Even though the holiday season is supposed to be a season of reconnection, closeness, and love, for many of us, it's also a stressful time, with too much to be done, more mess and activity than we're used to, and sometimes conflict between people with complicated histories.

So I'm pleased to bring you the Mindful Holidays eBundle Sale, organized by my affiliate partner Mindful Nurturing in collaboration with the Nourished Living Network. These 7 eProducts will inspire a peaceful holiday, including simple homemade decorating and gift ideas, 3-month access to a virtual yoga class, tips for cooking with kids, holiday recipes, and more. Total retail value is $69.09, and this sale is available only from October 28 to November 4.

The Mindful Holidays bundle was created to offer a selection of resources to help us through this time of year with joy and laughter instead of conflict and stress. Check out these heartwarming contributions and get your holiday season off to the best start:

11 months

6 years

That next one is just about to fall out, too!

I am proud and honored to be a co-founder of Natural Parents Network (NPN), a community of natural-minded parents and parents-to-be where you will be informed, empowered, and inspired — and to work with the many fabulous volunteers who keep NPN running.

When you visit NPN’s website you can find articles and posts about Activism, Balance, Consistent Care, Ecological Responsibility, Family Safety, Feeding With Love, Gentle Discipline, Healthy Living, Holistic Health, Natural Learning, Nurturing Touch, Parenting Philosophies, Practical Home Help, Preparing for Parenting, Responding With Sensitivity, Safe Sleep, and so much more!

The volunteers who dedicate their time and energy to make NPN the outstanding resource it is also spend countless hours informing and inspiring others on their personal blogs.

This month, the Natural Parents Network volunteers are sharing posts that celebrate books and reading! You will read posts that share some of our volunteers' favorite books and books they recommend you read for the sheer joy of reading. Other posts outline recommended reading as it relates to a wide variety of natural parenting topics. You will also find posts that outline favorite children’s books as well as books that inspire learning or have an educational focus. And, of course, no reading list would be complete without our volunteers' favorite cookbooks and health resources!

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We decided to head back to Franklin Falls for a family hike.


We last went there when Mikko was 3.


Here he is now at 6.


And we have this little dude now, too, who was fascinated by this dog who would cheerfully fetch sticks for anyone.


The big boys decided it was smart to head out across the creek by balancing on the rocks. Their shoes disagreed, but they had fun.

We continue to be delighted with the inspiration and wisdom our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants share, and we hope you'll join us for the next carnival in November 2013! (Check out October, September, August, July, June, May, April, March, January, and a summary of all our 2012 posts and 2011 posts if you missed any.)

Your co-hosts are Lauren at Hobo Mama and Dionna at Code Name: Mama.

Here are the submission details for November 2013:

Theme: Feeding Your Family: How do you keep your family nourished? Does your family practice a special diet or deal with food allergies? If so, how do holidays look different for you since starting a special diet? Do you practice baby-led solids or have tips and recipes to share?

Deadline: Tuesday, November 5. Fill out the webform (at the link or at the bottom) and email your submission to us by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time: CarNatPar {at} NaturalParentsNetwork.com

Carnival date: Tuesday, November 12. Before you post, we will send you an email with a little blurb in html to paste into your submission that will introduce the carnival. You will publish your post on November 12 and email us the link if you haven't done so already. Once everyone's posts are published by noon Eastern time, we will send out a finalized list of all the participants' links to generate lots of link love for your site! We'll include full instructions in the email we send before the posting date.

Guess who got to go on a date with this guy.


This girl! Woot.

Thanks to babysitting swapping with Shannon, I get to be spoiled with undisturbed time to TALK with my HUSBAND. I know! It's amazing. Did I mention we were NOT interrupted every thirty seconds? Seriously!


I was quite taken with this smiling puffer fish at the entrance. I was also a wee bit tipsy. I didn't realize how strong my drink was — good thing Sam could be my designated driver!


We decided to walk down to the lake since we had a little time left. Sam lent me his jacket (so chivalrous!) since I wasn't drunk enough to be warm.


We fantasized that we were fabulously rich and one of those floating homes was our vacation house. There was a sign up saying the last slips are being sold, so we'd better get on it!

Welcome to the Sunday Surf, a tour of the best blogposts I've read throughout the week.

In the spirit of letting kids do art, my child and this sweet little pirate have been doing a lot of Play-Doh this week.

Links!

40 minutes ago

#humor
#art
"Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style" from Seat Assignment >> Nina Katchadourian →
This has nothing to do with parenting but is cracking me up. I’m enjoying looking through all the whimsical found art on her site.





2 days ago (1 note)

#parenting
#toddler
#newborn
#new motherhood
#older children
It Gets Better | Brain, Child Magazine →
Love this reassuring, funny, & ultimately tear-inspiring letter from a mother of older children to mothers of younger children.
One day, the children will eat neither pennies nor crayons nor great, gulping handfuls of sand like they have a powerful thirst for sand, sand, only sand. They will no longer choke on lint and disks of hot dog or fall down the stairs, their heads making the exact, sickening, hollow-melon thump that you knew they would make, when you knew they would fall down the stairs. They will still fall out of trees and off of trampolines. They will still scrape their elbows and knees and foreheads, and you will still be called upon to tend to these injuries. And you will be happy to, because they so rarely need you to kneel in front of them any more, to kiss them tenderly, here, and also here.
3 days ago (1 note)

#toddler
#Preschoolers
#preschooler
#education
#homeschooling
#unschooling
#Montessori
View high resolution 
Keeping your toddler busy when working with your preschooler | Racheous | Playful & respectful learning & living, inspired by Montessori.
1 week ago (2 notes)


#unschooling
#Natural Learning
#education
#public education

Unschooling Reflects Current Cognitive Research - Life Learning Magazine Blog →

When schools were created, it was thought that learning was a sequential process that involved structure, uniformity, and memorization, and relied on extrinsic motivation and control – things like praise, rewards, and punishment. Now science knows differently; modern cognitive research is demonstrating that learning is open-ended and spontaneous, and that people – including children – learn best when they are intrinsically motivated (or what researchers Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan refer to as “self-determination”) and can build on their everyday experiences.

I've been thinking a lot about being countercultural and what that means. I've decided I don't want being countercultural to be my identity, and I'll explain why.

Humans are social creatures, meaning that we live in social groups and communicate a lot (a lot! talking, texting, body language, written language — we are so much more openly and complexly communicative than any other species). We want to get along with the other members of our social group(s), and this is where culture comes in. Each group sets up rules about what meets the criteria of the group, i.e., culture.

What does my group eat? What does my group wear? Where and how do we live? What do we do for work and play? What language do we speak? What gods do we worship?

It all becomes enshrined in an (admittedly ever-morphing) concept called culture.

As crunchy-granola, earth-goddess, attachment-parenting, hippie types, we often feel we're working, quite consciously, against our dominant culture.

You put your baby to sleep in a mini-jail? My baby sleeps snuggled against my warm body.

You feed your baby with a rubber teat? I feed my baby from my own breasts.

You push your child around in a wheeled chair? I carry my baby in my arms.

The grandparents gave goofy glasses to our littles.


It's particularly attractive with the missing tooth, no?

Welcome to the October 2013 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Kids and Technology

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have written about their families' policies on screen time.

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He figured out the remote early.

Sometimes I feel sheepish admitting how much I love television. In the natural world, it's decidedly unhippy because children should be playing with only handcarved wooden toys and spending eight hours a day frolicking in dandelions. In the parenting world, it's considered downright reckless, what with the brain rotting and all. And just in regular discourse, TV is too low-brow to impress anybody.

Particularly if you're not all that discriminating about what you'll watch. I will watch many, many different shows — and do. I mean, I watch Masterpiece Theatre, but I've also watched Toddlers & Tiaras. Sam's a big fan of TV, too, with his own favorites; we watch a lot of detective shows together, and he tracks football games on his own. And our children are the same with their beloved shows. Alrik's mantra is "Taillou, Taillou!" (well, that's how he says it!) and Mikko's is … watching whatever is on.

The other day, I was fretting: What does a child look like when he grows up if he loves TV a lot? What sort of person is he if he adores "screen time" and lives great quantities of his life online? What if even his profession is tied to a screen — and then his free time, his relaxing choice, is also to enjoy a movie or show?

Oh — it finally occurred to me: 

He'll look like me!

Well. That's all right, then. I'm pretty fine with me.

Sometimes I get intimidated by all the perfect Pinterest crafts. I'm sure you've been there, too, and know what I'm talking about. This isn't Pinterest-bashing or even Pinterest-lamenting (I'm there, all the time), just: My standards are a lot lower.

They need to be.

First of all, I have kids who don't like to follow directions. Like, ever. It took until this year (age 6) that Mikko even began to grasp the concept of coloring inside lines. He still refuses to color things the expected colors. I'm totally down with this, truth be told.

So if I put out some printables and art supplies with very specific ideas of how these elements would go together, I'd be sure to be disappointed. That's just how it is around here.

We do much better putting out the art supplies and then … that's it. Just letting the kids loose.

The results are very rarely frame-worthy — or pin-worthy. But the kids are creating and exploring and having fun.


MaryAnn F. Kohl, author of Mudworks — 100+ recipe ideas for modeling-dough play — 
has an article where she discusses the differences between "art" and "crafts," and I thought it was very insightful, and reassuring.

Because art and crafts are so different, it's good to know what makes them special and call them by their proper names. When children create art, they are exploring, discovering, and thinking. Art encourages a child's originality and unique expression with an unknown outcome. Crafts, on the other hand, involve the child's reproducing an adult's idea, while following directions to make a specific "thing" — a known outcome. Making crafts is about imitating what an adult has made and, as such, it requires no original thinking. Crafts are meant to be useful or practical, or to reinforce a fact or learning theme. Craft activities have value in this way, but art is a unique form of creativity that inspires each individual child to be original and inventive and to think for himself.

This post is part of my special HAVE KIDS, WILL TRAVEL series to give you advice and wisdom on traveling with kids along with some fun reviews of travel-friendly items.

Do you ever wish you had more travel games in mind than looking for letters on license plates to stave off the hours of "Are we there yet"? Do you ever need something fun to do while waiting in a doctor's office or at a restaurant? Would you like these ideas to be easy to manage, creative, fun for a range of ages, and screen-free?

Sweet!

When I was putting together the Mindful Play eBundle, I was so excited to read Freaky Rivet's How To Fool Your Kids Into Having Fun So You Can: Travel Games Without Gadgets (great name, hey?) because: We were about to go on an epic Midwest trip! And we could really use all those things I just mentioned!

When I gushed to Iyas, the author, about how much I loved this book, he asked that I consider posting a review, so: I am!

Here's an example screenshot of what sort of fun to expect:

Do you have anyone in your family who loves one or more of the following?

• science experiments
• craft projects
• books

Everyone loves all three, you say? Thought so.

Then you will want to hear about our experiences with the e-magazine Alphabet Glue and the Monster Toothpaste we created therefrom!

As the website describes this delightful e-magazine, you'll find:

activities and inspiration for families who love books

There are two autumn-themed issues of this e-magazine included in the Mindful Play eBundle (which ends Monday, October 7!). I've greatly enjoyed those and found Alphabet Glue to be one of my absolute favorites of this bundle as I was hand-picking the resources.

In the submission process, I also got a peek into a summer issue, Volume Thirteen. The boys and I decided to do an experiment from the (PDF) pages: Monster Toothpaste. The name alone makes you want to try it out, am I right?


Alrik helped me stir the yeast.


Mikko was in charge of color mixing.


The scientists at work.


The bottles are ready.


Mikko carefully pours the yeast into the peroxide mixture —
what's going to happen next?


Alrik waits.

I don't know about you, but my headphones tend to be the free ones that come bundled with some other electronic purchase and then fall apart after a couple rounds with the kids and cats. (No, I know cats don't wear headphones — earbuds would just fall right in! — but that doesn't mean they don't think the cords are intriguing….)

But I've always wanted better. I even shop around for headphones from time to time and then get befuddled. That's why I was so excited to review the Monster N-Tune HD headphones in a cool candy blue.

I mention the color upfront, because: Whoa! I was seriously so happy to open the box and see that bright blueberry staring me in the face. It's such a sweet change from boring old black. (This candy colours collection also comes in cherry red, green apple, tangerine, and grape.)

I also love how old-school yet hip they are. When I was growing up (gather round, children!), I always loved my parents' huge, ear-covering headphones, but it seems like the world's gone earbud. It's refreshing to have banded headphones that are soft and cushy as they cover your ears.

You know that mentioning cats wearing earphones made me need to take a picture of it.

Playing with scissors is always a good pastime.


Alrik shows off his foam fringe skills.


And then models a Mikko creation!