A Secret to Success This Back to School Season: Make Everyone Feel Loved

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Family in Chautauqua   Greetings from Chaton's World in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania! In my world, my days often start with laundry, early-morning emails, and making my kids a hot breakfast. They often end with late-night homework checks, making Instagram reels, and appearing on Celebrity Court of Public Opinion. Somewhere in between, I’m navigating boardrooms, working towards deadlines, and immersed in the good, bad, and ugly chaos of motherhood and household management. As a working mom of three and a professional carving out space in corporate environments, I share my journey of balancing leadership with loving my family, and I sprinkle it with self-care tips. Here, you’ll find honest reflections, hard-earned lessons, and practical strategies for creating an authentic life that you enjoy. If you’re trying to do it all without losing yourself in the process, you have found your sister in the struggle! Continue reading to discover some thoughts, hacks, and/or lessons that I have l...
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A Peek Into the Life of a Mommy Blogger: Braving the Snow to Find a Pre-School

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Last weekend we had a heatwave. This morning I woke up and saw lots of snow outside of our window, which was no surprise.  Last night snow blanketed Pittsburgh.  It kept coming and coming and coming.  I don’t often leave work early, but I left at 2:00 because I had late afternoon conference calls and didn’t want to get stranded at work. Also, as a working mom I needed to get home in time to relieve our nanny. The quickest way to get on her bad side is to get home late on a Friday night!

I thought leaving early would be a safer option. Although I was blessed to make it home safely it was a journey full of slips and slides. In a word it was scary!

Photo from our window this AM (after they cleared our walkway).


 

Despite the Winter Storm Advisory We Went Out


I would have loved to have stayed in all day and remained warm and toasty. However, there is nothing I wouldn’t do for my daughter!




And today, we had an appointment at a pre-school for a tour. Even though many things in Pittsburgh were closed today, the preschool tour remained on. So, off we went, despite the winter storm advisory we braved the elements.

Andre was not too thrilled about making the trek. He’s a public school advocate and this pre-school was at a private school.  Private schools offend his sense of fairness or something.  In general, he’s not a fan. I’m not necessarily a fan of private schools in general.  I am however, a HUGE fan of the toddler and I am trying to find a pre-school where she’ll thrive.  Pittsburgh Public Schools have some pre-school programs with excellent reputations. However, you have to enter a lottery.  I am planning to enter the lottery. However, since there’s no guarantee about the result of that I think that we need to keep our options open. 

Fortunately, he was really impressed by the school’s stories of success with its high school graduates. I was impressed because they emphasized empowerment, advocacy and literacy.  They also bragged a bit about their students writing skills.  They knew how to pull at my heart strings!

This school had a better answer about the discipline question too. They said that they help the students negotiate conflicts with other students and occasionally they give the students an opportunity to “spend time alone” to think about their actions.  For some reason they were reluctant to call it “time out”.  TomAto, TomAHto.  It really sounded like time out to me…
 

Tips For Finding the Right Pre-school

 
If you're looking for tips for finding the right pre-school, check out this post by a guest blogger last year. She gives great tips that we're using in our search! Selecting the Right Pre-School, http://chatonsworld.blogspot.com/2012/12/mommy-blogger-selecting-the-right-preschool.html

Stay tuned for more tales of our search for a pre-school and about the inauguration!

Photo from the last big snow storm in Pittsburgh. I love it. Thought I'd share!

The toddler visiting the pre-school.


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Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Comments

Anonymous said…
Does getting in under the preschool lottery have any relationship with getting a kid in to the public charter schools through the lottery? Like does the preschool feed into one of the charter schools?

Another option is putting you kiddo in a daycare that extends through preschool. Our kid goes to UPMC Mercy, which serves kids up to age 6, and it's an awesome daycare program. She absolutely loves it and learns so much. One of the things we like about it is that we don't have the separate hassle of figuring out preschool.
7:29 PM
K. Elizabeth @ YUMMommy said…
Well, I'm glad that you all made there and back to the preschool tour. We're in the process of applying to private schools for my daughter. It's a tedious process to say the least but we definitely want her to have the best education and be a school that's safe and not over crowded.
8:27 PM
anthony stemke said…
The photo with the snowman is really lovely.

I very much agree with the last sentence written by Yummommy.(above)

Best of luck on the lottery thing or getting enrolled where you think is best.
6:03 PM
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