Here a few quick and easy suggestions that may ease the burden of choosing nutritious foods your children.

• Buy baby bottles of water. Kids will be more apt to drink them if they can carry around on their own.
• Fresh fruits/veggies can be affordable. Kids love baby carrots and celery sticks. Add a little low fat peanut butter and you have a nutritious delicious snack.
• Avoid white starches-look to whole grain alternatives: whole grain bread (at least 3g fiber a slice). Put low fat peanut butter and real preserves on whole grain bread and kids will love it. Added bonus, the fiber in the bread will keep them sustained for a longer period of time. Great for lunches.
• Slip a high fiber, great tasting granola or bran bar in their book bag for an afternoon snack.
• For dessert, always have some low fat yogurts and puddings on hand. Always a favorite! Also buy real fruit bars in place of fudge bars, popsicles and ice cream. Although some low fat ice cream. Serve in a decorative coffee cup for portion control.
• Avoid the “100 Calorie Pack” fad. Frankly, it can get expensive. A more sensible solution is to use zip-lock snack size bags, and place enough for one serving.

By following some of these quick and easy suggestions, your kids will be getting the nutrition that they need without even knowing it! And when choosing foods for your children, use common sense. Does this seem healthy/nutritious? Does this sound too good to be true? Stick with the nutrition trends that have stood the test of time.
Your kids will be happier, healthier and will develop good eating habits that they carry into adulthood.

By Jaclyn Maupin

Kids are the best gift that any woman can have. The only issue being
whether we are ready to accept this gift.

They call the earth "Mother Earth." Why?
Because she gives of herself in every possible way. She gives when you
ask for it and she gives when you don't ask for it.
She bears our burden gives us space to build upon.
She provides us with grains, fruits, flowers . you name it she offers
it and does so beautifully.
She provides us with beautiful landscapes, valleys, mountains, hills
and so much more to explore, to travel upon when we need to.
She provides us with jewels, gems, precious stones to adorn us.
She provides us with beautiful trees that sustain us, that provide
oxygen for us to breathe.
As our Earth is a Mother, so are we chosen to be Mothers. Why?

Because we are able to share in the beautiful process of creation.
Because we can nourish a life, sustain it.
Because we give of ourselves, our energy, our time, our love, our support.

But, we can only do all this when we are ready from inside, when we
are ready to accept our gift, wholeheartedly.

Having a child changes our life, there is no denying this. But it is
in our hands to keep this change positive. Yes, there are sleepless
nights, increased expenses and less time for yourself. All of a
sudden you are a mature adult looking after a child.

Tell yourself I will manage if I want to. I will take the changes as
they come. So maybe at times I will be tired; I am only human. But I
am ready to give it my best effort; it's all for my very own child.

Just like Mother Earth, we too have the capacity to to be there when
we are needed. We have the strength to bear life and to sustain it.
So be proud of yourself.

By Nusrat Malak

Weathering the difficulties of single motherhood means we are growing
too. Like our children, it is happening to us fast; so fast we may
not be seeing our progress.

I have watched myself grow for the past four years, having left a bad
relationship, with no job, no hope and a second child on the way. I
believed my life was doomed for some untold reason and that these two
children were a blessing perhaps I did not deserve.

Now, four years later I can see that the blessing was all of the pain
I have had to feel, heal, and move through. The scars of my struggle
are the shining wounds of a warrior who went to battle against all
odds to nurture and protect her children ... and I have won.

Though the outside world has not changed very much, our home and our
daily lives are chaotic and peaceful in their own right. I have come
to accept where we are. We are closer to poor that rich for now, but
we are far richer than those families I see whose lives have never
been turned upside down for survival and safety. And somehow, I
managed to keep it together: be completely sober, stronger, older,
wiser and less afraid of anything that comes our way.

My boys are now 7 and 3, and we are making it with the help of family
and friends. We are also propelled by the energy of preservation from
the Universe, the one that keeps the flower tight in the bud and safe
on the coldest night and tells it when it is time to gently open up,
and share its true beauty with the world.

by Christina Ciani

Well, no more.

I’m of the opinion that our single-parent status makes our lives better, in many ways, than they would be if we had partners. Think about it. We make our own choices for ourselves and our children. Their schools, their spiritual educations, their activities…bottom line, it’s all up to us. I’ve been a single mom since the day my daughter was born. This means I chose my daughter’s name, I chose to nurse her, I chose to co-sleep. I got to hold her when I wanted to, and didn’t have to hand her over to someone else when I wanted another cuddle from her. I had all that I wanted. I still do.

So many of my married friends have complained that their marriages took serious hits when their kids came home. The dynamics in their relationships were totally altered, and it was hard to adjust. They have also lamented their lacks of sex drive, and have complained that, after a long day with children attached to them, the last thing they wanted was more touching in the evening.

These same people, however, often tell me they don’t know how I “do” it. But I know that I couldn’t do what they do. I’m certain that they’ve had it harder than I have. I had to adjust my life to accommodate one new person: my daughter. I didn’t have a relationship that had to adjust to her presence, and I didn’t have a partner who was adjusting, either. And rather than making my life harder, it made it oh, so much easier.

I knew from the moment I got pregnant that this was going to be all me, so there were no illusions that my husband would shoulder any of the childcare responsibilities. You know what I’m talking about. Don’t you hear your married friends complain that, when the baby came, they were the go-to parents? Didn’t their husbands try to continue behaving as they had before the baby came? Didn’t you roll your eyes and sympathize with them? And weren’t you thinking that you were so stinkin’ glad that you didn’t have to deal with that kind of nonsense?

I say that we single moms have it pretty darned good. Our kids are growing up brilliant and confident. They have strong female role models, and will never think that a woman can’t do what a man can do. Because we’re doin’ it every day, all by ourselves. And that’s awesome. Yep, we have it good.

The future is never a predictable place but I don't think anybody ever saw this one coming. In the last century, more science fiction writers saw us leaving the planet than changing the way we use this one and I don't think any of them predicted a closer relationship between human beings and the bodies that house them. There was a time when futurists feared that advanced technology would allow the human race to outgrow its use for bodies. But chances are we'll grow into a need for bigger better bodies instead.

We can make up the standards as we go and I'm pretty sure we should we address the 'peekaboo' issue before it becomes an issue. I know the plumber's-butt look is in for guys and the thong-crawling-out-of-the-jeans look is hot for women (too bad it's not limited to those who have the bod for it) but I really think we should consider the minimum and maximum coverage question now. If you skimp on the foliage, you're stuck padding the diet with cheeze in a can or doing the unthinkable -- stealing. When is it a case of playfully thieving crops from a friend or grabbing lunch at the expense of others? Will low blood sugar be an acceptable defense for such a personal crime? You may not be stealing the food from my childrens' mouths but you're stealing it right off my hand or my thigh or -- wherever it's growing!! We're gonna need a new set of laws. Forget about indecent exposure -- if it all falls out you can always put on clothes. But illegal mowing, clipping and gnoshing are the ultimate concern. Don't touch my daisies!!!!

If you're a fan of old sci fi movies you might recall that "Soylent Green is people." It's the ultimate in recycling -- processing the human body (corpses) to make a very anonymous meal of unrecognizable, tasteless, mass produced people chow. However dehumanized that might be it's still a pretty gruesome thought and probably a bad idea -- there is a human version of mad cow disease and this is how it gets passed around. We really aren't supposed to eat our own kind unless it's an emergency. Okay -- so eating people is out of the question, we don't have enough room to grow enough food anymore and until someone finally invents that terrific little food fabricating machine they used on Star Trek we're going to have to come up with something entirely new.

Of course you've already heard of the electric car (but they killed it), the natural gas car (fleet vehicles only), the hydrogen cell car (file that under "in your dreams"). You've probably also heard of the french fry car -- Willie Nelson has a tour bus that runs on something very similar but the oil his engine burns has never fried a fry. It runs on unused, unadulterated vegetable oil -- soy, I think. And most of Latin America has been developing 'flex-fuel' cars that work well with a high concentration of ethanol which is made from corn or beets. Wow! Crops are the new 'gas.' But where will we grow it???? If you're a vegetarian you're eating veggies grown in some patch of dirt, big or small and irrigated with water from a river or an underground well. If you're a carnivore you eat animals that eat grass and grain which are grown in some patch of dirt and irrigated with water. That's the same water and dirt we'll be needing to grow the new 'gas.' Uh oh! And don't think we can skip the grains and vegetables and go for the animal proteins instead. This won't be a case of forgetting about beef and lamb while feasting on chicken. Those egg laying, fry-me-up-in-a-pan feathered cluckers all eat grain and we're giving their feed to the engines instead. There should be a few fish left in the sea and I suppose you could develop an appetite for squirrel and pigeon but a society celibrating a new fuel to binge on could hardly be expected to do something so wonderfully sane -- or efficient. Maybe we could farm gold fish in our bathtubs and learn to love sushi.

There's a solution for every problem but it usually involves a sacrifice and I've been wondering just where we'll be willing to tighten the proverbial belt to avoid becoming a society of walking, biking or horse-riding humans with better health and shapely calf muscles. We could probably stop growing 'unimportant' things like tobacco and Christmas trees, poppies and daisies -- maybe even holly and poinsettias (because I never could figure out what we need them for when x-mas is over and who would really miss 'em if we didn't have 'em at all???). But no matter how much we cut back on the growing of unnecessary things it hardly seems that we could do much more than merely keep up with the demand for land. The fact is, there's less space to grow food and are more people to feed. As populations grow we'll need more houses and business buildings land I'm pretty sure we'll want to build them on a patch of dirt because "floating cities" seem to have gone out of fashion and no one has been able to perfect the art of building castles in the sky. Apparently whoever was in charge of planning for the future of mankind run amok just assumed we would have colonized the moon by now. Judy Jetson wouldn't have to worry about something as silly as food! With fruit still growing on trees and burgers for a buck at most fast food joints, it's hard for us to imagine a real food crisis in the US. But if we have to give up food growing space to get more fuel growing space -- we might have to move the chow line. So how do you feel about eating something like, uh -- bugs?

When he came home from work the house was dark and only lit by candle light. He walked through the door and saw a candle on the entrance table with a note, “Welcome home sweetie, this is the first ‘Clue’ that will lead down a path towards finding your Valentines Gift.…

follow the candle lit pathway to an item that represents the day we were married, you will be able to spot it because it is surrounded by red roses, a wrapped gift and a red candle. When you reach the item lift it up for your next ‘Clue.”

(Next note) “Sweet William, here is a gift that acknowledges the love I have for you and the gratitude I feel when I think of our time spent together. Inside the gift you will find the next ‘Clue’. (The gift was a copy of a love poem that was read on the day we were married)

(Next note) “These words are dear to my heart and remind me of the day I promised to hold you in the highest light. Since that day my love has grown more full and tender for you. To find your next ‘Clue’ find a place in our home where these words remind us of our love each day, behind the words you will find the next ‘Clue’. (We have a framed copy of the poem in my husbands office, the next clue was taped on the backside of the frame)

(Next note) “Congratulations, you have found your way to the next ‘Clue.’ The next note you will find wrapped in a gift in the exact spot Aidan was brought into the world.” (Our son was born at home and in our bedroom) (The gift is a framed picture of our two children, Aidan & Malia, with love notes written by them on the back.) In addition there was another ‘Clue’

(Next note) “Beloved Father, You’re getting good at this… you are getting really close to your Valentines Gift. Your next journey will lead you to a place where the exact blooms that graced your wedding day lay.” (Outside in our backyard we planted flowers that we had in pots on our wedding day, in front of the plants there was a big velvet box decorated with rhinestones and jewels and it was surrounded by a circle of candles and flowers.)

(Next note) “Sweet King, there are so many ways in which you touch my life, the life of our family and the people you touch each day. This list a way to express the immense gratitude for the difference you make in our lives.” I then had a list of all the things I’m grateful for, just to give you an idea the list was 2 pages long. At the end of the list he found his next ‘Clue’ “Now you are getting really really close… the next clue will be found in the place you find warmth each night”

(Next note, taped on the outside of our bedroom door)

(Next note) “Sweet Lover, Ok… you are red hot! Before you enter, I have written a special scenario for you… (I then wrote down a VERY detailed scenario of our favorite fantasy) Sorry, can’t go into it this is a ‘G-Rated’ version.  When he finished, he opened the door, the room was filled with a pathway of candles and red rose petals that led to our bed were I was laying down waiting for him with just a Big Red Bow on… We then kissed, embraced and had one of the most memorable Valentines Day Ever! Enjoy!

I have just read and signed the petition: "Help Change Midwifery Legislation!"

Please take a moment to read about this important issue, and join me in
signing the petition. It takes just 30 seconds, but can truly make a
difference. We are trying to reach 5,000 signatures - please sign here:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/458796522

Once you have signed, you can help even more by asking your friends and family to sign as well.
Thank you!

Suzanne Rock Stierle

…The path of powerful change is not masculine or feminine, action or stillness, but the beautiful life force created by the slow dance of the two, with an awareness of our center, our hara, our tan tien, our belly, as the fulcrum upon which the compass needle is balanced. How do we do that? Slowly. By bringing the masculine life spark into the feminine stillness, the feminine intuitive power into the masculine action.

When we sit and breathe, and surrender the mind to the breath, with nothing to do, we attain clarity. When we breathe into the heart, we connect to what we love. When we move into the world from that place, our meditative time is not simply something on our schedule, but the way we inform our day. When we move slowly enough to notice what is really happening in ourselves, in our bodies and in all around us, we experience the magic of a slow dance, and who does not love a good slow dance? We deeply notice our partner. There is contact, connection, and presence with one another. The subtle movements are noticed and hold power, and we feel the aliveness of new possibilities.

What would happen if today, you release all pressure of making the right choice, of doing the right thing, of producing the perfect result, and at the same time, you take one small step in the direction of what matters most to you? As you take that step, you listen to your body. You feel into your belly and your heart. You notice your breathing. When you go slowly enough, you can hear your body telling you where to go. It takes courage to listen! It takes courage to dance. It takes surrender. And it takes practice. The more you practice, the more you will trust yourself, and the more you will enjoy. Fortunately, your partner is divine.

Sage Lynn Knight is a licensed spiritual counselor, Director of the Agape Women’s Ministry, and fine jewelry designer who is deeply committed to Peace on the Planet through the empowerment of our direct intuitive connection to Source. For a free evaluation of your own Belly Power, take the Belly Power Quiz at www.GenerationsOfWomen.com. While there, be sure to peruse the gorgeous selection of Belly Power Pendants, all with beautiful bellies!