Many parents dream of earning money from home. It could be so that they could be a stay at home parent or it could be a much-needed supplement to the family income. In either case, an online search can quickly lead to disappointment, with all the scams, hard to land legitimate work at home jobs, and home business opportunities.

But there are some relatively easy ways to earn money at home. As the internet grows and changes, more possibilities open up for anything from a few extra dollars a month to some serious money to be earned from your very own computer.

One of the easiest is paid blogging. There are a few ways to do this, from signing on with companies that hire bloggers to write about topics they love to paid posting companies. It’s a fair bit of work and can be time consuming to do a good job of it, but it can also be loads of fun. Read the rest of this entry »

But it’s just so typical. I read over at Blogging Baby that MySpace considers breastfeeding pictures too sexy and removes them regularly.

If you read this blog much, you know that I’m a huge fan of breastfeeding, having done so for both of my children, and over a year for each one. And yes, I breastfed in public at need. It’s easy to be discreet.

I have a MySpace profile, even though I don’t make much use of it really. You hear all about the sexy pictures people put up, and I suppose that’s why MySpace is a little paranoid about things like breastfeeding pictures. But there are far more revealing and provocative pictures that do seem to stick around. Read the rest of this entry »

Mine are a little young for a full summer camp. After all, Ariel will only be 5 by this summer. I don’t think she’d want to go. But summer camps are a great way to give the kids an adventure without you. And of course you get a little peace and quiet.

For those of you out in Texas, I just learned about some delightful Texas summer camps. It’s co-ed, and I can really see my kids someday enjoying something similar when they’re old enough. The classics are there, of course: hiking, swimming, canoeing, but there’s also horseback riding, mountain boarding, rock climbing and more summer camp activities for the kids to enjoy.

I think a good summer camp can be very valuable to children, especially if they live in the city and don’t really get a lot of time in the country. Even children who aren’t used to country life tend to adapt well to being around nature and animals.

It is that time of year to start planning for the summer, even though it’s months away. For me that means planning the swimming lessons and figuring out other ways to keep both children busy. Eventually they’ll be old enough for things like summer camp to be considered, and I expect that will be a lot of fun.

Do any of you send your children to summer camp? Day camp? Or do you cope on your own?

I surprised the other parents at Ariel’s preschool today by still walking her to school, despite a pretty fair downpour going on at the moment. Nothing much compared to what I’ve seen other times, but not a light sprinkle either.

It’s just one of those things about only having one car. I have to cope with the weather when it comes to taking Ariel to school, and I’m not about to let a little rain get in the way.

It did make me realize one thing, though. I need to get a rain cover for the stroller. Poor Gage only had the sun cover and his jacket to protect him. I’ve never been in a situation before where I had to take the stroller out in poor weather, so I hadn’t thought of it before now.

And yes, it did stop raining about 5 minutes after we reached her class.

Technorati Tags: rainy day, preschool, walking in the rain

Phew! So nice to be done with all of that. All the getting ready for his party plus actually having it certainly took a lot of time out of my regular work schedule. And then today was Gage’s 2 year doctor appointment.

The party went quite well. Most of the time we’ve barbequed for the kids’ parties, but this year my husband said he was tired of being stuck to the grill so long, so we came up with easier foods to serve. Gave him a lot more freedom to enjoy talking to people.

For me it wasn’t too different than most gatherings. Shy as Gage is, he clung tight to me for much of the party. But he did eventually relax enough to go play with his cousins for a good while, which was a nice break.

We did my usual tradition of baking the cake, and then Gage and Ariel helped to decorate. Gage wasn’t much into it a lot of ways… he just wanted to eat the frosting and the M&Ms we were using to decorate the cake. Read the rest of this entry »