By Mona from Kirida
When I gave birth three years ago, my mother flew across the Pacific Ocean from Saipan to our Seattle home to assist me in those first few sleep-deprived and chaotic weeks. It was a true lifesaver to have my mom around, to make our meals, do our laundry and keep our house tidy while we were doing our best to be new parents without losing our sanity.
The trade-off though of accepting my mother’s wonderful help was accepting my mother’s bountiful uninvited advice. From the moment we brought my son home, she filled my ears with what he should be wearing (mittens all the time!) to how I should change his diaper (with lots and lots of baby powder!).
Her advice even extended to my role as a wife, even going so far as to write a list of “Mona’s Wifely Obligations,” which included making sure my husband had freshly pressed pants for work, even though he is a GROWN MAN with a master’s degree and is very capable of doing this for himself.
I, Natalie, am a geek. And no, not a geek like I write code and buy the latest gadgets, but a geek like I get both small and big thrills from getting stuff DONE, from making stuff TIDIER, from feeling more FREE of things. While most would call it nesting (or even “being anal”), my husband calls it “geeking out” – something I do quite often.
Bullying is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I can safely say that I hate it. I was bullied mercilessly as a child and therefore know first-hand how damaging it can be. I was never physically hurt, but I think that if I was, those wounds would have healed faster than the emotional ones. I was a nerdy kid. I wasn’t at the top of my class, nose stuck in the books, but I wore mismatched sweat suits, I had glasses, and I hadn’t a clue about social norms.
Tell me that you hate getting presents and I’ll tell you that you’re full of lies. We ALL love presents, for Pete’s sake. I mean, when someone puts in the time and energy to pick out a thoughtful gift, receiving that gift lights us up from the inside and reminds us how beloved we truly are. And that’s priceless and precious. But it’s also just plain fun to get stuff, and gifties from friends and family provide little surges of joy whenever they land in our eager laps.
Going green. It’s so trendy, even Hollywood A-listers are doing it. It can be daunting, we hear that to save the environment we must become a vegetarian, stop driving, use cloth diapers…it’s enough to make anyone throw their hands up in the air and say, it’s too hard, I can’t do it!
By Lindsay of 
At the age of 38, I don’t really feel old enough to have a 20-year-old son or an 18-year-old daughter or a total of four kids, for that matter. But, I suppose when you get pregnant at 17 and belong to a church that discourages birth control, that’s how it works out. On the plus side, I had a lot of energy for chasing around small feet and I was still a teenager and thought I knew everything when the kids started popping out.
