Authentically Nita

It is a breath of fresh air just to know that organizations like this exist. Check out this video from The Fresh Air Fund: The Fresh Air Fund is an organization that gives inner-city youth, from low-income families living in New York City, an opportunity to experience life in the country or suburbs. The program allows these children to enjoy a FREE, Fresh Air Vacation for two weeks in the summer. Right Now, The Fresh Air Fund is in need of Host Families. If you live in any of the participating states (listed below), and if you have room in your home and in your heart, please open your door to a child this summer. Contact The Fresh Air Fund for more details on becoming a host family. There are no financial obligations and hosts get to choose the age group and gender of the child they will bring into their home. So if you have an eight year old daughter, you could host a girl in that age group to hang out with your little girl and vacation at your home for two weeks. The Fresh Air Fund

Over the past few days I've been reading some stories, blogs and comments bashing families that have a large number of children. This is all due to the controversy over Nadya Suleman and the Octuplets. My how we judge. It's crazy and a little disappointing that people are so angry. We are raising eight kids together now. 8 It takes a village, and we have a strong support system of family and friends. The children are 12, 8, 7, 7, 5, 4 , 4 & 1. One child has juvenile diabeties, one child was born premature and one child has Biliary Atresia. Somedays we want to pull our hair out and we yell at each other because we are frustrated. Those days don't over shadow the good ones. We are a step-family and it's very challenging. The Jeub family posted on their website that they received this message recently: "You guys who say we want to have as many as GOD gives us sicken me. This is not the medieval times, this is an advanced age [where] everyone has access to b

Nadya Suleman Mother of the second set of Octuplets to be born in the U.S. She's going through a lot right now and so many people have something to say about her situation. Regardless of how it happened, these babies are here now. All eight babies: Noah, Maliah, Isaiah, Nariah, Makai, Josiah, Jeremiah and Jonah These babies are the world's second set of Octuplets to be born alive. They are also the only set of Octuplets that has had all babies survive this long. Everything else aside, that's amazing to me. I hope they all make it. I don't think that what this woman needs right now is the entire world telling her how stupid she is or people sending her death threats. This is a crucial time in these baby's lives and she is probably worried about them all making it. Especially since multiple births have an increased risk of death.

My mom seems to think Benadryl is the solution for everything. I hear things from her all the time like, "Her skin was itching so I gave her Benadryl." "He had a bump, it looked bad so I gave him some Benadryl." "Yeah, your daughter ate some crabs and her throat was itching, so I thought it might be an allergic reaction and I gave her Benadryl." "He fell of his bike and the scar had dirt on it so I gave him Benadryl, just in case he was allergic to the dust or something like it." Today she called me and said, "The kids are saying they're itching all over, I'm going to go buy some more Benadryl. It might be an allergic reaction to the detergent or something." I had to flat out tell her,"Don't give my kids anymore Benadryl!" She is driving me crazy with this. I don't know if they like how Benadryl tastes or what. What I do know, is that all of them were not having itchy skin at the same time and if they were, it

"You can never get ahead of anyone, if you're always trying to get even" A friend of mine has an ex who is going through all kinds of extremes to get revenge. Sometimes p eople will do anything to get a little payback. People will lie, make false claims in court, destroy property, try to sleep with their ex to ruin the ex's current relationship, keep a man from his children, spread rumors, post blogs on Myspace about a person, or post pics of them online and use various other methods to get revenge...I know people that have done some of these things. When someone does you wrong, retaliation just seems like a good idea. The Bride's personal vendetta in the movie " Kill Bill " displayed revenge in the most glorifying way that I've ever seen it displayed. She goes on a revenge fueled quest to kill every member of an assassination team that betrayed her. The end of volume two is the best part. She kills Bill and unites with her daughter. It's beaut

My family and I will be taking part in the JDRF's Walk to Cure Diabetes. We will be walking with one-half million other walkers across the country, as we try to reach our goal of raising $105 million for research. Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes, is a devastating disease that affects millions of people, a large and growing percentage of them children. My daughter has had Juvenile Diabetes since she was four-years-old. Our struggle with this disease has not been easy, but there is some good news. For the first time, scientists are predicting that we CAN expect to see a cure well within our lifetime! Now, more than ever, you can make a crucial difference. Please help us by giving to the JDRF. Together, we can make the cure a reality! Our Team is called: The Boo Boppers (My daughter's Nickname is LondaBoo) Team Members: Juanita, Shalonda, Tim, Tabitha, Fareed, Glorious

Today is my birthday. Yay !!! I'm officially 28-years-old now. Getting older sucks. Celebrities that I share a Birthday with: John Lennon Tyler James Williams

or, In Desperate Need of Fashion Tips for an Extremely Busy Mom! As I've said before, I'm no fashion guru. Right now I'm having a serious fashion crisis! My mornings are hectic. They begin at 6-6:30am, I have to have all the kids at school no later than 8:30am. I don't have time to worry about my image when I'm getting them ready. But last week I actually walked out the house wearing the following: Blue jeans Dark orange colored, v-neck shirt a gray hoodie black sneakers huge brown purse I almost called the fashion police on myself. My wardrobe consists of mostly comfortable, casual wear. But that does not give me the excuse to walk out the house completely mismatched with my hair in a ponytail. This was just a once in a Blue Moon type of thing. I'll blame it on the fact that I was running late. Thank goodness that no one threw out the stereo type that people so often say when someone doesn't match. But really, I do neglect myself a lot. When you have childr

It's not always easy to help children with their homework. Especially, their reading. I was having some problems helping my 7 year old daughter with reading. She is under the age appropriate reading level, and just hasn't been able to grasp the phonics as well as her siblings do. I was getting very, very frustrated. Then, my closest friend, whom I've known for a good 10 years, told me about a method called, 'The Sandwich Approach." The Sandwich Approach is when you take a negative response and surround it with two positives. I'm telling you, this method works! Apparently, it's also very popular and I seem to be the last parent alive to hear about it. I've always given my children praises when they get an answer right or whenever they do well. I think what makes this method successful is that you don't just end positive, but you start off positive. Starting positive seems to give the child some confidence and makes them feel more comfortable with to

My oldest daughter and I have a lot in common. We have the same eating habits. We like the same foods. We both love art. She keeps a drawing book with her work in it and I actually used to do that when I was around her age too, (my creative interests later switched to writing). I excelled in school getting A's & B's in all subjects except, Physical Education. During 'Back to School Night' I learned that my daughter is failing Phys Ed. Her grades in every other subject are great. I never told her that I didn't like P.E. in school so I have no idea why she is doing this. Anyway, she has some make up work and an Activity Log that she can use to make up missed time so I'll be working her behind hard over the next couple of weeks.

Today was my daughter's first day of school. She was excited about school up until this morning. She had asked me over and over when she would be able to go to school. I decided to sign her up for The Learning Tree and she got accepted. We were talking about her going to school since the beginning of September, but this morning she seemed nervous. She wasn't smiling at all on her way to school. Her father and I walked her to hang up her jacket and bag. We made sure she got her breakfast and that she felt comfortable before we left. Glorious walking with Daddy in her new school. Today was a half day. Her teacher says they like to start the little ones on half days because it's an adjustment for them. Anyway, she had a great time. She wasn't even ready to leave when her dad went to pick her up. She liked it so much that she wants to go back tomorrow. Unfortunately, tomorrow is Saturday, but she'll be there bright & early Monday morning!

Happiness. How do you find it? How do you define it? Does it really exist? Do you find it within yourself? If you are at peace with yourself, does that make you happy? Are you happy with your career, relationship, marital status or home? How does the way you feel about those things effect whether or not you are generally a happy person? I found out recently that there is actually a science to happiness. It ties into the study of human behavior. I found it pretty interesting. Especially since right now I'm trying to figure out some things in my life and I've been feeling a little down. I also searched Happiness on Google and found out that I'm not the only person out there asking these type of questions. Apparently a lot of people want to know why they are not Happy and how they can find happiness.

Without a doubt or hesitation, Autumn is my favorite season. The best time of year, but also the busiest time of the year for me. I've been blogging everyday, but yesterday, I was soooooooo tired. I had such a long day. It went something like this: Dropped my son off to school. Proceeded to take my two little girls to their Dentist appointment. Got off the bus 10 blocks too far Caught the bus back the other way. 9:45am, we still made it in time (Whew!) 1:00pm, made it home. Gave the girls lunch, set them up with a movie, turned on my computer and started work. 5:30pm time for a quick dinner. 6:00pm, made it to Back to School Night. 8:00pm, made it home with just enough time to get the kids ready for bed. 9:00pm-whenever I feel asleep, I was trying to clean up and chill. I didn't get the chill time I was looking. I didn't get a chance to blog all day yesterday and I missed all my shows on CNN. But I did gather the following info. Washington Mutual made history by becoming

Alluzee - Joyful Amara - Eternal flower, imperishable Alina - Noble, fair, beautiful Ali - Excellent, noble, greatest The names above belong to my children. These are their middle names which where chosen because of their meaning. Last night, for no particular reason, I was doing some name searching online. I decided to look up my children's first names. Each of them were named after someone in our family, so I never really thought about what those first names meant. Last night I found out that their first names have pretty cool meanings too. Tabitha - Gazelle (Gazelles are graceful creatures) Shalonda - Peace Glorious - Glorious (that one was easy) Fareed - Rare After that I searched for my first and middle names (I've never really liked them). This is what I got: Juanita - God is gracious Michelle - Who is like God I was like, "Wow, I'm cool even when I don't know about it." I had no idea my names had such great meaning. I feel a little special now. Do you k

Sometimes I think about the world and our country, and it makes me worry about my children so much. They have so much ahead of them. So many blocks of life that they haven't yet walked down. So many corners unturned. So many challenges. My oldest daughter is twelve. Soon she'll be going through some changes, they're already starting. I wish I could just hold her hand and guide her through life, helping her make the right choices.