Call me Martha, I love a good calendar! Tools that keep you organized and teach something to the kids on top of it.... Need I say more?

More

We're big fans of Joy Cho, and perhaps even bigger fans of her now one-year-old daughter, Ruby. Seriously, I could look at photos of her sweet little face all day. Joy recently created a photo album (an actual, real life tangible book versus digital files - gasp!) of Ruby's first year.
More

While browsing through photos of my son from this past year to make a calendar for the grandparents it struck me that the ones I loved the most were usually not posed or requested, but random shots that captured him at play or in a quiet moment. Just run-of-the-mill kid moments that, if not captured on "film", I would probably forget about. Which makes the idea of a 365 photo project so appealing.

More

After receiving a lot of gifts for Christmas, my son went on a kick about drawing elves and displaying them all over the house, so we would remember who brought him his gifts. Then yesterday he asked me to help him spell out a thank you letter to Santa and mostly to all the elves "who are the real workers in the story". Hand over the tissue because my eyes still water over this! I finally feel like I did something really right here.
More

Homes aren't just where we keep our stuff. We live in our homes and raise our children in them. Inevitably parenting and design intersect and homelife with children is a recurring theme in our posts throughout the year. Here are the parenting posts that generated the most interesting comments and discussion from readers in 2012.

• Embracing the Family Mess: Striking a Balance Between Chaos and Order
• Toy Buying Mistakes and Tips to Avoid Them
• Looking Back: How to Talk to Your Kids About Moving
• How Did You Prepare Your Toddler for a New Sibling?
• Elmo vs. Grover: My Ambiguous Disdain for Licensed Character Toys
• Compromising Your Style: Letting Kids Help Decorate for Holidays
• Embrace Your Child's Dreams
• Children Making Sand Homes
• Decorating Kids' Rooms: How Much Input Did Your Child Have?
• Avoiding the Avalanche of Baby "Must Haves"

More

When I was looking back at the year's archive of parenting posts one theme kept coming up again and again: gender. Our readers are a pretty progressive bunch and much of the discussion through the year was a reaction against marketing and media images portraying children in stereotypical gender roles. We also talked about breaking out of these stereotypes in our own homes.

• Pink Quandaries: What Color to Paint a Toy Mower?
• Solitary Man: Reflections of a Lone Dad at Playgroup
• LEGO Friends: Yay or Nay?
• Girlie-Girl Culture At Home
• GoldieBlox: Encouraging Girls to Embrace Engineering
• Swedish Toy Catalog Aims for Gender Neutral Imagery
• Happy 40th, Free To Be You And Me!
• Roominate: A Design Toy for Girls
• Children's Design Clichés & Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
• Going Gender Neutral: Kids' Twin Bedding

More

Maybe I'm the only one, but before I became a parent I hadn't really considered all the ins and outs of those yearly pictures with Santa. Sure, my brother and I sat on Santa's lap each year (okay, so I shyly boycotted Santa until I was five, but every year after that), but I guess I had just never pictured myself on the parent end of that ordeal. Now that I'm a parent, I'm wondering...is a yearly picture with Santa a necessary tradition?
More

When it comes to little kids asking for silly, impossible, and/or utterly confounding things for Christmas, I say, "Bring it on!," probably because my parents have always been down for attempting to fulfill off-the-wall gift requests. One year they even snuck downstairs early to cook the hamburger I'd asked Santa for… More

The holidays are not just fun and cheers, sparkles and songs. For a lot of parents it's a lot of pressure to do the right thing for their children. Whether we can or cannot afford the toys they want, we have a lot of feelings that might be associated with gift giving. More

Considering that Sweden is consistently rated to have one of the highest levels of gender equality in the world, it makes sense that consumers have been vocal about wanting marketing images of children to align more closely with this national value. Responding to consumer pressure and complaints to the Swedish Advertising Ombudsman, Top Toy company, which owns more than 280 toys stores in Sweden (including Toys R Us), has made a big effort this year to "reflect the way boys and girls play in real life, and not present a stereotype image of them."
More