This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of American Heart Association / American Stroke Association for IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine. College wasn't so long ago for me that I've forgotten how badly I wanted to just be done with it. I always knew exactly how many weeks of the semester I ...
Parenting
How to Keep Your Kids in Touch with Long Distance Grandparents
My parents regularly tell me that the best thing I’ve ever given them was a grandson, and the worst thing I’ve ever done was to move him one thousand miles away from them. It’s been three years since we committed the terrible offense of moving to my husband’s hometown in Texas. We've since added ...
What I’m teaching my two-year-old son right now about rape culture
The Stanford rape case is blowing up the conversation about rape culture. As it should. The statistics say that 1 in 5 women has survived sexual assault. That's difficult to measure because so many survivors suffer in silence without seeking justice. Who can blame them when they see what the victim ...
Will your daughter achieve less because you’re a stay-at-home mom?
Word is out, thanks to a Harvard study cited by the New York Times, that daughters of working moms will statistically achieve higher education, are more likely to work [outside of the home], and will make more money than daughters of stay-at-home moms. Three-quarters of American mothers with ...
I’m still giving my kids baths every night.
There has been a lot of talk floating around the interwebs about how kids don't need to be bathed save for once or twice a week. How daily bathing dries out their skin. How it is simply unnecessary. Buuuuuut, I'm still giving my kids baths every night. And I'm sick of feeling guilty for it, so ...
7 Ways to Beat the Worst Hour of your Family’s Day
The Witching Hour. You know what it looks like for your family. For us, it starts around 5pm, the last full hour before Daddy gets home. Our last hour of just the three of us. The last hour of them outnumbering me. When the baby is starting to get extra fussy and bedtime can't come soon enough for ...
Why New Moms REALLY Need Social Media
It's lonely. You didn't realize how lonely adding a new family member could make you feel, but it does. Sometime after the brand newness wears off--when husband goes back to work and helpful relatives go home and the church meals come to a halt--it's just you and your baby for hours and hours ...
Our go-to trick for calming upset kids
I have a threenager. He has every kind of emotion every single day. Like, today he got a little overzealous with his craft time and colored on his bed sheets. Although I was not in the room to see it, I suspect that he knew what he did was wrong and regretted it, and then came out of his ...
Stop Taking the Fun Hostage, Mom
"Bike ride at the bayou this Sunday?" My husband texted me from work on Friday. "YES," I replied. Our family loves bike rides, and this is the time of year for it in Texas. Soon, it'll be miserably hot and we would rather be swimming than biking. But, while I always love the idea of biking, ...
How Being a Parent Inevitably Makes You a Better Person
When babies become mobile, there is a slew of new chores added to a mom's day. One of those is hand washing. Babies crawl everywhere that we walk, so before they shovel food into their mouths with those grubby mitts, you've got to wash them. You know this. I'm not telling you anything new. But I ...