By Jennifer Howard from Chasing the Firefly
My two youngest children began going to school long enough this year to require a lunch. These two are the picky eaters of the family. One lives on air and Pixy Stix, the other would be happy drinking milk all day long. I knew I would have to be a little more creative when making their lunches. I decided that making Bento Box lunches would work perfectly.
There are many reasons why I chose to make Bento lunches but the biggest reasons would be:
Crystal is a 30-something freelance writer and stay-home mom to 3. When not chasing after her kids, she can be found blogging about them at Kid Things.
November is Diabetes Awareness Month, a cause close to my heart. In August of 2010, my then 6 year old son was rushed to the hospital with a blood sugar reading over 800. He was admitted into the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, where the first few days were the scariest I have ever experienced. His diagnosis was clear: Type 1 diabetes.
Unlike Type 2, Type 1 is an auto-immune disease. He did not acquire diabetes because he ate too many sweets, his immune system simply turned on itself. It is a chronic, incurable, but manageable, disease. He will need to administer a balancing act of insulin for the rest of his life.
By Britt Reints from Miss Britt
It’s hard enough to eat right in the comfort of your own kitchen, but add time changes and airport delays to the mix and staying healthy can be about as convenient as traveling with toddlers. Alas, much like hitting the road with kids, eating well on the road can be done - but you’ll need to do a little mental prepping to get it done.
1. Pack snacks. What makes eating on the road so difficult is the last-minute frantic search for food we often find ourselves doing in the most inconvenient places. Here’s a hint: you will want to eat. Guaranteed. Plan for this inevitably by throwing some travel-friendly food in your purse. Try granola bars, fruit, meal replacement bars or shakes, or even a sandwich if you’ve got the packing space.
By Jenny Grace from Miss Grace’s Disgrace
Between working full time and parenting full time, food can really fall by the wayside, especially when it comes to feeding myself. I’m generally pretty good about feeding my son meals that more or less end up balanced, but when it comes to me? During the work day? You have got to be kidding.
Over the years I’ve gotten better about (a) remembering to eat at all and (b) having something on hand so it’s not just straight from the vending machine into my belly.
I rely heavily on the following strategies:
By Christina of ThatGirlRuns
“Time and Balance! One of the continuing challenges we hear from runners is finding the time to run and balance running with all the other priorities in our lives. How do you do it? What are one or two things you have found that help you find time or make time for your runs. What do you struggle with in balancing what you want to do with your running with all you “need” to do?”
This question was asked about a year ago on one of the running forums I follow. As I was starting to think about this issue I realized that it never really has been one for me. The daily run has been part of my life for so long that it is not a question of when and how, but merely another routine not dissimilar to brushing my teeth. And although I have definitely shifted the time of day for the run around many times over the years, it has not ever been a consideration to skip a run altogether because something else takes priority. Even if that means getting up at 4 am or running on an old and outdated hotel treadmill for three (!!!) hours (I am not quite ready to revisit that experience though…). Running is part of my day, it is really as simple as that.
By Katie Workman of Cookstr.com
If you’ve been a slave to that blue box of mac and cheese, you owe it to yourself and your family to whip up a vat of homemade mac and cheese once in a blue moon. I keep changing up the cheese, depending on what I have lying around, and it never tastes the same twice, which I find part of the thrill. You should by all means toss in other interesting cheeses that you have around, like goat cheese, Fontina, Manchego, even that leftover hunk of brie (remove all rinds you wouldn’t want to see floating around your mac and cheese).
The Dijon mustard and red pepper flakes give this a little kick, a little edge, and save this dish from being too intensively rich and creamy (not that there’s anything wrong with that). This photo shows the topping-free version.
And, no, this isn’t low fat. Thanks for asking.
For the topping (optional):
For the pasta and sauce:
Directions:
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By Angella from Committed: The Ties That Bond and Dutch Blitz
I should start this off by saying that I am in no way at all an expert on fitness. I am just a woman who has managed to, for the most part, fit exercise into her life for the past nine years.
My first true stint at exercising was when I was a newlywed living in Vancouver. There was a gym next to my office and I would attend exercise classes either before work or during my lunch hour. My firm promoted fitness and allowed me a longer lunch in order to go to class.
Categories: Balancing Act, Health & Wellness, Kid Matters, Relationships & Marriage
Ladies, we were flat out lied to. Period. All those teachers, parents, adult role models, and TV characters who constantly reiterated to us girls that we can do anything we put our minds to were effing liars. They didn’t find it necessary to share the fine print with us. They didn’t consider disclosing the gravity of the situation to us. Just like nobody told us that giving birth hurts like hell, nobody told us that choosing to be a working mom is a one-way ticket to our very own three-ring circus. Except the clowns are our children. And sometimes our husbands. And we are the tightrope walkers, fire-eaters, hoop-jumpers, trapeze artists, and lion tamers. And, on occasion, the lions. I am woman. Hear me roar, damn it.
After my second kid was born and operating under the mistaken assumption that I could give both my family and my job 110% of my energy (I was never very good at math), I spent the better part of the past year experiencing my own very special brand of culture shock. The kind where you just have to go to bed by 8. The kind where getting dressed to impress is simply not an option (you know, the whole drool, snot, poop, spit-up factor). The kind where a date with your husband involves a drug-addict like dependency on Netflix. The kind where your personal identity decides to go on hiatus, leaving a confused, spent, and in my case, fat, out of shape and depressed, shell of a person behind.
By Linda
With two small kids at home, a part-time job, and a smattering of freelance assignments, it’s not always easy to get to the gym. I’ve been on a fairly steady exercise routine for about a year now, and for me the critical element to staying committed to working out is the ability to do it at home.
Truth be told, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to lace on my Nikes and put in some sweat equity while I’m in the same living room that has the nice inviting couch with a butt-shaped dent built just for me, but it’s the exercise option that’s almost always available to me—even if I have to do it last thing at night, after the kids have gone to bed.
Here are a few of the products that I’ve come to rely on for a good workout without leaving the house:
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Categories: Balancing Act, Getting Organized, Health & Wellness
By Kami Lahti, Kami’s Khlopchyk
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!
Going green isn’t a destination; it’s a journey, each stop taking you further away from a giant environmental footprint. Every little bit helps and if you start small and slowly it becomes a way of life.
Here are some quick and easy tips to start you out:
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