Mother’s Day is this weekend! Here are my top 10 books to celebrate mothers. It’s not too late to go get at least one of these from your local public library and read it in honor of all the mothers in your life.
The one shown above is from my childhood. I remember my mother reading it to me and I have passed down the tradition by reading it to my children. I just love it!!! It’s such a sweet classic. If you haven’t read it, you are missing out!
This one is a sweet tale about a girl who loses a home in a fire and saves money to buy a comfortable chair for her mother.
This one is a cute story about love that transcends language and generation barriers.
When my Bradley childbirth class teacher found out I was having a baby girl, she gave me the above book. I just love it! It’s full of everything a little girl says she will do differently when she grows up and has a daughter. It just brings a smile to my face every time I read it. Delightful!
Another classic from my childhood by P.D. Eastman. So fun!
This one is one to read aloud to your child in preparation for some kind of separation between the two of you. The little action the mom and child raccoon do in the story may prove to become a tradition for you and any sensitive child who has a hard time transitioning to a new activity. Absolutely charming!
Another classic from before I was even born, by the inimitable Robert McCloskey. It even won the Caldecott Medal.
Another one by the same celebrated author as above. You are missing out if you haven’t read any of his books!
Written by a real-life mother, Joanna Gaines, and her children, this one shows the power of gardening. After reading it you will want to get outside and plant something!
This one is a beautiful tribute to the unconditional love of a mother.
This one shows the unconditional love of a daughter for her mother, a reverse “mother-bear chemistry” which pushes through obstacles. I just love it!
A cute book about a mother bear and her cub! Perfect for younger ones who love to look at baby animals.
Who hasn’t sometimes wondered what life would be like if you had a different mother? This one shows a girl who decides to interview other women to be her mother and finds out that her true mother is the best one after all.
There you have it! A baker’s dozen of books for Mother’s Day. If you want more ideas of books about mothers or other springtime themes, check my list over here on my other site.
If you want some ideas for board games to play and/or get for your mother, go here.
Shakespeare and his plays have been on my mind a LOT lately. That’s because my youngest child just performed as Berowne in Love Labour’s Lost, one of the Bard’s many plays. He did a fabulous job! He had this billowy cape to add dramatic flair to his costume. It’s so fun to think he is following in his older siblings’ footsteps. Each of them has performed in at least two years of Shakespeare plays with whatever homeschool co-op we belonged to at the time. One of his big brothers played the same role, Berowne, 9 years ago. This is probably our last year doing a Shakespeare play as part of a co-op so we are feeling bittersweet. Of course, we can always read and watch his plays and learn the memorable lines that are so cleverly rendered. I’d love to get the book I heard about in this podcast by Sarah Mackenzie about teaching Shakespeare over here.
With Shakespeare on my mind, it’s so cool that I randomly found this video below from Scripture Central about Shakespeare. Did you know that Shakespeare and the Book of Mormon share the same literary device? Watch below to find out what it is! It features Jack Welch as one of my interviewees. For more of Jack’s story, go here.
Image Credit: Scripture Central/Book of Mormon Central
It’s just so amazing that God knew that the Book of Mormon, as Another Testament of Jesus Christ, is to go forth to all people, so He inspired its authors to use a literary device, chiasmus, that will translate into any language and retain its poetic beauty. I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God and as Joseph Smith said, “a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.” (See the introduction to the Book of Mormon.) I have been blessed so much by living by its principles, including having the Holy Ghost in my life to guide me. This book gives me so much peace and joy, I am so grateful for it. I testify that it’s truly the word of God.
I recently spent two weeks in Texas, so the Lone Star State is on my mind. I found the book pictured above for sale at a gift shop in the Fort Worth Stockyards. Like any thrifty homeschool mom, I didn’t buy it, rather, I took a picture of it with my phone, and then searched for it at my local library on my phone. The library had it listed! Score! I put it on hold, and as soon as I got home, I was able to pick it up! I’ve been enjoying it for Morning Basket with my son. We read a double-page spread every day. (More about Morning Basket here.)
This book is a great introduction to the magical, wonderful, wide world of Texas. The book has the following:
-double-page spreads about the bigger cities in TX: Austin, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, Fort Worth, and Dallas
-double-page spreads about the following themes: natural wonders, flora, fauna, regions, inventions made in TX, a historical timeline, festivals, man-made attractions, sports, history makers, quick stats and facts, and weird things.
By reading these pages, you will learn so many fascinating things about Texas!
For example, did you know the following Texas related facts?
-A cave just outside San Antonio has the world’s largest bat colony.
-TX is home to the least populated county in the United States, Loving County, with fewer than 100 people.
-King Ranch’s in TX is the largest ranch in the US, at over 1200 miles, bigger than Rhode Island!
-that TX is home to so many cool inventions, like Southwest Airlines, the snow cone, the microchip, Compaq, Computers, Dell computers, laser tag, and 3-D printing, for starters!
-a stretch of highway in TX has the highest speed limit, that of 85 mph, between Austin and San Antonio.
-Texas is the birthplace of Bluebell ice cream, Dr. Pepper, Whataburger, the first dance drill team, the herkie jump, the modern pom pom, the Heisman trophy, and Fritos, among many other things.
This book tells you all about those things plus many more fun facts! I highly recommend it with 5 out of 5 stars! So go get it from your library today! (If it doesn’t have it, ask the librarians to purchase it.)
(On my trip I had fun listening to the theme song of Dallas as my son and I zoomed along the interstate seeing the Dallas skyline. It totally takes me back to my childhood. We weren’t allowed to watch the show, and I don’t recommend it, but the song is so epic. Listen below. It reminds me of my childhood life of the 1980s.)
This man’s story is so amazing! His name is David Boice. He went on a search for the true church of Jesus Christ by investigating 52 churches in 52 weeks. Right before he went to visit different church congregations of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he saw cardinal birds. He also saw one right before he decided to read the Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus Christ. Then he visited the Manti Temple Open House and saw a cardinal bird in a painting in one of the rooms. Wow! These are God winks, as in winks from God telling you he’s there and loves you and helping you on your path for truth and joy. I love his story! I love the red cardinal bird, just because it’s so red and beautiful and I don’t see it very often since it’s found more prevalently in the east, and I live in the west. Just this spring for our drawing time during one of our homeschooling mornings my son and I sketched it one day. It is definitely one of God’s most beautiful creatures.
I just love that the red cardinal bird is involved in David’s story. He explains that they are rare for him to see in his home state of Wisconsin as well. Nevertheless, he saw five in two days. Then he went to Utah and saw one on a painting in the Manti Temple. Below are two videos he did. The first video tells his conversion story and the second talks specifically about his recent baptism. A cardinal appears again in that story! I love that he shares a scripture from the Book of Mormon in the second video, which is 1 Nephi 8:24, “And it came to pass that I beheld others pressing forward, and they came forth and caught hold of the end of the rod of iron; and they did press forward through the mist of darkness, to the rod of iron, even until they did come forth and partake of the fruit of the tree.” He explains in his conversion story just below that he felt the fruit of God’s love as he visited the churches that believe in the Book of Mormon. This is such a beautiful story!
This past week for my Come Follow Christ study I read King Benjamin’s sermon in the Book of Mormon Another Testament of Jesus Christ, in Mosiah 1-3. Ever since I first read this sermon when I was 12 years old, it has been one of my favorite parts of the Book of Mormon. I love that King Benjamin talks about how important it is as a leader to work alongside the people being led. This has been a fundamental teaching to me to follow as a parent.
This sermon has so many goodies in it! I love Jared Halverson’s explanation of the part in the sermon from Mosiah 1-3 about being indebted to God. He says that this is relational grace. This is the grace I have been learning about for years, ever since one of my neighbors told me that her son had written a book about relational grace. Watch the video below to hear it all! It’s so fabulous!
Brother Halverson explains that when you read these verses you realize that no matter how much work, how much thanks we give God, we are always in His debt, because He blesses us even more, even after we “pay him back” with thanks and praise. It’s like we have a ledger of debts and credits, and we come out still in debt to God.
The above images show the specific verses that he refers to. Based on those verses, Brother Halverson made this chart:
Looking at the above chart of our ledger of debits vs. credits with God, it could be easy to get discouraged, thinking, we will always be in debt to God.
Thankfully, as Brother Halverson explains in the video, we have a second ledger that shows that God is ok with our indebtedness. We can’t ever earn our salvation. He’s OK with giving to us and our “job” is to be OK with all His gifts and not feel we are in debt.
He doesn’t want us to think we earn salvation. He wants us to surrender to His grace and love, to gratefully accept His gifts of love, most especially the incomparable gift of His Son Jesus Christ’s atoning grace. He wants us to feel motivated to love Him. “I am not earning anything, I am learning everything,” as Jared said in the video. He likens it to the character of Daniel in the movie Karate Kid, and Daniel’s relationship to Mr. Miyagi, his mentor. You will have to watch the video to learn more!
I just finished a stint as “Granny Nanny” with my third-born grandchild who was born last month. I so enjoyed all the new baby vibes! The visit was also a reminder of what homeschooling mom Jamie C. Martin says, that newborn babies are the world’s worst roommates.
Ah, yes, so many memories of early mothering days with my newborns came flooding back to me during my stay. Chief among them was the memory of wishing that my babies came with a switch to turn them on and off at my will. What new parent hasn’t wished that a baby would eat and cry when it’s only convenient? Oh, how I remember being in the bathtub soaking up the relaxing hot water when I heard my firstborn, less than a week old, crying as he woke up in the other room. In that moment, the enormity of the reality of motherhood finally sunk in as I realized, “Noooo! He can’t already be awake! I’m not done with my bath. This is the end of my freedom! I can no longer take a bath as long as I want to!”
During my Granny Nanny visit, the new dad to my new grandbaby, my second-born son, gave me great thanks for taking care of him and being his mom. Now that he is experiencing the end of his freedom, he sees how much I sacrificed. It’s so sweet to hear the gratitude! As I saw him interacting so lovingly with his new son, I definitely felt it was a “paycheck for mama” moment.
I showed the same son this video below to share Dr. Harvey Karp’s “5 Ss” from his book, The Happiest Baby on the Block. This is the closest thing to having an on/off switch for a baby, to turn off crying and get the baby to sleep. Or a magic wand for a fussy baby.
I first heard about Dr. Karp at a La Leche League International Conference. His 5 Ss have since become revered Treasured Words of Wisdom for me, almost right up there with the Holy Word of Scripture.
I followed the Dr. Sears Attachment Parenting practice of nursing in bed and co-sleeping with all my children, having found Dr. Sears’ The Baby Book when I was pregnant with my firstborn at the University of Utah bookstore. I never mastered the skill of nursing in bed, advocated in the book, with my firstborn but got it right with all the others. After I mastered that skill, I eventually found out that sometimes, nursing in bed means that the baby won’t sleep if not nursing, or if mom is not right next to her after the mom leaves the bed. Nursing in bed worked well with Baby #2 and #3, but with Baby #4, he didn’t sleep as well with that trusty trick.
I’m all for AP, having not only perfected nursing lying down, but having learned to nurse in a sling, and/or wearing the baby in a sling, while doing dishes, fixing food, and folding laundry, amongst other business. Even I, however, one of Dr. Sears’ biggest fangirls (I have heard him speak in person and bought/read a lot of his books), have my limits for AP and multi-tasking. There are just some activities/events that you want to do while the baby sleeps for a good chunk of time, detached from the breast!
I used the 5 Ss on my last 3 babies. Doing so gave me a lot more sleep while still preserving the breastfeeding relationship and without tears. Dr Karp’s book featuring the 5s, shown above, combined with Elizabeth Pantley’s book, The No-Cry Sleep Solution, made mothering those last three babies a breeze. The 5 Ss really work! If the baby is hungry, the S of sucking on the breast or bottle allows the baby to calm down and get fed. If the baby is already fed and burped, and tired, then the other 5 Ss, including nonnutritive sucking on breast or pacifier, work to help the baby drift off to sleep. If the baby is already calm, then great, let the baby be quietly alert. You can’t force the baby to sleep with the 5 Ss if he’s not tired. At least the baby is calm/happy. Thank goodness babies have a short wake/sleep cycle. Eventually he will get tired. I noticed after having 7 babies that babies younger than three months tend to get tired after being awake from 2-3 hours, and that they could sleep at least a 5 hour stretch from birth during the night, with me using the 5 Ss. I learned that after the baby has been awake 2-3 hours and shows signs of tiredness (yawning and droopy eyelids) the 5 Ss will work to get him to sleep, and keep him asleep longer, about 2 hours, than if you hadn’t used Dr. Karp’s method.
What I learned from Elizabeth Pantley’s book The No-Cry Sleep Solution is the golden rule of putting baby to sleep which is this: Put baby to sleep when he is sleep-y not sleep-ing. In other words, don’t wait until he is completely zonked. Don’t let him fall asleep at the breast while you are reading, see him fall alseep, and then keep reading 5 more chapters of Pride and Prejudice with him attached to your nipple. As soon as he stops nursing actively at the breast, and his eyes are closed or fluttering open and shut, detach from the breast and put him where you want him to sleep. Let him drift off to complete sleep while in the place you want him to sleep for the duration of sleep. Then if/when he wakes up in bed he won’t be startled by the change of the environment. If he falls completely asleep knowing he’s in a bed/crib/bassinett/car seat, then when he wakes up slightly, he’ll remember, “Oh yeah, this is where I fell asleep, everything’s OK, I can fall back to sleep.” You will probably buy at least 30 more minutes of sleep this way.
When you are a new parent, sleep is as precious as gold! Practice these tips and everyone will get more sleep! Your time with your newborn will be sweet indeed.
You young moms have it soooo easy! I used to use a blow-dryer for white noise, for “shushing” one of the Ss, back in the pre-tech dinosaur days. I even burned one out after using it with two babies 18-months apart. I would run the blow dryer and rock the baby in the car seat, with the baby all swaddled up in a blanket. No need for blow dryers now. Now you can just pull up white noise in YouTube.
There’s even this thing called a Snoo that combines all the 5 Ss in one package. It’s a bassinet with a built-in straitjacket, er swaddling thing, that rocks and plays shushing noise. For only $1695! My daughter had one with her first baby. I was so envious, I just thought, wow, what I would have given for one of these. This is so much better than using a car seat (to rock the baby in), a blanket, and a blow dryer. It’s expensive but totally worth it if you can spring for it. If you plan on having a lot of children, I consider it a wise investment, especially for those first three months when new babies make a lot of weird noises as unintentionally rude roommates, which makes it harder to share sleep right next to each other the whole night through. The Snoo can fit right up against a bed, making it easy for mom to access the baby for nighttime nursing in bed, allowing her to put the baby back in the Snoo when done nursing.
Please know there is help for getting through nights with new babies without tears on the part of the baby or the adults. I hope these tips helps someone out there. May you all get more sleep in those early days with your precious new miracle!
It’s spring! Besides playing outside, what better way to celebrate a new season than to read picture books (except maybe playing nature-themed board games, shown over here). I present to you my top 12 favorite spring-themed picture books. These books capture the best of spring (besides Easter, those books are over here): including gardens, seeds, flowers, rain, and a fresh, new start.
The above book is just so beautiful and inspiring! I love that it shows a family working together to plant a garden, the work involved, and the wonder that comes with a growing garden. It’s based on the real-life story of the family of Chip and Joanna Gaines. Their Magnolia Farms garden all started with a indoor house plant, a fern. The whole family learned a lesson when it died, then applied that lesson to growing a successful outdoor garden.
This book is so adorable! I just love it when authors come up with whimsical stories like this. I review it over here.
This book above is so enchanting and inspiring! It just makes me want to go learn everything I can about George Washington Carver. He’s so fascinating! An amazing story of how childhood interests continue into adulthood.
I love the vintage 1950s drawings in this book. Yes, let’s bring back trees as fun things to play with for our screen-saturated children. A tree is sooo nice!
Image Credit: amazon.com
This book shows the lovely wildness of being outdoors. Let’s go fly a kite and run on the beach! Who knows, maybe the author/illustrator are portraying summer, but I’m so excited about spring I’ll claim it for now.
This book somehow helps you appreciate doing hard stuff, like going to an unusual school, even when it rains, which tends to happen a lot during spring.
It’s just fun to enjoy simple natural things, like the little girl in this book does with rocks, which can be found easily in the spring.
This book, showing a true story, doesn’t happen all in spring but it shows the magic of symbolic “springs” in our lives when we start over. You can read my review over here.
The little girl in this story plants a garden with her mom and enjoys the fruits of her labors.
I just love the illustrations in this book! It tells of all the things that happen in spring.
What happens to seeds in the spring? How do they get where they can sprout and grow? This book tells us all about them.
Oh my! I have to get this book to add to my Little Golden Book collection. It’s a picture book version of the classic story The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. It’s a magical story of friendship, kindness, and belief in possibilities, all symbolized by spring.
This book shows how different scientists explored nature as children. It is great for getting kiddos to get out and study the simple natural wonders in their neighborhood. That is more easy to do now that it is spring right? I love Snowflake Bentley but personally I’d rather go out to the wild outdoors without bundling up in the freezing weather to enjoy nature. I love that this book shows 9 different real scientists explored nature as curious children, collecting specimens to show a love of learning. Some of these people it shows are George Washington Carver, Mary Annig, and Jane Goodall. I really don’t know how the author knows exactly what these people did as children. Here’s a video below of the book being read aloud. The complete list of scientists is over here on the publisher’s page. Click on the “reviews and media” tab. It also has a list of how to treat nature respectfully when building a collection of specimens.
Want more spring-themed titles? Go here to get a free ebook full of titles you can request from your public library from their regular collection or through inter-library loan.
This week’s picture book is Seed School Growing Up Amazing by Jean Holub, illustrated by Sakshi Mangal. This book is so adorable! It shows that seeds come in all shapes and sizes, just like people do. In this story, a little seed with a spiky cap goes to school to learn what he needs to grow. He learns that he needs sunshine, air, soil, and water. But then he notices that he’s not growing like the other seeds. So what does he do? Read the book to find out!
If you want some other spring titles, please go here to my other website. Enjoy! Remember a picture book a day, even if you are grown up, keeps the blues away!
If you can’t find the book at your local public library, you are blessed by the magic of YouTube. Watch below!
Have you heard? A new movie about homeopathy to introduce this powerful medicine is coming this weekend, screening for the first time! You can go here to learn more about how to watch it. Basically, you pay $25 and have a window of time to watch it online through April 23. Gather your friends and have a watch party! When you purchse the pass to watch it, say you learned about it from AFHC, Americans for Homeopathy Choice, which is how I heard about it. That way the organization will get more recognition for its work.
I’m so excited about this! I enjoyed the movie/documentary a few years ago, Magic Pills, and now we have a new one.
Here are some interviews, below, with Kim Elia and the team behind the movie.
If you want some of my stories about healing with homeopathy, go here about healing from a bee sting, here about bed bug bites. and here about the flu.
If you want to learn about homeopathy with a course, round up 5 of your friends and I will facilitate the Homeopathy for Moms Book club for your group.
If you want a free ebook to learn the basics of homeopathy, go here.
Homeopathy is so magic! Once you learn about it and then practice it, and witness its powerful healing, you will almost want to be sick just so you can see more magic at work!
Jacob 5 is all about the Allegory of the Olive Tree, which is all so interesting as a sweeping history/prophecy of the world. You can see a great diagram of it all below. See video above to hear all of his commentary.
Even though that is all so good, I especially loved even more what Jared had to say about the story of Sherem and Jacob in Jacob 7. Jared points out how prideful that Sherem was in saying that he knew that there could be no Christ, and then how he also told Jacob that there was no way Jacob could know that there is a God. Jared explains how prideful that is, to say, I can know that there is no God, but you can’t know that there is a God. So, he’s claiming that his epistemology, his method of gaining knowledge, is superior to Jacob’s epistemology. Jared says that at least with agnosticism, there’s humility, but atheism is full of pride. It reminds me of an old Trim Healthy Mama podcast where Danny says basically the same thing. Watch the video below around the 48 minute mark to hear those comments from Jared. I can’t remember which THM podcast it was where I heard Danny say the same thing. If I eventually find it I will put it here. It’s interesting how Jared quotes the Catholic writer Flannery O’Connor who said that for someone to be an atheist they have to know everything there is to know, which is impossible.
Tree of Life Mothering 