Tips, tricks and mom hacks to family organization
Thank you Mardi Gras Napkins for sponsoring this post. Visit your local retailer to get the conversation going in your home! “Mom, Annie’s mom puts notes in her lunch box for her everyday.” This wasn’t the first time my 6 year old had mentioned this touching gesture from her friend’s…
This is a guest post by Jennifer Terra, a Local Childcare Consultant for Cultural Care Au Pair, the leading provider of intercultural live-in childcare. Learn how an au pair my be the flexible childcare option your family has been searching for. I will never forget my childcare search when I was…
Tired of being a constant disciplinarian? Are you exhausted from serving as referee over toys, books, games ALL day long? Successful parenting doesn’t have to be so hard. The day I changed my parenting perspective from a reactive disciplinarian to a proactive promoter of positive reinforcement, my kids’ behavior changed…
This post is part of a social shopper marketing insight campaign with Pollinate Media Group®, Kellogg’s and The J.M. Smucker Company but all my opinions are my own. #pmedia #SamsClubBTS http://my-disclosur.es/OBstV EVERY night we faced the same frustration. My girls wanted to read a specific book that was no where…
I received complementary product from Stickerkid to facilitate my review. As always, opinions remain 100% my own. With kids, comes stuff. And with summer, more of their stuff just seems to get lost or left behind. Schools, parks, playgrounds, pools – wherever kids congregate – are always littered with lost…
This post was sponsored by @GBChildUsa as part of a Blog Blast Activation for Influence Central. When you have three kids in car seats, car space comes at a premium. Even driving a large SUV, the space I am left with when all car seats are installed is minimal… and even less…
This was Big M’s first year at preschool. She goes to a partially co-operative school, which means, that we as parents contribute to the school beyond just sending our child every day and paying tuition. We give our time, signing up for required Parent of the Day sessions throughout the…
After the mudroom, my next favorite room in our new house is the playroom! Getting the toys out of our family room was huge. Having a place for all the kids’ stuff AND in sight line of the main living space was a double win. But a playroom can also…
You get everyone out of the car, and they race into the house. As you schlep extra bags, coats, the baby carrier and anything else left behind, you follow to find a trail of evidence in their wake. Backpacks thrown on the kitchen counter. Coats draped across the stairs. Boots…
When we moved into our forever home in August, I finally had a dream kitchen with space for everything. But that can be a double-edge sword. Space to store and stockpile, if not well-organized, can lead to lots of waste. We had also reconfigured our kitchen to eliminate a walk-in…
Every parent has had one of these days… from the moment your child wakes up, they are crying about something. Or maybe you didn’t get enough sleep last night, and you are the one with the short fuse. Regardless of who the grump is, the day starts off all wrong,…
We eat out with our kids a lot. They have been going to restaurants since they were infants, and I can recall maybe twice since Big M was born nearly 4 years ago, where they were so badly behaved we took turns racing through our food while the other shepherded…
Big M, at 3.5, has become increasingly interested in the concept of days and times. When she is awaiting a holiday or Grandma coming to visit, she will ask what day it is happening, and then everyday ask if it is that day yet! Similarly, she has picked up on…
We are in the market for a vacuum cleaner. Our current vacuum was purchased the year we first moved in together nearly a decade ago. And even with the move to our starter home a year later, and now two kids many years after that, it is more than sufficient…
The secret to keeping your kids entertained, especially through this interminable winter, is a well stocked craft closet. You’ll often notice in my At-Home Activity posts, I mention that an activity was free or cost me a $1 because I already had everything else in the craft closet. So what…
It is not news to anyone that the cost of a college education increases every year, growing at astronomical rates, faster than the overall economy and significantly higher than inflation. When I went to college, I had no college fund, but with the moral support of my family, hard work…
When I was expecting Lil’ M, my mother-in-law kept telling me to prepare myself… that 1+1 did not equal 2. I would laugh, and think to myself, how much harder can it be? How I Survived 2 Under Two I had reached the honeymoon stage of babyhood. By the time…