Whether you are trying to have a baby or you are delaying having one, missing a period could be quite an experience. This is especially true for those who have their monthly period regularly and never miss it. I am actually undergoing this experience as I have been quite concerned for the past 2 months. I have heard of countless stories about women being on the pill and yet conceiving. So the first thing that I do when I miss a period is to get a pregnancy test kit – the one you can use at home.

I could always go to the doctor and have a blood test done but this usually costs 2 or 3 times more than the home kit. Does the home kit work though? Of course! The problem actually might be that you would have countless choices to choose from – which one works best? Which one is most reliable?

The best thing to do would be to consult your local pharmacist. They would certainly know which products are the most popular and reliable. You can also check with your network of girl friends who may have more experience in this respect. Personally, though, I have found most brands to work quite reliably. I never really dwelled much on the brand name. I’d simply go to the drugstore and get several packets of different brands and use them all. That way, I feel that I have all bases covered. Then again, if you really want to be sure, then the best course would be to go visit the doctor and pay the extra cost.

Being a parent is a tough job – I am sure most of you will agree with me on that. It does have its wonderful moments that cannot be replaced by anything else but the fact remains that there are days which are going to try the most patient person. There are days when the stress will seem to be too much too bear. I ran across a post from Dr. Robyn J.A. Silverman which presents the ABCs of parenting. Now I would be the last person to simplify things to match the alphabet, to be honest – parenting is so much more than ABC – but I really found this list helpful. Allow me to share some of the letters of the alphabet and how they can help parents take on the challenges of their lives.

A- Accept the things you can not change: Single parenting? Step parenting? ADHD parenting? Just dealing with time crunches, making lunches, bunches and bunches of bills? It’s important to recognize that there are some things you can not control, surrender, move on.

B- Breathe: When things get hairy, scary, and you feel like you can barely hold on, take a step back, breathe, and be calm.

C- Count your blessings. Even though you have the weight of the world on you right now and feel far from compassionate for others who have things much worse than you do, there is some value in taking a moment to look at the things that are going right today, such as your child’s tantrum-free morning or how your spouse took out the trash…

All these three things, I find difficult, especially when faced with seemingly insurmountable things. Yet, I realize that they can indeed help me become more efficient and loving at the same time. I hope you see things the same way as well.

I got an e-mail the other day from Vanessa Van Petten of Teens Today With Vanessa Van Petten. As I was reading the e-mail, I felt like a little kid – I wanted to clap my hands together and do a bit of a jump while I was at it. (Ok, fine, I did clap my hands once.) Here is what she had to say:

I just wanted to write and let you know that your blog has been submitted to my
contest for the “Best Mom Blog!”

Hooray! I actually have already been reading your blog and love it, and have been RSSing for a few months so I am happy to add you to the list.

I wanted you to be aware that (I hope) you will be getting some more traffic from my site as I post the Top 50. I am actually 22 and write a parenting blog from the kids perspective to keep things exciting as a sort of expose on our generation of teens.

Hooray, indeed! I am glad that there are teens like Vanessa and that she sees the value in good parenting and communication between parents and children! Now let’s cross our fingers and hope that we win this one. Even if we don’t, the nomination is reason enough to celebrate, don’t you think?

I think that is every expecting mother’s wish to have a beautiful healthy baby. From the time that a woman finds out that she is pregnant up to the time that she delivers her child, I know that her prayer every night is to have a perfectly healthy child. Yet there are times when our wishes are not granted in the exact manner that we ask them to be.

As that famous line in the movie Forrest Gump goes, “life is a box of chocolates, you never know what you will get next.” Some mothers get their wish and have perfectly healthy babies. Others, they get something else, something that I would say is perhaps even more special, for God has granted them a baby with something more.

Lori Borgman says it better than I do in her work “Some Mothers Get Babies With Something More.” You can read the whole thing in the blog Special Child. This really touched my heart as, even if I am not a mother who got something more, my nephew is special – in more ways than one. I never really though that we would have to deal with this but God has presented us with a special gift and our family has grown together as a result. That is why I thought of writing a series on special children, in the hopes that as I share our experiences, other families will become encouraged and inspired.

So for mothers who got something more, here is a tribute to you.

The best way to get good tips and tricks on how to properly balance parenthood and personal life is to learn and read it from the people who know. Such can be found from sites that have used the services offered by organizations as the Los Angeles SEO when it comes to affordable search engine optimization and many have been directed towards their way.

For sure, parents are looking for advanced practices on how to become better parents. Moods and the things they do at home are not enough. There are varying techniques in the world of parenting today and people just have to be more open to them. Books may be of help but with the way technology has been spread today, the web is where updated facts and resources are at.

Be assured that there are a lot of ideas over the web today for better parenting practices. They are just waiting to be found!

While there is no question that most parents today know the responsibilities of growing their own breed while at the same time relying on other areas for potential improvement of the same, people often check the web for best sites which can help improve their current practice. Surely, these best sites will often be the first to come out when links or search queries thanks to the expertise of affordable search engine optimization techniques by companies such as Los Angeles SEO.

In fact, people may have a hard time choosing the best one since it is practically hard to select which site truly provides the best resource and information people are looking for these days.

There are a lot of sites on parenting today and each has its own line of specialty. While parenting may be simple to some, many would be amazed at the things they are missing out in their journey of parenthood. It is these little things that they can only locate once they start checking out the leading sites of parenting practices today.

First of all, I’d like to say THANKS to Daddy A, who so kindly filled in for me for February with his illuminating posts of life from the other side (aka Daddy’s). My deepest gratitude and thanks. I wouldnt be able to pull off the busiest month of the year without his time and effort for this blog.

February is a crazy month in my household. Its the month where most people buckle down to the routines of the New Year, but in our family, its the month of birthdays, followed by the yearly growups-only trip my husband and I take, away from the kids.

So after the meyhem of a seemingly endless stream of birthday celebrations culminating in the Pirate Party I obsessively blogged about, hubby and I took off to Hong Kong for a fabulous, ultra-luxe holiday. Its become a sort of tradition, these child-free trips right after the birthdays. I’m not sure how it started, but I suppose it arose from the need for some quality grown-up time after a month (or two - Christmas too, remember) where our lives just seem to be consumed by our children.

Wonderful as it was to have long conversations with my husband without whiny interruptions, shopping trips at leisure where I could actually browse as long as I pleased and try on as many things as I liked without rushing, and late breakfasts where I could read an entire newspaper, going home to our five-year-old and two-year-old was the biggest thrill of all.

And lastly, something very “pre-school” that my best friend sent me: (I promise this is the past pirate thing!)

Alexander Ratcliff from Spokane, Washington is the grand prize winner for the Riddles contest. His winning riddle is:

Q: Why wasn’t the child let in to the pirate movie?
A: It was rated arrrrrrrrr (delivered with an appropriate pirate squint)

I’ve never been into video games, which probably explains why I’ve always told N that she wouldnt be allowed a Gameboy or the like until she was 10 years old. So imagine my annoyance when at the family Christmas get-together, my 11-year-old half sister (who N adores) lent N her Gameboy, and N was entranced, showing that she clearly had some talent despite being only 5-years-old.

Then a few days ago, her friend Rose (as mentioned in the previous post) brings the latest Gameboy to school, which was a present for her birthday. It was the envy of all the kids at school, especially N. Noticing this when I picked her up from school that day, I gently (but firmly) reminded her that she wasnt getting one until she was 10. She was very-grown up about it, as if resigned to her fate….

Now feeling guilty, I spoke to my husband about it (who, has been desperate for N to be old enough to play video games with him, a hobby he gave up when we had the kids). He said that if we had a “big one” (i.e. something he can play too) at the beach house, which she can only play on weekends or holidays, then MAYBE we can bend this rule a bit. Hmmmmmmm…….

The jury’s not out on thus, but I didn find an interesting article about ways parents can make video games “good” for kids, which I’ll be blogging about next.

Much as I enjoy my blogging, I have to admit that sometimes it gets tiresome to see my own thoughts on this blog every single day. Which is the reason why I like to spare myself (and whoever else reads this) of me-itis ramblings by posting little bits and bobs, such as the previous post, and this one below.

It wasnt written by me, but its so utterly familiar in my life as a parent, that I feel I could have written it too. Well, some of it at least.

Somebody said it takes about six weeks to get back to normal after you’ve had a baby … somebody doesn’t know that once you’re a mother, “normal” is history.

Somebody said you learn how to be a mother by instinct, somebody never took a three-year-old shopping.

Somebody said being a mother is boring … somebody never rode in a car driven by a teenager with a driver’s permit.

Somebody said if you’re a “good” mother, your child will “turn out good”… somebody thinks a child comes with directions and a guarantee.

Somebody said “good” mothers never raise their voices …somebody never came out the back door just in time to see her child hit a golf ball through the
neighbor’s kitchen window.

Somebody said you don’t need an education to be a mother…. somebody never helped a fourth grader with his math.

Somebody said you can’t love the second child as much as you love the first … somebody doesn’t have two children.

Somebody said a mother can find all the answers to her child-rearing questions in the books….somebody never had a child stuff beans up his nose or in his ears.

Somebody said the hardest part of being a mother is labor and delivery….somebody never watched her “baby” get on the bus for the first day of
kindergarten or on a plane headed for military “boot camp.”

Somebody said a mother can do her job with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back….somebody never organized seven giggling Brownies
to sell cookies.

Somebody said a mother can stop worrying after her child gets married….somebody doesn’t know that marriage adds a new son or daughter-in-law to a mother’s heartstrings.

Somebody said a mother’s job is done when her last child leaves home….somebody never had grandchildren.

Somebody said your mother knows you love her, so you don’t need to tell her…. somebody isn’t a mother.

Heres another tear-jerker I had to share. It was sent to me by another Mother, but I think that anyone, whether they have children or not, will be touched by this simple story of a Mother’s love.

After 21 years of marriage, My wife wanted me to take another woman out to dinner and a movie. She said, “I love you, but I know this other woman loves you and would love to spend some time with you.”

The other woman that my wife wanted me to visit was my MOTHER, who had been a widow for 19 years, but the demands of my work and my three children had
made it impossible to visit her regularly, only occasionally.

That night I called to invite her to go out for dinner and a movie.

“What’s wrong, are you well?,” she asked?

My mother is the type of woman who suspects that a late night call or a surprise invitation is a sign of bad news.

“I thought that it would be pleasant to spend some time with you,” I responded. “Just the two of us.”

She thought about it for a moment, and then said, “I would like that very much.”

That Friday after work, as I drove over to pick her up I was a bit nervous. When I arrived at her house, I noticed that she, too, seemed to be nervous about our date.

She waited in the door with her coat on. She had curled her hair and was wearing the dress that she had worn to celebrate her last wedding anniversary.

She smiled from a face that was as radiant as an angel’s.

“I told my friends that I was going to go out with my son, and they were impressed,” she said, as she got into the car.

“They can’t wait to hear about our dinner.”

We went to a restaurant that, although not elegant, was very nice and cozy. My mother took my arm as if she were the First Lady.

After we sat down, I had to read the menu. Her eyes could only read large print. Half way through the entre�s, I lifted my eyes and saw Mom sitting there
staring at me. A nostalgic smile was on her lips.

“It was I who used to have to read the menu when you were small,” she said.

“Then it’s time that you relax and let me return the favor,” I responded.

During the dinner, we had an agreeable conversation, nothing extraordinary but catching up on recent events of each other’s life. We talked so much that we missed the movie.

As we arrived at her house later, she said, “I’ll go out with you again, but only if you let me invite you.” I agreed.

” How was your dinner date?” asked my wife when I got home.

“Very nice. Much more so than I could have imagined,” I answered.

A few days later, my mother died of a massive heart attack. It happened so suddenly that I didn’t have a chance to do anything for her.

Some time later, I received an envelope with a copy of a restaurant receipt from the same place mother and I had dined.

An attached note said: “I paid this bill in advance. I wasn’t sure that I could be there; but nevertheless, I paid for two plates - one for you and the other for your wife. You will never know what that night meant for me. I love you, son.”

At that moment, I understood the importance of saying in time: “I LOVE YOU” and to give our loved ones the time that they deserve. Nothing in life is
more important than your family. Give them the time they deserve, because these things cannot be put off till “some other time”.