Mommy Moments

In today’s digital age, it can be challenging for parents to decide when and what type of phone to give their children. With concerns about online safety, screen time, and the right balance between independence and supervision, choosing the best cell phone for kids is no small task.

These thoughts swam through my mind as I prepared for my first Meetup in December 2012, a month after my first daughter was born. As the first of my friends to have a child, I was determined to make “mommy pals” who had kids the same age as my daughter.

We moved our kids into the same bedroom last weekend. With a brother and sister sharing a room for the first time, you could probably imagine this week has been very long for everyone. Yes, some of the reasons why this transition has been a little trying may be obvious, but others may not.

I’ve been ignoring the inevitable for awhile now. It’s probably been at least five years since I’ve needed to wear glasses, for distance, but I’ve refused. My husband (who has perfect distance vision) has been giving me the hardest time. I regularly ask him to tell me what the TV says or what time the clock reads. Ugh, ok. I officially need glasses!

I’m so glad there are so many summer activities for kids out there! We all look forward to summer time, but with kids out of school, summer can sometimes feel really long. There’s nothing that annoys me more than when my kids tell me they’re bored.

Mom guilt is a thing. Working mom guilt is also a thing. Take working mom guilt, then add extended travel to very cool domestic and international destinations to the mix. Now we have a special brand of perverse agony from guilt.

Traveling with a baby can be really stressful. I have a lot of experience traveling with infants and toddlers and I totally didn’t do it right the first couple times. As a mom who has been there and done that, I teamed up with Huggies to share some travel tips to help other new moms.

Having drop-in child care near me when we needed it most was such a relief. Here’s the quick story on how I came to feel this way.

I can distinctly remember my parents warning me about becoming a parent. They told me how hard it was and how much it would change my life. They didn’t really talk about any of the positives. I remember thinking at the time – wow, my parents regret ever having me. I don’t actually think that’s the case, I think they just wanted me to understand the weight of becoming a parent.

I’m not really much for resolutions, but I do like thinking about the year that has been and the year to come, reminiscing about the highlights from 2013 and looking forward to the adventures that 2014 will bring.

I’m so excited! SheKnows recently accepted me as an Experts Among Us contributor. Published this past Friday, my very first article talks about how we decided when was the best time to have a second baby.

Colic is Satan incarnate. “She won’t stop crying. I seriously can’t take this anymore. Will this ever stop? Is something wrong with her? Is she ever going to be a normal baby?” I repeated to myself, tears rolling down my cheeks, every day for two months straight. This is life with a baby who has infant colic.

Last weekend, our local Orange County Wisconsin Alumni Chapter hosted a day at Zoomar’s petting zoo in San Juan Capistrano. Jade and I haven’t attended any alumni events since Rocco was born. We also haven’t ventured out of the house with both kids, other than a quick trip to the farmer’s market or a walk around the park. Now that Gigi is over her colic, we figured we should try taking both kids out for the day.

Do parents treat their high needs babies differently when they are older? Do the early years with a difficult baby affect how you see or treat them moving forward? Do parents grow to resent their high needs child?

I’m a rule follower by nature. When Rocco turned one, I immediately switched him to whole milk, per the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and others’ suggestion. But when he turned two in October, I broke the rules. For once, their advice just didn’t make sense to me.

To all the moms out there—Happy Mother’s Day! We all need to take a moment to appreciate the good moments with our kids and give ourselves a pat on the back for all our hard work this year.

I was confronted by my own mortality the other day. Long story short, it got me thinking about what would happen if I wasn’t here. In a flash, my eyes welled up at the thought of not getting to watch my kids grow up, to not be an integral part of their young lives and help mold who they will become.

My mom came to visit last week so she could spend Halloween with my kiddos. Just two weeks before she came, our friends at Toyota asked if we wanted to try out the 2016 4Runner. It couldn’t have been better timing, as it is pretty tough to fit five people comfortably in our Camry, with the two car seats in there. Having the 4Runner for a long holiday weekend was perfect because we had more space for the five of us to cruise around Phoenix.

As I reflect on 2015, I realize it has been a year of a lot of transitions. We moved back to Phoenix and slowly settled back into our lives here. I reconnected with friends and former colleagues. We explored some of the fun things to do around the valley with toddlers and visited some of the great nature Arizona has to offer.

I started Posh In Progress about 8 months after my first child, Rocco, was born. I told my husband I wanted to maintain my sense of self, and blogging was a way for me to express myself outside of the daily tasks of motherhood.

“Mommy, my legs hurt,” Rocco whined. It was a Monday evening after the long holiday break away from school. I didn’t think much of it, until he continued to complain throughout the evening, and woke up crying, complaining of leg pain, several times in the middle of the night. Since I was awake anyway, I Google searched “toddler leg pain” and was bombarded with articles about toddler growing pains.

My baby girl just turned two (more on that next week!) and Rocco is already three. I can’t believe I’ve been a parent for three years already! There are times when I miss my life before kids, but most times, I can’t imagine my life without them. Parenting taught me many things, and I’ve learned a lot about myself in the process.

Gigi loves animals. She consistently asks us to read her the same animal book over and over. When we were deciding on a theme for her 2nd birthday, it was a pretty easy decision to choose a zoo birthday party as the theme.

Last weekend we attended a Phoenix hot air balloon festival, the Out West Balloon Fest, in Glendale Arizona. I have never seen hot air balloons close-up, so we thought this would be a fun, family and kid friendly event, and a nice way to spend a Sunday morning.

Are you ready for Easter? I’m not. I just realized this past weekend that I need to get organized! I haven’t even started thinking what Gigi’s going to wear. So, I’m on the hunt for toddler girls spring dresses, preferably under $25.

Siblings play together, without a parent around, from the beginning, right? Wrong! I had no clue how long it would take. I am so grateful my kids are finally there. I mean, finally! Yay! It seems like it’s been forever. I had no idea just how tough it would be to raise two kids who are only 15 months apart. We actually thought it would be easier, and I think it will be when they’re older.

Just a couple weeks ago my son started asking why, why, why for everything! Literally any time we ask him to do something, he asks why. Asking why all the time can definitely get on my husband’s and my nerves. I don’t want to have to explain myself all the time, however, there are a lot of good reasons he is asking why. Here are some tips for how to deal with children asking why all the time.

Can peaches grow in Phoenix? That’s the question I asked myself when I heard about the Phoenix Peach Festival. It seemed unlikely to me that peaches could grow in such an arid climate, but apparently they can. My friend brought her kids last year, so I thought it would be a fun event to check out the Festival with my kids.

During the summer, I often travel overseas for work. When I come home, catching up with my babies and husband is a priority. But, after a long trip, jet lag has me dragging my body around like a zombie. Lastly, I live in Arizona. In the summer, temperatures routinely reach over 100 degrees before 10 a.m. Putting this all together for you, when I think about summer activities for toddlers, I need: 1) fun, 2) easy, and 3) cool – literally.

It’s 1 pm and I’m sitting at my computer when the phone rings. I don’t pick up. Who answers their cell phone to an unknown number? Then there’s the ding of a voicemail. “Hi, this is your preschool calling about Rocco….” That’s never a good sign. I immediately call back, as thoughts race through my head about what it could be. “Rocco stuck a bead up his nose.”

For Thanksgiving, we bravely decided to take our two toddlers on a California road trip. We hadn’t seen most of my husband’s family in over two years since we moved to Arizona. We figured it was time to make the trek so our kids could meet their extended family. They had yet to meet their aunts and uncles, cousins, and great grandmother (who is 86!).

Right after Christmas, I had grand plans of a girly-dinosaur-themed birthday party I was going to create for my daughter’s third birthday. I started scouring Pinterest for inspiration and even reached out to a couple of companies with chic dinosaur accessories for women that I thought would be fun to incorporate into her third birthday. I was determined to throw a majorly adorable toddler birthday party for my daughter, like I had done when she turned two (in case you missed it, it was zoo themed).

Did you know the average American child spends less than 30 minutes outdoors each day and more than seven hours in front of an electronic screen? These statistics were shocking to me. Not only do our kids not get enough time outside, as the obesity rates soar, our kids are missing out on all of the amazing health and developmental benefits of nature for kids.

What is your toddler bedtime routine like? Do you struggle to get your kids to go to bed? No matter how much tough love I try to show them, they will not stay in bed! We’ve tried shifting their bedtime to later, but that doesn’t help, they still won’t go to sleep. Instead, they get louder and more riled up, which only means they get less sleep and they are even grumpier in the morning.

Have you started your back to school shopping yet? My kids are still in preschool, but I’m stocking up on some great back to school clothing while the deals are so good. Plus, there are so many fun fall clothing trends I want my kids to try this year.

As a busy mom, I’m always looking for little craft projects we can do on the weekends to keep my kids entertained. Recently, we made these simple lion crafts out of paper plates. Not only did my kids have a blast, but it kept them entertained and busy for close to 30 minutes.

Relocation is tough on everyone. Moving with kids is a particular challenge; both for you and for your children. Us grown-ups have our own hassles, but for kids, the process of moving across the country, leaving everything they’ve known, being thrown into a situation where have little control can be especially tough on kids.

It’s 5:00 am on Saturday morning. My eyes snap open as I sense someone is staring at me. It’s my two preschoolers, poking me, whispering in the softest voice, “is it time to get up mommy?” I want to scream at them, “go back to sleep!” but instead I roll out of bed, blurry-eyed and put on a morning cartoon to appease them until I’m awake. For the longest time, I was desperate to figure out how to keep early risers in bed longer.

I get anxious a lot. Since having kids, it’s gotten much worse. I think all of the jugglings of the daily tasks has turned me into a much tenser person. This increased anxiety is not good for me, my kids or my marriage. It makes all of us stressed and on edge.

“G, look at you, only 3 months old!” as I showed my daughter one of my favorite pictures of her as a baby. “Am I Black or White?” she asked, with her big brown eyes staring up at me.

My mom posted this cute DIY handprint Christmas ornament on her Facebook page and I thought it seemed like a really fun activity to do with the kids. So last weekend, we set out to try this DIY baking soda clay to create handprint ornaments the kids could hang on our tree. I used this recipe as the basis for my baking soda clay DIY Christmas ornaments.

I’m so excited that my kids are getting old enough to enjoy the holidays. This year, I’m already getting in the Easter spirit. I created these cute bunny candy jars and I’m starting to plan all the adorable treats I can make to celebrate. I decided to let my kids get on the action, so we created these DIY window clings.