My gracious event host in Tennessee gave me many treasures this past weekend, but one that I am just beginning to open up and enjoy is this book by Andi Ashworth: Real Love for Real Life: The Art and Work of Caring (That’s the link to its Amazon page so that you can read all about it, but you’ll definitely want to buy it here from her husband (Charlie Peacock’s) online store to avoid the $38 Amazon price. Yowza! It’s $10 on his site.) I’ve only gotten into the first couple of chapters, but already I’m thinking of many “unpaid caregivers” (her words) whose work is “fundamental to sustaining the…

A little Momma Tara Math for you to kick off your Wednesday: Complete-Crawl-Across-An-Entire-Room-MOBILITY + Lots-O’-Interesting-And-Some-Potentially-Dangerous-Things-To-Poke-Into = Time-For-Baby-To-Learn-The-(Good!)-Word-“NO” (Yes, yes, I know I probably shouldn’t have even let her do this even just ONCE. But oh! It was SO CUTE to see her discover the bowls. Move the food bowl. Play with it. Discover the WATER bowl. (Her eyes LIT UP. She began to move so purposefully towards it. I ran for the camera.) A one time freebie because it was so entertaining for me AND to encourage her that there really is a super interesting and fun world “out there” for her to discover now that she is mobile. Hopefully…

Michael K. is preachin’ it well on parenting over at Forward Progress: Three Reasons Why Discipline is Harder Than Punishment (HT: TakeYourVitaminZ)  

If you’ve ever attended my standard women’s retreat, then you know that I usually mention in my opening session how I’m a women’s event skeptic (As a regular speaker at women’s events, believe me, I’m keenly aware of the irony.) But I have to say, the more I have the privilege of gathering with God’s women to learn from them, laugh with them, and just go through life with them? The less and less skeptical I am. Take last night for example. Our church had a baby shower for a wonderful young woman and as usual, the ladies did a great job decorating, provided nummy treats, a fun game, thoughtful…

Just discovered a great blog written by the father of  a special needs child: Wrestling with an Angel  

My dear friend Lori Johnson has a new blog, Helplessly Hopeful … Meandering in the Shadow of the King, and she asked me to write a little “guest post” on the topic of using hypotheticals with our children. I was happy to do so, of course, because I love Lori! 🙂 And also because hypotheticals have been a great help to us in our parenting of Sophia. So what does Sophie mean when she says, “Hey Mom! Let’s do a hypothetical!” The ten-second-Web-search definitions said that a hypothetical is a possible situation or circumstance that deals with the concept of “what if …” In our family, we make up scenarios…