Looking for a stroller? Download VancouverMom.ca’s Guide to Buying a Stroller to help you avoid costly mistakes and make the most out of your next stroller purchase.

Every year we are all faced with the same question: what to do for our child’s birthday party? From my personal experience, as children grow older, planning a birthday party gets a lot easier. But I remember those early birthday parties and the dilemma I was faced with (and still am, as my youngest daughter is five years old). I always want something unique and memorable, but something that doesn’t hurt the bank account too much. With four active kids, I’m looking for flexible hours, so that the birthday party can happen between the soccer game and the hockey practice. I know what the solution is: a home birthday party. I can make it as long as I want, and I can make it fit in our busy schedule.

The Vancouver 2010 Olympics and Paralympics offer an excellent opportunity to cheer on your country while practicing literacy skills. Here’s ABC Canada’s list of Olympic literacy tips and activity ideas to practice each of the 17 days of the Olympics. Go Canada!

In Cloth Diapering: New & Green Baby Has Us Covered, Part 1, Karen Randall of New & Green Baby Co. shared with us the pros and cons of cloth diapering. Today, she dispels some of the myths around cloth diapering and demystifies the some of the common concerns people have with getting started with cloth diapers.

Karen Randall of New and Green Baby Co. shares her cloth diapering tips.

Trips to the Vancouver Aquarium are always fun but trying to photograph our marine friends can get tricky when shooting indoors. Here are eight tips for those of you with digital SLR cameras that might help you get the kind of shots you were looking for.

It’s Family Literacy Day on January 27, and this year’s theme is “Sing for Literacy.” That’s right: raising a good reader has more to it than reading books to your child. There are many different activities that help literacy: word games, writing, and singing. Singing helps your child practice literacy skills because it encourages vocabulary and helps kids with sounding out aloud when they start reading.

While hearing your child read words from pages of their favourite books often doesn’t come until they’ve started school, the journey to becoming a lifelong reader actually begins at birth. “Studies indicate that reading to your child while still in the womb has a significant impact,” says Ashley Tilley, Communications Coordinator at ABC Canada Literacy Foundation.

Helping your child develop literacy skills is not just about sitting down with a good book each evening before bed. Anyone who has a young child knows that getting your child to read is not always easy. However, there are a number of ways that you can encourage young readers with fun activities that will keep them interested and entertained.