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[tags]wordless wednesday[/tags]

There was an interesting report on the evening news that I just had to look up and share tonight. It was about how broken bones are becoming more common in children. Not only that, they’re getting rickets.

Two factors are the major causes. One is that kids aren’t getting enough milk or other calcium sources; the other is that they aren’t getting enough sunshine, and so develop vitamin D deficiencies.

It’s not just that broken bones happen more easily in childhood if you aren’t building their bones either. It is suspected that osteoporosis will also become more common because bone density is not being built early on.

Rickets can be quite serious. The article noted a case where a little boy had it bad enough that his leg bowed and he could no longer run because his legs hurt so much.

Of course, there are plenty of things you can do to help your kids have stronger bones. Make sure they get plenty of calcium in their diets daily, whether from dairy sources or other sources such as broccoli. Make sure they play outside a lot. 10-15 minutes a day is a minimum. Makes me glad that I walk my daughter to and from school daily. We get plenty of sunshine during that time, and her school gives a decent recess. An hour of general physical activity is also needed, in or out of the sun.

If you’ve been having trouble getting enough calcium in your kids’ diets, think about what you can switch. Get them to drink more milk, for example, or serve yogurt sometimes for breakfast. Cheese in sandwiches or on pizza. There are lots of ways to encourage your children to take in more of what their bodies need if you fear they haven’t had enough lately.

[tags]childrens bones,rickets,health,children,kids,family,stronger bones[/tags]

I’m tired today. My son’s going through one of those ‘get up between 4 and 5 am’ phases, and I am most decidedly not an early bird myself. Closer to night owl, but since I do have to be up in the mornings with my kids I don’t indulge that as much as I would like.

But, you know, that’s one of the great things about working at home. I don’t have to drive tired to work, and if I really, really need to, a nap is not entirely out of the question. I’m pretty hard on myself, and naps are quite rare, but if they’re needed I can do it.

But there are many more wonderful things about working at home, especially for myself and online.

1. Setting my own hours.
   I have one kid at school and the other is currently keeping himself entertained. But once that stops I can stop working and not have a boss telling me to get back to work!
2. I decide what to work on.
   Some days that’s really hard, because there will be many things I think I ought to be working on, but it also allows for some whimsy. Of course, there are still priorities and sometimes I do things because they need to get done, not because they’re the precise thing I’m interested in working on at that moment.
3. Setting one heck of an example for my kids.
   My daughter is definitely getting the idea that she can do whatever she dreams of. For the longest time she assumed she would be a mommy, but she thought that a part of a mommy’s job was to work on the computer. Now she’s decided that she can have the career and her husband can stay at home. It’s fun to watch.
4. I can be as creative as I want.
   Some days that’s almost torture because I’ll have too many ideas and too little time. I have so many ideas I’ve just never had the time to implement.
5. Knowing I’m doing good work.
   Sometimes it’s easy to feel like nothing has come of my work, but other times I can see near immediate results. It’s a great feeling.
6. No worry the boss won’t give me a holiday off.
   While it’s rare that I take a day completely off, for holidays and other times I may do as little as check blogs for comments, check the forum, and my email. Less than a half hour, and I’m free for the day most times. And if I really want the whole day off, I can do that too.
7. I can work when I’m sick.
   Or not, depending on how sick I feel. No guilt about getting coworkers sick, and my family would be seeing me anyhow.
8. I can work my best working hours.
   I’m more night owl than morning person, so that’s when I work. If I can’t focus, what’s the point of working?
9. I am almost completely spoiled for regular jobs.
   And I love it. While I could work for someone else if I had to, and do a good job, my heart is in my business. I like it that way.
10. Being able to provide for my family.
    I do pretty decently from home. Currently not quite at my husband’s level of income, although at times I have exceeded his. That I can do this while being there when they need me is just amazing.

I could probably go on and on, but 10 reasons are plenty.

[tags]working at home,wahm,sahm,stay at home work[/tags]

One area I always have to resist going overboard on at Christmas is giving my kids books. It’s just flat out fun! They love getting them, too.

There are a few titles I already know I’m getting, such as both The Daring Book for Girls and The Dangerous Book for Boys. While both of my kids are too young to read these themselves, I expect to find some fun things to do with them.

I also want to get some of the Level 1 books for Gage, and Level 2 & 3 for Ariel. Yes, at 2 years and 9 months old, Gage has been seriously trying to figure out this reading thing. It’s been one of those amazing things to watch. He sees his sister learning to read, and wants to be like her, so he’s trying, and trying hard! We go through the books word by word with him, and while I don’t think he’s reading yet, he’s getting the idea and recognizes all the letters. It’s a nice start.

Of course I will probably end up getting a book or so for my husband, or at least I do so often enough that I can say so without ruining any sort of surprise. He doesn’t read this site much, but he does a little.

[tags]christmas shopping,books,childrens books,book shopping[/tags]

[tags]wordless wednesday[/tags]

The holiday season’s traditional kickoff days are rapidly approaching. The day after Thanksgiving is huge for retailers in the real world, while online the Monday following is far better. The beauty of it if you’re trying to save money is that a lot of retailers offer special deals to encourage you to shop on those days.

Now, I’m no fan of shopping anytime on Thanksgiving weekend. Six years in retail took all interest in that out of me. Fortunately many good deals are available online and today I thought I would try to find some of them for you, knowing that parents have a lot of people to shop for.

Amazon.com, for example, has a sale on Black Friday only. As they say, no waiting in line, which has to be a good thing. They also have a Thanksgiving sale that is going on now through November 26, 2007 on various housewares.

If you or someone you know needs software, Adobe has a page with all their current special offers on it. Right now Adobe Photoshop Elements has a $25 discount and free shipping, for example.

Buy.com has MP3 Players under $100, a deal that expires 11/30/07. They also have 10% off Amazon’s prices on over 900,000 books.

If you like to get creative with your gifts and share photographs, Photoworks now has 10% off your entire order if you enter the coupon code PW10OFF.

The LEGO website is offering free shipping on orders of $99 or more, which is probably pretty easy if you have a few kids to shop for. I’m just delighted that my daughter is finally big enough to think about getting her the smaller LEGO bricks, even if I don’t look forward to stepping on them!

You can also visit Brookstone’s holiday gifts page for great holiday deals. My husband loves wandering through Brookstone any chance he gets, and pretty much feels that I could buy him anything there and he’d like it. Not quite, but it’s pretty close.

There are of course many more deals out there, and plenty of sites willing to tell you all about them. Hopefully there will be some deals on the things you’re looking for this holiday season.

[tags]black friday,cyber monday,holiday shopping,christmas shopping[/tags]

With the holidays approaching, I’m feeling more and more of that old conflict – work vs. family time. Sometimes it’s really hard to decide to take some time off.

This weekend, I chose the time off and it was fun. A few hours at Sea World, a few hours figuring out outdoor Christmas decorations. All in all, it was a fun day.

But as the obligations and events pile up, it gets hard to not wish for more work time. How do you balance family and holiday and work time when you work at home?

This is harder for people who work at home than for people who work outside the home, because our work is often not as well understood.

Sometimes the answer is to just take the time off. Time for family, including extended family, is important. One of the benefits of working at home is that you can do that when you want to.

But you can’t overdo it. Going so far as to neglect your home business isn’t a good plan. Finding a balance that works for the holiday season is important.

A lot of this depends on the kind of work you do at home. If you get a lot of holiday business or your workload otherwise increases during the holidays, you’re going to have to keep to a stricter schedule than you would if your workload decreases during the holidays.

Family time isn’t necessarily relaxing, nor are the holidays. But even when it’s draining, there’s something about taking time to enjoy the holidays with the people you care about that really helps in the long run.

[tags]family time,holidays,kids,children,working at home,wahm,sahm[/tags]

There’s an article on MSN on how changing the name you call a food changes the perception. The first part is how it works on adults, but they do end with its impact on kids.

I already knew that. There’s a reason why one of my kids’ favorite recipes is called Sand and Shells. It makes a dish based on cracked wheat and pasta a lot more fun.

But it is something to think about when you have picky eaters, and after reading this I may have to try more of this on my son at dinnertime. He eats every other meal well, but dinner is a challenge for some reason, even if he loves the food we’re having and he hasn’t had any snacks since before his nap.

[tags]food names,picky eaters,kids,children,eating,food[/tags]

The holidays are an expensive time of year, on the whole. All the food, presents and travel really add up. But if you can stock up for other parts of the year, it can be a great time to do so.

For example, even though I’m not hosting Thanksgiving in my home, I bought a turkey. How often do you have a chance to get meat at $0.39 a pound? And a lot of other foods that you can stock up on may go on great sales as well.

Much as turkey can get boring long before the whole bird is gone. I generally find a good range of ways to use it. It makes fair stir fry, especially spiced up with turmeric or other spices that really change up the flavor.

The hard part, of course, is that a lot of Thanksgiving dinner ingredients are fresh, and not so easily frozen. But you can find some things to stock up on to save a bit in the long run.