I’ve written before about how much I love the library. Continue reading
early literacy
Frugal Favorites: Return to the Library…
I’ve written before about how much I absolutely LOVE the library– and today I’m coming at you with another edition of why you should be patronizing and supporting your local library, as well as highlighting some specifically cool things you can check out at the Phoenix Public Library for all my Arizona readers. Continue reading
Cultivating Memories
As we head into the holiday season, I’ve been reflecting how best to intentionally spend my time. It feels like there’s extra pressure this year to make it special as it’s the last Christmas my son will be an only child and that makes it tempting to try and do ALL THE THINGS. But I don’t want to do all the things and feel the consequences of an already difficult pregnancy under the added stress of exhaustion. And for that matter, I don’t just want the holidays to be the time we’re consciously choosing ways to make memories with our kids. Continue reading
Parenting Lying Down
First of all, I promise all my posts aren’t going to be about my pregnancy the rest of the year, and I especially promise they won’t be about my struggle with being sick but I thought this one might be useful to some fellow parents out there….
Up until this summer, I was pretty strict with TV intake for my toddler. The first year of his life I would play music on youtube for him to listen to and dance with, but no TV. Around 18 months we started letting him watch about 20 minutes a day. I don’t think everyone needs to parent that way but I wanted to make sure we were getting out of the house as much as possible and not having TV as part of our regular routine. Continue reading
The Top 9 BOOKS my son is currently obsessed with reading…
You probably already know that toddlers love repetition. My son could listen to itsy bits spider and When Will My Life Begin (the kid is seriously obsessed with Tangled) on repeat for days. Luckily, we have a pretty good rotation of books going on AND, much to our delight, our son is already in love with reading so we have a good handful of books to rotate through instead of just one or two. It isn’t hard to see that story-time is his favorite time of day, but here are the books that make him especially excited: Continue reading
Fall In LOVE: with BOOKS
So… aside from this first paragraph, I wrote this post on Thursday… but then the news of yet another mass shooting happened and I was distracted and then too depressed to post. It grieves me that we would rather enact new routines for students to prepare for shooters, to make this the norm, than to try and regulate guns in any way. I have enough worries about sending my child to school one day and wondering if he will get an adequate education. I shouldn’t have to worry about his safety being compromised because any crazy can go get a gun. Please, PLEASE research and add your voice to the changes that need to happen on this issue. It has certainly been weighing heavy on my heart and I feel like I would be remiss to post this without addressing this crossroads our nation is at (and honestly should have been at years ago. I remember when Sandy Hook happened I called my husband crying telling him I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to have kids anymore… we didn’t let fear keep us from doing that but we also hope that you won’t let fear of swinging to the other extreme on firearms keep you from working towards reasonable gun control and licensing laws.) Continue reading
Budgeting: A Magical Money-saving Place
If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that I am a huge fan of Amy Poehler and her show Parks and Recreation. I take the worldview of Leslie Knope on several things in life and find inspiration, joy, and perhaps painful recognition in various aspects of her life portrayed on the show, but there is one HUGE point on which she and I vehemently disagree: