Last night was date night. Cute W had bought tickets to see Guster at the Egg for Valentine’s Day, and we were going out for Vietnamese food for dinner first. Our usual sitter was performing in a school concert, so we booked one of her friends, a nice girl who’d babysat with us before. Cute … [Read more…]
When I was thinking about the whole big kids/little kids thing, I remembered something I hear all the time, which is how little babies and toddlers are so cuddly, cuddly, cuddly, and then big kids don’t want to cuddle. Well, yes, okay. Sort of true. It would be lovely if there were a happy medium … [Read more…]
Did I ever tell you about the time M saw the guy almost drive away with his coffee cup on the roof of his car? I was thinking about this story when I wrote the Planting Seeds in Pretend Play post. Especially if your child is always with a member of the family, you can … [Read more…]
Yesterday, one of M’s 4th-grade friends came up to me and gushed, “Mrs. B! You have got to let M see The Hunger Games! It’s so good!” I smiled what I hoped was a pleasant-but-cryptic smile. Another friend backed her up, “Oh, it’s TRUE. It’s so, so good. And it’s hardly even violent. You hardly … [Read more…]
The other night I couldn’t sleep because I found myself designing Maternal Merit Badges. I was thinking about how it’s So Not Helpful to tell other moms that things will get tougher (or, like one commenter reported, “What I’m doing is much harder than what you’re doing!‖nice). Meanwhile, kind words–especially from strangers, because if you’re … [Read more…]
Sneakily, my kids got old, and now I’m the mother of Big Kids. They’re 7 and 9, so I knew that they were aging, of course, but it really struck me today at the grocery store. For about two years I walked the grocery store with M strapped to my chest, carrying on a continuous … [Read more…]
At dinner, we were laughing about some political remark one of the girls’ classmates made. M tried to explain that this child simply didn’t know what he was talking about. “Oh, I know,” Cute W said. “Most kids your age don’t really follow politics. They just sort of parrot whatever their parents say.” “Including you … [Read more…]
Should you happen to wake up feeling depressed because last night your 7-year-old had another allergic reaction with swollen tongue, lips, face, and hands to add to the itchy rash, DON’T try to distract yourself by reading Facebook or the local news, because stories about how some of your favorite teachers are likely to be … [Read more…]
I started writing today, and I was going off on so many tangents that I finally decided to cut myself off and break up my various stories into a few posts. They’re all loosely related to a theme, which is that parenting is like gardening. Both of them require delayed gratification and a healthy dose … [Read more…]
Yesterday was J’s first day attending school since the Rash Incident. She’s been improving, so I gave her a non-drowsy allergy medicine and sent an email to the nurse telling her that my doctor swears it’s poison ivy or poison oak, as unlikely as it seems, and that it’s absolutely, definitely not chicken pox. J … [Read more…]
