A Parenting & Multicultural Living Blog
Picking one’s favorite post is never an easy task. Thankfully, posts aren’t kids and no post is going to nurse a wounded ego should I not choose it for whatever reason. Then again, living with a toddler and an infant where your day is often spent in make believe conversations with talking cars, animals, and toys, I wouldn’t be surprised if my posts have nocturnal rendezvous discussing my life amongst themselves.
Continue reading “In Case You Missed Them…Top Posts of 2016”
I am prone to many anxious moments when time is of the essence and everything needs to get done just right. This is particularly the case during the holidays. I want everything to go well. As a multiracial, multicultural family, at every bend, starting October, there is a celebration a.k.a stressor, just waiting to get the better of me. Here is a list of days we celebrate between October and December.Continue reading “Multicultural Celebrations – Hanukkah and Christmas”
We are bursting at the seams. Cliché, yes. My reality, absolutely yes. A developed world/privileged life problem? Couldn’t be truer.
I have been thinking about a brand image for this blog for a while. I wanted it to represent the title, both, the PhD part as well as the Mama part. After a few weeks of trying different variations of designs, I finally created one with which I am content. I hope you like it. I am not certain when, where, and under what circumstances I would use this “logo” but should a need arise, I’ll have one ready 🙂
I hope you like it.
After the balloons have descended, the ball dropped, the confetti cleaned up, and the champagne popped, what remains is just another year – A year that is ours to make what we can of it.
2017 is a year of promise. This year, my little boy turns 3 years old and my baby girl turns a full year young. Meanwhile, Aaron and I, both, inch closer to the fourth decade of our lives while hoping for a new level of maturity to set in. Much of this journey will be revealed on this blog as the year unfolds. In the spirit of getting older and hopefully calmer and more self-assured, I have created new challenges for myself this year.
I am not much of a resolutions gal. I have tried to hold on to a resolution or two in the past but contributing to the statistical reality that most resolutions get broken by February, I realized that those just don’t work for me.
Instead,Continue reading “New Year. New Challenges. New Hopes.”
People love to reflect on the events of the year around this time. Somehow, being a little introspective while trying to connect the dots of how things worked out or didn’t, in the otherwise mundane living of our dailies, seems to make the passing of a year, that much more significant.
I have had a good year. I understand that as far as adjectives go, “good” does not spark particularly inspiring interest, nor does it convey anything especially significant. It is just word that implies a nondescript, ho-hum kinda a feeling. My year was anything but. I merely use this adjective because you’ll find a range of others interspersed throughout the rest of the narrative. In this intro, I merely want to capture my contentment at a year well lived.
As I say good-bye to the year that was and look forward to welcoming the year that will be, I share with you:
1:17 a.m. I open my eyes and turn around to check the time. Silence. The house is quiet and dark. I especially try to listen to any kind of sound coming from my daughter’s room or, what used to be the parents’ bedroom. Nothing. I check her video feed. She is asleep. I fall back asleep.Continue reading “Baby Milestone: Sleeping Through the Night. Not Yet.”
Read Part I here.
We held hands. He reached his hand out and said, “Hold hand, Mommy”, he said with all his earnestness. It always pleases me when my little boy asks to hold my hand. I will always hold his hand just like I will always pick him up for as long as I am able to.
My headline reads like the title of a Little Critter book, doesn’t it?
On Monday last week, TJ and I got to spend some time together. Just us. Mother and son. Like we used to before Baby E was born. It was the last session of Music Together (MT) for this quarter. Upon my request, Aaron worked from home that morning so I could leave a napping Baby E at home and attend MT without having her tag along.
Imagine, if you will, that you are sitting in a comfy chair by a glowing fireplace, covered in a cozy blanket, and reading a Christmas story to a child perched lovingly on your lap. This is the story you want to be reading to them in that imagination. Continue reading “Book Review: The Girl Who Saved Christmas”
What is it about being a parent that makes us such suckers for toys for our kids? We know our kids have a lot of, no scratch that, a LOT of toys. I know, my kids, or at least my toddler, and therefore, by association, my baby, both, have a TON of toys. This is another one of those Industrialized World Problems, created out of nothing, for nothing, and just because.
How many toys do your kids have?
Continue reading “The Affluence of Toys. Recycle. Reuse. Reduce”
A few days ago, a former classmate of my husband’s, died in a car accident along with one of his daughters, having fallen victim to a drunk driver. He leaves behind a wife and two daughters.
This news upset both Aaron and me. It is terrible to know that the life of a little girl was taken away before she even had a chance at it. It is extremely sad to know that a wife lost her husband and a daughter; and daughters, their father and a sister. Also lost were other relationships that this father and daughter embodied.
