“Wash your hands, and say your prayers, ’cause Jesus and germs are everywhere!”

😷Good life advice, but especially vital in this dreary, never-ending rainy cold & flu season. 🤧

Well, Hurricane Florence got me motivated to prep my house and hunker down, and as a mom of two little kids, that means more than making sure we have enough water, bread, and batteries. The more I started to think and prep for losing power, the more I began to realize how important it is to have activities for the kiddos. And I realized how easy it is to assemble new, free/cheap, fun activities for little kids with things you probably already have in your house!

This makes hurricane prep, power outages, sick days, or a boring afternoon just a little more fun and exciting. You can pack them away for the car or a trip, or only take them out in times like these to keep them exciting. Who doesn’t love a few cheap (or free) and activities that double as learning and fine- and gross-motor skill development?! Here are the top busy bag activities that I either had the supplies on hand to make already or found easily at the grocery store/pharmacy while I was out and about.

I try to focus on parenting my children with the gospel in mind and my eyes on Jesus the whole time, but I fail regularly. Thankfully, I have grace and mercy from God and a helpmate in my husband, and I’m able to try better each time.

One of the things I’ve been focusing on lately is when it comes to extending what’s been extended to me (grace, mercy, love, forgiveness, etc.), I struggle to extend in the same way to my children. It’s like I’ve been given some leeway after acting up, but I expect everyone else to act perfectly all the time around me. That’s hard to admit: I think I’m good at displaying mercy (not getting a punishment you deserve), but I’ve become increasingly aware of my need to extend more grace (getting a gift you don’t deserve).

The Importance of Anchoring Your Furniture!

Did you baby-proof your home? I normally hate to overstep and tell a mom how to parent, but below is an email I received a few months ago from my friend about baby-proofing: a large bureau dresser fell on her son. A lot of times we (read: I) view these stories as examples of neglect, but I have known this friend for several years and she is a diligent, involved, aware mother who never leaves her kids unattended. She’s an ER provider and has seen the worst.

Thankfully her son is ok, but it made me rethink ALL of my reasons for not fully baby-proofing by anchoring some of our furniture (in our house, all furniture in kids’ rooms are anchored but not in our guest or master bedrooms because we were afraid of holes in the walls or wanting to move the furniture around eventually). When we think of baby-proofing, most of us think of outlet covers and door/drawer locks, but it is so much more than that!