Blog Posts by Parentables

Jeremiah Duggar lends TLC a helping hand in Birmingham, Alabama, after a devastating tornado tore through the town.Besides learning the basics of homeschooling, like math and spelling, we work with our children on something called character qualities, which we think kids are never too young to begin learning about. There are 49 character-building qualities, and each quality has an opposite so that we can give our kids more of a reference point.

Read More From Michelle: Michelle on Homeschooling: How the Duggars Learn Together

For a month we focus on that quality and memorize it together. For instance, we might learn about taking initiative and its opposite, unresponsiveness. We look for ways to practice initiative creatively. Once we decided we would have secret acts of initiative and help bless other people's lives with it. We would do something that needed to be done before we were asked to do it and try to do it in secret and then see if later in the day someone noticed it.

Read More From Michelle: Michelle Duggar's No. 1 Exercise Motivator

So somebody would come along and clean up

Nadya Suleman, a.k.a. OctomomUnless you've been living under a rock or on another planet, you know who Nadya Suleman is (or at least you know her as "Octomom"). For those of you who have taken up residence under said rock, I'll give you a brief overview. Suleman earned notoriety in 2009 when she gave birth to octuplets, only the second set of eight babies to be delivered alive in the U.S. That alone caused quite a stir, but then it was revealed that she already had six children at home, all of which were conceived through IVF.

Read More: 5 Things I've Learned From My Toddler Triplets

As you can imagine, a single mother with 14 children will face quite a financial strain. In the early days of the octuplets' life, Suleman took advantage of the interest and signed on to do several TV specials, and even had a reality show set to air in England chronicling her daily life. As more details emerged about her life and what many people dubbed "selfish behavior," the offers quickly dried up and the money stopped

Selfless SurrogatePregnancy and childbirth are often pretty tough to handle one time around for your own child, much less a whole bunch of other times. North Dakota resident Meredith Olafson has repeatedly gone above and beyond to help couples become parents, having delivered 11 babies for other people (4 pregnancies were with her own children).

Read More: Orgasmic Birth: Trading Pain for Pleasure

In total, she's successfully carried and born three singles, two sets of triplets, and three pair of twins...just to be a nice person and help other would-be parents realize their dreams. Lest you think that she's laughing all the way to the bank, Meredith makes only minor money for her trouble, as compared with the exorbitant fees that some surrogates can command.

Read More: What Does the Sphincter Have to do with Childbirth?

Of course, Meredith might be a little more inclined to serve as a surrogate than some of us because she routinely experiences easy pregnancies and extremely fast deliveries. Still,

Newborn baby girlWe're just over a quarter of the way into 2012 and Nameberry has just released their list of the top 16 trending names for the year. Surprisingly, none of the names that made the list so far were names that were predicted to be frontrunners for 2012. Sadly, but not particularly surprisingly, the top names of the year have many connections to pop culture and celebrities. That being said, this data has been collected based on the number of page views that each individual name page has received in the first quarter of the year on Nameberry and is not actually a reflection of the names legally given to children in the first quarter of 2012. Some of them will be familiar and others not so much.

Read More: 20 Wacky Celebrity Baby Names

Top Names of 2012

Rue

Emmett, Everett, and Beckett

Ivy

Weston, Wesley, and West

Adele

Grayson and Gray

Aria

Cyrus

Estelle

Cato

Blythe

Now clearly, some of the origins of these names are quite

Michelle Duggar and familyRecently I attended a mom's conference called Hearts at Home, where I was able to share with other moms how Jim Bob and I manage our home life. One of the questions that came up is how Jim Bob and I spend quality time with each of our children.

One of the best decisions we made in our family early on was to be able to have a lot of time together. I think we probably spend more time together than the average family that may have two or three children just because we're home day in and day out homeschooling and doing all our things that go along with that.

Read More From Michelle: 19 Kids, 19 Different Personalities

We just sit and talk with different kids throughout the day while we're doing math or spelling tests, and sometimes we'll use this time to ask questions about how they're doing, like, "What's going on in your life? Is there anything that you want to tell Mom? Is there anything on your heart that you want me to pray for you about? Is there any secret that

Pregnancy and weight gain.As if pregnant women already don't feel self-conscious enough about the changes their bodies are going through and the weight they are gaining; now it appears that people think it is ok to criticize pregnant women about how much weight they've gained. Singer, actress, and fashion designer Jessica Simpson has been lambasted in the media lately about her weight gain during her pregnancy. Regardless of whether or not someone is a public figure, there is only one person that has the right to criticize a pregnant woman's weight gain and it's not any of us.

Read More: 3 Tips for Safe Weight Gain During Pregnancy

I have to admit that I was surprised to hear that she has another month to go until her due date because she appears to be big, but I just figured to each their own and besides that, celebrities tend to look totally different in person than they do on screen or in the pages of magazines. By the way, did you see how amazing she looked on the cover of the April issue of Elle?

A toddler on a rock wall.

For all my brave talk of vowing to put my child in danger, I confess that I get decidedly nervous whenever Lilia (now two-and-a-half) starts clambering on the banisters or hanging off the furniture.

But maybe I shouldn't worry.

Erik Trinidad over at Discovery News just posted this mind-blowing video of a 22-month old mastering a bouldering wall in pursuit of her favorite toys. (The video itself originates from a post over at Rockclimbing.com) Now, I am no rock climbing expert, so I'll refrain from commenting on the safety of this specific situation. But assuming that sensible safety precautions have been followed (it doesn't look that high to me), then just like teaching beekeeping in schools, allowing your child to take a few managed risks is only likely to be healthy in the long run.

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The Duggars' healing process.

When we realized that Jubilee was not with us we wanted to honor her little life with a memorial service because every life deserves to be recognized. We felt like she had been a part of our lives for 18 weeks and we had so rejoiced when we found out God had given us another baby, and then our family needed to grieve and to be able to take a sigh and bring closure to that when we realized what happened.

We had our dear friend play for the service, and the music was heavenly. We had a harpist (she taught our girls how to play harp), and she offered to play at Jubilee's funeral. It was just the most beautiful, honoring memorial service that I've ever seen. We played the song "I Will Carry You" and another song called "Blessing."

Read More: Michelle Duggar on the Importance of Grieving After a Miscarriage

After the service we had people come up and other mothers that had experienced a miscarriage, and they said, "Michelle, I cannot tell you how this memorial service has