Professor Mom

Aliki
Chronicles the life of a mom, teacher, and writer trying to stay sane amid the chaos of daily life.

archives

August 29, 2008
Let us eat cake
I couldn't put up a column yesterday because apparently bad days can carry over into the next day, as well, and Wednesday was such a train wreck of a day that my faculties were completely gone by the evening, when I usually write, and all I could do was lie on the couch, watch House Hunters International, and feel jealous of the attractive young British woman who bought the world's coolest loft apartment in the heart of Amsterdam. I won't go into the painful details here, but Wednesday involved fallen-through babysitter plans, a two-hour meeting, a lost stuffed animal, lots of pouring rain,...
Activities for children, Cooking, Food for Thought, Life in General, Parenting, Recipes
August 27, 2008
The terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day
Remember Alexander and his terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day? Nothing goes right for him: his brother punches him, he falls in a mud puddle, he doesn't get to pick the sneakers he likes and, to add insult to injury, his mom serves lima beans for dinner. I always think back to that book whenever one of my own kids has a bad day--not just a Bad Day, but a terrible, horrible, no-good bad day. Those kind of days are special and in a class all by themselves. I also think about how different kids' bad days are from grown-ups' bad days. Our bad days can be really bad, filled...
Children, Parents, Social & Emotional Issues, T.
August 26, 2008
Firsts and lasts
A milestone will be passed in schools around my city this week, because yesterday was the first day of school for the rest of the public school kids, and Tuesday and Wednesday will be staggered entry days for the brand-new kindergarteners. At the pool yesterday, moms and dads were abuzz with discussions of school-supply lists and first days and teachers' names. I felt a little like an outsider, since L. has been in school for almost three weeks now. But it also felt good to have our first day of third grade over and done with, and the school routine settling down a bit for us. Yesterday...
Children, Growing Up Is Hard to Do, Milestones, Parenting, Preschoolers, School Daze, Social & Emotional Issues
August 25, 2008
Out with the gold...in with the old
The Olympics are over; our evenings just got a lot duller, and last night, as we watched the closing ceremony, we felt decidedly deflated. August is definitely a dark period in TV watching, and the Olympics were a bright spot shining in the midst of lots of bad reality shows and tired repeats of Law & Order episodes. Plus, everywhere we went, people were talking about the Olympics. On our parenting support group's Yahoo board, people were excited about Michael Phelps. He grew up with ADHD! And he was teased as a child! But look at him now, eight gold medals later, Phelps is a role model...
Children, Family Activities, Family Entertainment, Olympics, Summer, Television
August 22, 2008
This one goes out to the ones we love...
Last weekend, when we were at our friendly local Asian market to stock up on supplies for Family Cook Night, we noticed a large, prominent display at the front of the store, with a little crowd of people gathered around it. When I took a closer look, I saw that the shelves were loaded with beautifully decorated tins. Customers were scrutinizing the tins--picking them up, examining them, and then carefully choosing the design they liked best. I watched while an elderly Asian couple chose a red tin with gold lettering, and a young woman picked a black and red one. The sign above the...
Activities for children, Cooking, Family, Family Activities, Food, Recipes
August 21, 2008
Bountiful
The other day T. and I drove through our old neighborhood, past the turn-off to the street our old house used to be on. I felt a tug of nostalgia suddenly, but I'm not sure what for, really. I don't miss the house--I love this house and this new neighborhood, and the friends we've made in the nearly two years we've lived here--but the tug was there, nonetheless, like a homing instinct pulling me down the street. I've also been thinking lately about the garden I used to have. My dad and I built it when L. was barely two. We worked hard laying the cinder blocks and making them level, and then...
Activities for children, Cooking, Family, Food for Thought, Neighbors, Recipes
August 20, 2008
Bag of tricks: The homework edition
While many kids around the country are trying to squeeze the last remaining drops out of summer, over here at Professor Mom's house we've been back to school for almost three weeks now. And now that the dust has settled somewhat for us and for the other parents of kids at L.'s school, a new topic of conversation is springing up in the walk-up line: homework. The other day, a mom in front of me in line was lamenting to another parent about how her middle-school-aged daughter threw a two-hour tantrum over a spelling assignment. And on Monday, the mom of a new kindergartener asked me (me!) for...
Bag of Tricks, Children, Dads, Homework Help, Moms, Parenting, Parenting Advice, School Daze
August 19, 2008
Taking stock
Not long ago at the pool, Scott and I were moaning to our friends/neighbors about how summer was drawing to a close, and we would be heading back to work this week. One friend actually rolled his eyes at us--it was unmistakable, that eye-rolling. "I know, I know," I said. "I know you don't have any sympathy for us." Our friend put his thumb and forefinger together and made a big, fat zero in the air. I know that to many people who work 9-5 five days/week with two weeks off each year, our plight doesn't summon up any sympathy. But while some people imagine that college teachers lead ...
Children, Dads, Family, Juggling, Moms, Parenting, Summer, Teaching, Work
August 18, 2008
Storytelling
On Saturday we had one of those perfect dinners where the kids ate like normal people, and no one threw food, and we had an actual long conversation where everyone lingered over their meal and didn't catapult out of their chairs the minute they felt full (and with those little kid tummies, that usually takes five seconds around here). The conversation started with trying to help L. process two "bad" days he had last week--bad because he had different substitute teachers on Thursday and Friday, never a good thing for L. But before too long, the conversation shifted into storytelling mode, and...
Conversations, Dinner, Family Activities, Family Time, Marriage, Parenting, School Daze
August 15, 2008
Golden rolls
I had grand thoughts about writing a long, crafty post for today about all the things you can do with baking soda and vinegar--cork bottle rockets, volcanoes, geysers, bubble bombs, etc.--because there is little more exciting to small, budding scientists then watching the satisfying reaction between vinegar and baking soda. I'll have to save the post for next week, because it's been a long, long week of back-to-work meetings in which the merits of numerous new forms were discussed, crazy school meetings in which the merits of other forms were discussed, and then I spent two and a half hours...
Activities for children, Arts & Crafts, Cooking, Family Activities, Food for Thought, Recipes
August 14, 2008
Growing pains (mine)
One of the greatest parenting myths of all time is that the twos are terrible. Or, maybe the twos were terrible back in the old days, but a type of evolutionary process we don't yet understand has delayed the terrible parts until later, by a year or two. I know I waited for the terrible twos with L., but they never came. At two, L. was easygoing and engaging, and it wasn't until he turned three that things really changed. A few months into three, it was as if someone had swooped down and taken my formerly easygoing child and replaced him with a body-double--a kid whom I still loved to pieces...
Daughters, Discipline, Moms, Parenting, Preschoolers
August 13, 2008
The paper chase
Have you noticed that as soon as your child sets foot in a school, whether it be a preschool or an elementary school, there's a definite increase in the amount of paper that is spontaneously generated--much of it stuffed in backpacks that are too big, or flapping out of large brown envelopes or colorful folders? We noticed this right away when L. started preschool a few years ago. All of a sudden we were dealing with stacks of paper: artwork, information sheets, calendars, inclement weather notices, party planning notices--you name it. If they could put it on a piece of paper, they did....
Children, Homework Help, Parenting Advice, School Daze
August 12, 2008
Reaping
Remember those behavior/responsibility charts from last week? My kids did it! T. dutifully stumbled off to the potty every night when she woke up to come into bed with us. Granted, I did have to prop myself up on one elbow almost every night, gaze at her bleary-eyed in the dark, and remind her to run back to the potty, but she did. Every night. And L. managed to make it through six nights without crawling into bed with us. We told him he was free to bring his sleeping bag into our room and make himself a bed near us, but that he couldn't shout out, make noise, or climb into our bed. And he...
Children, Cooking, Discipline and Rewards, Food for Thought, Parenting, Parenting Advice, Sleep
August 11, 2008
Going it solo
Last week at my haircut appointment, my hairdresser C. and I were talking about families. He slipped in a bit of gentle criticism about his partner's mother, who (in his opinion) has some unhealthy baggage she carries around with her. But he hastened to add, because he is a very kind, big-hearted person, that many of her troubles stemmed from having raised six children single-handedly. I think that would probably send lots of people close to, if not over, the edge. Six kids as a single parent! My father's mother was practically a single mother for much of my dad's childhood, and she had six...
Dads, Family, Lessons from Little Ones, Moms, Parenting, Thoughts from the other side
August 8, 2008
Resolutions aren't just for the New Year...and tell me about your crock pot!
This summer I made two new resolutions. Resolution #1 is to give up drinking coffee, and Resolution #2 is to embark on meal planning for the week, rather than rely on our fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants approach. I only managed to come around to actually doing Resolution #1 about two weeks ago. I've given up coffee before, of course, in the months leading up to our trying to conceive both kids. This time around, I'm making the switch because I ended up drinking way too much caffeine last semester and, as a result, I think it made me jittery and less patient than I usually am. Our schedules were...
Cooking, Family, Family Activities, Food, Food for Thought, Recipes, Vegetarian
August 7, 2008
Perspective
Yesterday afternoon I stopped by L.'s school to eat lunch with him. While I was signing in, I overheard the school counselor talking with a mom and a child in the front lobby. The child, a new fourth grader at the school, wanted to call it quits on the school and go home. For good. The mom and counselor were trying to talk the girl into giving the school through the end of the week--she was so new she hadn't, apparently, even had the chance to eat lunch yet with her class (although I'm not sure THAT experience would be enough to sell her on any new school). The poor girl was trying to be big...
Growing-up Is Hard to Do, Lessons to Live By, Moms, Parenting, School Daze, Social and Emotional Issues
August 6, 2008
Sugar and spice and puppy dog tails
Last week Scott and I took T. to a free movie as part of the Family Summer Movie Fest. It's a great deal--free movie and $1 popcorn and the chance to sit for a little over an hour in an air-conditioned theater. We took T. to see Everyone's Hero, about a little boy who loves baseball and gets the chance to be a real hero if he can return Babe Ruth's beloved bat to him. This week we took T. to see Peter Pan--not the Disney version, but the 2003 one. There was plenty of swashbuckling action and sword play, which T. sat through without too many worries, but there were also lots of emotional...
Activities for children, Daughters, Family, Family Activities, Gender Roles, Lessons from Little Ones, Parenting, Sons
August 5, 2008
Bag of tricks: the sleep edition
Over the summer, L.'s sleep habits have gone from bad to worse, and he's now crawling into bed with us in the middle of the night--something he hasn't done for four years. This is, in some ways, an improvement over the nervous shadowy figure standing by our bedside at 2:00 a.m. and frantically whispering to us, and a definite improvement over the terrified yelling at 3:00 a.m., but it's still not good. At L.'s eight-year appointment, his doctor told us that eight is a prime year for anxiety and night terrors. Eight, it appears, is a tough year. Kids begin to realize that there are real...
Bag of Tricks, Children, L. and T., Parenting, Parenting Advice, Sleep, Social and Emotional Issues
August 4, 2008
Monkey what?
T. had a playdate yesterday with J., her best-friend-forever from preschool. When J.'s mom called to set it up, she suggested we meet at a new popular inflatable place in town. I hesitated, because I've had past experience with another popular inflatable place and just thinking about inflatables makes me want to crawl into a corner with my hands over my head. But it was hot yesterday and I was curious about this new, much hyped-up, fun play place. And T. loves inflatables and her friend J., so I didn't have the heart to suggest something else. The big hook with this place is that it boasts...
Activities for children, Children, Dads, Moms, Parenting, Safety, The Games Kids Play
August 1, 2008
Summer treasures
If your household is anything like mine, when you go on a trip to the beach you end up bringing back bags and bags of shells and rocks. When we went to Greece two years ago, half of one suitcase was loaded down with ziploc bags filled with gorgeous rocks, which the kids and I had plucked from the violet-blue sea, many thousands of miles away from home. The shells and rocks are always so beautiful the minute you pull them from the sea, but by the time you return home and dump them out onto a table or porch, they seem plainer somehow, only shadows of what they looked like--kind of the same way...
Activities for children, Arts and Crafts, Beach, Children, Family Time, Summer