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Motherhood

Mom swears by this buy-nothing trick for 10 minutes of quiet in the mornings

Morning Baskets are a gamechanger for fighting morning chaos.

woman holding woven basket and toys
abigaellanai/TikTok

Working parents, stay-at-home parents, parents of all ilks — we all need a few minutes in the morning to get ourselves together. Unfortunately, young children don't always cooperate with that plan.

My 4-year-old, for example, is a tornado in the morning. She might wake up at 5:30 ready to party or sleep until her alarm goes off. Anything goes. On those early mornings, it can be really tough to roll into the day when we're trying to juggle getting her set up with breakfast before we're even dressed ourselves, let alone caffeinated!

Apparently, we're not the only one who has this problem.

Morning Baskets are the solution to morning chaos currently taking the parenting world by storm.

What is a Morning Basket?

It's a basket full of toys, games, activities, or books that you set out for your kids the night before.

When they wake up the next day, they excitedly look through the basket to see what you've added, and then enjoy playing by themselves for a little bit while you get dressed, drink coffee, make breakfast, or tend to other responsibilities.

(Or just stare into the abyss until your brain wakes up.)

girl in white shirt playing with blue and red car toy Photo by Robo Wunderkind on Unsplash

Morning Baskets seem to be an adaptation of a popular idea from the homeschooling world, where the first lessons and readings of the day are placed in a basket the night before. Now the basic concept has been adapted to fit the needs of working parents, work-from-home parents, stay-at-home parents, and everyone inbetween.

Working mom Abigael Lanai recently made a TikTok explaining her approach to Morning Baskets.

Abby says her almost 3-year-old daughter always has free reign over all of her toys, but narrowing down the choices helps focus.

"I feel like first thing in the morning, specifically, she has a little bit of decision fatigue. She doesn't know where to start or really where to go. And having this basket with just a couple of items has really helped kind of focus her and lead her to having some independent play without me having to facilitate it."

Without having to facilitate it being the key phrase here.

"To me, that's the whole point of the morning basket," Abby says. "I need 10 minutes to myself, to drink my coffee while it's hot and let my brain fully wake up."

The baskets may not buy you a ton of time, but sometimes just a few minutes can make a world of difference.

Some parents worry that filling Morning Baskets with a never-ending rotation of new games and toys sounds expensive. Abby says — not so!

"I didn't buy anything new," she says. "I found this basket in my house and everything in it, we already own."

Abby recommends filling with items your kids used to love or have lost interest in, things they haven't played with in a while. Just as long as you keep it fresh so the kids are always curious to see what they'll find inside.

Watch Abby's full video for an amazing breakdown and FAQ on using Morning Baskets.

@abigaellanai

Replying to @nicolebasi.13 i change things out every weekend, would that be helpful to see what i include in tue basket each week? 👀 #momsoftiktok #morningbasket #toddlersoftiktok #toddlermom

People in the comments loved the idea — even if they don't have kids!

Though Abby didn't invent the idea of Morning Baskets, her excellent explainer went viral to the tune of nearly half a million views and counting.

Clearly, parents were resonating with the challenge of hectic mornings, and this unique solution.

child playing with lego blocks Photo by Aedrian Salazar on Unsplash

"Morning baskets have saved my LIFE with my toddler while I feed my twins in the morning," wrote Alyssa M.

"Heavy on the 'drink my coffee while it’s still hot' It’s a struggle over here," said petitecrevette04.

A lot of adults with no kids even chimed in that they wanted someone to set up a morning basket for them. (Honestly, same.)

Crucially, Abby adds that Morning Baskets are not anti-screen time. They're just a judgment-free alternative.

We use screentime in the morning in my house sometimes. But it's sometimes more trouble than it's worth, to be honest. I have to set up the show, skip around to find the right episode, and help change to a new show when my daughter inevitably gets restless.

The beauty of the Morning Box is that it's set up the night before and ready to go to work the second your child opens their eyes in the morning.

Morning routines are hard to get right, and hard to stick to, but that doesn't mean they're not important. Having a rushed, chaotic morning in your household stresses everyone out, including the kids.

Kids with a peaceful and calm morning routine show better attentiveness in school and develop a positive association with going to school each day.

And us parents? We're just barely holding it together a lot of the time. A few minutes to wake up and enjoy our coffee can go a long way to making us feel human in the morning.

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Joy

Hunger in affluent communities: How a Silicon Valley food bank is fighting food insecurity

We can all help fight hunger nationwide with one simple shift in the way we grocery shop.

Photo credit: Canva

Food insecurity is an issue in communities across the United States.

When people hear “Silicon Valley,” hunger isn’t usually the first thing that comes to mind. Instead, most think “global tech hub” and “wealth.” Named after the silicon used in computer chips, this renowned region is home to nearly 3 million residents and is famous for offering some of the highest salaries in the United States.

Given Silicon Valley’s association with wealth, it’s easy to overlook that not everyone living there is affluent. The high cost of living in the area makes it challenging for those without high-paying jobs to make ends meet. Many residents, including those who work full-time, struggle with basic living expenses.

That’s why Second Harvest of Silicon Valley helps provide food to more than 500,000 people across Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent inflation have prevented many families from getting ahead, making the food bank’s role crucial in providing access to nutritious food.

However, the high cost of living in Silicon Valley is also affecting Second Harvest. Despite the evident need in the community, the food bank had to close its largest warehouse in June 2024 due to rising rent costs.

donationsVolunteers help sort food bank donations.Photo credit: Canva

"Every single week, we receive more than 85 tractor-trailer loads of food. All of that food gets handled at our warehouses and goes back into the community," Second Harvest of Silicon Valley CEO Leslie Bacho told NBC. "Unfortunately, this is our largest facility that we are closing, so we're having to just figure out how we can have that work get done other places."

To help maintain the flow of food, the Albertsons Companies Foundation Nourishing Neighbors Program and O Organics gave Second Harvest of Silicon Valley a $200,000 grant. And they weren’t the only organization to receive funding. Thirty nonprofits received a total of $30,000 in grants during the O Organics $30K in 30 days campaign this past summer to help ease food insecurity. Hunger is an ongoing issue that requires continuous funding, and initiatives like these help ensure that food reaches those in need.

How can we all help make sure people get the food they need?

There are so many worthy organizations that need support to fight hunger, and there are numerous ways to help, from making direct donations and organizing food drives to volunteering. Enhancing these efforts, O Organics provides an easy way for everyone to contribute consistently by simply changing how we grocery shop.

Every time you choose an O Organics product, you not only provide nutritious food for your own family but also help someone facing food insecurity. Through the “Fight Hunger. Serve Hope” program, O Organics has contributed nearly $14 million over the past two years to reduce food insecurity, enabling 56M meals and counting to help fight hunger in local communities.

O Organics helps fight food insecurity.images.albertsons-media.com

Doesn’t organic food cost more than non-organic?

People often assume that organic food is more expensive, but that’s not always true. Many organic products cost the same or even lower than their non-organic equivalents, especially when comparing private label brands like O Organics to national products.

O Organics has products in every aisle of the store, making it easier than ever to find organic products that suit your family’s needs. Purchasing O Organics products also helps support organic agriculture. Small changes that benefit both the planet and its people can add up, and simply choosing one product instead of another can make a significant difference.

No matter where people face food insecurity, whether in Silicon Valley or communities across the U.S., we can all find ways to help. Learn more about how O Organics is helping fight hunger here and look for the O Organics brand at your local Albertsons Companies grocery store, including Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, ACME, Shaw’s, Jewel-Osco and Tom Thumb.
Pets

Research shows why you should always pet your dog before leaving the house

via Pixabay

One of the most wonderful things about having a dog is how attached they become to their owners. I work from home and my Jack Russel terrier, Scout, lies next to me on his bed for most of the day. The only time he leaves my office is for a sip of water or to go outside and sun his belly on the porch.

That's why whenever I leave the house and can't take Scout with me, I wonder, "Does he miss me? Is he sad that he's alone?"

Studies show that our dogs miss us the moment we leave the house and that feeling slowly intensifies until we are gone for about four hours and they have a "plateau of melancholy." That's why the longer you're away, the more excited your dog is when you return home.

The moment I pull up in my car Scout begins to howl like a wolf trying to contact someone who's miles away. It's like, "Dude, I'm 30 feet away. Give me a second to grab the groceries out of the trunk."

Researchers from the Universities of Pisa and Perugia, Italy have found that if you give your dog some affection before you leave the house they'll have less anxiety while you're away.

They conducted experiments with 10 dogs between the ages of one and 11 without attachment issues. The group was composed of seven mixed-breed dogs, one Labrador retriever, one Hovawart, and one Chihuahua.

Participants in the study walked their leashed dogs into a fenced area where they were greeted by a researcher who took their dog's heart rate. In the first test, after the owners walked their dogs into the area, they talked with a researcher for one minute then left without giving the dog any special attention.

In the second test, the dog owners petted the dog during their interaction with the researcher.

In both tests, the owners left the fenced area and hid far enough away so that the dog couldn't smell them.

After the owners left, the dogs looked for them for about three minutes on average. After the owners returned, the researchers measured the dogs' levels of the stress hormone cortisol as well as their heart rates.

The researchers found that whether the dogs were petted or not, their cortisol levels were unchanged. But their heart rate showed a marked decrease if the owners petted them before leaving. Researchers later watched videos of the dogs and found that the ones that were petted showed " behaviors indicative of calmness for a longer period while waiting for the owner's return."

Next time I'm ready to leave the house and Scout follows me to the front door after saying, "Sorry bud, you can't go with me on this trip," I'll kneel down and give him a little extra love and attention.

Maybe that way he won't howl like the house is on fire when I pull up in my car after a trip to the grocery store.

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Heroes

Customers bought all this store's donuts early each morning so a loyal husband could visit his wife in the hospital

Is there anything sweeter than people helping people? 🍩💞

For almost 30 years, John Chhan and his wife, Stella, have been serving customers their fresh donuts. But for the past month, Stella's been absent.

The Chhans came to the U.S. as refugees from Cambodia in 1979. They opened a donut shop called Donut City in Seal Beach, and the duo has been doling out delicious daily donuts ever since.

But last month, Stella stopped showing up behind the counter. She'd suffered a brain aneurysm, and though she survived, she was very weak and slowly recovering in a rehab facility. That meant that John Chhan had run the shop alone and be away from his sick wife. When customers learned of the situation, they wanted to do something to help.

Some offered to set up a GoFundMe account, but Chhan declined. He said he simply wanted more time with his wife. So Donut City customers embarked on a different mission: to help Chhan sell out his inventory as quickly as possible each day.

Customers rally bright and early every morning to buy out Chhan's donuts so he can be with his sick wife.

Through word of mouth, online, and in community newsletters, Donut City customers are encouraging people to buy donuts early and buy lots of them. Customers show up when the shop opens at 4:30am, and thanks to many of them buying a dozen donuts at at time, the trays are empty by 7:30 most days.

Locals say they're simply returning the kindness the Chhans have shown them over the years. Lifelong Donut City customer Steven O'Fallon shared his feelings with CNN."It is heartbreaking to hear her misfortune," he said. "She was always in the back making doughnuts. I would drop by there with my mom and dad in the mornings before school. John would always toss a few extra doughnut holes. He always has a smile on his face."

This is what community showing up looks like.

John Chhan told ABC7 news that the he appreciates the outpouring of support from the community and that it feels "very warm." He is happy to be able to leave the shop early and spend more time with his wife as she recovers.

Stella is making good progress, by the way. “She can talk, she can write,” Chhan told CBS affiliate KCAL news. “Right now she’s trying to start…eat something.”

Is there anything sweeter than people helping people?

This article originally appeared on 3.2.20

Pop Culture

Parents who grew up in the '70s and '80s remember the experiences that blow their kids' minds

Kids were tougher then for a reason.

via Wikimedia Commons

Island School Class, circa 1970s.

Parents, do you think your child would be able to survive if they were transported back to the '70s or '80s? Could they live at a time before the digital revolution put a huge chunk of our lives online?

These days, everyone has a phone in their pocket, but before then, if you were in public and needed to call someone, you used a pay phone. Can you remember the last time you stuck 50 cents into one and grabbed the grubby handset?

According to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, roughly 100,000 pay phones remain in the U.S., down from 2 million in 1999.

Do you think a 10-year-old kid would have any idea how to use a payphone in 2022? Would they be able to use a Thomas Guide map to find out how to get somewhere? If they stepped into a time warp and wound up in 1975, could they throw a Led Zeppelin album on the record player at a party?

Another big difference between now and life in the '70s and '80s has been public attitudes toward smoking cigarettes. In 1965, 42.4% of Americans smoked and now, it’s just 12.5%. This sea change in public opinion about smoking means there are fewer places where smoking is deemed acceptable.

But in the early '80s, you could smoke on a bus, on a plane, in a movie theater, in restaurants, in the classroom and even in hospitals. How would a child of today react if their third grade teacher lit up a heater in the middle of math class?

Dan Wuori, senior director of early learning at the Hunt Institute, tweeted that his high school had a smoking area “for the kids.” He then asked his followers to share “something you experienced as a kid that would blow your children’s minds.”


A lot of folks responded with stories of how ubiquitous smoking was when they were in school. While others explained that life was perilous for a kid, whether it was the school playground equipment or questionable car seats.

Here are a few responses that’ll show today’s kids just how crazy life used to be in the '70s and '80s.

First of all, let’s talk about smoking.

Want to call someone? Need to get picked up from baseball practice? You can’t text mom or dad, you’ll have to grab a quarter and use a pay phone.

People had little regard for their kids’ safety or health.

You could buy a soda in school.

Things were a lot different before the internet.

Remember pen pals?

A lot of people bemoan the fact that the children of today aren’t as tough as they were a few decades back. But that’s probably because the parents of today are better attuned to their kids’ needs so they don't have to cheat death to make it through the day.

But just imagine how easy parenting would be if all you had to do was throw your kids a bag of Doritos and a Coke for lunch and you never worried about strapping them into a car seat?


This article originally appeared on 06.08.22

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Wellness

Sisters thought they were rescuing an injured dog, but ended up with 10 lovely pups instead

"To think that this sweet girl had been treated that way...I don't even want to think about someone hurting her on purpose."

Sarah Bauer/GoFundMe

It is hard to walk into a dog shelter without wanting to take them all home. In the case of Meghan Wedge and Sarah Bauer, one turned into ten—and quickly.

It all started outside Meghan's work in Dalton, GA. Some colleagues of hers came into the office and said that there was a dog badly injured in the parking lot just outside. As Wedge told PBS39, "As soon as she got up, she'd fall back down. When she did finally get up, you could see that she couldn't put her weight on her one back leg. I wanted to help her, so I started posting on social media, just asking if anyone was able to help this dog. I didn't want to call the pound on her. I was hoping to find her a home." That was when she made a phone call to her sister, Sarah Bauer, who lived in Quakertown, PA. At that moment, for the dog who would soon be named Izzy, things were about to change.

As Megan recalls, "Sarah was like: What if I take the dog? I said: Are you sure you want to do this? You don't know what you may be getting yourself into." But there was no talking Sarah out of it. They met in Virginia where Sarah met Izzy and took him home.

The first order of business for Sarah was to take Izzy to the vet. That was when she learned how bad the trauma that Izzy had suffered really was. "Because of Covid-19 and everything going on, I couldn't go into the vet with her, which was hard in itself," said Bauer. "The vet comes out to my car and tells me that her hip is dislocated, she has abrasions on her legs and that she was probably hit by a car. She also told me that she was hit by buckshot. At that point, I started tearing up. To think that this sweet girl had been treated that way...I don't even want to think about someone hurting her on purpose."


image.pbs.org

As Sarah pointed out to PBS39 on Izzy's X-rays, "The tiny white dots—that's the buckshot—all over her body. This is just showing her abdomen. I also picked a couple out of her ears, arms and legs." As expected, when Megan heard this from Sarah it was heartbreaking. "When Sarah told me all of that, I started crying," said Wedge. "I have a rescue dog myself, and she was abused before I got her. To me, dog is God spelled backwards. Dogs are angels. I think it's sickening that people would even think about hurting an animal."

So Izzy had been hit by a car and had buckshot all over her body, but there was one more discovery about to be made. Izzy was also pregnant.

"The vet told me that she found a heartbeat," said Bauer. "So, just to know that a little puppy was alive after everything that her mom went through, that was incredible!" The thing is, they were wrong. It would turn out not to be a heartbeat. It would turn out to be nine of them.

images.gofundme.com

"The vet tech came out and said: So, we don't just have a puppy, we have puppies! Do you want to guess how many? I said: Three or four? She said: Nine! I said: Nine puppies...that's crazy," said Bauer. "She's really come alive since the first time that I met her. I think the puppies really brought out the puppy in her. She manages pretty well, but I know that she's in discomfort every day, especially if she tries to go up or down steps or even just to run around with her puppies, she won't put weight on that leg. I just want her to have the best life, that's why I brought her home with me, I just want her to have a good life."

To assist Sarah with the vet bills of over $4,000, and to help her feed the nine new family members, you can go to the GoFundMe page that was created.

It certainly sounds like Izzy could not have landed in a better home than the one she shares with Sarah Bauer.


This article originally appeared on 8.29.20

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Education & Information

This 'creepy' guy wouldn't stop staring at her at the gym. She knew exactly what to do next.

"He shut up real quick."

TikTok

Heidi staring back at her harasser on TikTok.

When lifting weights at the gym, the discomfort you feel should be coming from the workout. Not from other people with no concept of boundaries. However, this is an all-too-common occurrence for women.

Personal trainer Heidi Aragon (@fit_with_heidi) is used to sharing her fitness journey on social media. Her video, which has now garnered more than 8 million views on TikTok, didn't go viral because of the workout. Instead, people are responding to how she confronted a man who not only wouldn't stop staring at her, but denied the fact that he was. Until Heidi beat him at his own game.

Heidi explains in the text video "This creepy old guy at the gym kept coming over and staring at me." Sure enough, the video shows a man in a green shirt, eyes undeniably fixated on Heidi. Uncomfortable, Heidi tries to get her husband to stand between her and the man, hopefully laying down a not-so-subtle cue to back off. But subtlety is clearly not this guy's language.

So what does Heidi do? She stares back. The strategy seemed to work, at least for a while, but eventually Heidi had to go over and confront the guy directly.

Her video text read: "I told him if he's going to work out in this corner he needed to stop staring and making me uncomfortable. His response was, 'I'm just looking around.' I then told him I record my workouts and I have him on film. He shut up real quick."
@fit_with_heidi Don’t sit there and tell me you’re not doing something when I have proof. 😡 #gymtok #fittok #influencer #viral #trending #tiktok #fitness #gym #gymgirl #fyp #fypシ #foryou #foryoupage #gymcreeps ♬ Real As It Gets - Lil Baby

I know what you're thinking: "Wait, didn't we just hear a story about this?" Why yes, you're right. Our very own Tod Perry covered another woman who had to deal with a guy at the gym who couldn't take a hint.

Yes, almost back-to-back stories of women who have had enough from fellow male gym-goers. And still, there is victim blaming. In the video's comment section, one user wrote, "Wear pants like that and expected something different??" How many videos have to go viral before we stop blaming a woman's choice of clothing (which were really quite normal gym attire, by the way) for a man's obviously intrusive behavior?

Others also seemed to assess that because Heidi was a fitness influencer, she more or less signed up for this kind of attention, invited or not. Which completely negates this woman having any choice in the matter. However, Heidi did post a tongue-in-cheek follow-up video thanking those who posted negative comments, as it gave her more followers and likes. So I guess there's some small victory.

Though we may never have a consensus on proper gym etiquette, a good rule of thumb is keep to yourself. Getting the gumption to go workout is hard enough; don't make staying there a hardship as well.

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