My Blog

Lets see...what to write about today...I guess I will write about a website I like. www.naturalchild.org It has all sorts of articles about raising children "treated with dignity, respect, understanding, and compassion." I truly believe most of what is written there. This website introduced me to Attachment Parenting, Co-Sleeping, breastfeeding babies for more than 1 year, diaper-free babies, and Unschooling. Unfortunately I don't have a baby yet to try it all on, but hopefully soon. One article that has really stuck with me was about diffusing the power struggle between parents and children. If you take the time to find out what you child really needs, why they are arguing with you, you can solve the problem fairly between the two of you with neither one feeling like they lost. There was an example of a child who was on the top of a slide at a park and wouldn't come down, she was blocking other children from sliding down also. In the article, the father tries several tactics to get the child down, after figuring out why she wouldn't come down, and is eventually able to work through the problem without either him or his daughter getting angry. The article is called "Down the Slide, or Up the Anger Escalator?" by Inbal Kashtan.

Smile often, keep a song in your heart, and be happy with who you are.

Last week when started thinking about writing a blog, I had many ideas flowing through my brain. Now, I can't think of anything to write! Lol, not quite true, but I don't know how interesting it is. This week has been a typical week for me. Doing laundry, caring for my chickens, cleaning the bathrooms, changing the sheets, baking casseroles, and of course watching all the TV shows that have returned to TV this week. Before I get into TV shows, I want to share an anecdote about my chickens (I moved this story to the post called "Chicken Story" for ease of categorization)... Back to the TV shows I watch. We don't have cable, but watch TV shows online (cable is not worth paying for). My favorites are Castle, Psych, Warehouse 13, and Eureka. I also enjoy Bones, NCIS, NCIS: LA, and sometimes Glee.

I was going to combine the two posts today, but thought for categorization purposes, I should separate them, so here's my Chicken anecdote:

We started raising chickens in our backyard earlier this year. We built a hen house for them out of scrap wood we got for free on Craigslist and Freecycle. It took a long time to build. We started the hen house last summer, worked on it through the winter and finally finished it and got it into our backyard in May or June of this year. Last June, we attended a class to learn a little bit about keeping chickens and decided it would be fun and nice to get fresh eggs! We don't have eggs yet, but the hens are fun. We read online that we'd get eggs as early as when the hens were 5 months old, but then a friend told us her hens didn't start laying until they were a year old, so we're waiting to see when we get eggs. Our oldest hen is 24 weeks old.

Today I'm going to expound on my website's name.

Several years ago, I started Dontbflat.com as a music website. It had music history info such as a time line and information about composers and music eras. It also had a teacher/student section with quizzes on composers and music eras. I had a friend who taught music try it out, but no one else has used it. Anyway, it's been a few years and I couldn't bring myself to close down the website (I love the name: dontbflat), but I didn't want to keep paying for it if I wasn't going to be updating my website, so I decided to completely change it and now it's my blog. I'm sorry to anyone who did a Google search and linked to my website looking for music info, but if you write a comment, I may be able to help you find what you need.

Smile often, keep a song in your heart, and be happy with who you are.