on the ’90s mom summer checklist? Lots of outside play, limited screens, less hustle, more simplicity. Overall, evoking the “carefree” summers of the 1990s. But did anyone ever ask the real ‘90s moms if summers back then were all we’re cracking them up to be? If my own memory serves me right, my parents talked a whole lot about summers in...

Keep Reading

To the Woman Who Was Betrayed

In: Living, Marriage
Woman looking off to the fog

He promised you a lifetime, a family, safety, and security. You carried life and brought it into this world for him. Even still, in the trenches of postpartum, he betrayed you. It was never your fault. This is something I’ve fought to tell myself every single day since the day I discovered my marriage was never meant to last. Because the truth is, betrayal is never about you; it’s about them, and the character flaws deep within they’d rather bury than face. He watched as you fought for your life after delivery while your tiny, premature newborn spent the first...

Keep Reading

5 Things I’m Learning about 50

In: Living
birthday balloons

When my dad turned 80, he—and we, by default—celebrated all year. My sister made a fantastic, larger-than-life sign of him posing in front of his friend’s antique car, with beautiful calligraphy that trumpeted, “Cheers to you, celebrating 80 years of life!” The sign welcomed his closest friends and family into a private room at a steakhouse, where we toasted his 80 years—and the grandkids toasted his steady presence in their lives. The sign moved from the swanky steakhouse to the second-floor banister in my parents’ house. When you walked in, it greeted you—a feel-good conversation starter and a reminder to...

Keep Reading

I’m Constantly Waiting for the Metaphorical Axe To Fall

In: Living
Woman worried with head in lap

I knew people died. I just didn’t think it applied to us. Mortality met me in grade two with a punch to the gut when my teacher confirmed casually that, yes, everybody dies. What do you mean, everybody dies? I frantically thought, but kept my question to myself. Up until that moment, I had quietly believed my family was exempt from that fate. I thought death was a monster that only took other people and left my family alone. They say all panic has an origin story, and mine began shortly after that realization, fueled by a disconnected phone cord...

Keep Reading

The Apology You Deserve May Never Come

In: Living
Woman standing in field wearing hat

“You have to accept that you will likely never get the apology you deserve.” When my therapist said those words, I felt everything at once-anger, resentment, heartbreak. It was as if the air had been pulled straight from my lungs. Because accepting that truth meant letting go of something I had been holding onto for a long time: the hope that one day, it would all be acknowledged. My family was deeply wronged. Not in a way that can be brushed off or easily forgotten, but in a way that cut to the core. There were lies wrapped in deception,...

Keep Reading