We’ve been following the Montessori approach to toilet learning for quite some time now. At 26 months, Henry pretty much only wears thick cotton underwear (the ones from Hannah Anderson are better about containing urine, but we now use the ones from Target because they are less expensive and not so tight). He just recently told us for the first time that he needed to pee in the toilet. Mainly, we ask him to use the toilet every 1.5-2 hours, and that strategy works to keep him mostly accident-free. 

When we leave the house, we ask him to pee right before we get in the car. We usually

I often marvel at what an amazing historical period we’re living in. Any time I have the inkling of an idea, I can google it and read all about how it’s already been implemented at least 25 times with step-by-step tutorials and can then pin images left and right to remind myself of the project I want to undertake.

But while having that kind of technology at our fingertips makes it easier to undertake new projects, it simultaneously provides a whole new level of procrastination–“productive procrastination,” if you will. It’s so easy to feel like all that reading and pinning is productive work, but really, at the end of the

I have to insert a caveat before we begin and say that I’ve never read anything about how to help children deal with death. This post is based on my general parenting philosophy applied to death. 

The other day, I came home from work and found a dead bird lying just beyond the door to the backyard. My immediate instinct was to pick it up with plastic bags, wrap it up tightly, and throw it away. 

Instead of yielding to my instinct, I realized that it would be a good opportunity to expose Henry to the cycle of life–to the naturalness of death. I figured it would be much easier