PregnancyFamilyEducation Blogs
November 4, 2009
Claiming
Not long ago, on an afternoon off, I took the kids downtown to our natural science museum--one of our favorite places. It's free, and there are tons of neat exhibits to roam around, and some impressive dinosaur skeletons here and there, poised in mid-lunge. When we were in the main dinosaur room I noticed another family there--a woman and man, and their infant son, who must have been about two months old. [more]
November 3, 2009
Anxious
It was strange to be back in the classroom on Monday. There’s nothing like missing practically an entire week of work to make you feel out-of-the-loop, and very, very far behind. I also noticed that while I have a hard time getting any students to come visit me in my office for a chat about misplaced modifiers, or parallel sentence structure, they didn’t seem to mind dropping by to ask me about my battle with the swine flu last week.
What were my symptoms?
How long did my fever last?
Was I really, really, really sick? [more]
November 1, 2009
Then and now
Back when I was a kid, sick days seemed a little golden, somehow, tinged with a magic to them, spun from something out-of-the-ordinary. It was never fun to be sick, but getting to stay home was like being given a chance to step back into those perfect days of very early childhood, when you could lie cocooned in bed, drifting in and out of sleep to the steady hum of household rhythms, or the comforting background of the television or radio noise rising and falling around you in waves and you waited. [more]
- Tags: Parenting, Moms, Health, Growing Up Is Hard to Do, Children
October 30, 2009
In the land of the living...
Every year for the past few years we've hosted a family Halloween gathering at our house. My kids love to decorate for Halloween, and I love the chance to host a holiday party--especially a party that involves cooking up ghoulish looking cookies and other Halloween-themed food. I was so prepared this year--in advance, for once. Weeks ago I bought the party plates and tablecloth, and I've been collecting recipes and party ideas, and browsing Halloween sites for what seems like forever.
It doesn't look like it's going to happen this year. Thanks, H1N1. [more]
October 28, 2009
Note from the trenches
You might feel the need to Lysol your computer monitor after all the H1N1 posts I've been putting up this week...
It must be some type of cosmic joke that after spending so much time wrestling with the H1N1 vaccine question and writing about it yesterday, I would come down with the flu.
THE flu. [more]
October 27, 2009
Irony and indecision
Irony
pronunciation: \ˈī-rə-nē also ˈī(-ə)r-nē\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural iro·nies
Etymology: Latin ironia, from Greek eirōnia, from eirōn dissembler
Date: 1502
the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning
OR
Spending weeks and weeks debating whether or not you should get the H1N1 vaccine for your children, making the decision to go ahead and do it, then finding out that you can't get the vaccine anywhere, even if you beg and plead, and wring your hands.
************ [more]
October 26, 2009
Lying low
We had all kinds of busy and exciting things planned for the weekend: there was the vegetarian potluck on Saturday, and pumpkin carving, and an outing with friends, and we'd talked about a hike in the woods on Sunday, to celebrate the return of crisp, fall weather. But on Saturday morning, in the wee hours of the morning, T. woke me up by crawling into bed next to me and uttering the ominous words, "I don't feel very good." Then she settled her hot little body around mine and I lay awake, feeling an almost audible toll of some warning bell somewhere: fever, oh no! [more]
October 23, 2009
Feed the soul (again)
Something has happened to my internal clock, and to the internal clocks of my students, and my husband, and my poor children, who usually hop out of bed pretty wide awake every morning (my kids can go from asleep to awake in .2 seconds). Every day this week I've surfaced painfully from a deep sleep and every day this week I've had to drag both L. and T. out of bed. Even the dog has a hard time getting up. She follows me downstairs in the dark, but races to her second dog bed--the one in the office--to catch a little extra snooze time while I blow dry my hair. [more]
