I have a love/hate relationship with journaling. As in, I LOVE the idea of it: pick the prettiest one, get my special pen, sit in a quiet space, then climb so far into my head that I don’t know what to write, freeze, and end up reinforcing my belief that I’m bad at journaling. 

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My kids were medical kids. Seriously, Claire's first five years of life were peppered with diagnoses, doctors, specialists and surgeries.

After the stillborn loss of our first daughter, I worked hard to keep all her medical struggles in perspective, repeating this mantra daily: At least...

“Those pants don't really do you any justice.”

My (then) best friend said this to me as we were getting ready to go out dancing for the night. 

I was 18 years old and had spent adolescence and young adulthood hating my body. I self described as...

How often do you get caught in the trigger trap reaction cycle? It’s so easy to do and hard to break out of! 

Reactions are live-time, high emotion, frustration point solutions. They're short lived, and you have to repeat them over and over and over. And, they often lead to...

Traveling as adults is stressful enough. But traveling with kids is a different beast.

The planning. The packing. How does a tiny little human require so much stuff? And, of course, the changing of routines, food options, and sleep.

The first time I took my kids on a plane they were...

 How many emotional triggers do you field in a day? Don’t answer that, because you likely can’t.

Your toddlers and preschoolers are master button pushers and trigger your conscious and subconscious reactions, often without even trying.

You want to sit inside a level of...

Why your baby often crawls backwards before forwards.

Dirty Dancing is one of my favorite movies of all time. Seriously, I was ten years old when the movie came out, and spent two years begging my parents to let me watch it, primarily because I loved dancing so much. 

And at the ripe old age...

You’ve heard this quip, right? It’s along the lines of, put your money where your mouth is and no pain - no gain.  

In plain speak, we tend to take action when we feel invested. 

We come into the world as brand new, tiny humans with three basic survival needs: food, shelter and sleep. Shelter represents safety. Food represents nourishment and growth. Sleep is the foundation of it all. 

Your newly born baby isn’t able to control any of these things. 

Toddlers dump buckets. It’s in their DNA. Well, if not their DNA it is in their healthy development milestone checklist.

Buckets of toys.

Buckets of sand.

Buckets of dad’s nuts and bolt’s stash that he mistakenly left out the night before when fixing … a toy.

It’s a...

Dear Reader, I wrote this on September 4th, 2018. Reading through it nearly three years to the day, I take it as a much needed reminder that every season of our life is just that - and then there is another. Today, I still work really hard but I’m not strung out, and I control my time. To...