EO Series: What is an essential oil?

EOs come from plants!

If you read anything at all about living "naturally" whether it's cleaning, medicinal, etc., you've probably heard about essential oils (a.k.a. EOs). They are wonderful and amazing, but just because they're "pure" and "natural" doesn't mean they're 100% safe. Not everything in nature is safe, right? Think thorny bushes, cactus, and a multitude of poisonous plants! Even though these cute little bottles with beautiful labels and aromas appear safe, they're very concentrated forms of plants. I could probably have an ongoing series on this topic alone, and perhaps it will turn into that, so DON'T go out and buy some EOs today unless you've already done some extensive research about it. If you want to go do more research now, check out Learning about EOs.

My Picky Eater: Speech Delay and Early Intervention Assessment

Around 18 months old, my husband became concerned with our son's speech development. I thought he was doing okay though. But, a little over a month ago when we decided to take action with his eating habits, we read about the average speech development for a 2 year-old and I had to admit he seemed behind. Thankfully, the Your Kid's Table blog I had been reading about picky eating had a link to a mom/speech therapist blog called Playing with Words 365. I sent my husband there to do some research about how we could do more to help our son's speech development. Here are some things we learned:

My Picky Eater: A Reflection After One Month of Experimenting

My picky eater enjoying chips and salsa for his birthday

My picky eater primarily enjoys three types of foods: crunchy, mushy, and dips. This means that veggies, fruit, and meat weren't usually eaten by him, so he ate snack-type foods and baby food. But he's two, so we decided he needed to pushed into real table foods instead of gently introduced to them. It's been about a month since we started this adventure in transforming our picky eater, and we had about two weeks that went a little downhill because he was sick and my mom was visiting, so things weren't exactly normal. However, we actually have made great progress, but I'm beginning to feel stumped about what to try next.