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]
October 14, 2009
Me Day
Yesterday morning my office-mate/friend and I joked that we weren't the only ones who benefited from the two-days off for Fall Break. We left our clunky, prehistoric printer in a non-working state on Thursday--whirring endlessly to itself, and a couple of error lights flashing on and off.
Tuesday morning it was, miraculously, back-to-life again, doing what it was supposed to do--no help from anyone.
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- Tags: Work, Social & Emotional Issues, Parenting, Moms
October 7, 2009
Bag of Tricks: Bully Prevention Awareness
Did you know that this week is National Bullying Awareness Prevention week? Even if your child hasn't reported any bullying problems at school, I think this week is still a great time to talk with your children about friendship, kindness, and the importance of reporting bullying of any kind to teachers, staff and parents. So often we aren't motivated into action until something affects us personally; I'm guilty of this as a parent myself. [more]
August 20, 2009
Convergence
This made me smile yesterday:
T.'s take on winter science! The hypothesis she was testing? Whether or not frozen rocks would turn to ice.
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August 17, 2009
Big
Do you remember wanting desperately to be older? I remember, clearly. I remember being a teenager and just wishing for that next year. When I was really young I seriously believed I would grow the night before my birthday, and wake up looking different--older, taller, stronger. I had some feeling that if I could only turn 14, or 15, or 19, then that would be it, the year Great Things Would Happen. [more]
August 10, 2009
Testing the waters
What do I, and a community swimming pool, have in common?
We both turn 40 this month.
Construction on our neighborhood began in 1962, and in 1969 the pool--the hub of all our summer activity, the place where both kids learned to swim, where L.'s self-esteem soared for a brief, and wondrous period, the oasis in the woods we love so much, was opened. It's strange to me to think about that summer, forty years ago; to think that the month I was born, kids were jumping into the water for the first time at a pool in a neighborhood far, far away. [more]
- Tags: Social & Emotional Issues, Parenting, Moms, Birthdays
July 29, 2009
It was the worst of times, it was the best of times
Not long ago, L. surprised us out of the blue by telling us that the happiest day of his life was when T. was born. He then went on to recount, in great detail, the facts of T.'s birth ending with his first sight of her, as she lay between my legs. He really meant it, too, because he witnessed her birth--right there, up close and personal, while Clifford the Big Red Dog played on the wall-mounted hospital room television. He's never talked much about her birth before. He was, after all, only 3 1/2 years old at the time. We hadn't planned on his being in the room when T. [more]
