Ways to Work from Home and Still Be a Good Parent

Having a kid is a great thing but at the same time the amount of time and effort that you have to put into parenting, it can become an issue if you are also building a career at the same time. One of the most common decisions that most people make today is to simply work from home but this sort of work can fall into threat in the situations when your kid requires your undivided attention. Here are some ways that you can use to really simplify the whole process as much as possible.

 

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Separation

If you plan on working from home and you have a small child in your home, think carefully about just how serious you are about the whole thing. You have to be ready to get a nanny that will work for you and keeping your work, and your private life separated is a must. It will not be easy and you can expect your kid to first go to you when it wants something. You have to be aware of the fact that both you and your child have to learn to differentiate your work time and your home time.

Choose Your Nanny Carefully

One of the most important aspects of working from home is who will actually take care of your child. It is simply impossible to overstate just how important it is to choose a good nanny. You will have to go through a lot of different people before you choose the right one. Spend as much time as you need and don’t feel weird about asking all kinds of different questions to your potential new nanny. There are few decisions in life that will affect your child as much as this one. There are plenty of different studies that have proven just how important good child care is. It will impact your kid in ways that you can even imagine. It is extremely important that your child is surrounded with care and warmth as well as patience which your nanny will have to provide and this is why you should choose your nanny carefully.

Let Your Nanny Do Her Job

Unless you have somebody who can be around your kids all the time, you will need a nanny for this to work, there is simply no way around it. If you try to do this without nanny, you can expect that your kid will come to you every couple of minutes just like when you come home from your day’s work. It is very hard for your kid to understand the difference between you being home and your working from home at a young age. You have to let your nanny do her or his job and unless you see something that is really important.

 

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Boundaries

This is by far one of the most complex things that you will have to work out with your kid and with your nanny as well. When you are working in your office your kid will eventually start grasping that you are not available to for play. In the beginning setting the boundaries will be extremely hard and this is where you will have to work a lot with your nanny. You will have to work with the nanny as well and explain to them as well that you are not available during your work hours. You can’t have either your child or your nanny coming in every few minutes and asking questions or deal with similar interruptions. At the same time you will have to learn to respect your nannies decisions as well and allow him or her to establish her authority with your child.

Safety

When you are working from home you will often leave a lot of important stuff all over your home. Things like sharp pens, small tools, and similar stuff can be a potential danger for a child. At the same time your work will require from you to focus on it and you won’t have time to watch over your kid all the time. Keep all your potentially dangerous stuff locked up in chubb safes or in similar places.

Choose Jobs Carefully

One of the biggest mistakes that you can make is taking on a job that you simply can’t do properly or in time. Certain jobs will require from you to spend a lot of time retooling your set of skills and you will often have to do that at your own cost. These are things that most parents simply can’t afford to do if they are working from home and raising a child.

Make sure that you know what sort of job you are taking and what sort o requirements are needed before you make any long term decisions. It is quite possible to be a good parent and a good entrepreneur, but you need to set some rules and reinforce some discipline on your child and yourself respectively. If you do that properly, with the help of your spouse or a nanny, this could prove to be the best parenting situation ever.

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4 Step Guide for Baby-Proofing Your Yard

When you get a baby, or before you deliver, all of your focus is on baby-proofing your home because you want your bundle of joy to breathe, live and crawl in a safe environment. Most parents often forget about yard proofing till the baby is three or four, or they forget about it altogether. Wrong!

 

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Outdoors can be just as dangerous for a crawling baby as any edgy interior. This is why you need to baby-proof your yard to protect your baby from outdoor hazards. Before you start yard-proofing, you need to realize that some hazards are less obvious than others which is why you need to be focused when it comes to proofing the space.

We are giving you a list of potentially dangerous parts of the yard as well as some advice for you to focus on.

Keep the yard clean

The starting point of any child-proofing of the yard is to liberate the space of clutter. Clutter, such as old bikes, rusty pieces of tools, pieces of wood, old plastic bottles, old clothes, etc. can all be potentially dangerous for the baby.

Sure, while you are holding your baby, nothing can really happen to her in terms of yard hazards, but once your adorable little thing starts crawling or running around, it's easy to get hurt on old pieces of thrown out items. It's even dangerous for grownups, let alone babies.

Be mindful of plants

No matter how gorgeous all those pointy monster plants may look, you now have a baby and you need to make sure there are no hazardous plants around. So, we'd suggest avoiding dangerous plants. It's best you consulted with your gardener or horticulturist for how to steer clear of dangerous plants in your yard.

 

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Hazardous plants

Steer clear of olives and berries – they are easy to choke on because they are small and their skin is pretty slippery. Also, we often advise parents to search their lawns for mushrooms every day before sending their kids out to play. Why? Believe it or not, mushrooms are one of the top plants ingested by small children. And mushrooms aren't a plant you want to joke with – they often send kids to the emergency room!

If you are big on caring for your garden, you are probably using all kinds of fertilizers and insecticides. Well, before you letyour kid go out in the yard and play, confirm that all those fertilizers and insecticides are safe during application and afterward.

Edible plants

A rather good idea is to plan more edibles than you already have (if there are any, at all). Plant more fruits, veggies and herbs.

Most of them are considered nontoxic and safe for children to ingest. Growing your own fruits and vegetables has an added bonus apart from your children's safety – you'll have organic food just a few miters away from your kitchen!

Block water features

Not every yard has a pool, but in case you do, make sure you install a barrier to block access to them. Experts say a minimum height of 5 feet for a barrier is necessary. It needs to surround any water feature, including hot tubs, fountains and swimming pools. The barrier should be anchored to a stable base so that the kid can't knock the barrier down when playing. Make sure everything is anchored properly. Consult an expert on this.

Soft landings are the way to go

When you are creating a playground area for your baby, the ideal ground covers are soft and cushioned areas. Avoid pea gravel at all cost because these pieces are the perfect size for choking. Apart from that, they are really uncomfortable to sit on. We would always recommend grass (fake grass works, too) and padded foam. They cushion falls and are comfortable for the baby to spend time on; hard surfaces like brick and concrete are much less forgiving. Consult with experts on pavers Sydney for the best option possible.

Also, if you opt for any of the three we've suggested, make sure there is a good cover blanket on the ground for the baby to sit on. Don't let it just sit or lie on the ground with no protection.

Follow our guide for improved safety of your yard and make sure you implement changes in your outdoor space as soon as possible. It won't be long until your bundle of joy is running around, exploring her surroundings!

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Blogs Can Be Valuable Travel Industry Assets

The travel industry boasts a number of specialized segments. For many niche properties and resorts, finding the right fit and marketing partner can present a challenge. Consequently travelers that have specific interests and needs deserve to have access to relevant and important information. The internet provides an answer to both of these unique challenges, and the Outdoor Traveler Blog is a great example of form finding function. By relaying relevant material, addressing specific concerns, and providing social interaction, the website helps travelers to a dedicated niche, in this case outdoor travel experiences; make informed decisions on destinations and resorts.

Lake Lanier Islands Resort in Georgia- image:otdestinations.wordpress.com

 

Relevant Material
The whole point of niche travel is finding relevant material to share with customers. While the outdoor segment is loaded with potential activities, such as kayaking, hiking, and fishing, other segments have other needs. Sharing a fishing location with a theme park crowd is not exactly top quality marketing, but finding information on new developments at a popular park is. Hotels and resorts need to take a hard look at their clients and guests to uncover what they want to hear and read about.

Specific Concerns
A travel blog has the luxury of being as specific or as general as needed. The topic and niche decide on the details. Focusing a post on a specific property can benefit travelers looking for new ideas or unexplored areas, but information on wildlife trends, snowshoeing trends, or other specific ideas can really develop an audience and serve the travel industry at the same time. Finding the niche and filling it with information is really what it is all about.

Social Interaction
Social interaction is popular in the travel industry. While once viewed as a passing trend, the impact that social marketing can have on a property can be staggering. By being able to bring together people interested in a specific niche, the ability of a blog to bring new eyes to a resort, restaurant, or activity center is unprecedented. Furthermore, the ability of real people to interact and comment on the individual posts can increase the reach of the blog exponentially. Social media works in favor of specialty travel sites, because the people clicking those buttons are interested and invested in the concept.

In the end, blogs are a form of social media that can highlight different areas of a given resort or be focused across a niche as a whole. By sharing relevant material, highlighting specific concerns, and providing the chance for social interactions, blogs can help brands build a large audience of potential clients. The unique marketing method can be operated by a third party or developed by a resort, either way just getting the information to potential customers makes some serious impact.

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How to Make your Bathroom Absolutely Childproof

Parenting can sometimes be very difficult task. Giving your kids all love they need, educating them and raising them to be good people, would be hard enough even without the need to monitor them 24/7 in their early years. But although it sometimes seems necessary, watching over your kids without a break is simply not possible. Second best thing would be childproofing your house and here we will give a few advices for all supermoms and superdads out there of how to secure one of the places that is most interesting and most dangerous for kids – your bathroom.

 

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Restrict the access to the bathroom

If you think for a while, it is a matter of common sense, but very few people ever thought of that. Of course there is no need to carry the keys with you all the time. Depending of the type of door, there are numerous ways to restrict bathroom access. One of the most practical is to install hook-and-eye lock on the height your kids can’t reach. Another method is choosing a doorknob covers only adults have enough coordination and strength to open. Chances of your kid hurting itself will be reduced dramatically.

Supervise your kid when in bathroom

You can’t prevent the little ones from entering the bathroom completely, of course. But when they are inside keep an eye on them to ensure their safety. Teach them to ask you for access and make this part of your and their routine. Once they are used to that, you will lower the risk of them trying to break in.

 

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Going an extra mile

While the two advice we gave above are very useful and perfectly applicable, we have to admit to ourselves that, for the myriad of reasons, our kids will, sooner or later, venture into bathroom independently. Good news is that there are myriad of ways to keep them safe even then and we will mention some of them:

1.   Be very thorough while cleaning: Look for all the places that are within your kid’s reach and clean them one more time if you have to. Mould and mildew can hide around the corners, sinks and the bathtub. Also, you should try to prevent them even from showing up, so ventilate your bathroom after showering.  That doesn’t require much effort, but it will save you a lot of time in the future.

2.   Remove all the appliances: We all love our appliances and we love them even more when they are usable from the get-go. But, leaving them scattered around the bathroom in is certainly irresponsible if you have kids at home. So keep all the things that produce heat, such as curling rods and hair driers orderly packed, washing machine unplugged, and razors, scissors and other sharp stuff well beyond the reach.

3.   Hide the medications and cosmetics: You are starting to notice the pattern here, don’t you? Everything that can be removed from kid’s eyesight should be removed. Instead of explaining you why these things can be harmful, we will just give you the short list to spare you the time. Here they are: aspirins, antacids, prescription drugs, all of the cosmetics, shampoos, conditioners, vitamins and yes, even the toothbrush.

4.   Set back hot water to reasonable temperature: This way you will reduce the risk of scalding, and that will prove beneficial not only to your kids. You may also add an anti-scalding device on the faucets for the extra caution.

5.   Put the lock on everything: It’s really not expensive and it also fits in the regular costs so make sure to call bathroom renovations Sydney. Locking up the toilet will end your kids' fascination with putting head there and keep the water-happy toddlers clean and tidy. Same goes for the lockers. You will sleep better if they are properly guarded. As we mentioned above, you don’t have to carry the keys with you all the time. Just hang them in the bathroom where kids can't reach them.

Although it might seem like you are putting too much effort into all of this, you know how they say – Better safe than sorry. Majority of these measures count as everyday routine, so implementing them shouldn’t be too much of a bother to you and it can mean everything for your kid’s safety.

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