Jessica’s Blogs on Parenting

I created a FREE 15-page guide and workbook to help you plan a holiday season that has more joy and ease than overwhelm and stress. It will help you figure out what matters, learn some tips to create more joy and ease, and plan ahead so that you feel completely together when it comes to celebrating this year's fall and winter holidays.

Here are our top tips for keeping your car organized, with videos and links!

Know who you are, but don’t let it keep you stuck. Feel your feelings. Be intentional.

This year we’re about a month into enjoying a “Summer Fun List” for our family. We have two little kids, but there’s no reason this idea should be limited to families with kids. Everyone deserves a list of fun things to look forward to making happen!

Being a parent is hard. Being a mom can be especially hard. Having a supportive community is important in all stages of life (research shows that human connections lengthen your life and improve your mental health, among other benefits).

We brought some things that have made our trip easier, and there are others that we wish we had brought. Here’s our suggestions for 10 things to bring with you for an extended trip.

Six activities for kids to celebrate Earth Day.

I've included the more traditional activities (like dying eggs and an egg hunt) as well as some that will be new for us (like making a plastic egg sculpture with glue dots and creating a collage with the leftover dyed eggshells). I have also, as always, built in easy activities for days when doing something involved is just not going to happen (like reading these two Easter-themed books before bed).

An easy, printable countdown to have fun as you count down toward Valentine's Day with your family.

I found out yesterday that some of my favorite folks are expecting their first baby. Here is my advice to them - I hope it will be helpful for others, too.

I was surprised that several of the items that ended up becoming must-haves in our family were things I did not even know about as a pregnant woman. I learned about them from moms groups, friends, and by googling various problems that needed solving. It would have been great to know about them before our baby arrived, so I'm sharing them today in hopes of helping other new parents have a slightly smoother first few years with their kids.

The 34 ideas in here include everything from sending a care package to a soldier to buying a toy for a child in need to watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas to writing a letter to Santa.

A picture-based printable checklist for kids to shop for the most-needed items to donate to a food bank.

A printable Thanksgiving countdown: each day, kids open an envelope that has a paper inside describing a fun, simple activity to do that day. The activities include things like reading a Thanksgiving-related book or collecting food to share with those who do not have enough food.

A countdown of simple family Halloween activities to add some fun to your October. Includes an editable printable to modify however you please.

Even with some incredible friends to model parenting for me before we had kids of our own, and all of the things I learned before my first was born in books and on the internet, there are many things I would have liked to have known about much sooner in my parenting journey. Today I'll share 5 of them.

If you did a search of my calendar right now for the words "due date", you'd get way more results than normal. It feels like so many people I care about are having babies soon! It's caused me to reflect on what I wish I had known, and what I was glad that others told me when we were preparing for welcoming our first child into the world just three years ago.

As one of my friends says, "I have a children's book problem." It is one of the biggest contributors to my Amazon Prime problem (I'm not the only one, right?).

You connect it to your social account (I have mine connected to Instagram) and they automatically turn those photos into a book as soon as 60 photos get collected. If you use my referral link, you get your first book free.

Our travel plans have increased in complexity in the last three years with the addition of two more humans to the family. Even though they are small, the amount of planning and stuff required for them is immense. I joke with my parent friends often that these are "trips", not to be confused with "vacations". I hear that when kids get older they like to sleep in; I'll believe that when I see it. Our toddler and preschooler have yet to get that memo.