As part of my brand ambassadorship with Better Beginnings, I was recently invited to attend part of the conference of the Arkansas Early Childhood Association, a group of educators and parents whose focus is giving kids the best start possible. It was wonderful in a lot of ways — and I’ll be writing a lot […]
How to Raise a Smart Kid, Part Two: Talk a Lot
As a brand ambassador for Better Beginnings, I am being compensated for this post, but all opinions are my own. I told you the story about the girl telling her teacher that a butterfly doesn’t come from a cocoon but a chrysalis. And that I said she’s so smart in part because we read a […]
Sew an Easy Blanket out of Old Recieving Blankets
I don’t know how we ended up with so many receiving blankets when the girl was a baby. She was a preemie, so we swaddled her for a long time to help keep her warm, but the number of little cloth blankets we had still borders on the ridiculous. When she was too old to […]
Making Paper Bag Puppets (Your Own or With a Kit)
I like to give the girl crafty gifts and I have a lot of things on her wish list that are craft kits and other things I think she’ll like but that are kind of special because we don’t use craft kits all that often. This year someone bought her the ALEX Toys Paper Bag […]
How to Raise a Smart Kid, Part One: Read a Lot
As a brand ambassador for Better Beginnings, I am being compensated for this post, but all opinions are my own. My daughter started at her new school during the summer, and one day I walked in to pick her up and the teachers were kind of laughing. “She’s teaching me now,” one of the teachers […]
Make a Kid’s Birthday Party Space More Colorful with PartyPail
PartyPail.com allowed me to pick out some great stuff for the girl’s birthday party in exchange for writing a post. All opinions are my own (and the girl’s, mostly). For about six months the girl knew exactly what she wanted for her fifth birthday: a party at Gynmastics Joe’s, a local gymnastics studio that’s open […]
Zen and the Art of Mothering
We all know that our time with our kids is much too fleeting. Even though we seem to always be wishing for the roads to thaw or the summer to end, we know we need to hang on to these precious moments while we can have them. The passage of time seems ever-more prominent at […]