The Exasperation of a Blank Baby Book

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 7 Comments

Photo: Baby book titled "Baby's First Year" on a tabletop; Text: "The Exasperation of a Blank Baby Book / We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So"

Blank. Just blank. The empty page after empty page of my eight-month-old’s baby book stared at me in accusation. Even his name wasn’t filled in. Really? Crap.

I specifically bought this book because it was supposed to be “easy.” Just a page a month for the first year. How much time could that take? Apparently too much.

Was it that I didn’t love Little Bird enough to bother chronicling his important moments? While the guilt that beats at my brain wanted that to be the right answer, I know in my heart it’s not true. I adore my children. And I’ve spent a ton of time and effort capturing their childhood. I probably have hundreds of photos of Little Bird alone, much less those with his brother.

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9 Things I Learned While Visiting the New York State Museum with a Three-Year-Old

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

9-things-i-learned-visting-the-new-york-state-museum-with-a-three-year-old

What has luminescent rocks, woolly mammoths and a Native American longhouse? Unless you’re from upstate New York, you probably didn’t answer “The New York State Museum.” But if you did, congrats! This long-standing institution was one of my favorite places as a deeply-nerdy child. We brought Sprout there when he was a mere year and a half old, but he had very limited comprehension of the whole thing. This Christmas vacation, I thought I would give it another try.

Here’s what I learned:

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Guest Post: How to Raise Kids Who Value Biking and Walking

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Bicyclists on a triple bicycle in the Tour de Cookie

Among the many skills I want to pass on to my kids, getting around on their own power is actually pretty far up there. Biking and walking places provides exercise, helps get kids outside (with all of the associated benefits!), and provides them a level of independence that they won’t be able to get any other way.

That’s why I’m thrilled that I have a guest post up at Parent.co on teaching kids to value  bicycling and walking.

Here’s the first two paragraphs:

“In my day, we walked a mile uphill both ways in the snow” is the ultimate cliche for cranky parents to compare themselves to kids these days. But walking and biking have huge benefits beyond the ability to complain later on.

Active transportation establishes lifelong healthy habits for life, builds relationships with neighbors, minimizes greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change, and increases kids’ independence. While our society advertises a minivan as the ultimate family vehicle, it is actually possible to shift trips away from the car.

Read the rest at Parent.co!

What I’ve Been Reading

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Child and woman walking in a snow-covered yard.

And how was your holiday? Ours was full of snow, baby milestones, kids being cute, candy, whining, and way too many presents. We’re getting back on the sleep training bandwagon here, although that’s being hampered by the fact that Little Bird doesn’t want to drink from a bottle and instead just complains he’s thirsty all day. And now for your articles for the week!

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How to Be More Mindful and Present with Your Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

It’s easy to lose focus or let your mind wander when you’re spending time with children. Try these six tips to be more present with your kids!

How to Be More Mindful and Present with Your Kids. (Photo: Man in a blue hoodie walking down a paved trail surrounded by trees pushing a stroller, with a child walking next to him.)

As I turn on my phone to check the temperature outside before going to the park with the kids, Facebook opens up. Five minutes later, I forget why I turned it on in the first place. Meanwhile, the kids are wondering why I’m looking at my phone as well – or trying to snatch it out of my hands.

It’s so easy to get distracted from the people and beauty around us. It’s especially hard to be present with your kids, when we’re pulled in so many directions – sometimes literally. As someone who gets stuck in her head a lot, I’ve worked on being present and mindful quite a bit.

Here are six approaches that have helped me be more in the moment:

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My Blogging Best of 2016

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

my-blogging-best-of-2016

2016 was an interesting year, if you mean interesting in the “old curse” sense. While 2016 was the year where democracy apparently went to die (and not just because of Trump), I had a much better personal life than last year. It was damn hard, but good in so many ways.

We welcomed Little Bird into the world, watched Sprout go through a lot of transitions, and missed out on a shit-ton of sleep. (My children don’t hate sleep so much as love everything else in the world so much more, especially driving their mother and father slightly bonkers.)

Plus, my blog readership grew substantially! Thank you so much to everyone who has read and enjoyed these posts in the last year. Although it’s dinky compared to a lot of other people, I’m still proud that I’ve nearly hit 10,000 views this year.

Looking back, many of my favorite posts were the ones where I was honest and vulnerable about my struggles as a parent:

 

I also messed around with format and structure a bit, which I hope was as much fun to read as it was to write:

 

Some of my most important posts described lessons learned, especially as connected to a lot of the awful events of this year:

 

Others reminded me of some of the more off-the-beaten path places we visited in Washington D.C. and beyond:

 

And last but not least, I greatly enjoyed both doing and seeing people’s reactions to the Outdoors Family Challenge and my profiles of biking families for Bike Month!

If you want updates and more articles, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. Better luck to us all in 2017!

Guest Post on Raising Nerd: Top 5 Movie Examples of Female Scientists Who Will Inspire Your Nerds to Greatness 

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Nerds unite! At least that’s what the bloggers at Raising Nerd and I did over the past two weeks, exchanging posts on each other’s blogs. In case you missed it, Scott Beller wrote on here about how to get your kids thinking about Santa using terrible movies and STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). Two weeks ago, I wrote for Raising Nerd about five movies featuring awesome female scientists, from the women of Ghostbusters to Ellie Sattler in Jurassic Park. 

Here’s a preview of my post:

From dinosaur bones to aliens, some of the best Nerd inspiration comes from the movies. Unfortunately, female scientists and mathematicians notoriously have been under-represented on the big screen. But with an all-female Nerd team leading the Ghostbusters reboot and the story of forgotten NASA heroines finally being told in Hidden Figures starting December 25, it seems like things just might be changing for the better in Hollywood.
For more, check out the post on Raising Nerd! 

Guest Post: Extending Santa’s Magic by Appealing to the STEM/STEAM Side of Kids’ Curious Minds

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

We have our very first guest post here at We’ll Eat You Up, We Love You So! It’s courtesy of Scott Beller, who is the “Chief Word Nerd” at the blog Raising Nerd. As a completely unabashed nerd myself, I was proud to write a guest post for him last week on inspirational female scientists in movies. He’s returning the favor this week, with a blog post that ties together three of my favorite things: Mystery Science Theater 3000, science and Santa.

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My daughter giggled as she watched the gigantic blue and yellow egg hatch. The glowing blue larva emerged, surrounded by hundreds of worshipping natives on Infant Island. It was coaxed into action by two miniature, telepathic fairies in distress.

My daughter’s eyes widened.

“Is this real?” she asked, giggling some more.

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What Worked and What Didn’t For My Parenting in 2016

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Text: "What Worked and What Didn't for my Parenting in 2016 / We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So" Picture of a calendar by Freepic from FlatIcon.com

Before we can look forward to our New Years resolutions, it’s useful to reflect back, examining what worked and what didn’t this year. In the best case scenario, you know what to continue; at worst, you know what to stop doing. For us, we had such big changes this year that we had to learn a lot just to keep up.

Here’s what worked for us and totally failed this year in parenting. Hopefully, some our lessons learned will help you too!

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