Blog Posts by Parentables

While the rest of the nation is shivering in fear thanks to Shark Week, here are the real-life reasons why mothers are afraid to go near the water while on summer vacation.

1. The Pool Shut Down - On a packed, pefect summer Saturday, the lifeguard's announcement of "There's been a poop in the pool, please evacuate!" is thanks to your child's swim diaper fail. And everyone knows it.

2. The Torturous Tunes - Your pool plays exactly two CDs - Steve Miller and Jimmy Buffett. And while summery and amusing the first few plays, pretty soon that space cowboy eating his cheeseburger in paradise is driving you to margaritaville.

3. The Waxing Amnesiatic -You have worked out for months and searched for weeks for the perfect swimsuit. However, upon strutting along the crowded beach you realize you forgot one very crucial grooming step.

4. The Crisis Call - You are deplaned, unpacked and your first frozen fruity drink is poured. Too

This post was written by Michelle Duggar.

We recently went on book tour with our family on our bus. One of the neat things about this trip was that it was our youngest, Josie's, first road trip with us (and she did really good). Here are some of our favorite snack and meal ideas for road trips.

When it comes to snacks we reuse animal cracker buckets that we get from Sam's, the ones with the screw-on lids. They're airtight, and they're plastic, so they can't break, and they're big. So we usually have a bucket of animal crackers, a bucket of little whales or goldfish, and then a bucket of pretzels. We don't eat a lot of cookies and junk food. Animal crackers, Goldfish and pretzels -- that's the extent of our junk food.

We always try to take dill pickles, because that's our favorite snack. And so we will pack a lot of jars of pickles. We also love green beans, straight out of the can! We drain them, put them on a plate, and we spritz them with vinegar and put a little salt

This post was written by Sarah Fernandez. Photo Credit: Tim Hall/Getty Images

Lately I've been starting to get concerned that my son might have the tendencies of a hoarder, and I've been worried that it might go too far. We've all seen the shows where people can't walk through their living rooms because there are boxes stacked to the ceiling and there are mice in the kitchen because the dishes haven't been done in years. I wonder at what point these people developed their obsessive compulsiveness and if I really need to worry about my son or if he just attaches himself to weird objects every once in a while.

Hoarding Tendencies

The latest item he just had to keep was a large box from a multi-pack of snacks I bought at BJ's. When he asked me where the box was and I told him in the recycling bin because they were all gone, and he marched outside and pulled it out of the bin, along with a few of his sister's scribbles that he didn't think should be in there either. He

This post was written by Jeff Kart. Photo: Eugene Peretz

Breakfast, lunch, dinner. These are three times of the day that are unpredictable. As in, what do the kids want to eat? Do they like peanut butter today or not? Is chicken OK, or do they not like chicken anymore? How about corn, do they like corn? Oh, OK, but only if I de-kernel the cob. A new study says you can increase your kids' vegetable intake if you hide veggies in their food. Really? But what if you get caught? Don't we tell our kids enough fibs? And will this even work?

First, a little on the study. Then, a little story about my family.

Penn State researchers tested the hiding technique on 39 preschool kids, ages 3-6. The children were fed meals with pureed vegetables added to their "favorite foods," and ended up consuming twice as many vegetables and 11 percent fewer calories over the course of a day.

Pureed, in case you're not familiar, is what happens when you take a perfectly good vegetable and

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This post was written by Susan Wagner. Photo: Ann Taylor

July is almost over, and even though the temperature is still hovering at something that feels very much like the surface of the sun in most places, fall stock is rolling into the mall. While the idea of shopping for sweaters and wool-blend pants may make you itchy, keep this in mind: fall arrivals mean huge sales on summer clothes (because all those cute sundresses have to go!). And with who knows how many more weeks of heat wave in front of us, this is a terrific time to stock up on cool weather pieces.

But don't just run off to the mall and start buying willy nilly. If you shop smart at summer sales, you can get more and spend less -- and not wind up with Buyer's Remorse. Here are five strategies for making your money go further this summer.

1. Make a list.

Approach the sale rack the same way you would the full price rack -- with a plan. Before you hit the mall, take a hard look at what's already in your

This post was written by Julie Douglas. Photo: Le Club Symphonie Ian Nolan/Getty Images.

The other night I was giving my 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter a bath. I had gone through the rote motions of adding bubbles to the water, gathering her tub toys together and then immersing her in the foamy water to scrub her Georgia clay-stained feet clean.

Fragments of my to-do list were floating through my mind as my little water baby splashed a green toy boat, making funny little noises and prattling on about how she was a mermaid. I was on autopilot, fretting about how time was slipping through the cracks of the evening, wondering how I was going to get everything I needed to get done and grab a decent chunk of sleep in the process.

That's when my daughter caught my eye, beamed a beatific smile and rippled her boat through the water, saying, "Even my toy boat captain hits rough seas in my perfect little pond." My husband came in the bathroom to take over, and I asked our

This post was written by Katie Morton. Photo: Fuzzy Gerdes/Creative Commons

Even before I knew what American Girl was, I had a feeling of distrust and suspicion around the brand. All I'd heard was that the dolls and accessories are criminally expensive, and that little girls (and sometimes adult women) are obsessed with them.

I heard myself say, "I want to keep Alex away from that stuff."

My mother-in-law seemed puzzled by my apparent misgivings about the dolls. I couldn't really tell you why I felt a visceral circumspect attitude. Maybe because I'm assuming that anything that expensive that develops a fanatical following must be propelled by marketing genius rather than quality. Not a fact by any means. Just a knee-jerk reaction.

Then I read that a breastfeeding mom was supposedly ousted from the Fifth Avenue New York store. From Shawna Cohen of Mommyish:

This post was written by Andy Hinds.

Men have it pretty easy when it comes to family obligations, right? We're just expected to show up and be the lovable doofus who does Mom's bidding when ordered to; but when left to our own devices will let the laundry pile up to the rafters and feed the kids Top Ramen every night.

In the latest issue of Time Magazine, Ruth Davis Konigsberg tracks the reality and mythology surrounding the inequity of labor division in families, citing historical trends and sentiments, and examining some of the newest data from the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics. And her surprising conclusion is that the combined amount of paid and unpaid work men do is now almost the same as the amount women do. In other words, the amount of time the average American woman spends at her job outside the home plus the amount of time she spends doing unpaid labor at home is almost exactly the same amount of time the average man spends in these arenas.

This data is