life lessons | PulseonParenting

Rally Your Parenting Village, Now.

Our view from quarantine in Auckland, New Zealand

Jul 28 2022

So. It’s been awhile. Not for lack of inspirational writing material (there’s been plenty), or because our family has had COVID (we’ve had it, but it was mild, thankfully), or because my site crashed (it hasn’t). Full disclosure, I haven’t posted because of my addiction to double-spacing after end punctuation, which I hear is way passe because we no longer use typewriters. But I simply cannot commit myself to unlearning the only thing I could do consistently well in my high school typing class. Oh, and because my family recently moved to New Zealand. One of these “excuses” is actually…

Meningitis, Mistaken Gender, and Orange Pee…Our Week in Review

Aug 18 2016

It was one of those weeks. One of those that by the time it’s over, you feel as if you’ve been in a time warp and wondering what the heck happened. As crazy and weird as it was, the week was a learning experience, a wake up call and in some ways, pretty joyful: ~Early Monday morning, I took my husband to the emergency room; his headache had returned with a vengeance, with a fever, chills and a stiff neck. He was admitted to the hospital for meningitis and then given every available IV drug the pharmacy had to offer….

Losing a pet and how we teach our kids about loss

Aug 02 2016

We have the worst luck with pets. Dog number one. We had to give her up because she kept running away. Dog number two. Became food aggressive with kid vomit and bit my husband. We had to surrender him to the humane society. Lizard. My son caught “Lizzy” in our yard and designed a lovely terrarium for the randomly-assigned “her.” She lived her life span adored, sunning herself under her own heat lamp and feasting on bits of banana. My son was devastated when she died. Dwarf hamster. Our most recent, and possibly cutest, pet. She loved corn and green beans…

Jan 19 2016

Forget your troubles, come on get happy You better chase all your cares away Shout Hallelujah, come on get happy ~from the song Get Happy by Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler, performed by Judy Garland in Summer Stock (1950) If you smile, you will feel happy. There are some pretty fun studies out there to help support this. Just try it yourself. Smile, and you start to feel exactly what the upturned corners of your mouth show. But is feeling happy the same as being happy?

Jan 05 2016

What I suddenly understood was that a thank-you note isn’t the price you pay for receiving a gift, as so many children think it is, a kind of minimum tribute or toll, but an opportunity to count your blessings. And gratitude isn’t what you give in exchange for something; it’s what you feel when you are blessed–blessed to have family and friends who care about you, and who want to see you happy. Hence the joy from thanking. ~Will Schwalbe, in The End of Your Life Book Club I felt a twinge of hope when Mr. Schwalbe shared his epiphany about…

Nov 24 2015

I love seeing friends on Facebook posting their daily gratitudes. Whether they post for 30 or 100 days, what a great way to embrace (or make) little moments and focus on the good things in life, every day. My husband takes our family along a similar journey every evening before mealtime and even though the exercise produces some of the same gratitudes night after night (“legos,” “tacos,” and “Sophia, my doll”) it gets us thinking about how there is a gift within each day. I need this exercise because I am a worrier. I do “sweat the small stuff.” For…

Nov 17 2015

There’s snow up in the mountains, the annual ski swap is the “happening” hot spot and ski school is booked (don’t tell my kids…for some unknown reason they want to ski with Dad and Mom). Everyone in our southwestern Colorado town is counting down the days until the official start of (downhill) ski season. That is, unless you are one of those hard core individuals who enjoys the relatively insane sport of backcountry skiing, then you have been schussing for a few weeks now.

Sep 16 2015

I don’t remember what I made, but I do remember the process. Or at least, I remember what I disliked about it. The measuring, the tailor’s tacks, the ironing of narrow seams. In short, my mom tried to teach me how to sew and I really, really, didn’t want to learn. I was the teenage daughter of an exquisite seamstress: she made her own wedding dress. She helped sew bridesmaid’s dresses for her sister. She painstakingly pieced together, with her two equally talented sisters, a quilt for their parents. My mom grew up sewing. And thought I should, too.

The Holly Story and Nothing But the Holly Story

Jul 29 2015

It came in an oversized white rectangular box. I was ten, maybe twelve, and beyond the tradition of hunting for Easter eggs. And I was certainly “over” my belief in the Easter Bunny. But my grandparents, who held the secular rituals of Easter dear, still gave gifts. Thus the rather simple box laying in my lap that morning several decades ago. I was startled to find what was inside; it appeared to be a dismembered stuffed animal. I was startled, and am afraid I let out an “Oh!” or some similar exclamation because the sight was a bit disturbing: long,…

The State of Disconnect

Jul 15 2015

Our family spent a recent vacation at a state park in Nebraska. Unexpectedly, we found ourselves without wifi and also without cell service. And in order to get to our destination we made a painful several-hundred-mile drive across the western part of the state. Feel the obvious joke coming on? Maybe instead of calling it the Cornhusker State, Nebraska should be called the Disconnected State. I have heard and made many jokes about Nebraska (having spent lots of time there I can… right?). But I make this (barely humorous) zinger out of the pleasant inability to reach the outside world…

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.

Tag - life lessons

Rally Your Parenting Village, Now.

Meningitis, Mistaken Gender, and Orange Pee…Our Week in Review

When a Pet Dies

The Happiness Project

To Write a Thank-You or Phone it in?

The Giving of Thanks. Anytime. Everyday.

To Ski or Not to Ski (Silly Question?)

Kids Do Listen, Sometimes Years Later

The Holly Story and Nothing But the Holly Story

The State of Disconnect