Let me first say that I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but if someone would have told me some of these things, it may have saved us some dough and my kids some trauma.

`Tis a Flesh Wound

My son was jumping on the trampoline at my brother’s house. Bless their hearts, they made the effort to put the safety net around their trampoline. But, it was the metal stairs that lead up to the trampoline that my son cut his head on during a mad, three-kid-scramble to climb out. I was at work, my husband was at school, my sister-in-law did the right thing by calling us. Of course, we hurried over to their house to attend to our son. Although the cut wasn’t deep, it was bleeding a lot.

We took our five-year-old to the emergency room. By the time we arrived, the bleeding had stopped. We weren’t concerned about a concussion because my son was lucid and his pupils were their normal siz, but we thought that stitches might be in order. When we finally saw the doctor, he informed us that head wounds tend to bleed a lot because there are a lot of capillaries near the surface. He said that the cut wasn’t deep or large enough to merit stitches. The doctor asked the nurse to put Neosporin on my kid’s head and sent us on our way. That was the most expensive tube of Neosporin ever!

Don’t Leave Home without your Pharmacy

Our other son tripped a couple weeks ago in the backyard and broke his arm. Read on …

Guest blogger Tiffani lives with her three right-brained kids and one left-brained hubby in Erie. When not blogging the minute yet incredibly exciting details of her life at Child’s Play or dreaming up ways to look productive and organized without actually having to be productive and organized, she runs her own natural bath and body company, Serendipity Bath Co. If she had to sum up her life in three captions, they would be: “Proudly wiping other people’s butts since 1996!,” “Unschooling: not just for weirdos!,” and “Have minivan; will travel!”

I’m beginning to understand why ideas and education are the first things to be controlled in oppressive regimes. Education leads to…thoughts. Ideas. Connections. Expression. Discussion. And yes, Revolution.

I, being the Head Mama around here, am in a position of Exalted and Sovereignly Great Dictator. Especially when the playroom and bedrooms look like they’ve been ransacked by a bunch of gremlins with a penchant for making cardboard box civilizations and scattering the contents of every toy container to the four corners.

Today is particularly oppressive for the kids, as I am leaving to take care of some business for a few days, and Head Daddy is large and in charge when I’m gone. He needs a clean and tidy house like I need Dove Chocolate and Cherry Coke. I have them on a strict schedule of 15 minutes cleaning with a 10 minute break. Must. Clean. Up!

After lunch, I sent them upstairs to clean some more. They both did their best to argue why they shouldn’t have to/needed less time cleaning/needed a longer break. I announced in my best Exalted and Sovereignly Great Dictator voice, that I was boss and what I said GOES.

However, Read on …

When my husband and I announced our fifth child was on the way, a friend asked if we knew what caused that.

I told him I suspected it had something to do with my practice of washing my underwear with my husband’s.

I regretted the snarky comeback immediately, but I know why I unleashed my frustration.

The misconceptions, prejudices, and near-constant scrutiny of our choice to have a large family is tiresome and often grounded in ignorance. Only slack-jawed rubes from the sticks, religious zealots, or those taking advantage of the government and natural resources have large families, right? Sometimes, people who see our family assume all of the above. I’m thinking we should start carrying banjos and moonshine jugs around, just to complete the effect.

The questions are relentless: Read on …

This will be the third and final installment of “Where this mom draws the line.” ‘Tis the last chapter–the third witness–that I am a mean, but well-meaning mom.

Part One was about how I don’t play videogames with my kids. I’ll play soccer, go on hikes and show them how to go off “sweet jumps” on my bike, but I will not, as they like to say, “kick their butts” at Mario Cart.

Part Two revealed my aversion for balloons. A lot of you, in your comments, agreed with me on this one. As you know, balloons always end in tears.

For Part Three I will tell you the food I will absolutely, positively, no-matter-how-much-they beg, not buy.

Let’s go back thirteen years to 1995. Read on …

I have a niece who for the longest time referred to pickles as “shupet.” Like filet or valet or CABERNET. In fact, for the first five years of her life Megan spoke the most adorable make-believe FRENCH I’ve ever heard. Megan is now 13 and there isn’t A TRACE of foreign in her day-to-day speech and text-messaging. But there was a time when her mother wondered if Megan’s lagging speech development had something to do with a hearing impairment seeing as how “shupet” has but one thing in common with the word pickle: It’s a cute name for a pet hamster.

Luckily, it wasn’t her hearing. And, much to my dismay, she eventually started referring to pickles as… well… pickles.

My three-year-old Kyra doesn’t speak quasi-French the way that Megan did but, like many toddlers her age, she struggles with certain sounds. She says “queese” instead of “please.” She says “wike” instead of “like.” She totally avoids words like “bourgeoise.”But who cares, right? She’s THREE.

Well. As it turns out, there was more to Kyra’s speech impediments than we realized. Thankfully, my husband Allan put two and two together before it was too late. “Do you think Kyra is hearing okay?” he asked me as she was whispering jibberish to herself one day. It had never occured to me that she wasn’t. But he’d noticed Read on …

Guest writer Shannon lives in colorful Colorado Springs with her news anchor husband and two sons. When not fixin’ up their fixer-upper home, hiking, gardening, cooking, changing diapers or chasing children, this Colorado Native is sure to be found blogging at The Cole Mine.

I have taken it upon myself to change my perspectives lately. I am a stay-at-home mom. My husband works evenings. For so long, this weighed heavily upon my soul. I was disappointed we didn’t have a “typical” family that could sit down to a family dinner every evening. I grew up with conversation galore and both parents sitting down to dinner with me every night. I mourned the loss of this usual and socially acceptable structure in my life. It is how I always thought life would be and we had it for a short while when my son Josh was tiny and my husband was on a different career path for a brief 10 months.

Now, he is back to his much-loved career and I felt resentful toward him and his profession and blamed them both for the aloneness I felt every night. To me, it seemed most moms got a break in the evening with Daddy giving baths and orchestrating bedtime. Where was my break? Why do I have to do everything?

I’m not sure if it was Josh’s recent stint in the hospital or just a simple and pure realization that I do not HAVE to take care of these children. Instead of “have to,” I now say “get to.” A while back, I read many a blog post about re-framing thoughts toward a “get to” perspective rather than a “have to” perspective. Read on …

We are those parents. We held back TV, especially violent TV, so our son Declan still mainly watches the Wiggles. OK, now he’s into our old school Schoolhouse Rock videos.

But the TV ban has kind of backfired on us, because he cannot comprehend an actual storyline of a movie and he is so sensitive, he worries about everyone and everything going on in the movie. He’s never even made it past 10 minutes into Nemo, Monster’s Inc or A Bug’s Life. He cries during CURIOUS GEORGE, because he is worried that George won’t make it out of his hijinks. Pretty much anything with a character arc? He can’t handle.

The only one he really has embraced is Cars, and we still have to skip the tractor tipping scene. But his friends, who, granted, are a bit older than him since he was among the youngest in his Kindergarten class… but his friends? They are all watching Star Wars and more.

Not to say I am all about keeping up with the Jones’. Read on …