Boyd Meets Girl

This original Texas Caviar recipe creates a colorful, cold and crunchy side with zesty, fresh flavor. Black-eyed peas, mushrooms, celery, tomato and onion marinate in flavorful Italian dressing, making an easy and popular dish that is sure to become a family favorite. Ok everyone. I should have gotten this up on the blog, like, a week ago, but in order to provide delicious, scrumptious pictures I would have had to make it, and then of course eat it, and that would have (selfishly) ruined it for me for Thanksgiving because I wouldn't be craving it anymore. YES. I seriously plan out my craving vs. eating schedule and weigh it's importance higher than my editorial schedule. I am pregnant, ok? So, there are a lot of impostor Texas Caviar recipes online and on Pinterest that add silly things like mayonnaise, peppers or corn. While all of that is good and well, it needs to stay the HELL out of my Texas Caviar. This recipe is an original, from my wonderful grandmother Maxine, an...

I'm not really quite sure what I want to accomplish by this "open letter," other than to blow off some steam and possibly (read: highly unlikely) change a few people's minds (probably after pissing them off), but let me preface it with the following statement: My blog posts are, in general, not bitchy, judgmental or negative in nature, nor do I like to have those aforementioned adjectives be a part of my life either, so this topic has been brewing for quite some time. And I'm usually quite a nice and polite person. Here's the topic: PARENTS: Stop knowingly bringing your sick and contagious child around mine!!!!!  Now, I'm writing this from the standpoint of a parent of a youngin' but also as a provider (speech therapist) to many MANY young children. I'm also writing this with full acknowledgment that it may be misconstrued as rude, unthoughtful, snotty, and cocky. For that, I will only say that is not my intention, but DAMN.  I feel l...

Exciting news, y'all!! I've been asked to contribute to  CupcakeMag  on my totally "expert opinion" of children, being a mom, and speech therapy things. Of course, I am honored and completely stoked to have this opportunity, because as you may well know, I do like to write about these things! (I'm joking about being an expert - half the time I wonder if I truly know what the heck I'm doing regarding parenting and children at least!)  Click here to read my FIRST blog post about this over at CupcakeMag.  Today marks my first post , about what to do if you are concerned about your child's speech development. Time and time again I have had family members, friends, colleagues, and strangers ask me my opinion on if they should be worried about their kiddo's speech. So, naturally, I wrote a blog post about what to do (and what to refrain from doing) if you are the slightest bit concerned about how your little cherub is progressing in the area of speech!...

Let me preface this blog post with the proclamation that YES, the grass is indeed always greener on the other side, and that NO, being a part-time mom isn't better or worse than being a full-time mom or full-time employee. I'm just writing from the standpoint of my life, in which I have my paint brush in a million buckets of paint and am starting to realize that I will never finish my masterpiece. Ok, maybe that is a bit excessive, but any mom who has gone to bed at night feeling like an utter failure at LIFE gets my dramatization. Let's go back to the beginning. The beginning of my life as a mom, a sleep-deprived blur of trying to do it all but failing miserably, probably because I spent all of my "free time" perusing Pinterest for the best crockpot recipe and posting a trillion pictures of my newborn child on Facebook. I think that is maybe where it all started, this desire, no self expectation , to do it all. With the internet, full of ideas and words and t...

The holidays are right around the corner! If you are anything like me, you have all intents and purposes of getting all the Christmas presents bought and wrapped by the Friday after Thanksgiving, but end up doing it all online the week before Christmas. I feel ya girl.  This year, I have two goals, well really THREE goals in mind in regards to Christmas: 1) Budget appropriately to allow for Christmas NOT breaking the bank. 2) Getting Christmas put up and presents wrapped the weekend after Thanksgiving while avoiding and not supporting Black Friday (which I find to be one of the most annoying celebrated holidays in American culture). 3) Not buy my kids and niece annoying, pointless toys that serve no real purpose after the initial excitement than to collect dust in the closet. While it is true that every parent's dream is a zoo membership or 10 visits to Gymboree as a gift for their children, kids like to open presents. I don't need to tell you that, for one can only assu...

Preface: I'm doing a little bit of internal research, and I am finding that what is of most interest to a lot of my blog readers has to do with a) children and b) their speech development. Well, good thing I'm a speech therapist, am I right??? So, I decided that I'm going to start a mini-series showing parents specific developmentally-appropriate toys and how to play with them . By day, I work with children ages 0-3 and their families doing precisely that: teaching families/caregivers strategies of how to facilitate speech and communication development through play. So you're in good hands, people. There is no specific age group that I will be focusing on for this, but I can tell you that a majority of my therapeutic experience in the pediatric realm falls between 18 months to 4 years of age, give or take. However, the beautiful thing about these posts is that I will share activities scaffolding both down and up to cover a variety of concepts and skills. Some of the...

In the age of technology, EVERYTHING is online. Here are some tips to protect your (and your family's) information online! 1) De-personalize your passwords. You guys... I'm the absolute worst about this. I can safely share this with everyone because I have gone through and changed my passwords to everything, but the dumbest things to include in your passwords are pet names, special dates (your birthday, anniversary, kid's birthdate), any part of your social security number, and your kiddos' names. Do yourself a favor and make up the craziest NOT-LIKE-YOU passwords you can think of. Outrageous even! xbiggestBritneySpearsfan1481x; imyellintimber817OK; totesmagotesSprintPCS224. Crazy, stupid stuff that doesn't even make sense is what your password should be. Not something super predictable like your favorite dog's name and your birth year. C'mon y'all.  2) {Warning: this is the pot calling the kettle black.}  Stop over-sharing on social media. Sam fro...