Zen Mommy Minute: Kindness Jar

Here is a simple and easy idea you can use in your home to help encourage kindness in the way your kids treat each other… and you! Start a kindness jar. Everyone likes praise (moms included.) Keeping a family kindness jar will have you and your kids telling each other all the great things you see each other do and say on a weekly basis. Read more

How to Make Holiday Keepsakes

So you’ve just created the perfect holiday card! And you’ve sent it to all your friends. But do you keep one for yourself? Do you have an archive of all your sweet, personalized cards from years past? That was my dilemma. Every year, we display all the cards we receive from everyone else and it’s so great to see how much all the children have changed from year to year. But what about your own? Their pictures aren’t really tugging on the heartstrings in some drawer or file folder, are they?

Since my kids were born, I’ve made ornaments out of our annual holiday card. Each one is a little different. One year, I found a company online that would actually print your picture on a glass ornament. I’ve used wooden picture ornaments and silver ones… it’s fun to see the collection grow. My kids looooove putting them up during our First of December Tree-trimming Extravaganza and ooohing and aaahing about their cute, changing selves!

Really… I’m NOT Martha!!! But not only is it a great way to preserve those holiday memories… it’s also a way to get my holiday projects to do double-duty! Practical, see?

Click to see the matching card and ornament!

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Practical Mommy is Ria Sharon. Click the links for Practical Mommy’s recommendations for travel car seats, affordable and fun diaper bags (skip hop bag), and the best-selling crib brand, Da Vinci Crib.

How to Make Memories

This time of year is a flurry of activity! Like everyone else, my camera and camcorder (or whatever they’re called these days) work overtime. My daughter was in a musical, there are recitals for dance/singing classes, holiday performances, family gatherings… the list of “recordable” moments is as daunting as is the sheer number of Christmas cookies I’ve consumed.

For a number of these events, I’ve consciously decided to keep my electronic devices in my purse. Maybe I’ll regret it later, when everyone else has adorable pics of their kids dressed as Sneetches but I’ve been noticing that from behind the viewfinder, I’m missing the actual experience!

How many times have you tried to capture that perfect pink sunset on vacation? It never really translates… and in the process, you missed the whole thing! On our last trip to Europe, my best friend and I were commenting on the fact that if we really wanted a record of the places we were to show our friends, we should just buy the postcards because those pictures were taken by the pros! In the meantime, we should just LIVE it! Reflectively, my best memories from the past few years are things that I don’t have duly recorded on video… the breeze off the ocean in Tulum, a walk in Kennedy Forest, watching my kids skipping over a stream in Forest Park… oh wait, I think I have pictures of that.

So how do you make the best memories? BE in the moment. Stop trying to preserve them all for posterity. The great thing about it is that your memory of it will probably change over time and it will seem even better than it actually was!!!

And those Sneetches… well, there’s bound to be another parent in the audience who’s stuck behind the viewfinder! Tip: make sure your kid stands by theirs.

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Practical Mommy is Ria Sharon. Click the links for Practical Mommy’s recommendations for travel car seats, affordable and fun diaper bags (skip hop bag), and the best-selling crib brand, Da Vinci Crib.

How to Personalize Your Christmas Card Greetings

‘Tis the season to spread holiday cheer! One of my favorite things about the season is receiving all those wonderful Christmas card greetings from my friends all over the world. Practically speaking, it’s tough to stay in touch when all of us lead such busy lives. But come December (at the peak of all the busyness) I can count on bushels of cards that remind of a great friend and maybe even give me an update on their lives.

The ones that are most meaningful to me are the ones that have been personalized. These days, there are a million services that make it easy to order cards that are as unique as you are. Almost any retailer (even Sam’s) has photo cards available for a song. I prefer to do all of my shopping online (Surprise! Surprise!), which minimizes impulse purchases and saves me money in the long run (Really!).

By personalizing, I mean something as easy as selecting and uploading a sweet pic of your babies from the recent past. I just loooove collecting these from all my friends because kids just grow so fast!

Shhhh! I’ll give you a sneak peak at mine…

It took about 20 minutes on Tiny Prints to browse, select, personalize, order and be done with this project. So get to it, Mommies! Can’t wait to see what you come up with for Christmas card greetings this year.

Share your holiday greeting ideas with us for a chance to win a $25 gift certificate from Build-A-Bear. That’s enough to buy someone special a holiday gift!!!

How to Fully Record Pictures of Birth

Home video, digital camera, disposable camera, black and whites, full color glossies, professional videographer, cell phone that takes pictures, the professional photographer you used for your wedding, your mother/husband/sister/cousin with a disposable camera in hand… How did you capture pictures of birth? More personally, pictures of your own childbirth experience? How did you capture your babies first moments in this world outside the peace and privacy of your womb??!!?

No matter how you answer this question, one thing is true; there is no one best way to “record” this precious moment in time…or is there? Maybe nary a photo exists from your baby’s big day. Regardless of the technology you may or may not have employed, here’s a tip on how to be sure you recorded your childbirth experience in a memorable and meaningful way for “posterity.” This is for your children and your children’s children after all…and you’ll be glad to learn it won’t cost you one red cent; a good thing in this economy, huh?

Journaling

If you have pen and paper, then you have all that is required. Maybe you even kept a journal during your pregnancy. If so, use that. Find a moment to sit with pen in hand and recall all the wonders of the months, days and/or hour leading up to the big birthing moment. It doesn’t matter if your child’s birthday was a week, month or even a year ago. It can still be recorded, and I would like to help you do this if you haven’t already.

The Devil is in the Details

Write down everything you can remember. Truthfully, it’s the little things that you yourself will read years from now and think, “Wow, I’m so glad I wrote that down. I would have forgotten that!” Here are some questions to help you get your creative writing juices flowing:

Where were you when you finally realized you were going into labor?

Were you on your due date, early or late? When did your water break?

What were you thinking? What did those around you do/say?

What did you wear? What did you eat? What did you pack for the trip to the hospital?

And so on. If a detail comes to mind, write it down. Someday you will enjoy reading these little details to your child…and they will enjoy hearing them!

Know Your Audience

As any good writer would tell you, “know your audience.” Well, that’s easy. In this case, your audience is your child; a captive audience if ever there was one. The things that you remember when reflecting back on your child’s birth may seem small or silly even, but believe me when I tell you they will not find it silly to know that just moments before they made their way into this world you HAD TO HAVE a diet coke. What stories do you have to share from this memorable moment?

My friend Molly, the blessed mother of triplets Liam, Morgan and Sophie, told me that not a day after their babies were born, her husband smuggled a mini cooler into her room stocked with cold Corona Lights. Their MD had told them (off the record) that a cold brew-skie might help to get her milk flowing…and as there were concerns of jaundice not to mention three hungry little mouths to feed, her milk letting down was important; the sooner the better. Sure enough, hours after enjoying a beer with her husband while sitting propped in her hospital bed, Molly struck liquid gold and her milk was a flowin’.

Journaling Tips

We can’t let precious moments like these…drinking beer in a hospital bed with triplets just 24 hours old… fade into distant memories. We have a responsibility to write these down. Here are some tips if you are new to this whole journaling thing. J

1. Make it Personal: Write this story directly to your child. Dear ________, you were in some big hurry to get into this world!!! I was…” What would you like to know about your own birth if you could ask your mom anything? Write these things down for your child.

2. Be Fearless: Don’t edit out the not so pretty details either. If you were scared, worried, nervous…write it down. Maybe you were disappointed in the way things worked out…not going according to the birth plan you had created so intentionally. The truth shall set you free. This is a part of the experience. You and your child will enjoy remembering what actually occurred and how you might have moved through any rough patches that came up in the processes. This may even hold an important lesson for your child in the future on forgiveness and being with what is in life. Be real, be honest…be fearless.

3. Invite Daddy to participate: Your child’s father has a story to be told as well. Ask him to write his own account of the day and keep it with yours. Not only will he most likely get a kick out of being included in the babies journal (which, incidentally has so many bonding benefits I could write about this idea alone for pages…) but you two may even get a kick out of comparing what was going on in his world as you were having your very own unique experience of childbirth.

4. JUST DO IT: Like the Nike ad, and most recently McCain’s Vice Presidential running mate, Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin is famous for saying…“Just get ‘er done!”.

I am all for technology. Break out the video cameras or whatever. They say a picture is worth a thousand words…true. But in the case of pictures of birth, the visuals may well be enhanced with some narrative by you. So while after you are done snapping/filming away, remember to sit and record your childbirth experience the old fashion way, by putting pen to paper. Your baby will thank you. If you have an entry from your journal that you’d like to share, send it our way. Remember, it’s never too late to record your baby’s birth into this world…just do it.