book nook – Page 3 – Lemon Drop Pie

This week on The Spin Cycle, let’s get reading! I’m so excited to have some time for summer reading. Blogs, books, the newspaper, whatever! What’s on your summer reading list? Share good books you have read, books you want to read, your favorite blogs, and magazines you love to page through. Are romances your guilty pleasure? Would you love to sit down with a great sci-fi read? Share your reading loves, and get the rest of us excited about reading!

Link up your posts here!

Next week: Routines

Now that school is out for the summer, I need new routines for my daughters and myself! What are we going to do with ourselves ALL DAY LONG? Do you have a morning routine? A summer routine? A retirement routine? Or are you spontaneous and throw routines out the window? Share your routine or lack of routine with us!

Spin Cycle at Second Blooming — Get the code in my blog’s sidebar and add it to your blog post!

My kids have just discovered the Spy Kid movies on Netflix, and they have been watching them non-stop. They love the special effects and of course, the spy gadgets!

What my kids might not realize is that moms come equipped with their own set of spy skills and gadgets as well!

Guide to a Mom’s Special Spy Skills and Gadgets

Abilities

Know what a child is about to do just by the look in the child’s eyes
Stop child in her tracks with one look
Hear own child’s cry in a room full of screaming kids
Read one paragraph of a book aloud while scanning the next page to determine what information is need-to-know and what can be cut out
Use special silent creeping skills to leave a child’s bedroom

Gadgets

Coffee Cup

Morning pick-me-up
Hand warmer during soccer games
Allows Mom to take sips of her own special drink
under guise of coffee (wink, wink*)

Ice Cube Tray

Freeze individual portions of homemade baby food
Make mini fruit juice popsicles
Use as a sorting tray with tongs for fine motor practice for preschoolers
Sort endless supplies of beads and Rainbow Loom rubber bands
Make ice cubes for special drink (see above)

Spy Manual

As moms, we all know from Edna in the movie The Incredibles that a cape is a liability to a spy (or superhero)!

Alexa Bigwarfe and Kerry Rivera give us spy moms more tips in their book Lose The Cape – Realities from Busy Modern Moms and Strategies to Survive. In chapters such as “Modern Mom Stress No. 3: Feeding Your Crew,” “Modern Mom Stress No. 9: Distractions…Including the Social Media Time Suck,” and my favorite, “Modern Mom Stress No. 10: Keeping Bedtime Routines Managable,” Alexa and Kerry share a variety of ways to cope with that all consuming task of being a MOM!