Patti’s New Year’s Resolutions: 2023

This Christmas, all of my cousins bought our grandparents Skylight frames. It’s a digital frame with an app that allows people to add photos and video directly. I sent four years’ worth of kids pictures to each of their great-grandparents and Lolo and Lola.

It gave me a chance to go through my phone and sort all of these photos of the girls. Reflecting back on everything we did with them when they were little, and now as school kids, the highlight reel really is heartwarming. That doesn’t mean that our day-to-day is any less challenging or that burnout isn’t perpetually looming on the horizon.

I did accomplish what I said I would do last year: to be more selective with my time and attention. I said no to more things and didn’t overschedule or overcommit. But that’s not just what it’s all about.

In a recent news article about Yale’s viral course on Happiness, it’s not about being time-rich. It’s about actually having fun. While we can spend time recovering from work or winding down, relaxing things are simply just relaxing. They are NOT invigorating.

Full transparency: I signed up for the Yale “Science of Well-Being” course on Coursera right after I finished listening to this article.

So now that we have this context, I’ll jump into my Resolutions.

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Our Sloomoo Review

I saw an IG post a couple months ago about the Sloomoo Institute. When I forwarded it to Mary, I could feel her immediate squirm. But in the description, they use the magic word: sensory.

So, under their reasoning of blog research, we bought tickets and packed up three kids for a slimy field trip.

The Sloomoo Institute is an immersive, sensory-play experience, integrating ASMR and exploratory activities in multiple slime rooms. Our full experience took about two hours and our kids put up a serious fight when we had to leave. Here are some of our highlights:

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Patti’s Favorite Posts: 2022

It’s December and we’re closing out our third year of Childish Advice. We’ve seen a lot of growth in our material and it very much reflects our own personal growth through the last three years of parenting. So we’d like to share our favorite posts of 2022. 

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Child(ish) Reads: I Left My Homework in the Hamptons

“There is a commonality among all parents, riven with fear, wanting something better for our children and not knowing how to go about getting it.”

I decided to switch up our usual Childish Reads. Most of the books I choose are on child or parenting development, but this book covers a completely different age group and parent demographic.

I Left My Homework in the Hamptons: What I Learned Teaching the Children of the One Percent by Blythe Grossberg

I Left My Homework is a collection of personal stories and lessons from a former tutor of the children of the 1%. We’re covering not just high schoolers but those from super-rich families. What can their experiences empirically tell us about parenting and how our best intentions can sometimes create the perfect stress storm for our kids.

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Holiday Gift Guide 2022: Things Patti Would Love

Mary and I took our kids to one of the bigger town centers a couple weeks ago for a trick-or-treat event. As we went from shop to shop, hauling our brood, all we could think was “Damn, that’s cute. I wanna go shopping…”.

So it’s a nice little departure to think about things I would want for the holiday. And to be honest, it’s taking a lot of will power not to just buy all these for myself right now.

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