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    Kahlil Gibran: On Children


    Your children are not your children.
    They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
    They come through you but not from you,
    And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
    For they have their own thoughts.
    You may house their bodies but not their souls,
    For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
    which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
    You may strive to be like them,
    but seek not to make them like you.
    For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which … Read More

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    Book Club

    I’m going to a parenting book club this month, and the book is Easy to Love, Difficult to Discipline: The 7 Basic Skills for Turning Conflict into Cooperation. For any of you who live in Austin and want to join, you can find the information here.

    Here’s the description of the book:
    Have you ever opened your mouth to discipline your child, and your parents’ nastiest words tumble out? In an era when most parenting books focus on the child, this book supports parents in dealing more positively with themselves as well as their toddler–to–school–age children, offering specific tools to stop policing and pleading with kids and start

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    Meal Planning

    Last week was a really rough week for the Cotner-Bradford family in the kitchen. Basically, we never went grocery shopping (although Matt did pick up a few items at one point), so we ate out every night. Since I’ve been thinking that I need to eat more moderately, my overwhelming impulse was to eat junk food all week, before I officially started eating healthy food (terrible personal philosophy, I know!). We literally had veggie burgers, french fries, and milkshakes more than once. Since Henry has been eating everything we eat (from about eight-months on), I feel twice as bad about eating unhealthy foods because now I’m not only corrupting my
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