Parenting: Before & After the Internet

How did we survive before the internet? Certainly our parenting was far more driven by our own intuition than by that of our good friend Mr. Google. I suppose there were those things called parenting books that people could read.

“You are so lucky to have the internet,” my mom will often tell me. This is after I express to her that I’m refusing to give my kid juice before middle school because I’ve read somewhere on the internet that it’s a no-no. Or that my toddler won’t be wearing a winter jacket in her car seat because I’ve now seen the 12th video on how it could one day save her life.

How did this information get communicated so quickly before? Beats me.

#FamJamLinky | Link Up Your Family Posts #10

We have reached double digits with the #famjamlinky! Link up your family related posts about your kids, yourself, parenting, tough times, good times, everyday times! Handbags & Snot Rags and I cohost this linky every Wednesday.

Favourite post from last week was by Nikki of the View From In Here who wrote a bit about social media and Instagram, with a blogging focus. She has a couple other great social media posts for bloggers if you are interested.

As for my week: With a little inspiration from Nikki’s post last week, I actually started using my Instagram account! Big news right? I didn’t really see the appeal before but it’s definitely growing on me. Since I don’t post pictures of my kids on social media, I find it hard to know what to put on there!

On to the linky:

#FamJamLinky | Link Up Your Family Posts #9

Welcome to week #9 of the #famjamlinky! Link up your family related posts about your kids, yourself, parenting, tough times, good times, everyday times! Handbags & Snot Rags and I cohost this linky every Wednesday.

Favourite post from last week was by Cuddle Fairy who wrote about promoting creativity with her kids. It reminded me to try find things around the house (or close to the house) to use for arts and crafts with my kids.

As for my week: My kids are too young for school so we had quite an uneventful week. Besides traffic being really busy, everyday is still the same. #lifeofamum, am I right? I am requesting points for creativity though since I made these little jars for toddler-money-saving just for fun and cleaned up from the disaster that was the in-laws visit.

Want to get to know me better? Here’s 10 questions answered (The Liebster Award!)

On to the linky:

#FamJamLinky | Link Up Your Family Posts #8

Here we are at another Wednesday and week #8 of the #famjamlinky! Handbags & Snot Rags and I cohost this linky every Wednesday for all your family related posts – your kids, yourself, parenting, tough times, good times, everyday times!

Favourite post from last week was by The Hollyhock Door with Do You Have To Hug? I hope to teach my daughter kindness and manners and empathy, but she can show them in other ways if she doesn’t want to hug. Or she can choose to hug if that is what she wants to do with her body. Great read if you’re interested.

As for my week: The in-laws came for a semi-surprise visit – did I love it or hate it? Then, on the weekend, the hubs and I went on a little overnight retreat – sans kids – and he proposed! It’s kind of weird since I call him husband already and now he’s just my fiancee….

Anyways, we are way behind on EVERYTHING! Huge piles of clean and not-clean laundry, no food, a messy kitchen/house/life/kids, bags still lying packed from the weekend, zero blog posts written, but that ring though – it’s so sparkly and distracting.

Moving on! Here we are:

#FamJamLinky | Link Up Your Family Posts #7

This is week #7 of the #famjamlinky! Handbags & Snot Rags and I cohost this linky every Wednesday for all your family related posts – your kids, yourself, parenting, tough times, good times, everyday times!

Favourite post from last week was by ‘Silly Mummy’ at R is for Hoppit who always writes the most entertaining and hilarious musings of her toddler and baby. This one was about her toddler being politically incorrect – I think we have all been there!

As for my week: I picked up a new mum-friend at Starbucks and she made a comment about anti-vaxxers that really intrigued me. I also wrote a bit about Baby M’s first encounter with food and the horrible thing she ate the other day.

Hope you all are having a great week: time for linky!

Baby’s First Food! (Week 1)

Baby has officially tasted something other than boob milk. And other than her sister’s fingers, or the lint on the floor, or that thing she ate that shall not be mentioned.

I painstakingly make all her food myself. No, it’s really not that bad. Most of the time I make a bunch of food and freeze it so it’s almost the same convenience as having store bought. Kind of.

Picking Up Mums At Starbucks (Are Anti-Vaxxers Horrible?)

I usually pick up mums at the local Starbucks here. It’s the best place to meet them. You know you have a mutual love for coffee and spend a ridiculous amount on it, probably daily. And you also immediately have other little humans that can entertain your little humans.

I think this mum actually picked me up this time. We were standing in line and she asked how old my daughter was. Then the universal mum talk came out as we immediately had a million things in common to chat about.

We barely got through our orders as we tried to dish out things about our kids and discuss how mum life both sucks (I’m so tired) and is awesome (look at that adorable smile).

The Baby Ate What?!

Baby M has just woken up from her afternoon nap. I take her out of her crib and head downstairs to change her diaper.

Downstairs, I lay her on the ground beside her play mat and changing station. The changing station consists of a couple of diapers and wipes piled up on the ground in the family room.

I open up her diaper and notice a tiny little nugget poop in there. She’s just started solids so her poo is getting a bit more…well, solid. I put on a new diaper and continue to throw the used diaper away. I then put her on the play mat, not far from where I changed her.

#FamJamLinky | Link Up Your Family Posts #6

This is week #6 of the #famjamlinky! Handbags & Snot Rags and I cohost this linky every Wednesday for all your family related posts – your kids, yourself, parenting, tough times, good times, everyday times!

Favourite post from last week was by the View From In Here who wrote a very informative piece on the most effective use of images to portray your blog and draw people in. Great read for new or seasoned bloggers.

As for my week: Baby M tried solids for the first time! I’ll be writing more about that later this week. Everyone has been sick over the past several weeks so it’s been a little slow. First the Toddler was sick, then Baby, and now I’ve officially caught the cold as well. I thought I was going to get away with not catching it by diligent and obsessive cleaning and hand washing – but no such luck.

Let’s start the linky!

Homemade Baby Food | Tips For Make Ahead Meals So It Seems Like Less Work

Toddler can’t even control herself around this baby food. She hovers around the baby until she is done and then asks to eat the leftovers. Even licking the plate. I tell her that our food is so much better! She gets to eat pasta, hamburgers, wraps, and even dessert! But she would rather have mashed up, bland, simple baby food. I guess it’s back to basics.

We have started with some simple homemade recipes for baby. In order to make life a little less crazy, I do a couple things that make preparing home made baby food a little easier:

#FamJamLinky | Link Up Your Family Posts #5

Welcome to week #5 of the #famjamlinky! This is for all your posts about anything family related – your kids, yourself, parenting, tough times, good times, everyday times!

Handbags & Snot Rags and I cohost this linky every Wednesday.

Favourite Post From Last Week:

Modern Dad Pages wrote “Moments A Letter To My children” – a really beautiful read! It also received the most clicks.  This was one of my fave quotes: “All I know for sure is the moments in your life define you up until this very moment and every moment after this will define you.”

As for my week: We had our first date night after baby #2! It didn’t quite go as planned….read about it here!

I finally finished painting this antique silverware holder (see the before & after pics).

And, lastly, I have decided to pull the plug on transferring to a self-hosted site with Hostgator (for now). It was way too time consuming. I was constantly contacting them to try get the ball moving, and even a month later, nothing was happening. With two small kids, I can’t spend that amount of time chasing them. I might try BlueHost in the future and let you all know how that goes!

Now for the linky: 

#FamJamLinky | Link Up Your Family Posts #4

Welcome to week #4 of the #famjamlinky! Handbags & Snot Rags and I cohost this linky every Wednesday. We had 23 wonderful bloggers last week.

This is for all your posts about anything family related. Your kids, yourself, parenting, tough times, good times, everyday times!

The Favourite Post From Last Week:

The Mama Berry’s post ‘5 Things I Believe In…Now That I’m a Mom’ was my favourite post and very relatable for moms! Her comments were disabled last week in case you were trying to comment (has since been fixed).

As for my week: I am still patiently waiting to switch my content from my current free hosted site to a self-hosted site. You can read about that experience here. Toddler has also been writing in her Toddler Diaries about the “bummie chair” here.

Now for the linky: