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    Meagan Francis

    Meagan Francis

  • Playgroup is not junior high: 5 ways to make mom friends

    So you've been trying for months to make headway with that gang of moms whose kids have known each other from the womb (they were all in childbirth ed together, and have kept the group intact since) but there just doesn't seem to be any room for a newcomer?Don't worry. Cliques are a fact of life at

  • Parenting Guru: Our Tooth Fairy can't get it right...and that's OK.

    When I was growing up, my mom encouraged us to believe in mythical characters: magical bunnies, Santa Claus, gnomes, you name it. She worked hard to keep us believing by wrapping our "Santa" gifts in different paper from the rest and pretending to see gnomes hiding under toadstools. When it came to

  • 5 ways to get the mom in your life in the mood for love

    Guess what, dads: there are definitely sexier Valentine's Day gifts than racy lingerie or anything from the local Adult Emporium. With just a little thought you can give your kids' mom a truly special day. Bonus: the effects from these romantic gestures will be way longer-lasting than dinner and a m

  • Parenting Guru: 10 little things I love about having 5 kids

    People usually think raising a larger-than-average family means a lot of work, a lot of chaos, and a lot of clean-up. That's all true, but bigger families also have a lot of benefits. Here are my 10 favorite things about having five kids: There is always a big brother willing to help the five-y

  • Parenting Guru: When my parenting shined in 2010--and when it didn't

    Does your parenting always shine? I know mine doesn't. In fact, I fall down on the job most days--though I usually manage to turn it around afterward. Here are three of the ways my parenting shined--and three times it was a little more, uh, tarnished--in 2010.When my parenting didn't shine:

  • Parenting Guru: 5 Ways Busy Parents Can Make New Year's Resolutions a Reality

    With school papers and appointments to juggle, and rear ends and noses to wipe, it's a miracle moms get anything done. Throw in some New Year's resolutions or goals for 2011 and it's enough to make our brains overheat until we just want to throw up our hands and watch a House Hunters marathon on HGT

  • Parenting Guru: Dealing with parenting critics during the holidays

    The holiday season is upon us, and while managing a packed calendar and getting those gifts bought and wrapped in time makes some of us head to the cookie plate for solace, another factor often up the holiday stress ante--when friends and relatives criticize your parenting.

  • Parenting Guru: My Dad's death made me thankful for my siblings

    Sunday, June 27 was a bright, sunny, promising day…until about noon, when I noticed the blink of Yahoo! Messenger. It was a note from my stepmother, Brenda, letting me know my father had had a stroke while visiting his sister outside of Las Vegas and was being airlifted to a larger hospital.

  • User post: Why is "Homemaker" a Dirty Word?

    At my blog The Happiest Mom, I write about how to be a happier mother in today's world. My theme for October at The Happiest Mom is "Home," and I've had a lot of fun writing about what home means to me and what it means to my kids, and sharing my tips and thoughts about how to make a house a home.

  • Parenting Guru: A lazy weekend breakfast is a perfect tradition for a family of seven

    As a family of seven, we've created a lot of traditions over the years. But of all of them, my favorite is the leisurely breakfasts we enjoy together on weekend mornings. Why? Because our breakfasts meet all my criteria for happy family activities: they're fun, low-key, and flexible, and since we en

  • User post: The Happiest Mom: Guilt-Free Decision-Making, Part 1

    When my kids were little, I found myself paralyzed by making parenting decisions. What did I really believe? Did my parenting decisions support those beliefs? Did it matter what my friends, other parents, or far-flung experts would think, or was that just background noise muddying up the issue? Ever

  • Parents: You Really Can Say "No"

    My mouth is still hanging open after reading this Associated Press article. According to the article, this organization is launching a letter-writing campaign asking toy manufacturers not to market directly to children (instead, they ask that the ads be directed at the parents) this holiday season.

  • Room To Grow: Halloween is for kids of all ages.

    Since having kids I've noticed a few major differences between the Halloween of today and the Halloween I remember.

  • Room to Grow: The School Bus Shuffle

    Every morning when the alarm goes off, my husband and I begin a quiet battle. One of us has to get up right away to get the two oldest kids off to school, while the other gets to sleep for another half-hour or so, and we'll do anything in our limited early-morning power to avoid being the one who ge

  • Room To Grow: Eating for one...and one-one-thousandth?

    According to the pregnancy calendar on BabyCenter.com, my baby currently weighs about 3.5 ounces. Using some rough and rudimentary math that will likely turn out to be incorrect (guess I better start outsourcing my 5th-grader's homework help), that means that my baby is a little more than one-one th

  • Room To Grow: You're having how many?

    Last week, it finally happened: a man on an elevator asked, "So, when are you due?"

  • You gotta fight for your right....for peanut butter and jelly?

    The other day a mom I know was telling me about a new no-peanuts policy at her three-year-old son's daycare center. A new child will soon be attending the center, and he suffers from a life-threatening peanut allergy. To protect him, the entire school is going peanut-free: nothing cooked in peanut o

  • Finally, a double stroller that that works!

    Both sets of my kids (10 & 8, 4 & 2) have about a two-year age spread from one other. For the first six months or so of each younger sib's life, getting around was no big deal-I'd just pop the little one in a sling or backpack carrier and push the older one in a single stroller. But as soon as the younger became too big to carry easily in-arms, going places became an issue. ...

  • What's scarier: parenting in 1958 or 2008?

    As somebody who writes about parenting, I'm always interested in what advice the mainstream women's magazines were dishing out a generation or two ago. Certainly in those days, when children were allowed to run around the neighborhood from dawn until dusk, only coming home to eat their (probably hom

  • "Momnesia" makes mothers forg...wait, what was I saying again?

    After each of my kids was born, I went through a stage of mental fuzziness. Phone numbers that had been locked away in my brain for years suddenly seemed just out of reach, names evaporated from the tip of my tongue, and every day my car keys, which I could swear I had set down on in the dining room