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Camp Patton: have you visited? She’s a mom of three, hilarious, honest, great dresser, and makes parenting a roller coaster of laughs and squeals to watch along with her. I was pleased as pudding when she said yes to my offer to guest post about food. See it here: Healthy & Easy Toddler Snacks & Meals. I scoop on what we snack on, and my easiest 4 meals that almost make themselves, but are healthy. If you’re of my camp and love butter (ha ha. . . . camp!). Check her out, subscribe, like her on the facebook, the whole works. You’ll be glad you did. Thanks for the chance to guest post!
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SuperBoy helps his dad write the initials of the Magi on the Feast of the Ephiphany with a blessing for those who enter into our house. Speaking of names (great transition, right?), how’s it coming on picking a name for your baby? Did you know that everyone has an opinion about your baby’s name? Whether they share it or not, they’re judging. Inside. And either they approve whole heartedly, are luke warm, or think you’re a derelict parent for your selection. What’s in a name? We Catholics recently celebrated the feast day (because we love a good feast day!) of the Baptism of Our Lord. Jesus was once a baby, baptized, and given the name that the angel told his foster father to designate. Jesus, what a great name! The priest’s Sunday sermon was about names and name trends and the significance of a Christian name (either Biblical or a saint’s name). It got me thinking, which got me writing, and here we are. (And yes, when I asked SuperBoy what his uncle & aunt-in-law should name their unborn baby, he said, you guessed it, Jesus.) Baby names for us need to encompass three things in my opinion: family names (unless you’re saddled with a whole lotta Murgatroyds), spellable, and the actual name you’re going to call them. 1) Family names (or names with a story). I’m biased toward this because all five kids in my family have a family name, or a story behind their name. I’m named after…
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We were out of town last weekend and it was wonderful. SuperBoy stayed at home with my family and AA and SweetPea and I had a lovely little trip. Being home and back in the swing of a semi-dirty house with semi-dirty diapers everywhere and very dirty laundry and a semi-whining child and a very tired baby was less than ideal. I have literally 46 things to do this week, and no time in which to do them. It could have been a very frustrating week. Instead, I’m trying to practice being present as a parent, and not just going into survival mode. (And yes, my son wears the same football sweatshirt all the time. All the Time.) Survival mode looks like this: (Oh good, you found something to put into your mouth–I’m laying on the floor with you, periodically patting your bottom so you know I’m alive while checking life on my IPhone.) (Here, take all the books I can find about baseball, and please have quiet time in your room. No, I won’t read all your baseball cards aloud. I’m busy laying on the floor in your sister’s room, responding to emails.) (Oh, look, you’re mangling beans everywhere. You’re eating something. That’s great. Now I’m going to go and lay down again on the floor and try to write two articles on my laptop whilst laying down. I wish I could sew laying down. Thank GOD your father is home because I’m exhausted and crabby.) Parenting in a…
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Judgers love to judge. How judgmental are you as a parent of other parents? Or as a mother to non-mothers? Or just as a mere person to other people? I will confess that I’m judgmental at times. I can leap to conclusions about other people and then decide that’s totally accurate and correct on a dime. I judge other parents, mothers, sisters, daughters & everyone else. BUT I’m working on not being judgmental. Rather, I’d like to exercise my sense of judgment without being judgmental. Tricky thing. Am I splitting hairs? I don’t think so. These are pretty different concepts, right? 1) Judgmental people have few friends. Webster says this: 1: of, relating to, or involving judgment 2: characterized by a tendency to judge harshly — I’m going with the second definition here, people. Being judgmental means that you are always on the lookout for something to pounce on, to criticize. It means that as the person is sharing about their life choices, or their circumstances, you’re already evaluating, categorizing, and psychoanalyzing them. It means that your tolerance for people who process life differently than you is low. It means you are not a fun friend to have! Many of my mama friends work outside the home. Many had pain meds at the birth of their children. Many aren’t Catholic. Some are single parents. Some didn’t go to college; others are PhDs. They’re not my friends because we have the same path in life. They’re my friends because we are driven by the same desire…
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This is the final segment written by a guest writer whose son has been diagnosed with a form of Autism. See part 1 here, and part 2 here. This last segment gives concrete guidance for parents going through the system and provides a number of very helpful tips, including an online support group founded by our writer! Programs That Help But how do you get help for an autistic child? We had insurance through the state of Wisconsin (Badgercare) which has vouchers to pay for special help for children who have Autism … but there’s about a 1.5 year waiting period to get a voucher and a long application process. We figured by that time he’d have been in school long enough he should get help from the school district. We also figured we would no longer be on Badgercare by the time a voucher became available. The good news is there’s something called a Katie Beckett program in our state that can “divorce” your special needs child from your insurance if you find that they need more help than your insurance pays for and he or she can go on Wisconsin’s plan. We did not pursue that because we did not think his needs were severe enough to warrant a voucher. The rules are you must get 40 hours of services per week for young children and 20 hours for school-aged children and we knew he’d be too exhausted to be helped by services after a full school day.…
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This is a continuation of our guest post on a mother’s perspective on her young son’s autism diagnosis. Read part 1 here. Read all our Birth & Parenting Series here. Contact me if you want to share your story! —- How the Diagnosis Works When we took our son for his physical in June, we mentioned our concerns to our family doctor. She immediately referred us to the pediatric neurologist. We were very lucky to see her within two weeks, and after a meeting with her, she sent us to the psychologist who was the expert in autism for a screening. We were able to see him relatively quickly, too, and by mid-summer, we had an answer: he was autistic, but not classically so. When you get an autism diagnosis, there are several different “categories” you can get, the most known are Autism, Asperger’s, and PDD-NOS (Pervasive Development Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified). Our son was PDD-NOS because he was similar to the children who were fully autistic, but had some differences. For example, he is not particularly interested in the wheels on a car and does not have an overwhelming need to put things in order. He is also highly imaginative. But he does not seem to grasp social skills and has other things he does in common with the autistic children, such as liking to spin or twirl his body when he gets a little overwhelmed. The newest DSM-V will actually collapse all of these developmental disorders under “Autism”…
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