Recently a fellow Babble blogger raised quite a stir by writing about things he feels moms generally do better than dads. While I appreciate that Cody wanted to give his wife credit for the stuff she does well, his list just didn’t apply to our family.

In fact, his post inspired me to come up with a list of my own of the things my husband and a lot of other dads I know are great at:

As far as I’m concerned, household gadgets and cleaning gear have a unfair reputation for being bad gifts. I don’t think giving a woman a “homemaking” gift is necessarily sexist – after all, I’ve given my husband both tools and cookware for Father’s Day, and he’s given me sports equipment alongside jewelry.

But as with all gifts, what’s important in a Mother’s Day gift is both the intent and the message the present imparts. Does the tool you’ve chosen say “Get in the kitchen and make me some pancakes, woman!”… or “I love and respect you, and this practical yet beautiful thing seemed like something you might enjoy?”

In a little over twenty-four hours I will board a plane and fly thousands of miles away from my home in Michigan to the Mom 2.0 conference in Miami Beach.

And as I usually do before a trip, I’ve spent much of the last few days doing what I jokingly refer to as “pre-mothering:” stocking the house with snacks and reasonably healthy convenience food. Washing, folding, and putting away laundry. Changing sheets. Printing out important phone numbers. Double-checking the kids’ activities and school schedules. Tonight, if I have time, I might make a big pot of soup.

It’s sort of like reverse nesting: I’m making everything comfy and cozy as possible, ‘cuz this mama bird is about to fly far, far away.

Today I’m happy to welcome guest blogger Devon Barta with her beautiful essay inspired by Kelle Hampton’s debut memoir, Bloom: Finding The Beauty In The Unexpected. **Want to hear more about Bloom? Please listen to my interview with Kelle Hampton! **

"Bloom" by Kelle Hampton

The Beauty of Uneven Stitches: Learning to Embrace Imperfections with Bloom

by Devon Barta

I am a horrible seamstress.

Even though I’m good at coordinating colors, matching patterns, even piecing together a design, when I sit down at the table, the bobbin wound and my foot on the pedal, I’m at a loss. It’s as if there’s a disconnect between my vision and the sewing machine. I fake it of course because hell, I’ve come this far, I have to do something now. But the finished product is never as I envisioned it … not even in the ballpark.

A big thanks to YoBaby for sponsoring this series of posts. CLICK HERE for more of this discussion.

Over the last month I’ve written quite a bit about organic foods: reasons to consider buying organics, even more reasons to consider organics, and ways to save money on organic dairy and budget for other organic foods.

Maybe you’re convinced that you’d like to go organic, or you’re just organic-curious, but you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the options. Fear not: here’s a step-by-step way you can work on implementing more organics into your family’s diet:

I remember being a new mom and waiting eagerly for a very important milestone: the day I could feed my first baby solids. In those days, the recommended age for starting solids was 4 – 6 months, and many parents started much earlier. I thought I was being really patient by waiting until Jacob was six months old before I mixed up his first bowl of rice cereal and broke out the spoon.

It didn’t go so swimmingly. He gagged, turned his head away, and smeared the grainy mush all over his face and the high chair, where it promptly turned to a gluelike substance. I tried a few more times, but it became obvious that he just wasn’t interested. I worried. Would he get enough iron from breastmilk? Wasn’t there some … reason he should be eating solids regularly by now?

A big thanks to YoBaby for sponsoring this series of posts. CLICK HERE for more of this discussion.

Many of us would love to eat 100% organic, but for a lot of families, the higher costs associated with organic food can feel like a deal-breaker. That’s especially true with foods we consume in large quantities, like dairy products: if your family drinks a lot of milk, paying twice as much can feel out of reach.

But with some planning, you can save money on organic dairy! Here are some of my strategies:

Okay, I admit it: I’m going through a bit of an organic revolution over here. I’ve always tried to buy organic produce when possible, which is fairly easy to do during the summer since I live near lots of small family farms and participate in a great CSA. And I get organic yogurt pretty often, especially when it happens to be on sale or I can get a coupon.

But I’ve been inconsistent about buying organic dairy in general. It requires extra effort and sacrifice to buy organic when you’re working with a strict budget or shopping at stores with limited selection (no Whole Foods in my area, sadly!) Sometimes I’ve lost sight of my motivation.

Working with YoBaby on this series of posts has encouraged me to dig deeper into the issue of organic dairy, and it’s definitely inspiring me to try harder to fit organic dairy into my family’s food budget.

When I first began dreaming about our (yes, still in progress) kitchen remodel, I stuffed a folder full of inspirational photos. The photos featured many different kinds of kitchens: cottage, Victorian, rustic, ’50s retro. But they all shared a common theme: big, eye-catching, decorative over-the-range hoods.

However, this is what we wound up with.

Source: My actual house

A big thanks to YoBaby for sponsoring this series of posts. CLICK HERE for more of this discussion.

I can already hear what you’re thinking. “Full fat dairy products? But isn’t fat…bad?”

Even if we’ve all moved on, logically, from the low-fat craze of the 1990s, the truth is that many of us still have a knee-jerk negative reaction to the idea of consuming fat.

Sometimes we’re so used to buying low-fat and skim milk products for ourselves that we unconsciously avoid full-fat milk, yogurt, and cheese for our babies and toddlers.

But little ones – up to the age of at least two – need full-fat dairy products! Here are three good reasons why: