Search Results for: blog bed rest amp work from home moms

5 Quick Activities for Self Care

Many parents are looking forward to the start of a new school year. Keep in mind that back-to-school comes with hectic mornings, help with homework, and the enforcement of a bedtime routine (that may have lapsed over the summer). It is important for parents to take a little time for self care while the kids are at school. Here are a few simple ideas to start with. The Living Self-Care website says that moms and dads that take care of themselves first will have more to offer to their children (and to the rest of the world). Self-care doesn’t have … Continue reading →

Picture-Perfect Mother’s Day

What are you asking for this Mother’s Day? A clean basement? Not if your husband’s idea of “cleaning” is tossing out all of your stuff. An expensive vacuum? Not if you have to use it more to justify the price. Breakfast in bed? Not if it means doing damage control in the kitchen until dinner. What about a peaceful day surrounded by the people whose existence affords you membership in the sweetest sorority on earth? This Mother’s Day consider cuddling up with your kiddos and enjoying a quiet moment with these picture-perfect holiday reads: The Berenstain Bears: We Love Our … Continue reading →

Treat Yourself and Your Child

Labor Day is the last taste of freedom for millions of school kids across the country. Once Tuesday morning rolls around it’s back to the old grind. The first week back to school is typically fraught with challenges, as parents and children get reacclimated to nights filled with homework, extra curricular activities and last-minute dashes to the store for missing school supplies. In the midst of all the back-to-school chaos, dinner often gets overlooked and before moms and dads know it, bedtime is fast approaching and they’re looking around for a quick meal to serve up before herding the kids … Continue reading →

And So It Begins…

You know those moms doing a happy dance in the parking lot on the first day of school, then caravanning together to the nearest Starbucks to toast their freedom with Venti Java Chip Frappuccinos? I’m not one of them. I’m the mom rushing off to get as much work done before I have to navigate the car line for pick-up. I’m also the mom who feels like an amputee walking out of school after three straight months of summer vacation. Three straight months operating as my child’s social activities coordinator and she as my third arm. So, no, I’m won’t … Continue reading →

Childless Food Network Star Burns Sick Kid

You know, I really enjoy watching Ina Garten whip up healthy and inspired dishes on her Food Network show “Barefoot Contessa.” Sure, she is a multi-millionaire celebrity chef, who lives in an immaculately clean mansion in the Hamptons, and tools around in a posh Mercedes, which is about as far away from my reality as humanly possible, but on TV our differences seem to melt away. Well, they did until I was asked to write a letter chastising the former White House nuclear policy analyst, turned culinary guru. Apparently, there is a huge contingency of parents out there who think … Continue reading →

Amish Themed Copywork

Those who incorporate a Charlotte Mason method use copywork daily. As I have stated in another article, copywork is can be used to teach a variety of lessons such as sentence formation and memorization. Many times, I am contacted by new homeschooling moms or moms who do not take a Charlotte Mason approach yet want to add in copywork for ideas. So, I thought it may be fun and useful to give some copywork ideas for those interested. Sometimes I assign copywork by theme. I have used hymns, poems, famous quotes, math rules, and grammar rules and so on, as … Continue reading →

Working Time Trouble

One of the challenges of fatherhood has been having less time to complete the same number of tasks. My wife had been wonderful by trying to give me time to do my work. During her six weeks of time off from work our schedules were irrevocably changed. I would only drive to campus for the duration of the classes I was taking or teaching and then I would drive home to be with the family. This created a necessity for all of my work to be done at home. After the first week or so we were in a fairly … Continue reading →

Blame the Mother

My 5-year-old daughter loves to play games. And by play I mean win. And by win I mean beat the pants off other kids and do a butt-shaking, arm-waving, head-tossing, happy dance after her victory. Somehow her overzealous (yet in my opinion, age-appropriate) reaction to creaming the competition is my fault. Blame the mommy for the child’s lack of humility and sportsmanship. Whatever. I agree her gloating is a bit excessive, and yes, I’ve addressed it on more than one occasion. Still, the happy dance is riot. My child is a work in progress and I’m learning on the job, … Continue reading →

A Mother No Matter What

A mother is a mother is a mother regardless of whether she is on a business trip 6,000 miles away from home or whether her “baby” joins the military and is deployed to the middle of nowhere… or if she’s doing time in a North Korean labor camp. The latter situation is what Euna Lee is dealing with right now. Lee is an American journalist and mother of an adorably cute 4-year-old daughter with her husband Michael. She is also the colleague of Laura Ling, whose sister Lisa was a former member of ABC’s “The View” and current investigative correspondent … Continue reading →

Moms Sacrifice for Kids During the Holidays

In other news… the sky is blue and snow is white. For days I have resisted responding to the now infamous New York Times article, “To Buy Children’s Gifts, Mothers Do Without.” But the brouhaha that has followed its printing has become so phenomenal I figured I might as well add my two-cents worth. As you can imagine the article with the extremely trite title received a backlash of vicious replies from mothers around the world. “To Buy Children’s Gifts, Mothers Do Without.” DUH!! When don’t mothers do without? Before I continue on my soapbox I should note that the … Continue reading →