8 Ways Bluey is the Most Relatable Kids Show

Has anyone else been on a Bluey-binging spree? It caught my attention one day when I overheard my daughter watching it on her iPad. I know that watching shows with kids is supposed to win me a parenting gold medal or whatever, but please. You know I’d given her that iPad so I could brush her tangled hair in peace.

But the dialogue on Bluey caught my ears until I was just as wrapped up in its 8-minute antics as she was. It’s the rare kid’s show that feels like it’s as much for us parents as for the kids. There’s just enough parent-related humor sprinkled throughout to keep us invested, snort-laughing and high-fiving in solidarity. We set a family goal to watch through the entire series in order, which we accomplished huddled under cozy blankets during two consecutive subzero weekends in January. I’m not sure who enjoyed it more: the kids or me. (*ahem* It was me.) 

In case you’ve been living under a parenting rock (okay, or you don’t have kids in this age demographic), Bluey is a 6-year old Australian blue heeler. She lives with her parents, Bandit and Chilli, and her 4-year old sister Bingo in Brisbane. They have all sorts of familial, everyday adventures together. 

This is what sets it apart: I’m not sure I’ve seen another show celebrate family life in quite this way. Forget parenting books and influencers; watching Bluey is the thing that makes me want to be a better parent. It’s a show that doesn’t make you think too hard; there aren’t necessarily any grand morals or life lessons to be learned. Instead, each episode showcases the joy of family and packs a lot of laughs and emotions in less than ten minutes. You can just tell when a show is crafted with such care. And that Australian lingo? You know I love it.

Read the rest of my love for Bluey and it’s relatability over at Twin Cities Mom Collective.

If Parents Wrote the Headlines

I don’t want to brush aside the importance of following along with the actual news. I typically start my day with a glance at the headlines and a podcast or two—but does anyone else feel like their own day could warrant a headline or two? What if parents wrote the headlines? Really, family life covers all the basic news sections and storylines: we’ve got warring factions (aka siblings), drama (miscellaneous tantrums), business (balancing work and childcare), an arts and culture section (dominated by paper and crayons), food and recipes (staring at the pantry at 5 pm), and even romance (on occasion).

Here are some stories that might make the news if parents wrote the headlines:

Missing Mitten Rocks Morning

The mudroom was overturned this morning as a search was conducted for a missing mitten. “It looks blue and black just like the other one, except the thumb is on the other side,” said a boy familiar with the item. After searching through several backpacks, shelves, and the entirety of the floor, it was eventually found in the storage bin, exactly where it was supposed to be. While the children involved made it to the bus on time, their mother was left to deal with the resulting chaos of the mudroom on her own.

Coffee Shortage Leaves Mom in Crisis

A local mom opened her pantry today to discover she was out of coffee beans. “I don’t know how this happened,” she said, sounding close to tears, “I was just at Target yesterday.” Sources close to the family report that it had been her third trip to the popular big box department store chain this week alone. She was seen again this morning at her local Target, where despite purchasing two pounds of coffee beans, she also left the store with an iced coffee with oat milk from the in-store Starbucks.

Brothers: The Worst Ever

Our special 7-year-old correspondent reports that “brothers are the worst ever” after they “ruined” her day by not listening while playing a game and also taking six crayons. This is despite the fact that other reports suggest a bin filled with hundreds of crayons sitting next to her and that the game was made up with ill-defined rules. Despite those facts, our 7-year-old correspondent advises you to use caution when interacting with someone who could, in fact, be a brother.

Read more parental headlines over on Twin Cities Mom Collective!

Morning Routine Reality Check

Ah, morning routines. There’s something about the allure of the millennial morning routine, which, according to TikTok, is some combination of drinking a glass of water, working out, skincare, supplements, making your bed, coffee, and having a paleo-Keto-Whole 30-approved-grain-and-dairy-free breakfast. 

These routines…are not my reality. Well, besides the skincare. But I never make my bed.

The thing is, off our screens, real-life pops up, no matter how aspirational a routine we had planned for the day. Instead of a glow-y filter with perky music and “6:00 am” text floating across the screen as you rise out of bed, the baby was up several times that night, so you fight to stay in bed as long as possible. A kid throws a tantrum over getting dressed or brushing their teeth, and that was 20 minutes you didn’t plan for. Cheerios and milk get splashed across the entire kitchen floor. School gets moved to distance learning which doesn’t throw off only the morning but your entire week.

I do have a morning routine, though I’m not sure how aspirational it is. Maybe less aspirational and more relatable? Below, I present to you one Mom’s morning routine reality check. This is no TikTok video, so please imagine some dramatic Rocky-esque music while you read through:

6:30: Lie in bed semi-awake, hoping to fall asleep again.
7:00: Alarm rings. Hit snooze.
7:09: Turn off alarm. Take quick scroll through Instagram and weather forecast.

Read the rest over at Twin Citie’s Mom Collective.

Books to (Re)Read This Fall

Hello, my name is Shannon. (Hi, Shannon!) I am a serial re-reader of books. I come by this honestly. I was the type of kid who devoured stacks of books at a time. There was no way my parents could keep up with the number of library runs or the sheer amount of cash it would have taken to keep me in a steady supply of Scholastic orders. While I read anything I could get my hands on (magazines, the newspaper, cereal boxes, etc.), having an actual book in my hands often meant re-reading from my own bookshelf. I have distinct memories of sitting cuddled in “my” corner of our brown living room couch, reading the last page of a book, and then immediately flipping it around to the front cover to start all over again.

My love of re-reading hasn’t left me. If anything, it’s grown stronger over the past year and a half of the pandemic. There’s something comforting in visiting familiar characters who feel like friends in book form. When there’s so much beyond our control, it’s soothing to visit an old favorite and know exactly what I’ll find there. There’s no risk (I already know it’s a book I love), it’s fun to revisit favorite pieces of dialogue and turns-of-phrase, and I almost always find something new, even in a book I’ve read half a dozen times.

If you’d like to join me in my cult of re-reading this fall, here’s a round-up of cozy, familiar, comforting (re)reads. These are books I think pair best with a blanket, soft pants, and something warm in a mug, even if you only have five minutes to sneak in as children swarm around you.

(See the (re)reads at the top of my list by clicking over to Twin Cities Mom Collective!

The Kids Will Be Fine

A year ago, when the world shut down, I did what any reasonable Type-A person would do: immediately crafted a schedule to structure my days with a four-year-old and twin six-year-olds. Included were daily bike rides, schoolwork, free play, regular meal times, iPad time, and 15 minutes of silent reading time.

It was the last one my daughter protested.

“I don’t waaa-nnaaa read,” she would whine, draped like a spaghetti noodle over the couch. “I don’t even like reading.”

“That’s funny,” I would reply, “Because we read an entire Princess in Black book together last night before bed.”

To which she would try to suppress a smile before sighing and then continue on with her grumbling.

We’d get through the 15 minutes. Some days were better than others. It often felt like I worked for almost every one of those 15 minutes.

Let me be clear: it wasn’t that she couldn’t read. She adored being read to and was a strong Kindergarten+ level reader herself. She just…didn’t want to. Maybe she found it overwhelming. Maybe she wasn’t confident in her own abilities. Maybe it was that the world felt upside down. 

I did what I could to make silent reading appealing. I combined snacks with reading time. I encouraged her to just look at the pictures; she didn’t have to read all the words. I had small crates of books I’d curated specifically for each child’s interests and reading level. (Bless my early pandemic heart.) 

I’m a prolific reader myself. I see memes which say things like “I was the kid who sat up reading under the covers with a flashlight” and feel seen. Books are an enormous part of my life, and all this whining about reading unnerved me.

What if she falls behind? What if enforcing a mere 15 minutes of silent reading time a day turns her off reading forever? What if she never, ever likes reading?

I didn’t always think like this. But in my weaker moments, like during the it’s-day-four-of-this-whining-nonsense moments, my mind definitely went down that path.

It was several months into this schedule, late summer, when I realized she hadn’t whined about reading in…days? Weeks? I realized we’d fallen into a pattern with our silent reading where each kid grabbed a book and I did, too, with 15-20 (mostly) silent reading minutes each morning. I didn’t even know when the whining had stopped. I just knew that silent reading had been a battle I’d dreaded every day until one day, without even noticing…it wasn’t.

Read the rest over on Twin Cities Mom Collective.