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Hi. My name is Emily and I'm a mother to two great kids: a daughter who is 8 and a son who is 10. In the past decade, I've gone from being a full-time teacher to somewhat reluctant stay-at-home wife and mother to home-schooling hippy mama to single parent to on-call copy editor for The Modesto Bee to a freelance writer, editor and researcher working mostly from home.

I'm not a huge fan of labels, but my parenting style is best described as attachment parenting. What it meant for my children when they were younger was natural child birth, including a home birth, extended breast feeding, cloth diapering, baby-wearing, co-sleeping and minimal separation. What it means for them now is a relationship based on trust and mutual respect, using positive discipline, with as much time as possible for talking, sharing books and meals, cuddling and just being together as a family. Despite all the warnings about how my kids would be "spoiled" because I held them so often and nursed them for so long, they've turned out to be pretty amazing people.

We have a lot of fun. My husband is a marvelously creative guy who comes up with neat projects and endless enthusiasm for trips and holidays and, well, just about everything, while I keep the trains running on time. (As I write this, he's putting the finishing touches on his Halloween costume, which he sewed himself, in addition to sewing my daughter’s costume. He's a keeper, even if he has left fabric all over the living room and dining room. :)

There were times when I wasn't sure we'd make it to this point. The kids have been through so many lifestyle changes as a result of my marriage to their father ending, including the switch from a middle-class lifestyle with a circle of like-minded home-schooling families to me working nights and Grandma moving in with us while the kids attended school for the first time. Their father has also remarried, and the kids now have two very different homes. My household is Jewish and keeps a kosher dairy kitchen (no meat in the house except fish); their other household is fundamentalist Christian and has two stepsiblings. The kids say it's a bit like having two workplaces, with school being their third job. It's a lot for them to deal with, but we’ve come a long way in 4½ years.

What I hope to offer in this blog are tips for people who are interested in or curious about attachment parenting, as well as tales from my parenting files as I raise two geeky and cheeky kids in a house without a TV. I may talk a bit about the challenges of adding a step-parent to the mix, although after 2.5 years we’ve hit our stride. If there's an interesting study about parenting, nutrition or child development, I'll probably share it here. Sometimes such topics bring out defensiveness or even anger in people who have made different choices. When sensitive topics set me off, I try to step away from the computer and reflect on this quote, often attributed to Maya Angelou:

"You did what you knew how to do, and when you knew better, you did better."