Blog Posts by Parentables

Numbers!I like to think about budgeting as goal-setting, not limit-setting. A budget helps us align our day-to-day actions with our long-term hopes and dreams. It's about living purposefully, not carelessly. A budget is a plan, which can be adjusted as we go along, that helps move us toward the life we really want.

Read More: Creating a Budget in 3 Easy Steps | Step One: Track Your Spending

Before we start budgeting it's essential to figure out where our money is going, and what our priorities are. I suggest about three months of tracking spending (step one) to get a good idea of what a year of spending might look like. In the meantime, it's important to think about, talk about, and write down what we really want in life: defining our dreams (step two).

For some reason, what we do and what we really want usually don't line up. Maybe we're spending hundreds of dollars on eating out, yet we're feeling stressed because we have no savings to pay for emergency house

ROADTRIP!Like many families across the country, this Labor Day Weekend, my boys and I took a road trip. Preparation for a road trip with children is more involved than the college day journeys of the past. Where my husband and I once required well thought out mix-tapes and a bag of Ruffles, now our highway adventures depend upon Richard Scarry books, Pirate Booty, juice boxes, and Laurie Berkner albums. (And that's just pulling out of the driveway).

Read More: 5 Ways to Manage Illness on the Road

When all's said and done, however, once we're buckled up for safety, I still contend that there's little else more satisfying than a wind-in-your-hair road trip. That is, if your kid isn't carsick.

Ah, yes. There was the time he vomited all over his adorable seersucker suit en route to a family party. (Ever toss a pint-sized lavender necktie out of the window of a moving vehicle?) He showed up to the party in a bottom-of-the-diaper-bag, granola bar-crusted t-shirt. And let us not forget the

Crafty dolphins.My six-year-old daughter, Maia, is addicted to craft kits. Whenever we go into Michael's or AC Moore, she heads straight to the aisle with make-it-yourself jewelry and pottery.

Read More: Get Your Kids' Art Off the Fridge and into Your Decor

A friend of ours is a Martha Stewart craft maven. She has plastic drawers filled with different types of yarn, ribbon, paint and glitter. Every time my daughter plays in their crafting room, she comes home with a magnificent homemade creation.

Read More: Create an Easy DIY Color Wheel for Art Supply Organization

When kids come to our house, we dig into messy art projects (on the table in the backyard), but I am the opposite of a craft maven. I believe in making things work no matter what they look like - hey, the bird still ate the peanut butter from the birdhouse even though it looked more like a lean-to. I glop on paint, wipe off smudges with my hands, and pay zero attention to detail. Maia, however, is more of a perfectionist (or

Jana Duggar plays the harp.Music is one of those things in life that lifts you up. Our family listens to it all the time -- we usually have a CD playing or music playing over the intercom system in the house. We love hymns. We love classical music, and some of the kids listen to Christian bluegrass music, so there's always something playing in the house.

Read More: Why Michelle Duggar Has a 4 a.m. Open Door Policy

I love harp music, and I have a favorite CD called Peace Be Still that I always play every chance I get. It's great to help calm the little ones down. If they're being rowdy or energetic I can put that on and have them all sit down and be still for a little bit.

Read More: Michelle Duggar on How She Embarrasses Her Teens

The kitchen counter is full of CDs, particularly instrumental Christian gospel music. We sit at the table during memory lane each weekday and we work through through memorizing a lot of hymns together as a family. It's just very melodious music, and sometimes it's and

mmm...sleepy.Try as I might, I have never been able to understand little kids' aversion to napping. When Casey and Cole were young, I did the thing a lot of parents do; I lay down with them. I loved it too, so, as you can imagine, it was sad day for me when their routine naps went away.

Read More: How A Sleep-Deprived New Mom Can Feel Perfectly Rested Everyday

Couldn't we all use a little catnap in the middle of the day? Before you answer, ask yourself this: how much sleep do you routinely get each night? According to the National Sleep Foundation, the average adult needs between 7 and 9 hours but gets just over 6 1/2 each night. If you add that up over the course of the workweek, you can see where we're shortchanging ourselves.

Read More: Insomnia Is the Curse of Mothers: My Cure for Sleeplessness

Enter the power nap. Luckily it's in vogue again to catch 40 winks in the middle of the day (though I would argue for me, it never went out of style). Employers are warming to the idea

Open window.Confession: The other day I tried to climb through a window to get into yoga class. After a rough afternoon with the kids, I arrived five minutes late to find the studio door locked, which was strange since people often come in late. Next to the door was a big window, wide open, without a screen. So I casually slung my leg over to see if I could reach the wooden bench below. Just then, the police officer (yes, it's true) who owns the yoga studio appeared. It turns out I was early! He laughed at me. The class was at 5:30, not 5 p.m.

Read More: Crazy Things to Do Before You Die

I fled the scene and went to browse in a nearby drugstore, feeling so embarrassed that I almost didn't go back for class. Was I really desperate to do yoga? I don't even enjoy it that much.

But here's the thing, motherhood makes you crazy. And even among friends, I sense reticence to admit it. We want to seem composed, on top of things, put together like supermoms, not crazy people climbing in

Teach tolerance.Schools have a lot of leeway when they come up with policies. They can regulate the clothes by suggesting dress codes and behavior by making rules against fighting and bad language, but this seems a bit much: Grand Island Public Schools administrators have asked a three-year-old deaf boy to change his signing name.

Read More: The Man Behind the Bullied Bus Monitor's Retirement Fund Has More Good Deeds up his Sleeve

The boy's name is Hunter Spanjer -- and the sign for his first name looks like a gun. The school claims that the way Hunter signs his name violates the policy aganst instruments that look like weapons -- but Hunter's name is straight out of S.E.E., which stands for Signing Exact English, so it's not a symbol his parents made up out of thin air. So why are teachers are no longer concerned with teaching tolerance?

Read More: 7 Things Parents Should Discuss With Their Children And Three They Absolutely Should Not

Hunter is a three-year-old with special needs;

You say tomato, I say heirloom tom-AH-to."Kicking and screaming" is my answer when my city friends gasp and clarify, "You moved to the suburbs?"

When I close my eyes and picture myself in twenty years, I picture myself with a fresh haircut, slightly grey, donning uber-cool reading glasses hung from a beaded chain around my neck, walking through the bustle of Manhattan on my way to a play reading where they serve chilled Chardonnay in the lobby. But for now, I drive carpool in a crossover vehicle in suburban New Jersey and ensure that my elderly diabetic dog gets his insulin shots twice daily and that my children eat something green sometimes - and, the truth is, I'm happy. Despite all that kicking and screaming, I like living in a house. Plus, there are bonuses to a suburban life that I'd never considered.

Read More: Weird Colorful Vegetables to Grow With Your Kids

Like heirloom tomatoes grown from my kitchen trash can.

Stop. Ew. Gross. I know. But ... hang on. Hear me out.

When we transitioned from