Come late spring and throughout the summer, there's a common scene that replays over and over in our house. We will be sitting at the dinner table, coaxing our 4-year-old to eat her food, and one of us will shout: HUMMINGBIRD! You'd think we saw a dinosaur by our reaction, but no -- just this tiny, remarkable bird that dashes from flower to flower in front of our window before zipping off way too soon. Hummingbirds have to be one of the coolest birds, sure to impress all kids. Here are some fun facts + tips on how to attract hummingbirds to your yard:

Last summer my 8-year-old daughter Grace attended Tara Rachel Jones's week-long yoga camp at the Arlington Center and absolutely loved it. She was, and continues to be, at an age where doing a camp or activity without a friend takes some cajoling. After the first day of yoga camp, though, she bounced home happily and eagerly back every other day. She absolutely loved yoga camp with Tara.

My daughter has always loved art. From her early daycare days of finger-painting and messing around with sand, through coloring and cutting, and now up to learning how to sew and knit and make complex collages, she is drawn to create using color and materials and shapes. And while she always makes a beeline for the art table at school and we have collected boxes full of art supplies at home, there are still limits on what we're able to do ourselves. For this reason, I was thrilled to discover Maud Morgan Arts, a wonderful art center and school discreetly hidden on Sacramento Street in Cambridge.

Mother's Day seems easy, celebrating what our moms do for us. But it's not easy for every child. My children, for instance, are adopted. They don't remember their birthmother, but they do miss their foster mother from time to time. They have several friends for whom Mother's Day is sometimes challenging as well. Some have two mothers, one has two fathers, and a few have parents who divorced and remarried. Creative, loving intervention can help everyone enjoy the day. Here are some suggestions to handle Mother's Day challenges.

My son recently outed me as a neurotic non-juice parent at a birthday party. And during his "WE. DON'T. DRINK. JUICE!" meltdown, and while my daughter stood perplexed in front of this foreign combo of drink pouch + straw, I started to wonder whether I had been wrong in depriving my kids of this common beverage. Here are some ideas for navigating the juice jungle, culled from my own experiences, and tips from Ayla Withee (a registered dietitian at Boston's SportsClubLA and nutrition blogger for Boston Magazine) and Boston Mamas editor Christine Koh.

In a lot of ways, I feel as if I'm always working for the weekend. Given the long hours I work, weekday mornings go by in a blur and, with my kids being as little as they are, it's not uncommon for them to be tucked into bed before I get home from the office. And while I daydream about weekends filled with second pots of coffee and leisurely snuggling on the couch with my kids, the reality is that weekends are also the only time I have to run all the errands that have been piling up. Which is a total bummer.

I am the first to admit that focus has never been my strongpoint. Left to my own devices, I will gladly dart around from project to project, never really getting down to business until 3:00 in the afternoon, when all of the sudden I have a burst of productivity. And now that I have a 5-month-old and a toddler in the house, moments of solitude (usually gifted by the rare, simultaneous nap) must be leveraged...but it is so tempting to slip down the Facebook rabbit hole and come up for air having completely wasted an hour of my life.