Category - blog

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Step 6 for an Extraordinary Life: Make Space
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How to Approach the Sugar Epidemic
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Happy Mothers’ Day to All Our Modern-Day Harriets (That’s All of You:))
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Something You Should Know About Your Toothpaste
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Step Four for an Extraordinary Life: Let Go
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How to Talk Body Weight With Your Child Without Talking Body Weight
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Step Two for an Extraordinary Life: Be Grateful
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Enough!
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Spread the Love: Valentine’s Fun and Decor All in One
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Step One For An Extraordinary Life: Pay Attention

Step 6 for an Extraordinary Life: Make Space

Joanna Gaines of Fixer Upper and I should be best friends.  After reading The Magnolia Story I learned we have a ton in common.  We love to cook.  Neither of us wants to upgrade our engagement diamonds from modest to monstrous.  We both lean toward introversion. And visual clutter drives us crazy. I can feel my blood pressure rise when the kitchen counter goes MIA under newspapers, books and whatever random items my kids drop upon it.  I avoid my office space for all the piles.  To help calm myself, I placed a kitch-y towel on our mantle to keep myself from…

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How to Approach the Sugar Epidemic

It was ironic.  And a little bit sick.  Not nearly as sick as an airport television tuned in to a feature on plane crashes or that particular vendor in Pompeii selling snow globes of the doomed city.  But still.  As I was researching this article, a pop-up video advertised a delicious recipe using Reese’s peanut butter cups. SO not fair. But I’ll admit, at first the video didn’t seem out of the ordinary…so common and everyday is our exposure, in media or on the dinner table, to sugary nirvana. It may be the 21st century but humans still have cave person…

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Happy Mothers’ Day to All Our Modern-Day Harriets (That’s All of You:))

  I haven’t spoken in public since my son disappeared from supper at Disney World.  Then, I was calling his name across a couple hundred people enjoying a meal of their own.  That was six years ago and I was pretty nervous.  (Fortunately, our separation from our son at the Happiest Place on Earth was brief; he had taken himself to the bathroom and knew where he was the entire time….) I had the honor of speaking at one engagement in a series called Durango Diaries sponsored by our local newspaper.  The topic was Mothers’ Day and speakers chosen to…

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Something You Should Know About Your Toothpaste

    My kids’ bathroom is a disaster.  Wet towels carpet the floor, the wastebasket fills up daily (at least the trash is actually in the basket…), and I’m pretty sure the lavatory has gone MIA as it can’t be seen for all the soap bars, hair ties and dried crusts of toothpaste. I try to let this swamp be the kids’ responsibility, but on days the nesting instinct takes over, I can’t help myself.  The other day I found a half-dozen gooey, gummy, squeezed-from-the-middle toothpaste tubes.  Ick.  I lined them all up on the counter and the bathroom was transformed into…

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Step Four for an Extraordinary Life: Let Go

Let it go, let it go Can’t hold it back anymore Let it go, let it go Idina Menzel owns this song.  The only woman who owns it more is her Frozen alter-ego, Elsa, when she accepts her frigid powers and abilities. The power of letting go. What if we all did that? Maybe we can’t put the chill on global warming, or gift the desperately-needed snow to Colorado (but when you have any, please overnight it), but what if we let go of our fears and reservations?  What if you told yourself 5-4-3-2-1-go!*** and asked your boss for that deserved…

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How to Talk Body Weight With Your Child Without Talking Body Weight

  That’s WAY more than you need, put half of it back in the serving bowl. You just ate, you can’t need a snack yet. Your brother can have two hamburgers…he is growing faster than you are right now. Ugh.  These phrases are my dance around the weight issue.  Trying not to mention that my child weighs too much, and the fear of fueling a body image problem or an eating disorder, this dialogue is the best I’ve come up with.  Reading my rationale on my computer screen, I see how woefully inadequate and controlling I sound.  Not overtly bad,…

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Step Two for an Extraordinary Life: Be Grateful

Our family likes to mix it up at meal time.  Sometimes we offer a traditional grace, one of the two prayers my husband and I grew up with.  Sometimes we get our Von Trapp on and sing  “Johnny Appleseed” (Oh, the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord…).  At other times we recite the Philmont (boy scout camp in New Mexico) Grace.  But our favorite is to go around the table and offer one thing we are thankful for in our day, something for which we are grateful. Gratitude seems to be implied; of course we are grateful…

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Enough!

    Pulseonparenting is not a political platform.  But it is about kids and their parents and and their friends and extended families.  I’ve spent the past four years blogging with the goal of making a difference, big or small, in the lives of children and their loved ones.  To say nothing of what happened last week, on a day reserved for celebrating love, would dishonor the passion that motivates me to get up at 5:30 in the morning. Now, right now, while the nation is yet again in the throes of sadness and grief, the most glorious phoenix has…

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Spread the Love: Valentine’s Fun and Decor All in One

  I am not super-crafty but love to craft.  It’s hard to find the time to create so I rely on Annie’s Creative Woman Kit-of-the-Month Club and other simple suggestions, like one I found in the February 2018 Real Simple (makes sense, no?).  A fellow reader shared her love-note treasure hunt tradition she and her husband plan for their children each February, where they hide paper hearts around their home with notes of love written on them.  Then their kids search for them daily through Valentine’s Day.  As I didn’t come upon this fun little ritual until a couple days…

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Step One For An Extraordinary Life: Pay Attention

  While driving down the busy artery through town, I noticed patriotic lights flashing behind me.  What?  Me?  What did I do?  I honestly had no idea.  I wasn’t speeding.  I didn’t run a red.  Maybe I had a light out?  My face flushed hot as I desperately looked for a place to pull over, wanting to halt the embarrassing parade-of-two on the busiest road, at the busiest time, through town. The amiable police officer approached my van as I nervously located my registration and insurance (thankfully I hadn’t left my license in my other purse, as I have been…

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