Cars.com has an interactive website centered around car seat safety. This has been such a headache alleviator for us. You can choose the make, model and year of your car or a car you are looking into buying and determine the best car seat that will fit. There is a great Grading Scale (A-F) that lets you know if there will be plenty of room for the car seat and the child; doesn't impact driver or front-passenger legroom. Easy to find and connect to Latch and tether anchors. No fit issues involving head restraint or seat contouring. Easy access to the third row if there is one. They also let you know how many car seats will fit in each row. They have been testing cars and car seat fitting for over five years, they have thought of every possible parent need. Did I mention they show videos of how to properly install the car seats in each vehicle!?!

If your child is suffering from nighttime fears, then join the club. Studies indicate that as many as 73% of children between the ages of 4-12 experience them (Muris et al 2001).

Why are nighttime fears so common?

Scientists explain it in terms of evolution, suggesting this fear helped to keep us safe from saber-toothed tigers. Motherly intuition, however, simply points to the fact that kids have fertile imaginations and they don't always distinguish reality from fantasy. What's more, if they've moved from a room with mom and dad to sleeping alone, then this is a big and sometimes scary change.

Getting through nighttime fears can be challenging for the whole family, yet it can also be an opportunity to deepen your relationship with your children. Let's jump straight in with four practical tips to help your kids beat it.

Distance the worry. Get silly with it.

A little mindfulness trick is to separate ourselves from our emotions. You can help your child to detach themselves from their worry. Ask them to list their fears. Then say, "Worry is telling this to you. How true do you think these things are?" Creating distance between them and their thoughts can help to diminish their power.

Bonding with your child is difficult. Kids are different these days. Smartphones fill their day with friends and entertainment, and kids seem to do less and less with their parents. But it doesn't have to be this way.

Kids can enjoy indoor activities that aren't boring to them (that's the key to having fun). If your child gets bored, she'll be off talking to their friends or watching television in minutes. You can start the summer off right by planning some super fun crafts for the whole family to get involved in together.

You'll find that you can bond with your child in an entirely new way. And your child will have something fun and exciting to show her friends. It's a great way to break the cycle and get your family engaged in something else besides electronics.

When you have more than one kid, it can be tricky making one-on-one time for each child. While it’s important for your child to realize they are part of a strong family unit, it’s also crucial for them to know that they are unique and special to you as an individual.

Finding that perfect balance of individual and family togetherness isn’t easy when you have a larger family, a demanding career, an infant who is breastfeeding or if you’re a single parent.

breast pumping tips & Pinterest

Winter is officially here! The past few weeks here in New York the temperature has ranged in the high 40s to 50s. It has felt so much like spring that many people forgot how to dress for the cold temperatures of mid 20s that arrived unexpectantly; leaving those unwisely dressed very cold. Which I got to experience recently that really gave me an eye opening about myself and who I really want to be.

During a visit to the hospital with my bundled daughter, I overheard a group of young girls complaining about how cold it was. I looked at the barely clothed chattering teethed group of girls. One lanky girl wore a long sleeve t-shirt and ripped jeans that had more holes than material, another wore see-through spandex with a long thin flannel shirt, the third wore spandex, a see-through t-shirt and a winter hat, the last girl wore a winter hat and a long sleeved thin dress with nothing underneath and I do mean NOTHING! The mother in me kicked in and began yelling at them for their stupid choice of attire (in my head). As I listened to them, complain starting in the parking lot all the way into the building, through the lobby, and in the elevator, down the hall to a patient’s room, which was right next to whom I was visiting.

By this time, I wanted to scream at the ignoramuses. I visited with the patient I came to see and could hear them complain most of the time about how crazy cold it was outside, REALLY??? I refocused my attention the best I could until the time to leave arrived. Heading toward the elevators, I heard the group gathering behind me. I briskly walked to the elevator catching the doors just as they began closing. Yes! NOOOOOOoooooo! The man beside me decided this was the moment he needs to be nice to others as he held the doors open for the complainers.

I pasted on a smile as the elevator began descending. I jabbered with my daughter as the group started back in with the same complaints I had heard twice already. My head was screaming obscenities at the girls for having no common sense. Honestly, who in the world taught them this was a smart way to dress? Ignoring them to my stretched abilities, I exited the elevator a floor early to walk the stairs the rest of the way to my destination, weighed down with a bundled squirming toddler whom kept saying “me walk mama, me walk”. I just had to get out of the building and into some fresh air.

I push open the stairway doors to hear pleasant soft chatter from multiple small groups of people sitting around the lobby tables. Exhaling with relief…“Thank you Jesus!” I gently slide my daughter down my body to her feet so she can walk. Holding hands, we exit the hospital and turn the corner to walk right into a cloud of smoke created by the complaining teeth chatterers. Coughing I half drag half carry my allergic to cigarette smoke child out of the cloud while trying to find my inhaler. In the midst of my coughing fit, the lanky hole ridden jean girl says “ah man you sick too! It’s the cold, we are freezing out her” I lost all self-control and lashed out.

“Are you serious? It is the middle of January and all of you have more skin exposed than a swimsuit model, none of you have the commonsense to wear a freaking jacket then you deserve to freeze”. I am interrupted from saying more as another fit of coughing begins and I have to use my inhaler again. This time the girl with nothing but a thin dress on says “whaz it matta? You dressed and still sick”. Looking at my red-eyed runny-nosed toddler seeing the effects of the smoke already affecting her made me crazy angry…I seriously pictured a grizzly bear ripping the girl’s head off. I picked up my protesting daughter and replied vehemently “I have emphysema caused by being around smokers all my life and thanks to you all smoking on a smoke free campus, activated it and now my daughter has to have medication for her allergy to your smoke".

I walked away with tears streaming down my face. I was beyond infuriated. I buckled my daughter into her car seat and grabbed her diaper bag; I removed her tube of eye ointment and applied it to her tear streaming red puffy eyes. My tears ran faster down my face as I looked away from my suffering child. Then I saw what crushed my heart into a million pieces.

A dark car parked near the group of girls. Getting out of the car is a skinny woman with jeans (ripped worse than the lanky girls). The woman is wearing sandals and a thin off the shoulder t-shirt. She walks over to the girls handing the see-through t-shirt and winter hat girl a pack of cigarettes. The woman and two of the girls light another cigarette and begin complaining about the cold weather. I shake my head in disbelief and begin to cry harder. No longer are tears of frustration flowing but of sadness and disappointment.

I am now completely disappointed in my behavior towards those teeth chattering girls. I had no right to be angry with them for their “stupidity” or for having a lack of common sense. Those young girls knew nothing more than the example they were given. My heart broke for the lack of a positive example for those girls. My heart ached to hug each of those girls as I apologized for my ignorance and wrap them in the pile of baby blankets from the backseat of my car.

My trance is broken by the softly spoken “mama k?” I look down at my beautiful bundled daughter in her car seat, covered in blankets with a sippy cup in hand staring up at me with her big blue trusting eyes. Smiling at her through tears unshed, I vow always to be the positive example in my daughter’s life. “Yes, baby mama k”. I look up to find the girls and dark car have left. I get in my car and head home with a renewed sense of being.

I am told through all the numerous e-courses and webinars that I have taken this past year to always be honest and real with my readers. So here, it is...my LIFE SUCKS right now! It is overwhelming, draining and right out cruddy,

Highlights of My Past Two Weeks 
My uncle dies unexpectantly and I am asked to organize his memorial service, which I could not say no to, as he and my aunt are huge supporters of my family no matter the situation. This is what I do for a living. I organize services and special occasions; this by far was the second hardest for me.

We dealt with an emergency family court meeting granting us primary custody of my stepson. If you are a regular reader, you are probably a little confused as I refer to him always as "my son" because in my heart he is and has been since the day he was born. (So many things I could write about on this subject but I refuse to be bitter and unrepentantly share that bitterness with the world.)

My husband had a titanium plate fused to his neck bones to repair the damage to his spine because of being hit by a drunk driver, my husband was stopped in front of a friend's house waiting for him to back the vanload of kids into his driveway. When he looked up and realized the car lights from behind were coming too fast, he tries to turn off the road when he was hit from behind. The drunk driver backed up trying to get away and re-struck my husband's car sending it thankfully into a stump that was made a week prior. The officers told us the driver was going over 70 miles per hour when he first struck my husband's car which caused the lumbar rod in the seat to break and impale my husband in the back and crushing his disks in his neck. Many things went right that night that we can only praise God for.

1. You see I was a week from having our miracle baby girl and I was supposed to be in that car. 
2. My husband had decided since I was not going he was going to ride his motorcycle and I had asked him not too. 
3. My husband's quick thinking to turn away from our friend's van kept him from crashing into it.
4.  Lastly but the most important piece of the situation is that the stump made a week prior prevented our car from entering the living room of a couple on the couch enjoying a quiet night together watching a movie. 

After Pens of course a blogger needs notebooks. Fun notebooks add to imagination juices. I have multiple notebooks for different topics. I even carry a mini 5 section notebook in my bag incase a new toddler activity pops in my head while i am shopping. I have even wrote an entire blog post while waiting to see my dentist in my little notebook.