For weeks now T.'s excitement about the upcoming holidays (Christmas and her birthday in January--an event which should be a national holiday, as far as T.'s concerned) has been building and building. It's difficult for most small children to get as excited about Thanksgiving, as they do about the thought of getting lots of gifts over the holiday season. My students, on the other hand, have been thinking about Thanksgiving for weeks and weeks now. [more]

All the sunny, blue sky weather we’ve had for the past few days vanished last night. We woke up yesterday to heavy gray skies, and rain. The perfect day to wear my new raincoat, a spiffy black Ann Taylor coat I bought for $15 at my favorite thrift store last week. Except I had taken it to the dry cleaners on Friday and hadn’t picked it up yet. [more]

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This weekend my mother-in-law visited and brought with her several tattered cardboard boxes filled with all sorts of odds and ends from my husband's childhood years--the missing years, as we have called them, because while a quick trip upstairs to my parents' attic will open up a time capsule to my childhood, Scott thought for a long, long time that all those boxes were lost--thrown out by a renter who had once used their family's garage and taken it upon himself to do some housecleaning. [more]

If you are a working parent, is your company family-friendly? Take a minute to think about what you think family-friendly really means--in your ideal world (we're not talking reality, here). You can make a list, as I make my students often do in class, whenever I want to challenge them to think about a topic. Some things I would put on my list would be:

1. Good affordable health care benefits for families (including dental and vision)
2. Flexible work time
3. Extended leave for pregnancy/illness
4. Ability to bring children to work on school breaks [more]