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This week I swapped with Cascia from Talbert Zoo. She has a wide variety of posts ranging from parenting, humor, wordless Wednesday, and special needs. Don’t forget to visit her site to see what I asked her.
- We have both experienced single motherhood. I raised my oldest by myself for four-and-a-half years before I met my husband. What did you find the most difficult about being a single parent?
The biggest struggle that I had was doing everything for my children. If they were sick, I had to take off work to tend to them. Plus, it is always hard to do the discipline thing because I am a nurturer and tend to be soft hearted. But for the most part my kids figured out when I was serious and when I meant business.
After I moved back to Texas and developed a support system, things got a bit easier for me. When I first got divorced, I lived in North Carolina and didn’t have a support system. Moving back home was really the best thing for my children.
- Parenting kids with special needs is very challenging. Four out of my five children have special needs and I write about them often in my personal blog. You have two children with special needs, what tips or advice do you have for parents struggling with caring for a special needs child?
The best piece of advice that I can give for special needs children is to stand up for them and seek out answers. My daughter’s needs where fairly straightforward but I had to over rule the audiologist and doctor’s recommendations to drop her sign language after she got her cochlear implant. I am thankful that I didn’t listen to them because after talking to the audiologist in Dallas, she said that research now supports keeping the sign language. Plus, my daughter is bilingual now.
My oldest son was a tough toddler. I am not sure if it had something to do with my divorce or not but he was high needs. He would stay up half of the night because he would fight me for hours to go to sleep and he would be up at the crack of dawn. This didn’t work very well for me because I was a single mom. I had to have my sleep in order to take care of them. I had to beg and plead for doctor’s to help me. Once I got someone to listen to me, they ended up giving him medication to sleep. He was diagnosed with ADHD and ODD. He is now 14 and has grown out of some of these problems. He still struggles with the ADHD some but we manage it by making sure that he gets enough sleep at night time.
- I also support breastfeeding moms and believe that breast milk is the healthiest for babies. I nursed my four younger children. Why are you so passionate about breastfeeding?
I breastfed all three of my children for well over a year. I ended up going back to work after my youngest was born and I wanted to share my experience. Pumping isn’t always easy for some moms and I wanted to share my experience so that mom’s around the world would know that they didn’t have to give up breastfeeding just because they went back to work. Once I started blogging my experiences, I wanted to help spread the awareness too
About Blogging
- How long have you been blogging?
I have been blogging about 3½ years.
- Why did you start your blog?
Around November of 2011, I started a small breast pump site to help breastfeeding mom’s realize that they could continue to breastfeed after they returned to work. I was doing it as a test. I got laid off from my job and started writing more and sharing my blog. I caputured a small audience. So I decided to move on and created Uplifting Families so that I could write about a wide variety of topics. I merged my breastfeeding site into Uplifting Families. I started doing this full time because I wanted something to keep me from getting depressed. It has turned into so much more and I am happy with my progress. I started off as a terrible writer and have improved my skills greatly. I can’t wait to see where Uplifting Families goes in the next few years.
- What do you write about?
I write about a wide variety of topics. Here is a list of topics that I have written about: pregnancy, breastfeeding, parenting, home life, family related topics, pets, recipes, social media, and anything else that snags my interest.
- What are your goals for your blog for 2015?
I am currently working on growing my readership. I have been working diligently since my blog took a plunge in October ( there was a google update around then and lots of blogs were affected). My goal is to hit 30k monthly pages views by the end of the summer.
About Your Family
- How did you meet your husband?
I started talking to my husband on Myspace. We ended up talking for several months before we decided to meet. One evening when my children were off visiting their grandparents, he met me at a restaurant. It didn’t go so well. The waiter was annoying and he said I was too quite. I am thankful that he gave me another chance. 
- What is one thing that makes each of your kids special or unique?
My daughter has always been very determined and she never lets things bother her.
My oldest son is very sweet and often things of others.
My youngest son is very sweet and caring, he knows how to make you laugh or cheer you up.
- Quick Favorites
- Book – I have read so many great books and it is hard to just choose one.
- Movie – Frozen
- Food – Mexican Food
- Season of the Year (Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall) – Spring/Fall when temperatures are the best.
- Holiday – Christmas
- Music/artist/song or genre – Christian music
- Celebrity – Oprah
- Historical Figure – Mother Teresa
- State in the United States – Colorado
- Animal – dogs and cats
- Book – I have read so many great books and it is hard to just choose one.
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