Thursday, April 11, 2013
In case you haven't noticed, the majority of people we come in contact with are a little bit, well, stressed! It doesn't have to be this way you know - not if you have a special "place" to visit when the going gets tough!
One of my fondest memories in high school was a fact I learned in Health class. No it had nothing to do with body hair (eek!) or the delicate issue of how our bodies store gas—it was far more important. In between learning the benefit of eating the food pyramid and the importance of using deodorant once we reached the pungent age of 16, we learned how many muscles it required to frown versus smile. (Only in America) As I recalled, it took more muscles to frown than to smile, but several years after I graduated from college, I learned I was sadly mistaken. According to Dr. David Song of the University of Chicago Medical Center who recently did a study on the topic, the average frown requires 11 muscles while an average smile requires 12…
Monday, April 1, 2013
Feeling stuck or uninspired with your role as a parent lately? Spring is a time of growth and renewal, and it’s the perfect time to freshen up your parenting skills. Here's a recent article from mightymommy.quickanddirtytips.com.
Here in Rhode Island, we are coming off a very long, icy, snowy winter. I can’t remember when I wanted spring to arrive more than this year. With the warmer, fresher days of spring right around the corner I’m preparing to transition seasons by performing my annual spring cleaning. (Sadly, yes, I actually look forward to this each year!) By the time I’m done, every corner (well, nearly every) of our home will be scrubbed and freshened so that my family and I can enjoy as much time outdoors as possible. Spring is not only the perfect time to clear away the dust and dirt in your home, but as a parent it’s also a great time to clean up your overall attitude and stagnant outlooks about raising your children. Here are Mighty Mommy’s 6 ideas …
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Kids don't get a whole lot of learning about money and finances in school. Here are some fun, easy ways to teach kids about money.
When you have kids, you learn quickly that although parenting is amazing, it’s also very expensive. The older they get, the more things they want, and many parents struggle to balance not only the cost of all these items but also how to teach their kids about financial responsibility. Today we’re going to get some expert advice from my MacMillan Publishing QDT colleague, Money Girl, Laura Adams, who has some fun and easy ways that parents can work together with our children to create a solid financial future. Laura is the author of the award-winning book Money Girl’s Smart Moves to Grow Rich Cheryl: At what age can we start teaching our kids about money and how can we make it an easy process that they can relate to? Laura Adams: As soon…
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Child Outreach is a valuable and free service offered to children ages 3 to 5. Learn more about this important service that can truly help your child before Kindergarten placement.
Child Outreach is a free service offered to all children 3 to 5 years old. Child Outreach provides a brief assessment in five areas of development: vision, hearing, speech and language skills, social and emotional development, and general development, such as gross and fine motor skills and memory. Much like bringing your child to the pediatrician, children should be screened annually, at 3, 4 and 5 years old. Because the activities are based upon what is appropriate for your child's age and experiences at the time of screening, each screening provides families with an up-to-date check on their child's status. Child Outreach can help identify children who may need further assessment, intervention and services at an early age in order to …
Monday, March 11, 2013
Dreaming is OK, as long as we don't get too fixed on the exact outcome.
As I scurried through the store and rounded the corner I literally lost my breath when I saw it! There it was—the most exquisite, perfectly designed 8 X 10 area rug I had ever laid eyes on. If ever an item screamed my name this lush, tropical masterpiece was it (well, excluding certain edibles like whoopee pies and pressed grape beverages). For those of you who have followed my yearlong quest to transform our home into a private Caribbean resort (Just because I have 8 kids doesn’t mean I can’t live an exotic life) I knew after brushing up against that plush, vibrant-woven hibiscus piece of incredible floor art that it would be the showstopper to my entire sultry project, and I just had to have it! Of course, there was only one small …
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
How's your holiday season going so far? Are you loving every second of the chaos or are you scurrying through each day, just praying for it all to be over?
If the idea of spending the next couple of weeks shopping for gifts that you really can’t afford, standing in long lines at the Post Office to send out those precious photo cards that nearly cost you your sanity, trying to keep your kids from climbing the walls with excitement all while juggling your job, fitting in one too many holiday parte on top of wrapping, baking, and decorating your humble homestead so that you can create the near-perfect holiday for your family, let the Gansett Moms’ Council talk you off the ledge. Too often the holidays get a bad wrap (No pun intended!), but it doesn’t have to be that way. ’Tis the season to be joyful and merry, but thanks to all the pressure we put on ourselves, it often ends up being the season …
Friday, December 14, 2012
Think YouTube is only for listening to great tunes? Think Again!
I consider myself a reasonably creative person. Just last week, for instance, I created a winter wonderland in our living room with branches I found in the woods behind our house. After dragging them several miles, I managed to spray paint them with shiny white paint, sprinkle them with snow glitter and then strung lots of white lights on them all without batting an eye. It’s a shame no one in my family has noticed this festive venue yet, but the dogs and I certainly are enjoying it. Sure I can bring a dead tree to life, but ask me to assemble something like those UNICEF boxes the kids come home with for Halloween, and I break out into a cold sweat. Just because I’m good with a hot glue gun doesn’t mean I’m good with a set of written …
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Christmas comes but once a year - but the cost of it can last much, much longer!
Pay no attention to the yards of yellow tape currently draped around our home, and don’t worry—it doesn’t indicate a crime scene—but possibly something just as ugly—a construction site. Make that a “Holiday” construction site! Regardless of your religious affiliation, this is the time of year where most families are gathering their most festive ornamentation to decorate their front lawns, their mantels, their 7-foot pre-lit designer trees, their wardrobes, their pets, and some even the hoods of their cars. Since we are Christians, we celebrate Christmas, which if I recall correctly, all started in a manger with hay, not in a mall with credit cards. Forgive me if I sound a little sour, truly that’s not the case at all. My friends and …
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Thanksgiving is the perfect time to grab those beach buckets you just stashed away - unless, of course, you use an imaginary one!
As the mother of eight, if I’ve done the calculations correctly, I’ve attended more than 65 open houses to date at the beginning of each new school year. These events are certainly status quo but are also pivotal landmarks of how quickly time passes in our young children’s lives. One moment we are “oohing” and “ahhing” at the self-portraits they’ve created in kindergarten, and in no time at all we’re listening to their high school teacher explain the importance of molecular geometry configurations predicted using VSEPR theory. (I’ll take the kindergarten open houses any day of the week!) It’s not that I don’t enjoy open houses, but because I’ve gone to so many, sadly most are now just a blur. (Sorry, don’t mean to sound so callous!) …
Sunday, November 4, 2012
The question "What If?" is one I normally don’t ponder, but when the right questions are asked, that gets me thinking.
As a writer, I have the extraordinary privilege of leading two separate lives. My first full-time job is that of a mom. I’m sure you don’t want me to bore you with the details about what it takes to keep a household with eight kids and two dogs cranking each day, so not to worry — I’ll be brief. Let me just say that as monotonous as much of motherhood can be, for me, no two days are ever alike. I can go months without having to unclog a toilet and the minute I realize my upper arms are in need of some toning, wham, I get to plunge one or two toilets a day for a week! Or everything in the laundry department is effortless and almost pleasant, until some kid leaves a black sharpie in his pocket, and because I neglected to check it in …
Sheila Dobbyn
8:44 am on Thursday, April 11, 2013
This was a fun read. As a relatively new mom, I can completely relate to your Bed and Breakfast “Happy Place”. I sometimes dream of a huge bed with heaps of pillows and crisp white linens, and lots and lots of silence! more ›