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Friday Link Roundup
Bean hit the “why?” stage of life this week, resulting in some highly unusual conversations around here. I’ve found myself explaining why it is more cost-effective to build rail on flat land, rather...
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SF Rec’s Winter 2016 Catalog is UP
Hey fellow San Francisco, just a heads up that the SF Rec catalog (pdf) is up. Registration is on December 12th at 10am. Remember that the Randall Museum is temporarily operating out of the Mission...
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Toddler-Led Baking
Yesterday, Bean was in the final stretch of recovering from her recent leg ailment. It’s nearly impossible to keep a toddler from running, jumping, climbing, and scrambling, but I was doing my best to...
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Our Dairy, Egg, and Soy Free Thanksgiving: Toddler Edition
When you have a kid with food intolerances and allergies, birthday parties and holidays become a tight rope walk. And that is even more so when we’re talking about Thanksgiving, a holiday centered...
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How Do You Teach Kids About Gifting? (In the Age of Amazon Prime)
Last year, Dave and I managed to do all of our holiday shopping in one evening, passing a laptop around the sofa, feeding in remote shipping destinations, all while watching a movie and wearing...
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Picture Books We’ve Loved This Year: Animal Edition
I’m still sick and a walking embodiment of Sick Dumb. (Similar to Tired Dumb, but with an added layer of phlegm and annoyance.) Weeks ago, a friend asked me for children’s book recommendations...
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For Kids That Like to Throw Stuff
It is a truism of parenting that sometimes, others know your kid better than you do. You’re just in it too deep, you know it too well, and it can be tough to see what’s right in front of you when...
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The Laws of Mechanics, for the Toddler Set
(ramp, sphere, long cylinder, egg, small car, napkin ring, Tyco truck) This is one of the more fascinating (to me) trays, mostly because it has made me realize that everything I thought was...
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When the Weather Calls for a Rainy Day Hike
With the El Nino rains coming through, Bean and I have been spending an inordinate amount of time at home. Until this week, when I gave up, covered her head-to-toe in waterproof nylon and headed...
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How Our Montessori Floor Bed Experiment Went
Back long ago when I was pregnant with Bean, Dave and I read about Montessori floor beds and loved the idea. And then I googled it (as you do) and found a quiet glaring empty hole on the internet....
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Child-Height Artwork
Montessori is all about creating a calm, comfortable environment for the child to explore and that fosters independence. A part of creating this environment is hanging art at a child’s eye level,...
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My Bento Box Starter Kit
As soon as Bean started preschool, my mind was blown by how superior her lunch box options were to mine as a kid. We likely have Japan to thank, turning packaged lunch into works of bento box art. Now,...
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What Happened When We Let Our Toddler Pick Out Her Bedroom Furniture
A long time ago, I read an article in House Beautiful wherein an interior decorator asked a young girl what her favorite colors were. “Pink, orange, and leopard.” The decorator went on to decorate an...
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Our Mushroom Mini Farm
As soon as Bean opened one of her birthday presents to reveal a Far West Fungi mushroom mini farm log, the three of us were immediately hooked. Like many 2 year olds, Bean is a bit farm and...
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Is Your Baby/Kid a Tension Increaser or Tension Decreaser?
Amy on Alpha Mom brought up Ask Moxie’s Tension Increasers and Decreasers today, and oh, how I wish I knew about this distinction, say, 2 years 8 months ago. If you’re a parent, you’re likely...
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Taking Portraits With a Telephoto Lens
(Shot with a regular 50mm lens; trying not to publish recognizable photos.) There is a turning point that I’m imagining all parents go through. Babies, so oblivious, have no idea that you have a...
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On Telling Our Daughters to ‘Be Careful’
As someone who’s read aaaalll the parenting books, I thought I had this one area down: not treating my daughter differently because she’s a girl and not a boy. She has as many dolls as she has...
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A Toddler-Sized Bathroom
Soon after Bean could walk, Dave and I started thinking about how to bring the world (and her things) down closer to her. We wanted to follow the Montessori philosophy of creating an environment...
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Little Girls and Baseball, and Also: You’ve Got to Be Kidding Me
Do you know how many picture books have been published about a little girl playing baseball? Not a biography, not an animal, just a fictional story about a human girl child, playing baseball? One....
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A Simple Montessori Language Matching Game
I pulled together this phonetic language game for Bean today, and it was kinda fascinating. In the Montessori world, you would provide a tray of language objects along with sandpaper letters, and...
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