It’s Screen-Free Week at the girls’ school, and for the first time ever, it’s actually a breeze. Although our dinners together have suffered with all of our activities, another happier by-product is that the girls haven’t been watching tv on weekdays at all. Typically, if my kids watch tv during the week, it starts between … [Read more…]
I’m getting fed up with being sensible. My brain is creating intelligible, perfectly reasonable statements, but by the time they flow out of my mouth all anyone can hear is the “Wawhn-wawhn-wah-wah-Wonk” of that teacher from the Peanuts cartoons. It’s seriously frustrating. Okay, so it’s almost May, and the sky is blue with puffy white … [Read more…]
I used to read articles in parenting magazines which urged us to try our best to have dinner together as a family at least once or twice a week and I totally rolled my eyes. I’d think: talk about a low bar! What the heck do they think everyone is doing? Is everyone driving through … [Read more…]
I lost it a bit yesterday. I’ve got a soda problem. I just love it. And I know it’s terrible. It’s chemicals in a can. It’s got caffeine, and I’m ridiculously sensitive to caffeine–if I have two Coke Zeros, then I’m screwed, sleep-wise. So I’m intermittently abstaining from soda, trying to quit, or off the … [Read more…]
We enjoyed our first completely unscheduled Saturday in months. The gorgeous weather was a bonus. Cute W spent much of the day staining a desk that his dad made for him. Staining furniture has got to be on the Cute W’s top ten list for things that make him most tense, ever. For part of … [Read more…]
I don’t quite know where the day went. That’s what it’s like when the kids are home. Well, first, it’s not entirely true. In the morning, we visited an orthodontist. Little J has crowded teeth, and we were hoping that today’s second opinion would echo the first opinion so that we’d just know what to … [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…]
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…]
