Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Nothing will make you more grateful for childcare help as having your partner go out of town for a week.
I am primarily a stay-at-home mom, which means that most of my kids' care falls on me. I'm the parent who packs school lunches, makes sure they do their homework, contacts teachers, goes to doctor appointments, makes dinner, and does all of the other tasks that fall on whomever happens to be home between the hours of 8 in the morning and 7:30 at night. Even though I manage their lives pretty well, there is nothing more exhausting and demoralizing than when my husband, Alex, goes on a trip for work and leaves me to do all of the work. His absence just adds about two hours to my child care day, but those two hours (7-8 a.m. and 7:30-8:30 p.m.) are hard. Alex was out of town for almost all of last week, which left me to solo parent. I …
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
The Metro trip with my kids that I expected to be a hassle and a half turned out to be an exciting adventure. It turns out that even older kids can find magic in ordinary places.
One of the really wonderful things about having kids is seeing the world through their eyes. For instance, when they're babies and they see a cat and it is like, "Oh, good lord, what is THAT? Because it is AMAZEBALLS!" Then they are toddlers and the little wooden climbing structure at the playground turns into an epic pirate ship that transports their little imaginations around the world and you are reminded of what it is like to be able to see the possibility in anything. Once your kids are a little older—say ages 7 through 11, like mine are—these moments come less often. Don't you worry though, because they still happen. I took all three of my kids on a Metro trip last Friday. Living in the DC area, this may not seem like that big of a …
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Parents have decades of hard-won experience and knowledge, yet our kids seem to think we know nothing at all. Here's what we know, kids. Here's what we know.
I had a little mental scuffle with my oldest son last weekend. I was trying to impart wisdom to him and he was emphatically doubting my ideas—with tears. I lost the skirmish; it turns out that his ironclad grip on delusion and his sad little face were stronger than my years of experience. It got me thinking though about the things that I have learned over the course of my many years that my kids are convinced they know better about. I made a handy little list that I can stow away and pull out in 30 years to show them that I was right all along. 1. Being edited makes you a better writer. Being edited can also feel like the worst thing in the world, but it almost always improves what you produce. This is the scuffle I had with my son last …
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Did your kids have a Valentine's Day party at school last week? See how you do on our quiz about the joy that is the classroom party.
Valentine's Day came and went last week, which means that sugar-fueled Valentine's Day class parties have come and gone as well. After attending two of them last week, I got to thinking about these parties. I have been to something close to six million and four of them, so I feel like I am something of an expert. Are you? Take the quiz! 1. Classroom parties should consist of: (a) a snack, an activity, and some mayhem (b) goodie bags and organized activities (c) at least one child under a desk chanting, "more sugar, more sugar, more sugar..." Answer: (a) If we're being honest here, you could also have answered with option (c) and I would have counted you right. I've seen it happen at more than one party. 2. Snacks at a classroom party …
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Kids grow up so fast. And every stage they go through seems harder to parent through than the last.
One of the most obnoxious things about parenting is that just as you (mostly) master one stage of your kids' lives, they move on to another one. This is an excellent reason to have more than one kid. This is also why everyone (mostly) jokes about how they wreck their first child. So far, the level of difficulty of each life stage my kids has gone through is harder than the one before it. The exception is that "big kid" is easier than "little kid." However, I am something like four days into "puberty" and it's already 16 times harder than "big kid," so the difficulty curve is still headed sharply up. I'm hopeful that at some point, that trend inverts and those stages start to get easier. Stop laughing at me. I've created a handy dandy guide…
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
I was dreading bingo night at my kids' school, but I learned that sometimes giving in to the chaos is sometimes the best idea of all.
Last weekend was a big sporting weekend. We had the Super Bowl (congratulations, Ravens!), the Puppy Bowl (best hour of our lives!), and let's not forget the event that my kids were really excited for: bingo night at the elementary school. Evidently last year I told my youngest son that I would take him to bingo night but I forgot and we didn't go. I have absolutely no recollection of this (although, let's be honest, it sounds a lot like me), but Quinn, the youngest, remembered and made sure to remind me over and over in advance of this year's bingo night, held last Friday. I had no option but to hang my head in delinquent parent shame and take my kids. Sadly, my husband was out with friends so I had to be in charge of all three of my …
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
My family loves it when a grandparent comes to visit. Aside from the joy of being with family, there are some very practical reasons to welcome these people into our home.
My mom is in town to visit my family, which is lovely. Aside from the joy of seeing my kids interact with their nana and being able to hang with my cool mom, there are some very practical benefits to having her hanging around. For instance, I have never taken so many daytime naps in my life. I decided to make a list of happy things about having grandparent houseguests so that next time I am, let's say, overwhelmed by having someone stay in my home for multiple days, I will have a cheat sheet to go to as a reminder of why grandparents are awesome. • She goes to the bus stop to pick up my kids after school so I don't have to. What? It's cold out there. I don't want to go. My kids are more excited to see her anyway. • Because Montgomery …
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Of all the holidays to celebrate, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is one that my children look forward to every year.
There are so many holidays for kids to celebrate, most of them requiring the purchase of things. Halloween requires costumes and candy, Valentine's Day requires cards and candy, Christmas requires gifts and candy, and Easter requires baskets, commercial dyes, and...candy. (I figure it will only be a couple more years before Peeps comes up with a Labor Day candy. Maybe little marshmallow chickens carrying "ON STRIKE" signs.) That is why I am so glad to see that my children have embraced a meaningful holiday in Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which has become an annual day of celebration in my family. It started a few years ago with my son Jack, who is autistic. People with autism tend to have obsessive interests in specific things and for some…
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Remember when weekends were for sleeping late and partying? Then remember how your kids put an abrupt stop to that?
Remember back in the day when you were young and didn't have kids and Friday afternoon was the best time of the week? The weekend stretched out ahead of you, 48 hours of possibility and awesomeness. Then you had kids. Friday afternoon quickly becomes something entirely different after you have children. Those 48 hours change from "What wonderful thing can I do this weekend?" to "How on earth am I going to fill 48 hours straight with my kids?" Dreary winter weather only makes this harder. You have options, of course. You can just let them do their own thing and see what happens. Left to their own devices over a period of several hours last weekend, I found my husband and oldest son watching Transformers cartoons together on different …
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Has your family gotten this flu that's going around? Because my family just had it and it is terrrrrible.
I've been reading Facebook status after Facebook status describing whole families falling victim to the flu. It seems that a particularly virulent, contagious version of the plague is traveling rapidly around the region. Each time I saw one of those statuses, I mentally sent sad thoughts the way of the afflicted families and thanked my lucky stars that I wasn't one of them. I should have known that our luck wouldn't hold. I'm glad that we managed to get through the holidays and New Year's without anyone being sick, but I wish that my youngest son hadn't fallen ill on the very first day back to school after break. I sent everyone off that morning and happily settled in to taking care of my post-holidays to-do list when I got an email from …
Jean Winegardner
10:59 am on Wednesday, March 6, 2013
There are a LOT of Metro rider crimes I would happily mete out judgement for in such a court, Judge Astrove. :) more ›