I loved my birthday when I was growing up. I was always a shy kid, but if there was one day when I didn’t mind the attention, it was on my birthday. My parents made our birthdays special with lots of fun traditions that I plan to carry on with my daughter. We were allowed to pick a restaurant for dinner and choose the kind of cake we wanted to have at home. Every year we also took a birthday quiz that my mom saved for us, so we can now look back at how our answers changed over the years. (We may have whined about taking it some years, for which I am sorry Mom!). Since my daughter is starting to understand birthdays now, I decided it would be fun to start some of these birthday traditions with her this year.
Teaching your kids to brush their teeth can sometimes be a struggle. My daughter has gone through stages of loving to brush her teeth, and also hating it. At her first visit to the dentist, he told me that we would need to floss her bottom teeth because they were very close together. After a few failed attempts, she suddenly loves to floss them on her own! By making it a fun game, she took over the activity herself, and actually enjoys it. Using a fun story and imaginative characters is a great way to get kids interested in dental health. It can also help them to understand the importance of proper dental hygiene. I was thrilled when I found this awesome company which does just that. And we had a lot of fun creating these dental health activities for kids!
I am a firm believer that learning opportunities can be found anywhere. My parents often used every day situations to teach my sister and I various lessons and skills that would be helpful to us in our lives. While driving home from places, my mother would encourage us to give her directions home. When we would go on walks, they would encourage us to point out familiar things and name them. All of these lessons helped my sister and I to become avid readers and learners. I am starting to do the same with my daughter, and she is already eager to learn from the world around her.Shopping is one of the tasks which my daughter and I do together that affords us lots of fun learning opportunities. We have been learning and reading at the grocery store since she was a few months old.
I believe that books are one of the best ways to teach kids about the world around them, so I am always excited to find new books that can educate. In addition, anything that brings books to life is a winner in my book. Therefore, I was excited when I was approached by 
My father is one of my favorite people. He makes us laugh, he makes us feel loved and he teaches us everything from history, to movie facts, to random trivia. As I began searching for books about Dads, I was pleased to find several that portray the special relationship between fathers and children, as well as the many hats that fathers often wear. From books that celebrate spending time with your dad, to books about “dad humor”, there is a little bit of fun for all kinds of fathers. I hope you enjoy sharing these books with the great fathers in your life!
Summer is here which means it is time to get outside and play! We have been spending as much time as possible out in the sun and my daughter has a newfound fascination with chalk. There are so many ways to use 
When we were younger, one of the books that my sister insisted our parents read over and over again was The Big Honey Hunt by Stan and Jan Berenstain. It 
We live in a world of Instagram and Pinterest, where “perfect” families make “perfect” crafts and have “perfect” lives. Let’s be serious. We post the good pictures on social media, but how many outtakes did it take to get that perfect shot? Reading to kids falls under this umbrella too. I have posted photos on my Instagram of my daughter and I curled up and reading together. And that totally happens! But I will not lie to you. There are definitely days where that perfect picture is NOT what happened!
Raising kids in a digital age comes with a whole new set of difficulties. From managing screen time to monitoring what kids have access to, parenting with screens can be a difficult balance. While screens may be part of our everyday lives, and access to them is more prevalent than ever before, it is important that we remember to put down the electronics and enjoy the hear and now. We all fall into the trap of viewing important events through our screens, since we want to capture every adorable second. Corine Dehghanpisheh’s book #BabyLove: My Toddler Life, reminds us to put down the phones and enjoy the moment!
