bluegrass redhead

The EASY way to limit screen time

My kids LOVE screen time. If given the choice, they would spend every waking moment playing Minecraft, LEGOS® Star Wars™ app, or watching Netflix until their eyeballs rotted out of their heads.

Obviously, as their mother, I try to prevent this from happening.

Now, I’m not opposed to ALL screen time. We live in a digital age and I want my children to be digitally literate, but I also don’t want their legs to atrophy or backs to develop humps.

I’ve tried and tried and tried several techniques to limit screen time. When Griffin was little, we used a clothespin technique, which worked really well when all we had to deal with was the television.

Since then, we’ve added an iPad, a Kindle Fire HD Kids Edition, and a LeapPad. (In my defense, we won the LeapPad and my husband purchased the Kindle Fire!) So, now I’m not trying to keep them from ONE screen. I’m trying to keep them from FOUR screens. 

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5 Lessons from The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

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Several months ago, my dear friend Annie texted me pictures of her neatly organized drawers and told me to stop what I was doing and read Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.

When Annie says, “Read this book. Do it now.” I do it.

I have been battling with my stuff for a long time. A few years back I announced a massive project in which I was going to declutter and inventory my entire house. Never happened. I tried going room by room and intensely declutter. Never happened. 

I would walk around my house and feel like the piles of stuff were mocking me. I would spend weekends purging and organizing but never feeling like I got anywhere.

I was exactly what I didn’t want to be. I was a stuff manager. 

The problem was I thought I already knew everything there was to know about organizing. What could Marie Kondo possibly teach me?

Turns out. A LOT.

One of the best pieces of parenting advice I’ve ever received

Last week, as I stood on elementary school lawn enjoying the Back to School Night picnic, I was chatting up another mother, who also happens to be a dear friend, about our kids. We were talking the hilarious things kids say - some of them funny funny and some them embarrassing funny.

I was telling her all about Amos explaining “tongue lick kissing” to me the week before.

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Apple Watch: The Parent’s Best Friend

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When word of the Apple Watch first started to spread, it barely made a blip on my radar. I’m not opposed to wearable technology, but – at the time – I still had my Fitbit so I didn’t really see the point.

Then, my friend Jessica got an Apple Watch. This is the same Jessica who changed Christmas forever so I tend to listen when she speaks.

Y’all, she used the word “life-changing.”

Zero Tolerance Parenting

This post originally appeared on Salt + Nectar, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately as I tackle the same decisions with baby #3! 

Cloth v. Disposable, Breast v. Formula, Co-sleeping v. Ferberizing...

These are the debates that keep us judging, keep us feeling guilty, keep us up at night. 

I remember reading and researching all these issues while I was pregnant with Griffin. I just knew it was imperative that I pick a side. It felt like sorority rush, once I revealed what jersey I had on there was no going back. 

If I was going to breastfeed, I was going to breastfeed. Nothing but the breast for the first year as recommended by the World Health Organization! If I was going to use cloth diapers, then I better decide which brand was best and stock up so I'd never be caught without clean diapers. 

If I was going to co-sleep, then I pictured my snuggly little baby curled up next to me for the foreseeable future. 

Until I realized, I could do both...or neither...or whatever worked best for me that day.

The Mommy Race

Recently, a dear friend asked for my advice about a parenting dilemma. Not the Mommy Wars, this is what I’m going to call the Mommy Race (although dads are just as guilty!). It’s that moment every parent has when they feel compelled to engage in a sort of baby one-upmanship. Particularly prominent with first-time parents, an honest pride in baby’s newest milestone suddenly morphs into something a little less pure.

The Last Baby

Y’all. I’m falling so hard for this baby.

Even with the middle-of-the-night feedings, I’m still completely enamored with him. I’ve always loved my babies when they reach this age. 

Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE newborns, but it’s mostly because they are so soft and cuddly and sleepy. However, then the newness sort of wears off and you’re stuck with this completely dependent being who is just trying to figure out how to be a human and more than a little bit frustrated by the task.

Then, the skies clear. 

They start sitting up and LAUGHING and eating solid foods and being seeming particularly fond of YOU - the momma.

I just love it, but it’s more than even that.

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How I STOPPED ruining Christmas

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My journey with Christmas began in 2009. Up until that point, Nicholas and I had always traveled to our family’s and spent the holidays in someone else’s home. When Griffin was born, we spent our first holiday season in our own home and it was wonderful. The next year we traveled to Nicholas’s family for the holidays, which was hard, but we still only had Griffin so the trip itself was easy. 

As many of you already know, 2011 was the year that changed everything for our family and how we celebrate the holidays.

Nicholas lost his job in mid-November and we decided to celebrate Christmas without Consuming. We borrowed a tree. We canceled our Holiday Open House. We gave gifts of time and energy instead of presents. 

In many ways, that Christmas was the best thing that ever happened to our family.

The online home of Sarah Stewart Holland