A few years ago, a Mom I know posted on Facebook about how she was going to enjoy a slow summer with her school-aged kids. They were going to sleep in and just take each day as it came, doing whatever it was they felt like doing. I commented that it was nice that she was doing that and an option not available to working mothers. She responded that she prioritizes her children, which is why she is spending her summer with her children at home.
We all have it. A love/hate relationship with kids and their screens. Tablets, iPhones, iPods, PS4, Xbox, there are so many devices kids can play on these days that it’s hard to keep up! It’s also hard to remember what life was like before kids constantly had screens in their faces. But in our house, we wanted to remember. So, for 30 days, we put our home on an electronic “cleanse”.
It’s summer time.
Backyard BBQ’s with family and friends are hands-down one of my favourite things about summer! I love getting everyone together to catch up, laugh, play with all the kids, have a few adult beverages, and of course, EAT!
Motherhood can do a number on a woman’s hair. Sure, it starts out great with the hormone boost during pregnancy – it’s thicker, fuller and shinier. Once baby arrives, though, it can change significantly in its texture, curl and volume. You might remember some post-baby showers when your once-glorious hair came out in handfuls and went down the drain (along with your hopes of a Pantene endorsement deal).
Screen time is a concern for many parents. With the rise of social media, smartphones, and streaming services, children and adults alike have more access to technology than ever before.
Both my parents were teachers. There were lots of benefits to that, but you know what the BEST part was? That last day of school when they returned home with arms full of gifts from students. If you had asked me back then what the best gifts were, I would have said all the chocolate. But the actual teachers may have a different opinion. Here’s what I now think they REALLY want:
I don’t play the lottery very often. I have seen the odds and it barely seems worth it. 1/30,000 isn’t something that could happen to me, so I always brushed-off those odds. When you are told your baby has a rare chromosome abnormality, and that the odds are about 1/million, you learn to never assume those odds can’t happen to you. Receiving a rare diagnosis Nine months after my baby was born we were told she has Uniparental Disomy. This is, in a nutshell, when a person inherits 2 chromosomes from one parent, and none from the other. Rather than one of each. The clinical results can differ greatly depending on the chromosome affected. We had received prenatal genetic testing when I was pregnant and were told that it looked good, we moved forward thinking that the odds of our baby having down syndrome (which was the only genetic disorder…