PregnancyFamilyEducation Blogs
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]
January 13, 2009
Five
My T. turns five today. Five is big, I think; after all, it's half a decade, as L. pointed out last night, and half a decade IS big (um, not quite as big as being around for nearly four decades). We're having a big party for T. on Saturday, and today, her actual birthday, we're taking her here, and then out for pizza. I even set my alarm extra early this morning, and made her a chocolate chip waffle face: [more]
November 20, 2008
Weighty decisions
I know it's only the middle of November, but we're already beginning to think about the fact that T. will be starting kindergarten next year. We're thinking about where she should go, and yes, we have a creeping wondering about whether she should go. We're not planning on keeping her back another year. She'll turn five this January, and by the time she starts kindergarten she'll have at least six or seven months of being five under her belt. We honestly never thought twice about sending her to school next year.
September 10, 2008
Losses and gains
In each of my three sections of English Fundamentals this week, we read Mark Halliday's Young Man on Sixth Avenue, and in each class I asked students to come up with two or three conflicts they saw present in the story. All three classes came up with the good, but conventional ones: the Young Man vs. his inner self; the Young Man vs. society; the Young Man vs. life. In my third and final class today, a young woman raised her hand and said she saw in the story a conflict between gains and losses. [more]
July 29, 2008
Yin and Yang
We've suddenly slipped into a different pace around here. It's a quieter house, and the hours stretch ahead, marked definitively on each end of the day by school drop-off and pick-up at 3:00. T. missed her brother yesterday, but she has an extra spring in her step, we think; that glow that kids get when they can play at being an only child for a while. We're already enjoying the one-on-one time with her, but with pangs of guilt now and again. Should we be having fun? I ask myself at the pool, while we toss T. into the air between us and watch her dive and laugh. [more]
- Tags: Social and Emotional Issues, Siblings, School Daze, Parenting, Moms, Dads, Children
May 6, 2008
Bearing gifts
I was recently invited to a virtual baby shower for a blogging friend of mine who is expecting her second child. I had never been invited to one of these before, although I've attended quite a few flesh-and-blood showers (that sounds kind of gruesome, actually, but I hate referring to the world outside of the Internet as "real life," since I blog in real life and real-life people read what I write). [more]
May 5, 2008
Tooth and nail
On Sunday we had a total of 20 minutes of peace between the two kids. Those 20 minutes took place -- aptly enough, I suppose -- during Family Cook Night. L. was too busy chopping carrots and cucumbers (he even sliced a tomato, which was real progress for him! [more]
May 2, 2008
The spacing game
Last night, while dozing and resting with the kids during their respective bedtime routines (rituals), I realized yet another one of the many marvelous things about being a parent: It must be the only job (vocation? state-of-being?) where you can spend a solid 10 minutes with one child at bath time discussing the virtues of various body parts and, 45 minutes later when that child has drifted off to sleep, spend 20 minutes in a darkened room with the older child discussing evolution, the possibility of life in outer space, and the Big Bang theory.
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April 18, 2008
Going it alone (for a few days)
Those little pangs of nostalgia and twinges of longing I sometimes get for my children's babyhood are always squashed completely at times like this, when my husband is out of town and I'm left to hold down the fort alone. I marvel at how much easier life has become now, with a four-year old and a seven-year old, even if parenting has grown extremely trying in other respects. But the daily routines are easier, bedtimes are predictable, and the guarantee of a fairly seamless night's sleep is pretty certain. [more]
April 9, 2008
The unbearable lightness of siblinghood
A few years back, an acquaintance of mine was pregnant with her first child, a son. She told me that she was relieved that her first child was going to be a boy. This way, she told me, she wouldn't have to worry about whether her second child would be a girl or a boy. She didn't want two girls--girls, she told me, fight too much and usually just don't get along (as it turned out she had three sisters, and they fought tooth and nail for years). [more]
