blog | PulseonParenting

Should My Tween Have a Cell Phone? Ask Delaney Ruston, MD.

Jan 16 2018

My son wants a smartphone in the worst way. And no wonder. His best friend received one for his thirteenth birthday. He gets asked frequently by his 7th-grade peers why he doesn’t have a cell phone, so the pressure is real. Topping his list of reasons he should have one? So he doesn’t have to borrow someone else’s to call for a ride home. He feels embarrassed. It’s never easy in middle school, on the cusp of or in the throes of puberty, trying to navigate your place in the crowd. Especially when your status in that crowd is…

Jan 04 2018

It’s a new year, a new calendar, a new start. I love a new calendar, it’s like a clean slate. No creases or dog-ears, no chicken-scratches lined through and rewritten in another box. No mayhem. Just an open book full of possibility and promise. Before I write in all the appointments, extracurriculars and school inservices, I page through my calendar and enjoy the work my husband has gone to to create each month’s snapshot and how I want my family’s year to be filled with the same joy his art brings to each of the calendar’s 12 months. I…

Dec 24 2017

My mother has been called the Walter White of Christmas cookies. She’s been known to bake them 3-figure numbers without breaking a sweat, and some of her creations have been declared utterly (and legally) addictive. The decadence goes international with Norwegian Kringla, German-influenced Peparkakor and Leibkuchen, and Scottish shortbread. But it’s the traditional, down-home, cut-out sugar cookie that no one can get enough of. I am merely her protege, her Jesse Pinkman, who uses her recipes and is constantly trying to perfect the techniques and skill of a true pro. I wish I had the time to hand paint (yes,…

Dec 12 2017

Sometimes wakefulness at 4 am can produce something other than frustration. Yes, my brain was marching through a parade of thoughts and worries faster than a screenager’s brain on gaming: the Christmas party we are hosting, the puppy arriving the day after, did my son really just leave his ski jacket at school, or did he lose it? You know how it can be, especially during this crazy, joyful, where-is-the-snow-already (!), time of year. But in the middle of the brain train, I had one, just one, really good idea. I’m jumping on the caboose of the veritable iron horse others like Maria…

Nov 10 2017

The other night, my husband sent himself a package to his mom’s house, one he will catch up with when we arrive for Thanksgiving. To be sure to whom the package belongs, he included his middle name “Byron” in the name for the addressee. You see, his dad was “Charles Allen Black.” My husband is “Charles Byron Black.” Punctuation saves lives; middle names add interest and depth to who we are. They are a source of intrigue, prompting the ubiquitous question, in one form or another: So, what’s the “Z” stand for? Huh. “E.W.” Wonder what her middle names are?…

Aug 23 2017

A mother drops, (yes, drops) herself down next to me at a “Mother of Multiples” meeting. She recently delivered babies seven and eight, twin boys. You read it right. Babies seven and eight. I was already acquainted with this Wonder Mom as our husbands were colleagues, and was, needless to say, in awe of her ability to make babies. Given it was four years of real effort to conceive my husband’s and my twin boys, I was (and still am) amazed by women who only have to think the word pregnant and bam! They are with child. Or children, in this case….

Aug 17 2017

I had it all figured out. Post #200 was going to be a little bit sad and a bit uplifting, steeped in parental poignancy. And I was in rare form; I had the pictures ready to go before I even began a rough narrative. (Photographs are normally an eleventh-hour pursuit for me.) I was ready to write. But then life happened. I haven’t written that particular post (but pics are waiting in the wings, though…yay); it will just have to wait. Something else needed to be written and posted first, still sad, and also uplifting: Do not put off the…

Jul 20 2017

So well-loved it’s often transformed beyond recognition: tangled shreds of a sickening brownish hue and still adored. Sometimes tragically lost and never found, irreplaceable. But sometimes the attachment is fickle; any soft square of material will do. It can have its own persona, have a cute name, and even take its own adventures. What is this amorphous being of which I speak? The blankie. Aaaahhh, the blankie. The cherished, most comforting “lovey” (psychology parlance for any item a child finds comforting) outside of Mom and Dad, is that bit of softness-to-cheek that children become so attached to. …

Jun 22 2017

My family lives in a free-spirited town. A place where you can’t say I’ve seen it all, but you regularly get a little closer. Like the other day. As my favorite barista was handing me a much-needed java, I spotted, making a bee-line across the local highway, a bicyclist pulling a child trailer. Even in my coffee-deprived state I was present enough to think OMG, that’s dangerous, then realized with relief that the trailer did not chauffeur a toddler but an oversized stuffed toy huskie. An arthritic toy dog, who I swear had a look of frozen terror on…

May 09 2017

“Do you work?” I haven’t been asked this question, in this way, for awhile. And how thankful I am for that, for those three little words stir something in me that can only be described as unpleasant (and a little gross): a turbulent goo sloshes in my stomach, a heat rises in my chest and a fog clouds my brain. The sensation isn’t quite anger or embarrassment but a discomfort, unease at having to respond that while I don’t have a career outside the home, I do indeed work within it as a mother and homeschooler and writer. Am…

My name is Heidi Black and I have it all... Maybe not in the traditional sense of the phrase but I do feel I have it all: three beautiful, healthy children, a devoted husband and father and the privilege of being a Domestic Engineer. (I used to call myself a SAHM but that just doesn’t fit when my day is filled with coordinating 5 schedules and preplanning their execution, all up to a week in advance.) And now, indulging in a not-so-secret desire to write, and following the advice “write what you know” I am ready to share what I have learned from this ironic life journey and along with you, discover answers to those many questions related to parenting.

Category - blog

Should My Tween Have a Cell Phone? Ask Delaney Ruston, MD.

Happy New Year 2018: a Resolution Revolution

Easy Ideas for Decorating Christmas Cookies

My Favorite Things 2017: Holiday Gifts to Give or Keep

What’s in a Middle Name?

Tweets About Twins

Post #200: Honoring a Man who Completed His Bucket List

A Child’s Blankie is a Cherished Friend

Rules of the Biking Road: Hand Signals

Happy Mothers’ Day to the Working Mommas ( aka, all of us)