Tim and Olive's Blog

“What I Learned” is a guest post series of readers telling their personal stories about lessons they have learned about relationships in hopes of helping us all grow and cherish the relationships that matter the most to us (you can send us your story too). This guest post is by Laurie Rappeport from Safed, Israel. (Note: While we may not agree with everything Laurie writes in this post, we wanted to publish this because her thoughts offer a great opportunity for discussion. We’re excited to hear your responses.)

About ten years ago someone accused me of something that I absolutely had not done. It came like a lightning bolt out of the blue and obsessed me — how could this person believe that I had acted in a way that was completely unethical, and that went against everything that I believed?  What had spurred this false accusation? And most importantly, how could I get my reputation back, even if it was just with this one person? Read More

I have a love-hate relationship with social media. I love it because it allows me to connect with people I would otherwise have a difficult time being able to connect with. I hate it because it aggravates my struggle with being content with the life I already have.Read More

Our house is full of ducks. For some reason, everyone has gotten Allie a duck. She has two rubber ducks, one I picked up at Walmart and a limited edition duck my mom lined up for in Osaka, Japan. There’s a giant duck my brother won at an amusement park and a small stuffed duck my brother’s girlfriend bought in Singapore. And then she has a duck jacket, a duck finger puppet, a duck shaker, a duck bib and more.
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Update: Our ebook is no longer free on Kindle, but subscribers to our newsletter will receive the PDF version of the book as a gift (see sign-up box on the top right). 

Happy 12.12.12. To celebrate this cool date, we’re giving away our ebook “Fight With Me: How We Learned to be Married” on Kindle! It will be free for 2 days.
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Earlier this year, Tim wrote a piece about looking for the wrong person to marry. “Thanks for writing this,” responded some readers, “now I know who NOT to look for. But I’m still left with the question, who DO I look for??” It’s a great question.

“You just know,” is probably the most unhelpful answer of all time. But if you took a poll of married people on how they knew they wanted to marry their spouse, that is a common answer you might get. Maybe if you were a very intuitive decision maker, you would just know (and if that’s the case, this article is not for you). But for the rest of us, although I don’t have all the answers, here are some factors that might be helpful when considering whether the person you’re dating is someone you’d want to marry. Read More

“What I Learned” is a guest post series of readers telling their personal stories about lessons they have learned about relationships in hopes of helping us all grow and cherish the relationships that matter the most to us (you can send us your story too). This guest post is by Tiffany Chan (a.k.a. Tim’s favourite, and only sister). We are thrilled that she is a part of Allie’s life and that she’s such an excellent aunt.

The baby was crying. And this time it was because I was leaving. Not her mom. Not her dad. Me. Her aunt. I couldn’t help but get excited.
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As new parents, it’s hard to find a regular babysitter and go out for date nights (like we used to). So we’ve had to use our creativity to find fun things to do on Friday evenings after Allie goes to bed.
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I am henceforth replacing my daily To-Do List with a Ta-Da List.*

In place of the endless litany of tasks to finish, I am choosing to note down all the things worth celebrating in my day. Being a mother of a young child means that most of my things to do are in a state of partially done by the time evening rolls around. Dishes? Half in the washer, half in the sink. Emails – read but not responded to. As I type this, our bedsheet is sitting on the dining table, waiting for me to finish patching it (I WILL have to finish that before I get to sleep on it tonight!). Actually crossing something off of my To-Do List is a major, major accomplishment and looking at the ever-growing and unfinished list is discouraging.Read More

“When did your baby start walking?” I used to eagerly ask every parent I talked to. It seemed like the answers ranged between 9 months to 16 months. I kept a mental note and secretly wished my baby would start walking very early so I could brag about her to everyone I knew (for the rest of my life).
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[This is a preview of a guest post I wrote for SheLoves Magazine]

“Haha, you’re cross-eyed!” “Cross-eyed! Cross-eyed!” The kids in the schoolyard mercilessly taunted me. This, unfortunately, was one of my earliest memories at school.
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