Building Hardy & Kin While Raising Them

In my last journal entry, I shared the story of how Hardy & Kin began. This time, I want to share what building it has actually looked like—not apart from motherhood, but right in the middle of raising four children.

People sometimes ask how I found the time to start a business during such a full season of life. The honest answer is that I never really found the time. I built Hardy & Kin inside the life we were already living.

I built it during naps that ended earlier than expected, after everyone went to bed, and from the passenger seat while my husband, Vincent, drove our family toward the mountains. I answered emails with a baby in my arms, reviewed designs with a toddler nearby, and made business decisions between the very different needs of two teenagers and two little boys.

There was no separate season set aside for becoming a founder. Hardy & Kin was growing at the same time my children were, and both needed something from me every day.

Our family is blended, multicultural, and spread across several stages of childhood. We are raising two teenage daughters, a toddler, and a baby, which means motherhood can look completely different from one moment to the next. One child may need a serious conversation while another needs a snack, a diaper change, or help finding the toy sitting directly in front of him.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, I decided to build a children’s clothing company.

It sounds slightly unreasonable when I say it that way, but motherhood was never an obstacle standing between me and Hardy & Kin. It became the reason I cared so deeply about creating it.

I knew what it was like to buy children’s clothing that looked beautiful at first but lost its shape or softness after a few washes. I knew how quickly children grow, how often pajamas are washed, and how much parents already have competing for their attention and their money. I wanted to create pieces that felt special without becoming too precious for real family life.

That meant obsessing over everything: the fabric, the fit, the smallest construction details, and how each piece would look after the tenth wash. I researched, compared, changed my mind, changed it back, and then questioned the decision once more for good measure.

The prints are especially personal to me. Each one begins with a family tradition, a familiar activity, or a memory I want to hold onto—from slow Sunday breakfasts to helping Dad outside and time spent in Nana’s garden. They are not simply designs chosen because they look sweet on pajamas. They are small pieces of our family life, turned into something our children can wear.

I know these moments will change as the children grow. The little hands helping outside will get bigger, Sunday mornings will become busier, and the routines that feel so ordinary today may someday become the memories we miss most. Choosing these prints is my way of preserving a little of this season while inviting other families to find pieces of their own stories in them, too.

Building Hardy & Kin has also happened within the reality of being a firefighter wife.

I am incredibly proud of what Vincent does, but the firefighter schedule asks a lot of the entire family. When he leaves for the station, he is not simply gone for a normal workday. He misses bedtimes, overnight wake-ups, morning routines, and all the unpredictable moments in between.

During those stretches, I am the only parent physically home, and it can feel very much like single parenting. There is no one to hand the baby to when I need ten quiet minutes, no tapping out at the end of a long day, and no guaranteed uninterrupted hour to focus on the business. If someone is sick, refusing to sleep, or simply having a difficult day, I handle it while trying to keep everything else moving.

Those are often the days when Hardy & Kin gets built in the smallest pieces. I may answer one email while the baby sleeps, review a design while my toddler plays beside me, or wait until the entire house is finally quiet to finish something that should have taken twenty minutes.

It can feel lonely and overwhelming, but it has also shown me how capable I am.

Vincent’s job sometimes means I carry the parenting alone while he is away, but when he is home, he is fully present. He takes over with the children when I need time to focus, listens as I talk through every idea, and reminds me to keep going when I begin questioning whether I can manage all of it.

A surprising amount of Hardy & Kin was also built while our family was traveling with our trailer.

Camping is one of the ways we slow down and reconnect. We load what feels like half the house into the trailer, pile everyone into the car, and head toward the mountains. During those drives, Vincent takes the wheel while I work from the passenger seat—writing website copy, answering emails, reviewing samples, researching requirements, and talking through whatever decision feels enormous that week.

Those drives became some of the most productive and meaningful parts of building Hardy & Kin. The children were behind us, the trailer was following along, and the business was slowly taking shape right in the middle of our family life.

Vincent has listened to more conversations about children’s pajamas than any firefighter should reasonably have to endure. He has heard every worry, every new idea, and every version of “I think I need to change something.” More importantly, he has supported me through the moments when the excitement gave way to exhaustion.

There were days when I was ready to quit. Building a business from the ground up requires thousands of decisions, many of which no one else will ever see. When those decisions were layered on top of the mental and emotional weight of raising four children—especially during the stretches when Vincent was at the station—the dream could feel impossibly heavy.

On those days, he reminded me why I started. He helped make room for the business inside our already full life, and when I could not see how far I had come, he could.

Still, the greatest motivation has always been the children.

They are watching me build something before it is polished, successful, or certain. They have seen the samples, the boxes, the late-night work, the changes of direction, and the moments when I doubted myself. One day, I hope they understand that Hardy & Kin was not built because their mother had endless time or perfect confidence. It was built because she cared about an idea enough to keep returning to it.

I want them to know that becoming a mother does not mean every other part of you disappears. Dreams may move more slowly during certain seasons. They may be built in smaller pieces, interrupted repeatedly, and carried alongside everyone else’s needs, but they still matter.

I never wanted to build something that required me to step outside of motherhood to become worthy of being called a founder. I am both at once. The patience, resourcefulness, determination, and attention to detail that motherhood demands are the same qualities I bring to Hardy & Kin every day.

This business did not come together in a perfect office. It was built at the kitchen table, beside sleeping children, during long drives with our trailer behind us, through firefighter shifts, and in countless ordinary moments that did not look important at the time.

That is what makes Hardy & Kin feel so personal to me. It was not merely inspired by family; it was created within one.

As the business grows, my children will keep growing too. The baby will stop being a baby. The toddler will become more independent. The teenagers will begin building lives of their own. The season that feels so full and demanding now will eventually look completely different.

When that happens, I hope Hardy & Kin will carry a record of this chapter: the beautiful, exhausting years when I was raising them and building it at the same time.

Not perfectly. Not separately. But together.