Dear Andrea, circa 2007: You decided to wait until your 30s to have children. Good for you! You don't understand it yet, but one day you will be "that mom." The one who lets her kids watch TV for hours so she can get the house ready for a party. The one who gives up on wiping a snotty nose while out in public.

Unless we self-reflect and make a change we risk becoming the voice we grew up defying. We might live long enough to see ourselves become the villain. The circle of defiance continues except now our children are the rebels and we are the evil empire.

We cannot anticipate such senseless slaughter. But we can make the next one more difficult. America does not have any more mentally handicapped, disturbed, or mad people than any other country. What it does have is more guns. We cannot make sense of what happened in Newtown. We can only try to give this senseless massacre some purpose other than a cathartic outpouring of grief.

I've been using the power of Santa Claus for a few weeks now, and things are looking good. For maximum effectiveness, the use of Santa and his omnipresence is good for the window directly following Halloween until December 25. During this time, I enjoy the increased attentiveness, dearth of meltdowns and general calm that precedes Christmas day.

Not only are we enamored with the ability to send and receive information in a digital format, but our children are equally smitten. I hear more and more parents bemoaning the fact that they're not able to retrieve their iPad or laptop from their young child who is busy surfing the web, watching videos or playing games on the device. Here are the top seven ways that digital technology has affected our children -- the good and the bad.

Every week Minnow picks five things that have caught her attention. This week, moms are really into the Nutella lawsuit, videos that are pulling on parental heart strings, design-your-own-shoes sites, and more.

I'm employed on contract. I'm thankful for this. But when this contract ends, what will be next? What if my luck runs out and I can't find anything? The thought of unemployment fills me with anxiety, and a fear I feel in my bones. It's unknown territory that I'm not anxious to discover.

The thing is, most of the time teens are fine with not being listened to by their parents. But here's the problem: What happens when you really need them to? You see, all your training in getting them to ignore you isn't going to come in handy. You're, like, the kid who yelled woof! Or barked, or something.

I'm sometimes known as the Queen of Quinoa for my healthy eating habits. So you can imagine the shock on a patient's face when I bumped into them at Costco's snack bar where I was face deep in the most delicious beef hot dog, bun oozing with Heinz ketchup, French's mustard and Bick's green relish. Oh, and I was also inhaling a side of fries.