Parenting doesn’t come with a handbook. Not really anyway, and you should trust me because I’ve totally looked. (High and low) The car seat comes with a manual rivaling most graduate school textbooks and assembling the stroller takes NASA’s best, but the actual baby? Nope, no manual for that little human. You’re kind of, well, it. Which is why you really should snatch up this palm sized how-to parenting book written by two of the smartest women I know, Rookie…
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Dear children, I know you’re still small, that you’re growing into your feet and arms, and long, long legs. I know you don’t have to decide right now who you want to be when you grow up, or what you want to do with your life. Right now I’m spending a lot of time thinking about you when I fall asleep at night, when I wake up in the morning, and when I’m at stoplights. In fact, I spend almost…
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This post is Sponsored by Clorox. Help stop the spread of germs with Clorox® disinfecting products. I need more time in the day. Who doesn’t? I mean, how often do you think to yourself it would be amazing if there were 3 of you, or if you could just push pause on your day to get everything done before you push play and do all the great stuff you’re always meaning to get to. So if you had three extra…
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Right around the 18 month mark of tiny babyhood, Precocious decided she was done letting me play dress-up. Just when we were getting into the really cute clothes stage, out of onesies and jumpsuits, Precocious decided she was a better judge of fashion than I and that she ‘would take it from here’. As you might imagine, I was a little heartbroken. I mean what 18 month old have you ever seen dress themselves properly? We ended up playing battle…
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At the Czarnecki house we try really hard to involve kids in making healthy food for the whole family. By default our kids are included in every step of the process; we pretty much do everything together as a family, grocery shopping and cooking included. All the planning starts at the beginning of the week, usually on a Monday, when I’m trying to figure out some semblance of a meal plan. After the kids come home from school, I sit…
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The scary banana allergy was just the beginning of a huge realization for me that as the mom, theres an instinctual knowledge about what works for you and the health of your baby that no doctor or professional can understand. I learned a critical lesson that day, to listen to myself, to trust my own instincts, the knowledge that as the mother of this new little girl, there was no advice better than my own. To read the rest…
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I write a weekly column for BabyCenter‘s Momformation blog, and today I wrote a little something about my dear friend Kami Bigler. She’s the proud new mother of a micro-preemie baby girl, Afton Jean Bigler, born 2 days ago at the tiny birth-weight of 12.7 ounces. She was born way too soon. About 3 1/2 months too soon, in fact. Kami and her sweet family can use any and all support you have right now. If you have any well…
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Even though my pregnancy was less than standard, my labor (thankfully) was as smooth as silk. I pushed for less than twenty minutes while my family congregated just outside the delivery room door, but when my daughter arrived she didn’t make a sound. Of course I was terrified something had gone horribly wrong. For several minutes there was absolute silence while I cried and looked frantically from face to face, hoping for some sign of an answer from one of…
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Making it alive through two pregnancies is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. Today Im sharing an essay about the scariest year of my life for ABC News and the UN Foundations Million Moms Challenge. And all of a sudden, in the midst of the bustling holidays, the night before the first day of my final semester of college, I took a pregnancy test. And it was positive. Go to Million Moms Challenge to read my essay, and…
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