Blog Friend Feature: Practical Parenting

Who do you go to when you need parenting advice? Your girlfriends, twitter, blogs, and books, right? This week's Blog Friend Feature combines all those things: a blog with parenting advice like it's being dished out by your girlfriends.  She's a total sweetheart with a lot of parenting know-how.

Meet Katie of Practical Parenting:

When Shell contacted me about writing a Blog Friend Feature for her, I nearly fell off my chair.  I don’t have to tell any of you that Shell is the most supportive blogger around (how she manages to help everyone feel so loved while working from home is beyond me), or that her Blog Friend Feature is one of the most coveted features out there (who wouldn’t want to meet all of Shell’s fantastic friends?).  You already know that.  I nearly fell off my chair because it didn’t ever occur to me that I would be asked.

Shell seems to have an uncanny ability to find and feature the best blogs around.  I either laugh or cry my way through these posts every Friday morning, and then begin following them almost obsessively.  

But my blog…is not that funny.  My blog is all about providing practical parenting strategies.  It’s really meant to save you from buying 1,000 parenting books.  If you ask me a question, I’ll post an answer.  My blog is kind of…nerdy.

But today, because Shell believes in me, I will break the mold.  Today I will share some of the more impractical things that go on around here:  

Lost Sleep:  Sure there’s the average sleep loss due to the revolving door of illness, constant teething, nightmares, and night terrors.  

But the real story here is that I married a sleepwalking, sleep-talking, all around sleep-doer.  Once, before we were married, he hid my favorite pair of jeans on a super high shelf in a closet.  We didn’t find them until we moved nearly a year later. Then there was the time that we both managed to wake up his band during a 14 hour drive.  His screaming ignited my screaming and then everyone was screaming…for us to please shut up.  I often wake up to find him face to face with me because he has to tell me something very important. And he loves to protect me from the giant spiders and aliens he believes are coming into our room through the locked balcony door.

Interior Design:  My 4 year old daughter, Riley, is nothing if not creative.  On the bright side, she creates some amazing art projects and has excellent fine motor skills for her age.  But sometimes the creativity translates to some interesting “decorations”.  

Just the other day I entered her bathroom to find it covered in toilet paper.  I was speechless for a while.  When I finally asked why she chose to do that she replied, “I wanted to make snow”.   

Then there was the time when she was 2 ½ that, while I ran the bathroom to pee, she managed to “decorate” the entire family room and kitchen with Tampons two minutes before a playgroup was due to arrive.  She thought they were pretty.

Lost Holidays:  I love Christmas.  More than any other holiday ever…I love Christmas.  I love the smell of a Christmas tree in the house (but not the fallen needles), hot chocolate by the fire (yes, even in LA), and watching as loved ones open the carefully chosen and wrapped gifts.  My 2½ year old son, Liam, has yet to really celebrate Christmas.  

Two years ago, we all had the stomach flu.  After 21 hours of straight puking, I could hardly lift my head off the floor.  Liam went down on the 23rd, Riley and I went down on the 24th, and Sean took Christmas day.  No one even looked at a gift.

Last year, I took precautions.  I didn’t send Riley to school the week before, we didn’t go to the park for weeks, and we avoided all play dates.  Sean came home on the 22nd (he was working in New York) with “food poisoning”.  Two days later it was another vomit-fest.  Again, Santa’s hard work was largely ignored.

And for the last two Halloweens Riley has had bronchitis and croup.  On the bright side, she didn’t have it in her to beg for candy.

Grocery Store Hopping:  I spend entirely too much time traveling to different grocery stores in order to fulfill the necessary requests.  Liam has a few staples that can only be found at Trader Joe’s, while Riley will eat almost anything…but certain things that can only be found at Ralph’s.  Then there are the very important organic items that necessitate yet another store:  Whole Foods.  And did I mention the Farmer’s Market?  Buying the food to feed this family is a full time job.

Lost Time:  If I counted up the twenty minute increments of time spent searching for missing cars, cats, shoes for Polly Pockets (do they need to be that small?), and other miscellaneous items, I would lose at two weeks of my life.  Seriously.  “Gold Ramone” was just located at the bottom of a huge Lego box after nearly two months on the missing cars list.  Can I speak for all of us when I say thank you Disney for getting our children addicted to your products only to have you put them in the vault so that they can never be replaced?

Bribery:  Some parents are firm believers that kids should just do what they’re supposed to do…end of story.  I believe in bribes.  I believe a single Tic Tac can make a trip to the grocery store a breeze and a sticker chart to earn books or cars can cure a sleep issue.  I once fed my kids jellybeans and lollipops pretty much all the way from New York to LA minus a nap (read: sugar crash) when I had to fly home with them solo.  Yes, I believe in bribes.
The practical parent (read: control freak) in me loves schedules, calendars, organization, and rules.  With my bass playing husband on the road for long stretches of time or holed up in studios for more hours than you might think actually exist in the day, I need structure.  My kids need structure.  We crave practical.  But even the most practical parents have moments of impracticality.

What are some of yours?

Please leave Katie some comment love here and then go follow her fabulous blog!