Blog Posts by Parentables

This post was written by Marla Garfield. Photo: clevercupcakes/Creative Commons.

One of the first posts I did for this site was about my son's hypotonia. He has low muscle tone in his back and he cannot support weight on the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet. He's 17 months old and can roll and sit, but he still cannot transition from lying to sitting, he can't crawl, he can't stand, he can't cruise, he can't walk. He can kick and stretch and throw himself around, he has good fine motor skills, he's rejecting his straw cup because he wants to eat like the big kids, but he cannot do these other things. When gross motor delays are present, that can lead to speech delays, then developmental delays in play and communication. It can be treated with therapy. Lots and lots of therapy. He has improved, but slowly.

There are worse problems. But it's terrifying.

My husband, Josh, and I haven't buried our heads in the sand. On the contrary, Stefen has been seeing a

This post was written by Jessica McFadden. Photo credit: iStock Photography

A few months after a woman has had a baby is usually not a gal's hottest time. She is sleep deprived, has loose skin and extra pounds hanging around her midsection, and if she is nursing she is serving as a walking milk truck. But at least she still has that thick, lustrous hair leftover from pregnancy, right?

Wrong. In fact, her hair very likely is falling out...sometimes in clumps.

Is this a dirty trick of Mother Nature? A sick joke? The side effect of all those salads you're consuming to slim down to your pre-pregnancy dress size, or those deliciously deserved glasses of wine after baby finally goes to sleep?

Nope, it's totally normal. Technically, your hair is just going back to its normal, pre-pregnancy state. During pregnancy the extra estrogen in your system is responsible for less strands ending up in your brush and down the shower drain. The average non-pregnant woman loses about

Our family's new favorite homemade pizza. Post and photo by Amy Suardi.

We all know that preparing our own food can do wonders for a sagging bank account. But not everyone feels the love.

Even though I usually don't mind whipping up dinner, I have plenty of moments when I long to toss the kids in the car and head out for Mexican. Our tight budget makes me wait until that craving passes; then I pull up my bootstraps and get to the kitchen.

Not everybody has the financial constraints we do, but most people wouldn't mind reining things in. Here are three ways to love your night in:

After watching your favorite cooking show, print out the recipe to your favorite dish and write the ingredients on your shopping list. When it's time to chow down, ask everyone to rate it: either thumbs up or thumbs down, or one to five stars. If your creation makes the cut, the recipe gets added to your family's favorites.

The Chow section of Parentables is a

Post and photo by: John Cave Osborne

Yesterday was a red-letter day for my nine-year-old daughter, as it was the first day in her entire life that she could legitimately say she was more technologically advanced than I. And I'm blaming her school. After all, they're the ones who required that I buy her an iPad, a toy I've yet to even buy myself. And I'm not so sure how I feel about it.

I mean, on the one hand, I suppose I'm okay with it - at least from a conceptual standpoint.

After all, my daughter attends a private school, and in my opinion, a private school can ask anything they want of their student body. No one's holding a gun to the parents' heads forcing them to enroll their children there. What's more, I attended that school back in the day, so I know firsthand what a great place it is - I believe in it.

Besides, I think every single school, public or private, should do whatever it can to deliver the best education possible to its students. And it's

This post was written by Susan Wagner. Photo: Banana Republic

My summer uniform is a slim t-shirt and a knee-length skirt and thong sandals. I wear some version of this outfit to work, to run errands and to hang out with my kids. It's cool and comfortable and easy.

It's also a little more dressed up than the shorts-and-tee option most moms in my neighborhood are opting for. Which is fine with me.

Once upon a time -- not so long ago, actually -- women wore dresses all the time. And then the sexual revolution came along and we grabbed the opportunity to wear pants -- and shorts! -- just like the men, and the everyday dress fell out of favor. Which is too bad, really, because dresses and skirts are so easy to wear.

These days, casual summer wear means shorts, especially for busy moms. Why fuss with a skirt or dress when you can toss on a pair of cutoffs? After all, shorts are so much easier!

Or are they?

Shorts are hard to wear -- much harder than a skirt.

This post was written by Amy Vernon. Photo credit: Steven Puetzer/Getty Images.

It came out of the blue one quiet Saturday at home.

"F*&^" my older son said when something happened on the computer where he was sitting, playing a game on NickJr.com.

My husband and I gasped, looked at each other and froze in our seats.

It wasn't that we were so scandalized by the word. We have both, after all, said worse in our lives, though we virtually never have around the boys.

Rather, our brains were racing, as we tried to figure out how to make it clear to him that he was not to say this word again, yet not make it so enticing that he'd want to use it just to make us or someone else angry at a particularly mischevious moment.

We also, I suppose, were trying to figure out which of us may have been the offender who slipped up and inadvertently taught our son, who was 5, the dreaded "F-curse."

I flashed back to my own first grade experience when a boy named Rodney

This post was written by Michelle Duggar. Photo: Darwin Wiggett/Getty Images.

In June and July our family got on our bus for an 11-city road trip to promote our book, "A Love that Multiplies." It was a great opportunity for us to fit in some family sightseeing and field trips together. And it was really great for homeschooling since the kids were able to learn more about the history of the different places we visited.

When we were in New York we were able to go to the Bowery Mission, one of the oldest missions in New York and in the United States, where we served food and helped cleaned up. That was a real highlight. The children really enjoyed getting to go there and sing and then visit with the homeless people there.

And they really enjoyed visiting with a volunteer who had been homeless 30 years ago. When he was homeless he actually ended up at the Bowery Mission himself. Now he's serving and helping there, and has just a really neat testimony of how he got back

Post and photo by Sarah Fernandez.

According to the USDA, in 2011 it should cost me $523.70 per month to feed my family of two adults and two children ages two and five a nutritious diet on a thrifty budget. To feed the same family on a low-cost plan would cost $667.20; a moderate-cost plan would cost $823.60; and a liberal plan would cost $1,018.80.

I have a feeling that a lot of people out there gasped when they read that thrifty number because they are easily spending over $1,000 per month on groceries. I see the other people in the grocery store whose carts are piled so high that just the slightest wrong move could mean an aisle blocking disaster. I would say that I fall closer to the thrifty budget of $523.70, but my guess is that my family eats just as much and just as high quality food (I often buy organic) as the family who spends more than double what we do. Oh, and I have a dog to feed and a child in diapers that factor into my number as well. Here are a few of my