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Posted by: mommy9 on 3/10/2010 A few weeks ago I wrote part one of "Mommy's Time for Random Unloading" found under "Having a Baby" here on Stage of Life. I shared about how I have grown in this season of the seemingly mundane duties of being a stay home mom. In reality, one can learn much within the ongoing flow of day to day tasks. We should never minimize the life lessons we can receive if we would only open the eyes of our hearts to accept those valuable points. In my last post I expressed how I have personally grown in c...
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Posted by: shamaker on 3/1/2010 1 Are hot dogs killing our children? You might think I mean in the nutrtional sense, but it seems that the very shape of the weiner is deadly. Last week, American Academy of Pediatrics published a report that warned about the dangers of kid's chocking on such common foods as grapes and hot dogs. The academy called for warning labels to adorn such foods.
As the mother of four kids, I have sliced hot dogs and grapes into halves for them when they were young. Once they stopped stuffing t...
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Posted by: deweywells on 2/24/2010 “Children learn from adults. If you don’t read for fun, why would your kids?” Robert Munsch.
Instilling a love of literature is one of my favorite parts of parenting and teaching. The world offers us so many things – and formats – to read. I love telling first graders, “If you don’t love the book you are reading, then abandon it. There are too many good books in the world to read one you don’t care deeply about!” Their mouths hang open, but I mean it. Life’s too short to read some...
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Posted by: deweywells on 2/16/2010 note: This is second in a multi-part series on Desirable Trait #1 - Service to Others and includes more reflection on the 10 Desirable Traits to Foster in Young Children.
Beyond those early years, tweens and teens can work on meaningful project to help others as they take a step outside their own important lives to consider the needs of a community, population or caus...
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Posted by: mommy9 on 2/13/2010 I cannot believe it! The house is totally quiet. With 11 active children, this is a rare moment. So I grab my simple laptop, run into my teenage daughter's room to sit by the window in her cushiony purple bucket chair. I gaze out and contemplate the endless and bluest sapphire sky.The slender palms sway and whisper in the tender cool breeze. And while all the folks back in my home town of Ninety Six, S.C. are enjoying a rare snow storm, I sit in my home here in the Arizona desert thinking how I...
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Posted by: shamaker on 2/10/2010 I'm a Virginia native and snow is for the most part here-today, gone-tomorrow phenomenon. Until this winter, when a December snowstorm dumped half a foot of the stuff on the ground. Then came January and some more snow. February started with a bang--two feet of snow on Feb. 5-6, followed by more snow Feb. 9-10 (and it's still falling as I type).
Needless to say, the kids have been out of school since last Friday, and with four children at home (two school age and two preschool), we'...
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Posted by: spicegirl on 2/9/2010 6 1. Spend every minute of every day telling your child to stop climbing on the furniture and cabinets. Your child will ignore you, but as a parent, you must continue this message ad nauseum. (Life lost: .5 years)
2. Repeat every day for months. (Life lost: .5 years)
3. Since your child is ignoring you, he will then climb onto the highest perch he can find in your house. In some cases, this may be book shelves, curio cabinets, bunk beds, cabinets; perhaps he will swing from the show...
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Posted by: deweywells on 2/7/2010 1 Greetings,
For so many of us, life is good. Many realize this every waking moment, many have to work hard to acknowledge that goodness. Sometimes it's in our service to others that we fully realize how rich our lives are.
Several weeks ago, I caught a piece on the Today Show about teens in New Orleans who worked at local food bank. Fairly standard stuff. But these were teens who were young children when Katrina and Rita struck. Or kids whose parents had lost jobs or other...
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Posted by: shamaker on 2/3/2010 3 Sometimes on Valentine's Day, I have tended to sit back and think, "I wonder what my husband's planning for this year." But lately I've realized that it's not all up to him, that men need love and appreciation shown on Valentine's Day. So this year, I will secretly make some chocolate candy for my love and plan a special meal just to say "I love you."
What have you done or are planning to do to show your husband that you love him this Valentine's Day?...
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Posted by: mommy9 on 2/2/2010 1 Well folks, trying to find time to blog these days is a challenge. But writing is one of my most favorite things in the whole wide world! And if I go too long without doing it, I start feeling a bit “constipated” in my soul! I know this sounds yucky, but it really is how I feel. Just being real here!
With eleven children which includes 12 week old twin girls, my life is consumed with diapers, skinned knees, messes, and teenage conflicts. These are only a few of my daily tasks. And ...
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Posted by: ssowmya on 1/29/2010 Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief h...
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Posted by: Desiree Jones PhD on 1/27/2010 As a research scientist, I note increasingly that more and more people at younger ages are now dealing with cancer. In fact, most of us know someone who is dealing with or has been lost to cancer. But, do we know how we can truly pro-actively prevent the great majority of cancers? In 2010, cancer will lead heart disease in being the NUMBER ONE cause of death worldwide. In this article, I share with you why "Early detection" alone is NOT the best protection; but EAR...
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Posted by: thiegsr on 1/21/2010 I try hard not to listen to my husband when it comes to gifts or cards. He is a generous man when it comes to love. When it comes to gifts he gets it right about 25% of the time. In the world of grades a 25% means failing.
I remember once when I commented on a co-worker’s beautiful rose bouquet that she received for Valentine’s Day. My husband responded by saying, “Flowers are so cliché. I would rather get you a pound of ground beef in a Tupperware container than flowers. You ...
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Posted by: shamaker on 1/13/2010 A few weeks ago, we bought our first piano, a 24-year-old Kimball. Not the top of the line, much to the disappointment of the piano showroom manager, but ideal for our rough-and-tumble household of two girls and two toddler boys. We want our children to take several years each of piano lessons and more if they desire. I am extremely glad my mother made me take piano lessons as a youngster. I switched to the flute after four or five years of piano, so I'm somewhat proficient, but hardly a good p...
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Posted by: deweywells on 1/10/2010 Like many of you, I am starting 2010 with a clean slate, ambitious agenda and refined, reasonable goals. Celebrating one full year of blog writing is one of the good things of ‘09 and one I hope to do more of in ‘10. Another goal for the year to a commitment to listen more.
Yup, listen. I’ve written about listening before in Story Telling and Read More |
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Posted by: lthiegs on 1/9/2010 1 My kids were coloring with markers at the dining room table recently. We had been careful to lay down newspaper as we always do to catch the stray marks that go off the paper. What I didn't realize was that my seven year old had gotten hold of a black Sharpie marker. He used it on his drawing for a while, but once he got bored, he started coloring on the newspaper. When I came to check on them, I was horrified to see that the Sharpie had bled through the newspaper. My beautiful maple wood table...
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Posted by: shamaker on 12/31/2009 With 2009 fading fast, I figure it's time once again to reflect on the year gone by and to think about goals for the future. While I usually have a few personal goals in mind each new year, I think this year I might write down a few family goals as well, with my husband's input, of course.
Ideas that come to mind include be more proactive about having family time each weekday evening, organizing the mornings better to facilitate off to work and school more smoothly, the ever-needed b...
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Posted by: ssowmya on 12/29/2009 There is no single route to Happiness.
I believe Happiness is a tangible, achievable goal. But that cannot be had by reaching out to a single thing or person.
To me it is a sum total of many aspects of our life. Like a mosaic design we find these individual parts and place them piece by painstaking piece together and build it into the picture we desire.
So that means we need to have the larger picture in mind. If not the exact at least an idea of how we want the...
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Posted by: ssowmya on 12/29/2009 We meet many people in our lives, some leave their mark and some others don't.
Yesterday I met an interesting lady. I know her and have spoken to her many times, but it happens that sometimes when yu are so bored to death (in official parties), we tend to get into converstaions to liven it up, and then suddenly a spark is fired and we connect.
This one was that day. Generally chatting, she slowly started talking about her children (what else, do mothers talk about?!), the...
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Posted by: mommy9 on 12/15/2009 It is 6 a.m. and I just arose from feeding one of the twins in my rocker positioned by the Christmas tree . My sleepy thoughts are deep this morning as I ponder on the meaning of Christmas and all that is stirring in my heart about my favorite time of the year.
I have had Christmas seasons where tidings of comfort and joy were far fetched. It seemed I could not engage in the magical feelings of the season. However, with time I have realized that it is not so much about the giddy emo...
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Posted by: toorockmysoul on 12/25/2009 Here we are, another Christmas and another year nearly past. As I find myself reflecting the past 11months and 24 days, I also find myself in a bit of a placid shroud of complacency. Whereas days before, even just hours ago I felt no real desire to do the whole Christmas gig, I am slowly finding myself giving in and conforming to tradition. This would be the first year my wife and I are essentially flying solo at Christmas. With our son and only child moved out and no grand kids as of yet ...
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Posted by: shamaker on 12/11/2009 My mouth hung open in disbelief as the doctor delivered the verdict: my first grader had head lice. I nearly groaned aloud as I thought about all the laundry--the sheets, blankets, pillowcases, jackets, clothes, and towels for six people--and the hassle of buying the special shampoo, soaping up my four kids, myself and my husband. I knew there was a chance that lice could show up in our house since the two older girls did go to school, but I was kind of hoping that it wouldn't happen, well, tod...
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Posted by: thiegsr on 12/10/2009 Last week my soon to be 5 year old daughter shuffled groggily into our bedroom to snuggle between my husband and me. When she breathily asked, “Is it a school day today?” I realized that the night before she fell asleep in the car on the way home from her grandmother’s house. Too exhausted for the evening routine, we put her to bed without brushing her teeth as evidenced by her morning, child, hot, dragon breath.
I suddenly thought of the sad tooth picture at the dentist office –...
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Posted by: AmyDoodle on 11/26/2009 Bill and I were sitting in that special kind of traffic jam that comes just before the holidays and is the result of a small town growing like an overdose victim of Jack’s magic beans, leaving mundane things like convenience and city planning behind. The roads were packed like the straw in a peach milkshake. Fruit gets stuck in the end, all movement stops, and nobody gets any relief. With a milkshake you can pull out the straw and suck out the peach pulp. With overburdened roads, the obvious an...
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Posted by: shamaker on 11/17/2009 Okay, so with 40 just around the corner--literally--the thought of geting a mammogram does cross my mind from time to time, kind of along the same vein as contemplating my annual OB/GYN visit. Then this week, the government releases its new guidelines for breat exams, that you should wait until 50 to get a mammogram and then every other year after that (unless family history points to your needed more, rather than less). Here's the Washington Post article about it: Read More |