bring joy

creating a literacy rich home–part 3: reading to babies when to start? + 10 baby book essentials

literacy rich home

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Part 3 of our 10 part series on creating a literacy rich home.

The answer: start right away. You can start reading to your baby as soon as they are born (in fact you should!).

Why?

Babies are smart.

Babies love to be read to.

Babies can learn to love books.

Babies love to be close to you & hear your voice.

Babies like books that are simple, colorful, & high contrast.

Start with a few minutes at a time & work your way up to longer. Most babies before 12 months have attention spans that will only last a minute or two at a time. That’s normal!
Take time to read to your baby any chance you can get. When they wake up, before naptime, during playtime. Short, frequent & repeated exposure is the way to go with babies.
Speaking in a high pitched...

The other half of this blog

marriage, blogging

You always hear my voice, read my thoughts.

But just as important to is the voice you never hear–Joseph’s.

Joseph & I are going on ten, years this summer. If you think we look young for being married ten years, you are right.

We got married young, we started having kids young. So yes, we are still rather young for having five children & ten years of marriage.

Many people ask, how do you do it all?

I will tell you.

I don’t text (I don’t even have a smart phone). If people want to talk to me, they call or email, or hey! talk to me in person (I know, I’m living in the stone age).

My kids do chores & they clean as much as I do. In fact, hopefully more. So I spend very little of my days cleaning.

I often multi-task with exercise & housecleaning. For example, I like to take the kids for...

5 tips for frugal juicing + cucumber romaine carrot juice

frugal life, breakfast, cleansing

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As nice as all of these are, the one invention of the 20th century, the one that impacts my life the most–or at least, I’d put it up there in my top three, along with modern sanitation & air conditioning (especially now that I live in south Texas!)–would be my blender. Specifically my Blendtec (why I love my Blendtec, here).

Why?

You know how much produce I can pack into my diet each day because I have a blender? I like to drink at least a quart (that’s four cups) of smoothie every day. In 4 cups, I can pack a ton of greens, much more than I have time to eat (though you know I still love salads!).

It saves me so much time (at least one meal a day comes from my blender) and makes my role as nutrient deliverer to my children so much easier.

The...