Category Archive

toddlers

Surviving toddlerhood: sleep training, meal negotiating, and discovering How It Really Is

This child is not that child. This child is a warrior. This child narrows her eyes, pulls down her mask affixed to her Medieval spiked helmet and unsheathes her sword. This child licks her lips and spits on the ground, never breaking eye contact. “Hello, Mother,” she quietly growls through her binky. “Welcome to Hell.”

My wife and I didn’t pick names for our son to call us — and now I’m “Other Mommy”

After hearing his whole life us saying versions of, “This mommy is cooking — ask other mommy to put your shoes on,” or, “This mommy will read you one more book, and then your other mommy will take you upstairs for bed,” he now calls us — quite sensibly — “This Mommy” and “Other Mommy.”

Family photo session round-up and more tips for rocking your own photos

Family portrait sessions are one of my favorite things that people do — there’s no better way to capture where your family is at the moment. The sessions are also super diverse — you can shoot in the intimacy of your home, at a park or playground you frequent, or anywhere.

Baby wearing for toddlers and preschoolers: child carriers for kids up to 45 lbs

When I started researching baby wearing while pregnant four years ago, I never looked up carriers beyond what I thought I would use during my child’s infancy. It seemed to me that once my kid started walking, he’d… you know, walk everywhere on his own. Now that I’m a parent of a three and a half-year-old who has been diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy, I’ve realized that what you think will happen isn’t always what actually happens. Enter my new obsession: child carriers designed for kids above 20 lbs.

Photo books, teapots, and stuffed mammoths: a holiday gift round-up for babies, kids, and grown-ups

Just in case the abundance of cheestastic music and colors and that old bearded dude hanging out in the mall hasn’t tipped you off, the holidays are upon us. This means a lot of things, and one of those is that it’s very likely gift-giving season in your neck of the woods.

Kids these days have all the luck: light-up shoes are so much better in 2012

Y’all: light-up shoes have come a LONG WAY since I was seven-years-old. As far as I know, no one’s yet designed light-up shoes for adults (or if they have, I can’t find them), the kid crowd has some amazing option now-a-days.

How can we work pre-kid hobbies into our life with a toddler?

We have a wonderful one-year-old daughter who we love hanging out with, but we find ourselves feeling stuck at home. Neither my partner or I feel that satisfied, renewed or entertained by our weekends as we tiptoe around nap times, clean up after our toddler or each other, and come to terms with the fact that spending a lot of time sewing, home brewing, driving, or vegging out on Dr. Who marathons is very difficult (and not so desirable) with an active toddler. How do you accommodate pre-kid hobbies into post-kid reality?

I turned a coffee table into a chalkboard canvas for my toddler

I love to encourage my little girl to draw and be creative as much as possible. I’ve looked into a lot of options for her, but wasn’t very happy with what was available — besides, my daughter needs a BIG canvas. When my husband brought a pretty grody-looking coffee table home a few weeks ago, I ignored it until I realized what I could use it for — the coffee table could be transformed into a canvas for our kid.