Our home has white walls, white cabinetry, and white furniture. It makes me extremely uncomfortable and anxious when I see things out of order and in a mess. Because one of my daughter’s favorite things to do is paint, I have since learned how to see the benefits of letting her get dirty!

If you had the opportunity to set your kids up for success, would you do it? Of course, you would. Currently, I am trying to set my daughter up for success by introducing her to the love of reading. We started reading to her at a very young age and now, at 4.5 years old, one of her favorite things to do is to curl up with a book, look at the pictures, and tell me the story.

Unless you loved toys to begin with and is a collector of them, it seems like toys only start coming into your house (and life) immediately after you have a child. Everyone, including yourself, loves to buy toys for your child because of the joy on their face when they receive and play with them. The buying and seeing joy, leads to a never ending cycle and an accumulation of toys in your home. In this blog post, I will share my tips on how to deal with toy clutter and end the cycle of toys coming into the home.

As a working mom, the best part of my day is when I pick up my daughter from her dayhome. I am excited to see her, hug her, and to learn about everything that happened with her day. I want to know it all. I will ask her questions about what she ate, whether she took at nap, whether she made a poop, whether she went outside, who she played with, and what they played. Sometimes, she doesn’t share the same “level” of excitement as me.

Does going on a road trip with your children cause you anxiety? It used to for me too. After each road trip, I learned something and was able to prepare better. This blog post shares my list of must have items for road trips with children. Some of these items I bet you would not have even thought about!

One of my 2019 new years resolutions is to help my daughter learn more Chinese.

She started going to Chinese school back in September of 2018 and it was a really rough go for her. Above is the picture I took of her first day at Chinese school. She struggled going to class because she didn’t understand what was being said to her.

Most parents think that they need to start their baby on solids using pureed food. But maybe you've heard that you can skip the mush and start your baby on finger foods from the start! It's called baby-led weaning, and it allows you to enjoy your meal along with your baby.

Sometimes it is hard for us to believe our kids love us because they often don’t listen, do the opposite as they are told, and act like turds. Every since my daughter turned four years old, she has turned into a different person. A person that is argumentative, questions authority, and questions the logic in rules. Basically, she turned into a grown up overnight.

Last year’s resolutions made things definitely interesting, by doing less and not more, focusing on self care on a regular basis, and making personal relationships a priority, exciting things came my way. This year, my focus will be on things that needed to be a priority for a while but was neglected because they are plain difficult to tackle.

After my daughter was born, I really wanted to start some holiday traditions for her so that she would have memories of them growing up. In comparison to my spouse, I didn’t grow up with a lot of Christmas traditions. We ate a Christmas dinner and opened presents but that was the extent of Christmas.

The holiday season is upon us and for moms we can basically translate that to “more work and less schedule”. We don’t want to miss out on all the family activities but we also don’t want to be paying for it for days/weeks after, so how do we achieve balance?

Years ago, when my daughter was still a baby, I read an article that some 18 year old's enter university without basic living skills like cooking or doing laundry. I was appalled. At that moment, I told myself that I am going to start giving my daughter chores as soon as she is able to. (I know we all say things like this but I stuck with this one.)

It's been a few months of packing those school lunches.....are you getting tired of it yet?!  Maybe you started the year gung-ho to make Pinterest-inspired, fancy home-made lunches all year long. And most of us are over that by oh….about week 2 of school!

Last year, I was very ambitious and wanted to make a cake for my daughter’s birthday. I tried but fairly quickly realized that I suck at baking and following instructions. The hack I came up with last year was buying a plain cake from my local bakery and decorate it myself. My daughter loved her “Peppa jumping in muddy puddles with her family” cake last year. (She absolutely didn’t make it easy.)

I don't have a sweet tooth so it is super easy for me to take the fun out of Halloween for my daughter (and spouse.) I don't really get why they need to go out, in the cold, walk around, to get a ton of random candy from strangers. After they proudly come home with their stash, I just look at them thinking there is no chance my daughter is eating a quarter of that and then crashing like a crazier than usual preschooler. 

Recently, my partner's coworker told him that she doesn't understand why we keep our daughter so busy with going to events and learning new things. She wondered why we don't just let her be a kid. This coworker was also a mom but her daughter was younger than ours. Her comment might have been innocent and not judgmental but it still rubbed me the wrong way.

Super late with this post because I had hoped to get more done on this project before posting. Oops.

Late last year, we were very lucky to have been gifted this well-loved playhouse. It was previously loved by our friend's kids for 7-8 years. It was a cedar playhouse originally purchased from Costco and looked like this: 

It is bound to happen - when your child has a public melt down. You child is never an angel 100% of the time. This is a whole new ball game as opposed to melt downs at home.

When our dayhome was closed for a month with less than a month's notice, we were left scrambling for care for our daughter. If needed, we were prepared to each take two weeks off work to watch her but that would really suck because that means no family vacation! Luckily for us, my mother-in-law stepped up and volunteered to watch our daughter for two weeks.

To be perfectly honest, I haven't traveled very much or very far since having my daughter. The thought of traveling with her (even if she is an angel 95% of the time) gives me a ton of anxiety. I'm constantly worried about how she will adjust and how we can possibly affect others when we travel. Until I figure out how to best travel with her on a plane, we will be sticking with road trips for a while.

With the weather in Calgary FINALLY starting to warm up, I thought it would be timely to share our Granary Road experience!

This was indeed a daytrip for us since we live in the very north end of Calgary. We were literally going from one end of Calgary to the other. When I heard about Granary Road, I was so excited! But I had to keep the excitement to myself because I wasn't quite ready to make the trip there. One random day, I showed Grace a couple of pictures friends posted on Instagram about their trip to Granary Road. From then on, all she could talk about was sliding down a frog's tongue. (This makes sense in a bit.)

Imagine this, you are stuck inside for whatever reason and your child is no longer interested in playing with ANY of her toys. You can either: 

1) Grab a new toy out of your surprise bin. (Every parent should have a bin of new toys or things it can bring out in a pinch aka boredom or random birthday party invite. It is a life saver.)

2) Pop in a movie and watch Frozen for the 150th time. 

3) Make something new to play with. 

I attended Chinese school for 10 years, every Saturday morning for four hours. I hated it for 7-8 years because I missed all the cartoons in the morning. (All my classmates hated it too.) I might have hated the first couple of years too but I don't remember because I was 3-4 years old. No matter how much I voiced my displeasure with Chinese school, my mom made me go. It got to the point that she said it would be easier on me if we just skip the part where I whine before I go, because I am going no matter what.

Some of the most random DIY projects arise out of random requests by my daughter. One evening she requested to play fishing. Initially, we used pipe cleaners to make a fishing hook and fishes but she was not impressed at all. Then