Stepping up to the plate isn’t always easy when it comes to volunteering your time for anything. Most moms are busier than ever nowadays and are professional jugglers. The fear of dropping the ball or taking a misstep at any time can be worrisome to most moms. Have no fear, you can do it.

Recently, my three-year-old daughter began having night terrors. I hope this is something you haven’t experienced, but after doing some research, it is a relatively common phenomenon in mostly younger children. One study I read said that up to as high as 40% of children have experienced them.

We recently asked our pediatrician to get in the battle, asking him to very clearly point out how important fruits and vegetables are to eat. While his recommendation helped, ultimately it is still up to me and my husband to get our four-year-old, Elsie, to eat well. So, I have enlisted some of my favorite kitchen gadgets to make fruits and vegetables more appealing.

What do you do to take care of yourself, or how do you choose to spend your quiet moments? Wishing you plenty of quiet moments to yourself that make you thankful for your noise.

I will let you in on a little secret. I am the chaotic mom in this story. Between work, school, baseball, golf lessons, swimming lessons and a traveling husband, life is chaotic. As strange as it may sound, Costco understands my chaos and helps make life easier.</p>

Parenting is hard and requires a sense of humor. It also doesn’t hurt to ask for a little divine intervention once in a while. Thus, we pray as a family before dinner, and the adorable prayers of my twin three-year-olds are both entertaining and impressive.

Perhaps I’m not the only one, but I often think about how things were different when I was a child. It might be because I’m in the midst of raising my own children. It might be because I miss simpler times. The world may have undergone a drastic change. Whatever the reason, one thing I reflect on often is the difference in babysitting now versus twenty years ago.

I went into the final days of my 42-week pregnancy armed with hopes and plans of what my experience as a new mom would be like. I arrived at the hospital on my induction date with a nervous smile and the naive expectations only first-time moms possess.

What if your child couldn’t eat candy? That would take away a HUGE chunk of Halloween. This was the problem Becky Basalone, a mom in Tennessee, faced in 2012. At a local Trunk-or-Treat event sponsored by her local food allergy group FACET, she offered non-food treats out of her car’s trunk.

I remember the days of holding friends’ babies, while longing for children of my own. The one thing that didn’t cross my mind at the time, while smelling those sweet newborns and kissing those squishy cheeks, was how short a time period a baby is actually a baby.