Spit-up On My Shoulder

Having children is the biggest life change I’ve ever been through. You probably feel the same way. However, I was shocked by how little becoming a mother was acknowledged after I had my first child. We have ceremonies to mark most milestones in our lives: graduations, weddings, birthday parties. So where’s [...]

When I had my first daughter, if a parenting technique I tried wasn’t successful, I would promptly forget the technique. I figured, “That method just doesn’t work for my baby.” But, guess what? Babies change. If your baby, for example, now doesn’t like to be held or burped a certain way, didn’t [...]

I have to laugh when I hear women say they “love every minute” of being a mom. Really? Do they love sleep deprivation? Changing a blow-out poopy diaper? Tons of laundry? C’mon! No one loves every minute of motherhood. If they say they do, I know I probably can’t [...]

Professor Trevor Cox, an acoustical engineer doing research at Salford University and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, England, is on the way to answering the question above.
In a yearlong Internet study of 1.1 million people, he had participants listen to 34 sounds and rate them from bad, really bad, awful, [...]

This was in today’s Dear Abby column in my paper:
Dear Abby: My nephew, “Vincent,” is 16 and has had problems with obsessive handwashing for years. I have enough professional experience to strongly suspect that he suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder.
My brother and his wife refuse to believe their child has a problem and will not [...]

Why do we see articles in parenting magazines that only address what the mom is doing wrong? “Top 10 Mistakes New Moms Make,” “How To Get a Grip on Your Finances Once You’re a Mom,” and “8 Ways to Be a Better Mom,” for example. And these are not in magazines specifically geared [...]

I’m writing with a heavy heart today. We had to put our cat, Calvin, to sleep this morning. Calvin was a lovable orange and white tabby who had a horrible habit of chewing up stringy items. Bathing suit straps, shoelaces, speaker wire, headphone cords – you name it. It was very [...]