Plant A Kiss- Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Posted on by Mandy

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Wouldn’t the world be a wonderful place if we could plant a kiss, watch it grow, and share it with the whole world? That’s exactly what Little Miss does in Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s new children’s picture book Plant a Kiss. With simple words and whimsical pictures by Peter H. Reynolds, this story succinctly tells the tale of how love and kindness grows and spreads. This is actually one of those children’s books that grown-ups will appreciate, too. Plant a Kiss covers three of the greatest lessons I think we can teach our children: love, kindness, and being generous.

I personally loved this book and can’t wait to take it to my school to read to my students. My son also thought it was sweet, too. I loved the textures used in the illustrations, a happy little surprise in the book that you won’t be disappointed with. This is definitely one you will want for your child’s home library.

Plant A Kiss
Hardcover
ISBN 0061986755
AGES 4 to 8
MSRP: $14.99

* I was sent a review copy of this book. No other compensation was received.

Blog Name Change

Posted on by Mandy

If you come here often, you’re at the right place, I promise.

After agonizing (seriously) for the better part of a year or more, I finally decided to change my blog’s name from Mommy Cracked to Read. Write. Mom!. Besides the occasional weird looks I would get when telling people about my blog’s former name, I just feel like this name fits me better. I love to read and write, but my greatest joy is being a mom. I’ve also found myself slowing down a little here in the blog world. While school is in, I just can’t keep up the blogging pace like I would like to sometimes. I’m learning I have to become a little more intentional with my spare time. I’ve found myself reading more and having a real craving to write. Not blog, but to just let thoughts flow freely on paper. It may never lead to anything serious, but it’s an amazing outlet that is really therapeutic for me right now. I’ve also realized that I have been too caught up into turning this blog into something it’s not. I started with no intentions other than sharing my life, and I’m finally ready to get back to basics.

I’m sure going to miss my little shoe and egg, though. Change is hard for me. I’m really trying to be open to the possibilities here.

I don’t plan any major changes to this blog other than the name. I am going to try to share more posts about books I’ve read and a little more about my job as a children’s librarian.

So, I hope you will still stick with me. And also? Greg at Engine 1 Media designed my new blog header and he is amazing. I highly recommend him if you need a fresh, new look for your blog.

Unplugged Parenting

Posted on by Mandy

I think I’ve discovered this week why it’s so much easier to not punish a child. It’s because when favorite toys or things are taken away from a child, they become bored and the responsibility to direct that energy towards something more creative and beneficial falls on the parent. Let’s face it, it would be much easier to look the other way and let life resume as normal. However, I’m intentional about raising my son to accept consequences for poor choices and pray that he will learn from those mistakes. Am I always 100% on my game? Absolutely not. I’ll admit I’ve had my lazy moments with small offenses and let it slide. However, this past week E.B. had to be punished for a poor choice he made. In the grand scheme of things, it isn’t a really big deal. However, he was warned several times to stop before he broke something and he chose not to.

There are many different theories about punishments for children. Spank…don’t spank. Ground….don’t ground. What we’ve personally found to be most effective with our son is to take away something he really, really loves. That something just happened to be the thing he broke, a small netbook I had passed down to him when I got my laptop this Christmas. Each night he is allowed to play games for a certain amount of time. However, now that the hard drive is wiped on his netbook, he has nothing to play games on, and so that is his punishment. He also isn’t allowed to play on any other computer in our home or at his grandparent’s house for a week.

This first “grounding” has been tough for him. We’ve been reading lots of books, building with Legos, and watching movies. This hardly sounds like a grounding at all, I know, but he really, really misses his computer time and a certain game he played. He’s tried all of the “old tricks”. Buttering me up with how I’m such a great mom, how we could at least “talk” about this, and ohmygoshcanIpleasegetonthecomputerNOW???!?!. I’m proud to say we haven’t caved. Sure, it was easy to get a bit of blogging and Facebook time while he was gaming each night, but his grounding has helped me unplug a little, too. I’ve been too busy redirecting him to other things to get much of either done, and frankly, the extra time spent with him has been good for my soul. It’s so easy to tune out the things around us that we don’t usually notice because we have our noses to the screen on a daily basis. It’s allowed me to step back and take stock of myself and what I focus on. It’s been a gentle nudge that some things need changing for me.

E.B. has three more days until he is finished with his “groundage”, as he calls it. I think it has been good for him, too. He is calmer and I think he has really learned from this experience. I hope.