What Blogs Do You Read?

Welcome back!

What blogs do you read?

I usually add 2-3 blogs a week to my RSS aggregator, and while this gives me enough information, I’m still not getting enough knowledge on personal development.

I do read books, but sometimes it’s much easier to learn a useful lesson from a friend who had obtained the skill by trial and error.

So today I’d like to ask all of you readers of my blog to please take 1 minute of your precious time and share the most useful few links to blogs or websites you have found useful and interesting.

If you feel comfortable to leave a comment, please do so! Otherwise, there is always a Contact Me page.

Thanks a lot in advance everyone, and have a good weekend!

Closer Than Ever

Few days ago I’ve been given a chance to experience another new feeling: becoming even closer with my little daughter.

I woke up too early, and therefore was the first one to hear when Elizabeth woke up 20 minutes later. I went to her room, and she already was smiling when I entered the room – in the morning, when it’s so quiet in our apartment, she hears your steps and smiles in an anticipation of seeing you and being taken out of her cot for a morning hug.

It’s such a strange and pleasant feeling of hugging her for the first time in the day! She’s still very sleepy, but she recognizes you and smiles back, and hugs you back when you hold her.

I was given a chance to feed her from a bottle. Not that I had never done this before, but this time it was different because she was both sleepy and hungry, and also because previously I was only given a chance to feed her for a while and then hand her back to her mother. This time around, Jane was still asleep and we didn’t want to wake her up.

So I’ve had 15 minutes of feeding our child, and watching her smile as she was eating. I didn’t expect the feeding to be any different from the previous experiences of mine, but it turned into something completely different, something really emotional and unique.

It was really quiet and it felt like there were only two of us in the whole world. I hugged her tightly as she ate, and she hugged me. We were looking into each other’s eyes and it felt like there was some kind of morning magic in the air. We both were grateful for having each other this morning, and we both were happy.

As she was emptying the bottle, she was waking up, growing more alert and smiling even more. Sometimes she would stop for a few moments just to look around and make sure it was still okay for her to eat more. I could hear her breathe and swallow her milk, and felt how she was getting more and more relaxed with every sip of it. Finally, she finished her bottle and just lay there in my hands, still smiling but quickly falling asleep again. I’ve enjoyed a few minutes of listening to her breathing and feeling her heart beat, and then I put her back into her cot.

I couldn’t explain how or why, but I felt closer to my little girl than ever.

Parenting: We Are Growing!

Our little angel, Elizabeth, just turned 4 months a week ago. She’s growing so fast that sometimes I’m too excited to take notes about her development and our impressions, but it’s been a while since I posted anything about here, so today I’m filling this gap and reporting our parenting impressions and baby’s development progress.

 

I must confess, I’m absolutely shocked how the mother nature makes a child develop only the most essential skills! Have a look at the list of some new essential skills Elizabeth has just mastered:

 

• holding her milk bottle with her own hands
  It pleases everyone to see that she’s quite capable of holding her bottle herself. This probably gives her more control over the situation, as she definitely smiles more when she’s holding her bottle.
• pulling the soother out and pushing it back into her mouth
  How cool is that?! Frankly, this was a surprise. We didn’t notice when it happened the first time, so when we finally saw her doing it, she looked so confident and determined that we all laughed. It looked as if she knew how to do it all time along, and simply didn’t feel like pulling the soother out before.So, if there’s anything important she has to say, or simply if she doesn’t enjoy the soother anymore, she simply pulls it out and throws it away. She also looks very funny when she suddenly misses the soother and tries pushing it back into her mouth.
• pulling someone else’s hair
  Oh yes, this skill is definitely a must have for any child. We simply didn’t expect Elizabeth to master it so quickly and so early :) Now we have to be really careful approaching her, cause she waves her tiny hands randomly trying to catch your hair, and when she does, there isn’t much you can do but ask for someone else’s help to rescue.Elizabeth clearly enjoys pulling hair very much: she smiles and giggles, and naturally expects you smile in return. Maybe it is time to finally get a kitten we’ve been thinking about for the past few months? When playing together, it will hopefully keep them both mutually interested and somewhat occupied when the girl catches the kitten and tries expressing her love by gently pulling hair out of the poor thing.

Overall, we’re still incredibly happy watching our little girl grow and become a person. I guess, parenting is really one of the most rewarding periods in your life at this early age. You see your baby grow and learn something new every day, and the more time passes, the more conscious and pleasant relationship you establish with your child.

 

Elizabeth has plenty of enthusiasm, lots of curiosity, and is very determined in her achievements. I wonder what skill she’s going to develop next? Can’t wait to see her learn something new! I guess that’s what parenting is about ;)

Some Positive Changes on Personal Development Blog

Today marks the 5th month of this blog. And while it’s nothing like a real anniversary, it’s a day good enough to make a few (hopefully) positive changes to this Personal Development blog:

 

1. Quick And Effective Reading
   I think it’s about this series gets its own index page. For those of you following the series, it will make it easier to navigate the articles. And for visitors completely new to my blog, this page will provide short description on each of the articles to make sure you’re never lost looking for certain asnwers in my articles.So, here it is: Quick And Effective Reading series.
   Enjoy! And yes, if you have some suggestions on making this series even better, be sure to let me know! Thanks!
2. Articles count for archives
   Since I’m already showing how many articles there are in each of the categories of my blog, I thought it would only help to have similar counters shown for monthly archives.
3. Full RSS feeds
   Although having only article excerpts shown in RSS potentially makes more readers open the browser and visit the relevant article page, I really don’t want to make this decision for you anymore. Do whatever suits you best – be it reading the blog through RSS, visiting its pages or subscribing to the e-mail newsletter (yes, I’m planning to start offering one very soon).

Back In Action

I’ve been away for the past few days, and because of this my speed reading experiments didn’t get as much attention as they should have. Because of this, I’ve decided to skip the yesterday’s Monday update, and instead of trying to come up with just about anything to simply fill in the blank, I will concentrate on more experiments and gather more information, so that the next speed reading post on Monday is appropriately good and informational.

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