PregnancyFamilyEducation Blogs
September 24, 2009
Playground wisdom
There must be something in the air. Maybe it's the sudden return of the heat and humidity from the summer, maybe it's the constant rain, maybe people are just having a tough week. Yesterday I was crossing campus and passed two female students engaged in an all-out argument--name slinging, disparaging comments and everything. One of the girl's friends stood behind her, arms crossed, ready to jump into the verbal fray.
September 1, 2009
Lessons from little ones
If you’d seen me yesterday you might have noticed I walked around my day floating on a cloud of contentment and happiness over the outpouring of well-wishes about my birthday I received all day long. Say what you will about Facebook and Twitter and the likes, but the internet is a great place—a rich place, a warm place--to be on your birthday.
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On Sunday night, the eve of my birthday, I tucked T. into bed after stories and songs and just before I left her room she asked, “how old will you be tomorrow, Mama?”
August 24, 2009
Future Me
Setting: Me at the computer, Sunday afternoon. Scott is gone for the afternoon, taking care of some family business, and the kids are playing "Star Wars" in the family room--building intricate block structures for L.'s Star Wars action figures to inhabit. I'm attempting to seize a sliver of time to get some work done at the computer--desperate to do so because I don't want to spend my Sunday night working. L., who has spent the last twenty minutes delivering a monologue to T. on the ins and outs of the different clone troopers walks into the office.
"Hey Mama!"
"What?" [more]
August 6, 2009
Mind over matter
Ever since L. started kindergarten it's been our quest to get him to reveal some tidbit of information he learned at school. Every now and then he'll surprise us with an interesting fact ("did you know that a light second is 186,000 miles?") and we'll utter an exclamation of amazement and follow-up with our standard "did you learn that at school?"
But the answer is always, no. No, he learned it on such-and-such website, or in such-and-such book he read during math class when he was supposed to be learning about long division.
June 3, 2009
Don't cry over spilled...pickles
Scott often teases me that while I'm patient and sympathetic (to a fault sometimes) with animate things, whether they be people or animals or plants, I have little patience for inanimate objects. Maybe I take out my bottled up frustration with animate things on the inanimate objects in my life, who knows. But I do know that I can direct quite a bit of anger and resentment at things that don't breathe, or talk back, or have feelings--like my refrigerator, for instance.
June 1, 2009
The other side
For those of you on the edge of your seats (and I know you're out there) wondering how we made out on Friday at the end-of-year IEP meeting, it went well--better than either one of us had anticipated. I realized during the first 25 minutes or so of what turned out to be a 2 1/2 hour long meeting, that I had desperately needed to let off some steam, and L.'s IEP team seemed to recognize that. Scott and I had stayed up late the night before strategizing and writing out an "agenda" of our concerns, goals, and needs. [more]
April 21, 2009
Baggage
L. had to learn a hard lesson this past weekend: it had to do with trust and friendship, and it was a lesson I think he is too young to learn. I was lucky that I didn't have to learn such lessons until college, but when my trust in two friends was betrayed, on two separate occasions, I remember feeling devastated, disappointed, and alone. Because the parties involved were adults, it was more difficult for me to reconcile what had happened. When the friend is an eight-year old child, though, this is a very different matter. [more]
January 16, 2009
What I do know
Yesterday was a long, long day--one of those days when there is so much packed into it that you can't believe all of it happened in one day, instead of in two. There was work, and a doctor's appointment, and birthday-party-related errand-running, and too much driving in between. The kids were difficult to deal with--T. is tired from getting to sleep too late these days, and L.
January 12, 2009
Mental milestones
You know how growth spurts in kids are always marked by physical and psychological changes? Sleeping through the night--or its converse, night waking? Increased appetite, or worries, or tantrums? You wonder whether something's happened to your child lately--what's set them off--and then they suddenly catch you by surprise. They seem taller, or more rounded, or their face has lost the curved cheeks of toddlerhood.
December 22, 2008
What to do about you-know-who
I had a disturbing and utterly frightening dream last night; the kind of dream that sends chills down a parent’s spine this time of the year. I dreamed that it was Christmas morning and that we’d all—everyone in my family—completely forgotten to fill the Christmas stockings, or—horror of all horrors!—leave cookies and milk out for Santa. Of course, I have to add here that even the horror of this dream did not compare to the reality of having actually left behind, two states away, some of T.'s critical Santa presents last year—but that's another story.
