This is a photo of my little girl.  When I saw this photo for the first time I gasped out loud… she isn’t so little anymore.  Isn’t it funny how the photo of your children that you carry in your mind is always about 2 years behind the reality.

It’s summer-time now and every summer Emily takes off on some travel adventure or another.  This year she is visiting family in Kansas City, upstate New York and finally my Parents in PA before we pick her up in New York in early August to bring her home again.  She has been gone for less than a week and already I wake every morning with that tug of yearning at my sternum.  I miss her so much when she is gone.  But – my little girl has a streak of independence so fierce that it carries her through situations that would have me on my knees weeping  I remember when my own Mother went back to work when I was in my teens and at 15 I would come home from school and immediately pick up the phone and call her in her office to find out what time she would be home.  When was the last time Emily called me since she left?  Ummmm… she hasn’t.  She has sent me some lovely emails…

Do I think that Emily misses me?  Yes.  Do I think that Emily feels as though she can’t get by without me?  Thank goodness, No.

Every day I resist the urge to call her several times and tell her how much I miss her – how that tug at my sternum bothers me constantly.  But I don’t and I won’t.  I am proud that my daughter forges ahead on these grand adventures without me holding her hand.  I always remember I am giving her the gift of independence.

Do your kids travel without you?  How do you deal with the separation?

For 10 years I was a corporate geek, for 12 years I have been a Mother, for 4 years I have been an entrepreneur – based on that diverse background I feel very qualified and confident when I proclaim this… There is NO SUCH THING as multi-tasking.  For years we have been told that, if we were a modern woman, we should and would be able to juggle conflicting priorities, multiple tasks, soul-tugging attention getters (like a crying child) with grace and aplomb and all at the same time. I say “hogwash” and if you are trying to do it just STOP.  Shouldn’t a priority be a priority?  Shouldn’t a task get done right the first time?  Shouldn’t your crying child get your full and undivided attention?  If you are multi-tasking… someone or something is getting the short end of the stick.

There are all these “productivity gurus” out there these days.  Every one of them claiming they have the ultimate secret to getting things done.  Here’s my secret, it’s very simple and doesn’t require a 45 minute video, 15 blog posts or a $25 downloadable product to explain it.

Do one thing at a time.

It’s amazing that when you focus on giving your full attention to one thing at a time how quickly your to do list shrinks.  It’s the power of focus.  Don’t check Facebook while you are cooking dinner, don’t pack lunches while you are braiding your daughter’s hair, don’t walk in to the kitchen and then forget what you came in for.  Do one thing at a time and do it until it is complete or you come to a stopping point that makes sense – and if you do stop, put that thing completely aside before you begin something else.

Rashaki a zen master said, “When walking, walk. When eating, eat.” I bet he never lost his cell-phone because he put it down to tie his shoelace on his morning workout, or let his dinner get cold because his kids were fighting over what TV show to watch at the dinner table.

One thing at a time… and with focus.  You’ll feel so much calmer I promise.

I find myself slipping in to daydreams as the summer creeps toward us. Dreams of wonderful days spent bonding with Emily, going on picnics, doing fun crafts, visiting interesting places. The truth is that these dreams aren’t very realistic. Emily travels a lot during the summer visiting Grandparents, plus her annual visit to some of her Dad’s family in Kansas City, and she is getting to the age where she wants to hang out with her friends most of all (especially as an only child). Also – I have to work. I’m sure that you are like me and the weekends sometimes come as surprise with a long list of errands and house-keeping issues to complete. Fun gets pushed to the back-burner.

I have decided that I don’t want the summer to slip past me without having made the most of Emily’s time off of school. So I did for my personal life what I do for my business – set some realistic goals. I figure that if I have 3 or 4 realistic goals that I keep in sight I am less likely to drop Emily off on the first day of 7th grade year thinking, “where has the summer gone?”

So here are my goals:

• Go to the beach at least 2 times before Emily leaves to travel.
• Start some kind of project together that we can work on independently and put back together when we are re-united
• After school is out – let Emily stay up an hour later every night during the week and make that hour a Mommy/Emily hour with her choice of activity (let’s face it, it will probably be re-runs of Glee musical numbers but at least we will be snuggling )

Do you have some summer goals relating exclusively to your kids?  Please share?

When my sister and I worked together during the early crazy Holiday seasons, we would sometimes start our day with a visit to Dunkin’ Donuts for a coffee (and OK maybe donuts for her and the little ones, but not for gluten-free me). This visit definitely did not fit in with our pledge to thrift – I can’t believe how expensive a cup of coffee can be – but during those 16 hour days a little coffee was a necessity not a luxury.

Given our thrift pledge, the first time we visited my sister surprised me when she pulled up to the window to pay and said to the cashier, “I’ll get his too”, and pointed to the car in line behind her. When she saw my eyebrows raise in question she told me, “Once I was having a really horrible day and I broke my rule of not spending money on coffee out because I just felt like I needed one. When I got to the cashier she told me I didn’t owe anything because the car in front of me had paid for my coffee. My whole day just transformed. Now during the Holiday season I like to pass it on as often as I can.” Pass it on. It’s so true. Pass on little random acts of kindness and your day could be transformed by a stranger one day too.

I love this story from Blogher of a Mom who watches her daughter do what comes completely naturally. The little girl shares her pizza with homeless man – no prompting, no discussion, just saw a man who was hungry and realized that she could share.

Can we all make a pledge to perform a random act of kindness today? Let’s share what we can and maybe more people would “pass it on”.

I got so sucked in to this article on raising socially intelligent children.  The article outlines 5 skills that we as Parents should be focusing on teaching our children to boost their social intelligence.  In the article the writer talks about how important it is to focus on your child’s social intelligence skills because kid’s need social intelligence to do well in school.  I am not so much worried about school, after all I am with Emily there every step of the way, I think it is more important to teach social intelligence so that our kids do well in life.

As I read through the list I got a little bit nervous about my Parenting.  I absolutely agree with every one of these skills but don’t necessarily push hard enough on teaching them.  I thought I would share with you where I stand on this and would love to hear from all of you.  Do you agree with these skills?  How are you doing?

Skill #1 – How to be a Loser

I have been thinking a lot about this one lately.  I would actually reword this one and say that “How To Fail Well” is more appropriate.  We focus so much on building self-esteem and helping our daughter’s believe that they can do anything. Do we actually then make them terrified of failure?  I often wonder if Emily’s fear of failure (which I know comes from no Parental pressure whatsoever) was born from hearing “you can do anything” so many times that the message morphed in to, “I should be able to do anything – and be good at it”.  The scary fact is that those people afraid of failure don’t take risks and those who don’t take risks may never fulfill their dreams.  I have pondering how to encourage risk-taking and acceptance of failure with Emily.  Any thoughts?

Skill #2 – How to Be a Joiner

I think we are pretty good at this one.  Although Emily is shy she is brave when it counts.  She makes friends easily and we try hard to give her a lot of experiences where she is forced to cross out of her comfort zone.

Skill #3 – How to Fight for What’s Right

Toughy.  Major Toughy.  We are getting in to clique age here.  Since you can’t be around your kids during the most important opportunities to fight for what’s right – when someone is getting picked on – you just have to assume that what you are doing at home is enough.  We talk to Emily a lot about empathy.  Always, always put yourself in someone else’s shoes.  Always think before you speak.  And – what I think is a very important message – what goes around comes around.  Things change quickly in the social world of pre-teens and the picked-on of today may quickly become the pickees of tomorrow.  Trust me… they will remember.

Skill#4 – How To Be A Good Actor

Why is it that the teens of tomorrow who will no doubt have mastered good acting for their own purposes are so bad at acting today.  This is a difficult one to teach also because there is a fine-line between “acting” and “lying”.  We were recently on a trip overseas and eating in a wonderful restaurant.  The waiter was practicing his English and was quite taken with Emily’s friendly attempt at Spanish.  About halfway through the meal the waiter came to the table and proudly tried to hand Emily a brochure about the restaurant “for her scrapbook”.  Emily looked at the brochure in his hand and said “no thank you” and turned away.  The waiter was crushed.  But Emily was just incredibly confused about why I was so upset with her.  ”But I didn’t want it for my scrapbook”, she said.  ”I didn’t want to lie.”  Hmmmm… deal with that one.  Apparently I am not very good at teaching this skill.  How about you?

Skill #5 – How to Question Authority

Out of all the skills listed I think this one is the most important.  There is nothing wrong in questioning.  There is no better learning catalyst than doubt.  Any “authority figure” who doesn’t encourage questioning in others is not deserving of the adjective “authority” in my opinion.  There is not one human being who knows everything.  There is not one human being who is always right.  We tell Emily that if we ask her do something she can ask us for a reason.  If we can’t give her a good reason she doesn’t have to do it.  I tell her to respectfully question her teachers (after class – no one likes a “know-it-all”) and others who present themselves as authority.  Not only is this an important life skill – it is vital for our children’s safety.*

Now you – how are you doing on these 5 skills – or do you not agree with them at all?

*Read The Lovely Bones for an example.

Here’s a wonderful guest post from one of our fabulous customers, Ann Root.  Please comment below.  If you would like to guest post on Raising American Girls we would love to hear from you.

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I’ve recently rekindled my love affair with fitness. I was ready to start making fitness part of my daily routine, but worried that my hour an evening working out would be taking time away from my 11 year old daughter.

Even so, I couldn’t let worries keep me from bettering myself. I needed to be strong and healthy.  So the evening workouts began. While my husband and I worked out our daughter played or read, but always near-by. I noticed that she would “peek in” on us and once found her reading my Oxygen magazine. Next came her questions:

“Mom, can I try your yoga work out?”

“Sure!”

Followed by,

“Can I do your warm up with you?”

“You bet!”

And then last week she asked if she could try our chest and back routine.

“Wow! Really? Ok!”

I was excited at her interest in fitness and her desire to work-out. She didn’t see it as time spent away from her as I had worried. That’s not to say we don’t have our ups and downs. She does get annoyed that mom can do more push- ups, but she’s also delighted that she’s the only one in the family that can do reclining bound angle pose. It’s my hope that the lessons she’s learning in fitness will carry over to other aspects in her life.

1.       Do what you can and don’t worry what everyone else is doing.

2.       Even when you think you can’t do anymore try to do one more- you may surprise yourself.

3.       Change happens a lot slower than we would like.

4.       A positive attitude allows you to achieve much more than a negative one.

5.       Being good to yourself allows you to be good to others.

As moms and maybe even as humans we often resist doing things in life because we worry about how it will affect others. But what a pleasant surprise, by doing something for myself, by being good to myself I’ve given something good to my daughter.

Ann Root

www.annmroot.blogspot.com

I thought I would share something that has been helping me start my day with a clear head and tame my monkey mind.  Now when I wake up in the morning (even if it is two hours before my alarm clock) the first thing I do is log on to 750words.com.  This website is such a simple concept but I can’t tell you how much better the start of my day has become.  750 words is a very simple web interface (see the image below).  It includes your name, the date and a big flashing cursor and all you do is start to type.  Type anything – everything that is running around in my head gets dumped on to that page.  Sometimes I write my grocery shopping list, sometimes I outline an idea that just popped in to my head while I was in the shower, sometimes I consider and issue or problem I would like to resolve… anything.  When you have typed 750 words a little message pops up and lets you know.

It is truly amazing how much this simple exercise clears my head and prepares to tackle the day.

They also have included some fun and interesting features.  When you have completed a few days of your brain dump you can log in and get a view in to your subconscious  The system will use some secret ninja techniques to provide you with some feedback about what your writing may really mean.  Of course you need to view it all with a grain of salt but it is still fascinating to scroll through.

All in all a great tool to help anyone tame a monkey mind and get a great start to crazy days.  I’d love to hear of any fun and exciting tools that you guys use to get yourself going in the morning.

Last week we posted a crochet pattern and got lots of requests for links to more free 18 inch doll knitting patterns – especially from all of our Facebook fans.

This one is From Lois’ Hands.  A knitting pattern for a gorgeous sweater that will fit your 18 Inch doll (like the American Girl ® doll).

You would think that since I work from home that I would be fabulously organized when it comes to domestic matters. After all – I am sitting right next to my kitchen all day. How hard can it be to think ahead; evaluate the contents of the fridge, take something out to defrost, plan the evening meal. Ummmm – very hard. I must admit that I am often neglectful in my wifely duties and you can often find me with my head in the fridge at 6:00pm desperately willing a healthy meal to manifest itself magically in front of me. It’s never happened.

Look what I found!! I love this website. All you need to do is pick your ingredients and theme and a dinner that takes 15 minutes to create really does magically appear in front of you. It’s Real Simple.

Now when I am staring at the pork tenderloin that I defrosted two days ago with the intention of creating some fantastic, enviable dish… and I never did – I know it won’t go to waste. Just plug pork in to the 15 minute dinner finder and I have a bevy of choices in front of me – all perfect for my last minute dinner habit.

Emily Rose just celebrated her 12th birthday.  Now that she is getting older one of the things I miss is having a “theme birthday party”.  Don’t get me wrong we still have a great time on Emily’s birthday.  But long gone are the days of slaving over creating a “Blue’s Clue’s cupcake cake” or spending hours piecing together princess goodie bags.  Themed parties are so much fun.  One of our @Home founder’s members wrote a great guest post on creating an American Girl Doll ® party for your favorite American girl just a few weeks ago.  In browsing the web this week we uncovered another party planning post specifically with the American Girl Doll theme.  Purple Trail Party ideas has a great post you can read here.  My favorite idea is to blow up a paper doll image of your doll and post her on the wall for the girls to decorate with clothes and accessories.  Why not add to the challenge and give the girls a specific period in history to adhere to?  Or you could turn the concept in to a craft activity by having the girl’s make paper dolls themselves.

An American Girl Doll ® party is such a fun idea for a theme.  What would you do at your doll party?