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So, we started out our baby journey with a pack n’ play type of crib. The kind of crib that you can fold up and take anywhere, on a picnic, to a friend/family members house, and so on.  It had a bassinet attachment, that I loved very much, in the first few months of my sons life.

Once my son was old enough to roll over, I removed the bassinet and he began sleeping in the lower crib area. That worked for a while, but was hell on my back.  It was always aching me, and a friend mentioned that it must be the crib that’s causing so much pain.
So, we asked around, and a friend brought me a beautiful white crib, and we assembled it and my son stayed in it the entire time until he just barely turned 14 months old.

The other night, my son happened to find a way out of the crib, which managed to scare both my husband and myself beyond belief, because he could have been seriously hurt, but thankfully was not.

So, now I’m shopping around for toddler beds, and a friend brought me a bed that can convert from a crib, to a toddler bed, then become a headboard for an adult bed.  We just barely put it together last night, but I’m thinking there must be a safer devise to keep kids in, but to not be so high that if they attempt to jump, they’ll really hurt themselves.

I’ve been looking online at toddler beds, and they seem like twin beds, but with a half railing on the side of the bed. This seems a little more feasable, with my son (who is still quite young), but we’ll have to see how well he does on this bed for a few more nights before figuring out if this is the right bed for him, or if we must try something new.

Either way, all kids are different. Some kids are content in cribs until they’re a few years old and they can move on into a real bed. Some kids are like little monkeys trying to escape from prison.  Wonder which one I have?

A friend of mine was recently dealt a blow by finding out that the pain she has been dealing with, is due to a chronic illness.  She had been suffering for some time, before finding out the true diagnosis.

The important thing that I advised her to do, as well as what I would advise you or your loved ones to do (if you’re dealing with the same issue), is to not lose focus on the goals you have set for yourself, before getting a diagnosis.

You may have to alter your life plans to some degree, depending on the type of illness, but  this is just one of many things that could come our way that may be discouraging, disheartening and cause us to go into a momentary depression.  Whatever the situation is, keeping a life plan and educating yourself about your illness and what can be done to make your life easier as the illness progresses, is imperative.

Maybe getting together with other people who have your illness in a weekly support group, an online support group (where you can choose to be anonymous), discussing your illness with friends and family, writing your feelings down in a daily journal, and more; may help ease you through the first days in this phase of dealing with the recent diagnosis.

Whatever you are feeling is a true feeling, you are not imagining, you are not crazy, you should not be ashamed and you don’t have to explain yourself to anyone, unless you choose to.

Remember, although you have been put in the passenger seat, due to this diagnosis, it doesn’t mean that you can’t retake control of your life and move into the drivers seat.  Thus taking charge of the seconds, hours, and days for your chances to heal yourself (inside and out), to live  contentfully each day of the rest of your life.

Taking a lot of photos and videos of yourself and your loved ones, is a very important thing to do, in my opinion.  Life is short, people change, kids grow up, people move away, others die (sorry to be so morbid); but from time to time, a person really needs to get things documented and see all the changes their loved ones have gone through.

Back in the old days (as recently as a few years ago), pictures were taken and stored for years, getting all tattered and discolored.  But, now a days with digital photos, they can all be saved on our computers, on our memory sticks or saved on a blog or website.

I was one of those people who wanted to start scrapbooking (several years ago), but once I realizing how much work was required, how much money it can cost (it can be a lot), and how much time can be spent doing the intricate work, I stopped before I ever started.  But, now a days there are websites dedicated to making scrapbooking pages online, and some can be found for free.

A little over a year ago, while I was still pregnant, I tried to find such websites and found one which I absolutely adore, and use to this day. I’ve made countless scrapbooking pages online using this site, for myself, my family and friends. I even had one set up for my son and his monthly photos, showing the changes he’d been going through.

I also have a website created for my son and our family.  I find these sites very useful and I keep them updated on a monthly basis.

I’m sure you’re telling yourself, “Jeez, she must have a lot of time on her hands!”

But, the answer is, “No!” I just like to go on these websites (and this website of coarse) as a means to unwind and get all the daily pressures out of the way. They bring me immense joy, like something I used to feel as a child.

I was one of those kids who wrote their pen pals from all over the world, and I usually used different colored pens, cool looking stationary paper, stickers, stamps, markers to color in the stamps and so on.  I even had amazing address labels that I used to send out with each letter. But, that was in the stone age! Now that we have e-mailing and so on, there’s no longer a need for such manual labor.  Mind you, I still create decorated e-mails to make my e-mails look nice and pretty, and have gotten tons of compliments for it before (which I love by the way), and here we are.

So, back to the subject at hand.  Take some time to gather any photos you really wish to save, create your own blog (for you, your family, or whatever you wish), update it regularly, and in a few month or years you’ll look back and feel the utter satisfaction of knowing that you took part in capturing priceless memories.

For children to grow properly, they need the usual basic things: food, water, love, a proper roof over their heads, etc.  But, what do they need beyond that?  Something that is often skipped over is their need to be positively praised, so that they can correlate the praises with good things that they’ve done; instead of correlating attention with bad things that they do.

If every time the child does something right, you say, “Good job, I knew you could do it,” or “Yay! Good job!” or some such thing, it makes the child happy to please you and that child will subconsciously go out of their way to make you happy again.

But, if every time the child does something wrong, you shout and scream, call him or her names, and make a huge deal out of it, the child will become scarred and upset, but after adjusting to the constant bereavement on a daily or weekly basis, they may start to, in turn, do everything they can to get a rise out of you.

So, when they do something wrong, say a simple stern, “NO.” Not a shout, not a scream, but a simple stern, “NO”.  Also be careful of your facial expression.  If you have a look of horror on your face, versus a plane expressionless look, it makes a huge difference. Then when the child actually does do something right, praise them a lot and of coarse show them the appropriate amount of positive attention.

The same goes for children who fall down and hurt themselves. If you run over to them in a panic and are saying something like, “Oh my baby! What happened to you? Oh no! You’re hurt, you’re hurt,” (which may sound crazy, but so many parents do this), then your child will become a drama queen or drama king every time the littlest thing happens.

If your child hurts themselves, go over to them, look them over, clean them up and say, “It’s alright, now you’re all better,” with a smile on your face.  Remember that the way we behave is the way that they will behave. It’s like looking into a mirror.

Since we have discussed how to positively reinforce children, I would like to reinforce with you the importance of treating every child equally.  Don’t praise (let’s say) Johnny, and forget all about Billy.  Catch my drift?  Don’t make your children hate one another, because Mommy or Daddy, Grandma or Grandpa obviously likes one sibling vs the other more.  You should treat children equally, lovingly, with care and attention (for positive things- that is), and always remember that what we do while they’re young influences the people they will grow up to be, in the future.

Almost everyone is a procrastinator now and again, these days.  We say we’ll do something and then never get around to doing it.  The point is, we need to make an active choice in what we say we want to do. Especially when we’re telling someone we’ll do something.

If you tell someone that you’ll do something and then never get around to doing it, and you do it often, then your word means nothing.  People will stop believing you and you’ll be known as a liar.  Do you really want to be viewed that way?  Because many people who become known as liars are no longer believed, even if they are telling the truth.  It’s like the boy who cried wolf.  When you decide to tell someone something, do it.  Don’t just tell people stuff and fall off the end of the truck, so to speak.

There’s a huge difference between someone who tells themselves they will do x, y, and z and someone who goes out of their way to tell others what they plan on doing, and then they never actually do it. Don’t assume that the other person has forgotten all about it.  It’s still something that rolls around in that giant globe, called a mind and they’ll never let you slide about it.

So take my advice, do things you say you’re going to do.  If you plan on doing something and you want to tell someone really badly, just hold onto that little tidbit of information and wait until you actually start to do it and then you can tell the people you select to tell all about it.