Modern Parents Messy Kids

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Parenting: One Stay-at-Home Dad’s Take on Self-Care

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I'm so happy to introduce you guys to Billy today. He has some really interesting things to say about self-care, and what that really looks like when you're also responsible for the daily care of a young child. I especially connected to the part about modeling (and, sadly, the part about the dentist as I had a similar experience. NO. FUN.) Don't forget, we are always looking for new parenting perspectives to share. Learn more here. Here's Billy... "How long can this wait?" I ask. … [Read more...]

Parenting: The Gifted, the Talented, and the Hard Workers

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Image Credit: © Suzette - www.suzette.nu | found here | CC by 2.0  Jessica is with us today discussing, once again, how do we really give our kids the kind of childhood we want for them? I really love what she has to say, it reminds me of a great chapter from one of my favorite books, Nuture Shock: New Thinking About Children. Like nearly every parenting issue, there's a lot of gray area here and not a whole lot of black and white- I'd love to hear your thoughts! Here's Jessica with … [Read more...]

Round Up: Our Most Useful FREE Printables for Your Kids

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The nature of blogging is so fast paced - always working to churn out that next post - that every once in a while, I put my head up and realize that there's a lot of great stuff essentially getting buried here. I try to help with menu bars and categories for things like Project Organize Your ENTIRE Life, In the Kitchen, or The Holidays- but the truth is a lot of you are viewing this on your phones and those menu bars are so teeny tiny they're virtually non-existent. So today, I thought I'd … [Read more...]

10 Great Places for Kids to Spend Their Allowance

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I've written here already about how back-to-school always feels like a breath of fresh air to me - largely because we get the chance to establish some new routines and it brings a whole new flow to our family life. One of those routines we're currently focusing on are our chores. These include both family jobs AND money jobs.  So far, it's going really well. But one of the things that stumped me for a bit, especially when we first started to pay our young children for their "money jobs", … [Read more...]

How to Set up a Healthy Pack-Yourself Lunch Station for Kids

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I'm all about making life easier when possible. As moms we are juggling a million things and making lunches for school is one of those things that seems like it should be an easy task, but ends up being one of the tasks that I avoid until the last minute.  So here's what I've discovered. Just like anything else, preparation is key.  You may have seen our serve-yourself snack station over the summer.  I decided to apply the concept to lunch. If I let the kids have make their own lunches … [Read more...]

Sending Kids Off to College on a Budget

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*This post is sponsored by QVC but all opinions are 100% our own. Check out #QVC for more info. on the QCard. I don't have any children heading off to college yet; my oldest just started kindergarten, so those days are still a ways off for our family. But my husband's youngest brother begins his first year of college in a few weeks and even that is pretty much blowing my mind. I met him when he was nine years old, so it is hard to imagine that he's old enough to head off for university … [Read more...]

Responsibility & Logical Consequences: One Mom’s Conundrum

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So technically I'm taking suggestions here. I mean, I think we're doing it mostly right, if level of difficulty is any indication. Because so far, teaching our kids to be responsible little people seems to involve an awful lot of biting my tongue, sitting on my hands so I don't rush to do something the "right" way, and letting them fall flat on their own little faces sometimes. I’m all about modeling good behavior. I say please and thank you to my kiddos, and I expect to hear it back. I … [Read more...]

Trying out Gymnastics for Young Kids: A Morning at The Little Gym

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Finding just the right activity to sign up your little one to attend, can be nothing less than maddening. I really value classes that allow my kids to be active, gain confidence, and grow their social skills. That said, I also like to spend a lot of our time on unstructured play and usually limit activities to just one per season. Which means, I am VERY choosy about which classes we take. Gymnastics is far and away one of my favorites. There's just something so amazing about watching S … [Read more...]

Technology Makes Me a Hypocrite, and How I’m Changing That

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Image Credit: © Tricia | found here | CC by 2.0 (edited) Every single time I stumble across an article or a post relating to “screen time” and kids, I devour it. First off, I want confirmation (that I rarely get, because everyone must be lying) that I’m not the only parent whose kids get waaaay more than the token thirty-minutes of approved screen time on any given day. It’s not constant, but yeah, I’ve been known to hand over my phone or a tablet so I can focus for an entire 45 minutes. … [Read more...]