Skip to content

FINDING A MOM-LIFE BALANCE. LEARNING YOU CAN TAKE CARE OF OTHERS ALL WHILE TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF.

Blog
Mini Mindful Activities
Wellness
Easy Healthy Eats
Professional
Speech & Language Tidbits
Tiny & Tidy

Blog

This is the page where users will find your site’s blog

Search for:

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 73 other followers

Pages

Blog
Easy Healthy Eats
Mini Mindful Activities
Professional
Speech & Language Tidbits
Tiny & Tidy
Wellness

Sarah Ott

I am a Full Time Mom and Part Time Speech and Language Pathologist. Becoming a Mom has brought me to to numerous new life lessons, including balancing self-care with caring for my family, fulfilling my professional goals in new ways, and striving to raise good humans! This page is a space to share my own experiences, successes, and failures, hopefully create a positive space for others to join, and invite you to join me in pursuing happiness in whatever life journey you are on. Our children are our greatest teachers, and looking for us to teach them in return.

View Full Profile →

Instagram

Ever since this quarantine began my daughter has really craved messy, sensory loaded, and physical play. Maybe it’s how she’s adjusting to a “new normal” which is not normal AT ALL for a child. So I am trying to adjust with her, and encourage her to let out the MESS! Feel the sun on your face, make new discoveries, create new worlds. I’ll even join you because what you are teaching me is that looking inward and creating is perfect for right now. ✨

As a speech therapist and a parent I am a big proponent about getting creative with what you have coupled with what your little one is curious about! These quarantine activities are simply made from things lying around! Buttons, yarn, and duct tape! . . . . We have been raising baby caterpillars so cocoons have been a popular topic! We discussed how the caterpillars hang off the lid in our habitat, but in nature they hang on branches! Enter our yarn and tape! . . . The Very Busy Spider is an all time favorite of mine. We discussed how spider webs are sticky to catch the flies or in our case the BUTTONS! We “flew” them into the web practicing various developing sounds! “Zzz” “ffff”, etc. you can play around! We also gently tossed the buttons to watch how they stick! . . . Enjoy today ✨

@hugsandbugsclub school has been doing the most AMAZING job with zoom learning and above all inspiring me as a parent to get creative without the pressure of planning. Imagination is everything ✨ Tag me @balancingmom_me in your unplanned play moment! Inspiration is everywhere! . . . . When it comes to learning sometimes the unplanned is the best plan! We made this “ocean” with plants from the yard (seaweed), rainbow sprinkles (grains of sand), rocks (coral reef), and sea shells. . . . It was an on the fly activity that ended up teaching new vocabulary, fine motor skills (pinching our “sand”), ecosystems, and imaginative play skills!

I’ve been super quiet for a while because we added to our little family! Another little lady joined us and my oldest could not be more obsessively in love! Which is wonderful and stress inducing all at once when an overzealous two year old sprints over to a newborn desperate for a “hug”. . . . Or when that two year old becomes earth shatteringly upset because the baby won’t wake up to dance to Moana 😂 As a new parent to two it’s a complete emotional, physical, and mental juggling act. But, as someone with a professional passion for child and social-emotional development I try to remind myself that my daughter is learning always and always. Let her help, give her explanations, and above all lots of love and empathy ❤️

#repost ✨This is so important to keep in mind✨ . . . Without “soft skills” it’s hard to have lasting relationships, succeed in a work environment with others, and overall remain happy and calm in difficult situations that go well past academic years. Pay attention to social communication and emotional regulation development. They’re not a grade on a report card.

The writing was on the wall tonight during bath....literally! . . . Writing on a vertical surface improves wrist extension and pencil grasp. Vertical surface writing naturally puts the wrist in an extended position which encourages better pencil grasp and fine motor control of writing utensils. . . . These are just mirror markers from Amazon! When I was growing up my mom used to leave us positive messages on our bathroom mirrors to read while brushing our teeth so they were the last thing we saw before bed and right when we woke up ❤️. I bought the mirror markers to carry on the tradition and to allow for some extra fun art time during bath! Learning can happen anywhere!