Paige and her dads: a newborn session in black and white
If you need me today, I’ll be busy swooning over these photos of newborn Paige and her dads. Seattle photog Jenny Jimenez is creating magic again, y’all.
How do you prepare your kids to stand up for themselves — and for other kids?
If my kid ever witnesses another child being bullied (or is the child being bullied), my hope is that she will stand up for the child and for herself. How are you talking to your kids about defending others?
Halloween costumes for kids who use wheelchairs
Carter has Spina bifida, so his dad built him this outfit so he could roll around on Halloween with the rest of the kids.
When your 7-year-old announces, ‘I’m gay’
I was on the phone with a relative who had just discovered that I was blogging on The Huffington Post and openly discussing my son’s crush on Blaine. I was in another room alone (I thought), explaining, “We’re not saying he’s straight, and we’re not saying he’s gay. We’re saying we love who he is,” when my son’s voice piped up behind me. “Yes, I am.”
How do you avoid passing down your own phobias to your kids?
I’ve also spent almost my entire life terrified — and I mean TERRIFIED — of bugs. I’m planning to become a mom in the next couple of years, and now I’m worried that this fear will make it hard to be a good mom. How do offbeat mamas balance their paralyzing fear of things with the need to take care of their little ones?
On saying no to a second foster child
For weeks now, I’ve been feeling this slow and steady ache growing — the feeling that I am not doing enough, can never do enough. I know, rationally that most of us only have the time and resources to do a very little bit. But the idea that there are 16,000 foster children in NYC alone, each as unique and precious as my foster son, each needing stable, loving homes both temporary and permanent, actually hurts me when I think about it, makes it hard to breathe. I can do so, so little.
“How can I talk to my kid about _______?”
We love our questions posts, and we’ve noticed that a lot of them tend to be about talking about a particularly challenging topic with your kids. We’ve also noticed that even though the topic changes, the advice is usually similar — so it seems that it would be helpful to collect some of our favorite, most relevant bits of advice in one place.
The Baby-sitters Club: where are they now?
From the moment I first read The Baby-Sitters Club #1: Kristy’s Great Idea what seems like a zillion years ago, I was hooked. I devoured the BSC books, reading all about Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, Stacey, Dawn, Mallory, and Jesse: back before I had “girls,” these ladies were my girls. So I pretty much happily squealed and shrieked when I found this article discussing the likely present-day whereabouts of the club members (you know, if they were real).