Category Archives: Guest Post


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Grace for Your Disappointing Birth Experience – Guest Post at Red + Honey

Grace for Your Disappointing Birth Experience

Today I’m posting at Red + Honey. Read the teaser here and click over to read the rest. While you’re there, stay a while! It’s one of my favorite blogs and I am constantly blessed by it!

‘Erin, you have to wake up. You have to wake up. You need to feed Audrey’

My husband had been trying for several minutes to bring me to consciousness but I wasn’t responding, I didn’t want to respond.

‘She’s beautiful – she looks just like you. Don’t you want to meet her?’

I don’t know what held a tighter grip on me: the pain, the anesthesia or the disappointment that my daughter was just born via C-section.

Click here to read the rest!

 


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5 Ways to Sleep Better Naturally – Guest post at Red+Honey

 

5 Ways to Sleep Better Naturally

Today I’m posting at Red + Honey. Read the teaser here and click over to read the rest. While you’re there, stay a while! It’s one of my favorite blogs and I am constantly blessed by it.

Does anyone understand why our ideal is to ‘sleep like a baby’? I’ve spent a lot of nights with babies and, let me tell you, I do not want to sleep like one.

But I don’t necessarily want to sleep like an adult, either. While sleep seems like it should come easily, it doesn’t always.

In general I sleep well but between pregnancy insomnia, times of high stress and jet lag I’ve had my fair share of sleep difficulties. While at times it can be easy to reach for the melatonin (it’s natural, right?) I’m learning some techniques to help me get a good night’s rest without heading to the medicine cabinet and that go beyond conventional wisdom (exercise, chamomile tea, relaxing baths, etc.).

Click here to read the rest!


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Kids and Major Life Changes – Guest Post at Red+Honey

6 ways to prepare your kids for major life changes

Today I’m posting at Red + Honey. Read the teaser here and click over to read the rest. While you’re there, stay a while! It’s one of my favorite blogs and I am constantly blessed by it.

It’s well known that kids need routine and predictability. They behave better when they know what is happening now, what is coming up next and they understand what is expected of them.

But what about when everything changes? What about when their routines are altered?

In September my husband, two kids and I are moving to Macedonia. Ryan and I have moved internationally three times already, twice with kids in tow, so we have a pretty good idea of how to handle the challenges we’re going to face. But when we moved before our kids were babies and while there were adjustment periods, they were minor. They’re 3 and 1½ now so we need to prepare them for the change and help them understand their new life when we arrive. We need to help our kids make this major life change.

Click here to read the rest!


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6 Small Habits to Increase Contentment – Guest post at Red+Honey

6 Small Habits to Increase Contentment When Life Isn't Easy Photo

I’m posting at Red + Honey. Read the teaser here and click over to read the rest. While you’re there, stay a while! It’s one of my favorite blogs and I am constantly blessed by it.

The couch is covered in unfolded laundry. The kitchen sink is pilled with dirty dishes. My unchecked ‘to-do’ list mocks me, my weekly goals are untouched. It’s already half an hour past bedtime and the kids are still running around, not even in their pjs. My husband asks where his work clothes are and I hear a child scream out through hot tears, ‘He hit me!’

What I want to do in this moment is scream, cry, run away. I want to be as far removed as possible from the responsibilities and pressures of managing a home and raising a family.

But what I need to do in this moment is to choose joy. To choose love for those entrusted to me. To choose contentment. Click here to read more…


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Setting weekly Goals – Guest post at Red + Honey

Setting Weekly Goals

Today I’m posting at Red + Honey. Read the teaser here and click over to read the rest. While you’re there, stay a while! It’s one of my favorite blogs and I am constantly blessed by it.

We’re half-way through 2014 (I can’t get my head around it, either) so it’s a good time to evaluate how you’re doing on the goals you set back at the beginning of the year.

Didn’t set goals?

Me neither.

I’ve never been a goal-setter. It’s just always seemed kind of corny to me so whenever I was forced to set goals I usually picked something I knew I could easily achieve.

But back in December when everyone on the internet was talking about setting goals for the New Year (‘resolutions’ are cliché) for the first time I started to think goal setting actually had some value. I read enough blog posts and statistics to convince me I really should set goals for 2014.

I was gung-ho and had my printables ready to fill out, breaking down my goals into action steps and such.

Then about five minutes later I realized this was ridiculous. Click here to read the rest!


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6 Way to Promote Healthy Gut Bacteria in Pregnancy and Newborns — Guest post at Red + Honey

Gut health and pregnancy

Today I’m posting at Red + Honey. Read the teaser here and click over to read the rest. While you’re there, stay a while! It’s one of my favorite blogs and I am constantly blessed by it.

When your baby is conceived she has a totally unique genetic make up, a mashup of you and your husband’s DNA.

You can’t control whose eye color she will have, if she’ll be high-strung like you or relaxed like your husband, or, God forbid, she gets your father-in-law’s sense of humor.

There is one thing your precious baby receives from you, as mom, from conception that you can control: her gut bacteria.

Super exciting, huh?

click here to read the full post


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10 ways to create a healthy amount of screen time – A guest post at Red+Honey

Screen Time Photo

Today I’m posting at Red+Honey. Read the teaser here and click over to read the rest. While you’re there, stay a while! It’s one of my favorite blogs and I am constantly blessed by it.

I made one of my best parenting decisions long before I became a mother. Sitting in a psychology class in university I learned about how watching TV negatively affects brain development in children under two. Right then and there I decided my children would not watch TV until after their second birthday. Click over to Red+Honey to read the rest and leave a comment!