In the last couple of weeks I’ve been going through archives on this here blog. My intention is to dust off all that old content to make it better, delete where appropriate, and figure out a way to make what’s left useful now. For several years I hosted a podcast called NaturalMomsTalkRadio. I’m finding transcriptions […]

[This post originally published a few days after my sixth child was born. Since she turned 4 yesterday I thought I would republish it.] Dear Baby V, This morning your Dad kissed me goodbye and you were snuggled on my left arm and your big sister Ruby was lying on my right arm, having climbed […]

  Inbetween using my phone to take dozens of selfies of her feet (feetsies?) and hiding in luggage, my 4 year old daughter speaks nuggets of wisdom. I call her Victoria the Sage. She randomly makes delightfully humorous and profound statements. A few examples follow. On beauty and femininity: “When people are mean, they’re not […]

Preview: My experience and feelings about using a Lact-Aid nursing system for breastfeeding my 27-weeker preemie. I review the Lact-Aid versus the Medela SNS, and share my thoughts on both. Yesterday I got an email from the mother of a preemie. She had just taken her baby home from the hospital and sounded desperate. She asked […]

Remember my complaint about the kids being lazy unproductive slothful bored this summer and getting on my last nerve? I have been working on that. The first plan of attack was to have the kids plan a menu and cook four nights a week. I placed them into two teams: Team A is the 18-year-old […]

For several years now, I’ve been taking a summer break from homeschooling. So, you’d think I would learn. The first couple of weeks, I let the kids enjoy some lazy downtime. They sleep late. They lay around on the couch reading, building with LEGO, watching movies. We go to the pool. They Kik and WhatsApp […]

Parenting is not something you “figure out”. I’m learning as I go. As my kids grow and change, I change with them – out of necessity for their needs, but also because I’m changing. Still, I’ve learned some things over the past 18 years with these seven children. Here are 18 parenting lessons. My oldest […]

At least once a week, my husband and I will look at one another after watching a child play with a cardboard box, and say: “Kids don’t need toys.” There are many, many other occasions that elicit this observation. Recently, I bagged up all of the toys of one of my children after a particularly […]

This post on Modern Mrs. Darcy (In praise of being bored) reminded me of a topic I’m passionate about: boredom and “kids these days“. Our children need never be bored because of handheld devices that can easily take up every moment of their spare time. (The same is true, of course, of adults. Long ago […]

Today is January 19. If my youngest child had been born on his due date, he would be one year old today. Instead, he is 15 months old. If you’re new here, you can read our preemie story here. I’m working on this page a little at a time, and at this moment it’s not […]