Toddlers

“Mommy, read.” As annoying as these words are to hear at bedtime some nights when we’ve already read four books, I still love them deep down. I love that I’m raising a reader. I’ve been reading to my daughter since she was a newborn. Don’t get ahead here and think I’m one of “those moms” that had reading all planned out, doesn’t let her get do screen time, etc. I’d bet money my daughter gets more screen time than your kid. No, I didn’t intend to be a reading mom. One of my great friends teaches elementary school. She told me a few weeks after having my daughter to start reading to her, even if it was just news articles. So, I started...

Biting was something that I naively assumed only other parents’ kids went through. My stepson wasn’t a biter, and neither was my now 3-year-old. I just supposed I was one of the lucky moms. That my kids somehow managed to bypass that habit, and I escaped having to deal with this behavior. Well, like with many other things related to motherhood, I was WRONG. At just 19 months our daughter’s little personality already shines through. She is spunky and sassy and oh so adorable. She is the princess of the family and spoiled to the core. She is also a biter. The biting started a few months back at home. She would use it as her way of expressing herself when...

Summer is quickly approaching and since I’ll be welcoming two new babes in the next four weeks, I’ve been trying to get as much done as possible in terms of scheduling summer camps and more importantly (in my humble opinion), swim lessons, for my big boys. When my first son was about a year old, we decided to enroll him in ISR or Infant Swim Resource lessons. Just to provide a little background information … ISR was founded in 1966 and since then, it has delivered more than 8,000,000 lessons to children worldwide. According to their website, ISR’s primary focus is to teach your child to become a productive swimmer or floater in any depth of water. They teach children...

The second I feel like I’ve got a category of motherhood down, I get thrown through a loop. Either our schedule changes or my daughter hits a new phase. Motherhood is an ever-changing journey. However, I do feel like I’ve consistently had the cleanup category just short of mastered. I realized early on that how my house looks has a huge impact on my mood and patience. I care about my home feeling like a refuge, not a place where I see a huge to-do list the second I walk in the door. On the same note, I want to spend more time being home, not cleaning my home. We've gotten pretty good with efficiency around here. Here’s how: Toy Rotation I...

It shouldn’t have surprised me when we slowly started facing more bedtime battles with my now 3-year-old. For literally years after sleep training, we had zero sleep struggles. When we transitioned to her big girl bed, she even refused to get out of it on her own for a while. She would wake and call for us to come get her. I guess you could say we were pretty spoiled in the sleep department. 12-hour nights, 2-hour naps (minimum)…yes, we were spoiled. The fact that I’m a baby and toddler sleep consultant is almost irrelevant here. I know what needs to be done and what is to be expected at every stage from 0 to 4 years old, but it’s...