Professor Mom

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

archives

October 31, 2008
Spinning magic
Looking back on yesterday's preschool Halloween party, I think it's fitting that my last preschool Halloween party for my kids ever (sniff!) would be not unlike the first one ever, when L. was three. I didn't make those whoopie pies that year, but I did make sandwiches and cut them into pumpkin shapes with the same orange pumpkin cookie cutter I used this year. The year L. was three, I raced home after teaching my one and only class that day (I was still a part-time adjunct instructor back then) and I had a few hours in the morning to get things ready. This year, there were certainly not...
Cooking, Fall, Food for Thought, Growing Up Is Hard to Do, Holidays, Parenting, Party Planning, Preschoolers, Recipes, Traditions
October 30, 2008
Whooped
Halloween has taken us completely by surprise this year. I don't know what happened, but we're just not as ready as we have been in the past. Last year by this time we had carved the pumpkins, made our toasted pumpkin seeds, eaten our toasted pumpkin seeds, completely decorated the house and yard, and bought our candy for the trick-or-treaters. This year we have the pumpkins, but we haven't carved them yet, and I certainly haven't made the seeds or bought any candy, and the house and yard still need some tender, loving Halloween care. Part of the problem, I think, is that we normally use the...
Activities for children, Cooking, Fall, Food for Thought, Holidays, Recipes
October 29, 2008
Math karma
Yesterday afternoon I sat in on a meeting while T. happily watched Dora's Halloween Adventure in the adjacent office (with ear buds on, no less). Someone in the meeting mentioned being "math challenged," and my mind instantly sprang to attention--not in a good way, but in an empathetic way. If there had been a soundtrack to my thoughts at that very instant, you would have heard the music from the Psycho shower scene playing in the background. More than one person at the meeting groaned and admitted to being "math challenged" as well, so at least I wasn't alone. I can still remember...
Children, Dads, Homework Help, L., Moms, Parenting, School Daze, Teaching
October 28, 2008
Bag of tricks: the classroom survival edition
Around this time of the semester, I start to morph into a different person in the classroom. I spend weeks at the beginning of the semester trying to lay the groundwork to help my students have a successful semester. We go over classroom strategies, fill out calendars, talk about study skills. I do all this because I hope they will build on these skills and that, come midterm, it will be all clear sailing for them--at least from an organizational and study-skills standpoint. But this semester I've been finding myself grouching at my students much more than I like to. Sometimes...
Bag of Tricks, College Preparation, Lessons to Live By, Parenting, School Daze, Teaching, Work
October 27, 2008
Me, my body, my self
Last week, when I was waiting outside T.’s school for the doors to click open so I could go inside, a mom ran up, breathless, dressed in a snazzy work-out outfit. “Are the doors open yet?” she asked me. “Nope.” I said. “Whew.” She fanned herself with her hand. “I didn’t have time to shower after working out. I tell you—looking like I did before I had kids is HARD work.” I really wanted to say something then, about what hard work it is to work full-time and parent, and keep a house, and not have time to exercise much, if at all, and what even harder work it is to remember to not mind so much...
Children, Health, Lessons to Live By, Moms, Parenting, Pregnancy, Shopping
October 24, 2008
You know those days
I couldn't get a column up yesterday because it was, frankly, One of Those Days. You know those ones, where you fully intend to get x, y, and z done, but maybe only z gets done, or x and y, but not all three, and certainly not in the order you wanted. One thing I didn't really realize about parenting when I was a younger, more naive parent, is how much mental energy it takes. When you are the parent of a young baby, or even a toddler, you find it physically exhausting. I used to think it was mentally exhausting as well, but I really didn't know what mental exhaustion was back then. I think...
Children, Cooking, Food for Thought, Juggling, Life in General, Parenting, Teaching, Work, Writing
October 22, 2008
Family van
Yesterday, in my Facebook profile, I wrote a note about how I was tired of people who care too much about cars. Then I sat down to write this column, which is about how, after four weeks on Craigslist, we've said good-bye to our poor, down-and-out Dodge Grand Caravan--the first car we ever bought together, and the one we used to bring both our babies home from the hospital. Then I thought I was living a double-standard, because clearly I care a lot about cars if I was going to sit down and write a whole column about one. What I was referring to in my profile the other day, though, was an...
Family, Growing-up Is Hard to Do, L. and T., Life in General, Parenting, Social & Emotional Issues
October 21, 2008
It's me, on a soapbox today
I have been hearing from more and more parents of kindergarteners about how rigid and, frankly, unrealistic the expectations placed on five-year-olds are becoming. Maybe it's just my county and state, but I hear a familiar lament every time I talk with a parent in the walk-up line, or talk about school with the parent of a kindergartener. I have to say my memory of kindergarten is foggy, but also different from what I perceive happening now as a parent. First of all, I didn't go to all-day kindergarten, the way kids in my state do. I also didn't start preschool until I was four, just...
Children, Education, Kindergarten, Parenting, Parenting Advice, School Daze, Social & Emotional Issues
October 20, 2008
Balance
This weekend was a long and difficult one, because we spent much of it doing the dirty work of parenting: enforcing consequences (also known as punishment). L. did hardly any work at school last week, and his teacher sent it all home ("Who's being punished here?" Scott wanted to know, which was a pretty good question), and we had to exact consequences on L. for a moment of extreme folly last week that ended up costing us $120. But enough said. Remember that adage parents like to pull out when they're discussing consequences with kids? The one about how this hurts me more than it hurts you?...
Children, Discipline, Fall, Family, Food for Thought, Life in General, Parenting, Recipes, Traditions
October 17, 2008
A lesson and a recipe
I’m not normally a jealous person. I’ve learned, over the years, that jealousy is a pretty fruitless emotion, and it makes you feel bad, too, which is never good. But yesterday I stood in the sweltering heat (86 degrees! It’s October, remember?) at the walk-up line at L.’s school. My shoes were too hot, my pants too hot, my shirt too hot, my hair too hot. Leaves trickled down from the trees above but they were dry, pathetic-looking leaves, not the crisp bright colors you get with a good fall. I felt peevish--even angry, about being cheated yet again of good fall weather, the season I love the...
Choices, Cooking, Food for Thought, Lessons from Little Ones, Lessons to Live By, Parenting, Recipes, Social & Emotional Issues
October 16, 2008
Getting back to (Halloween) basics
Every year around this time, I look at the calendar with a start and realize that my kids need Halloween costumes. We usually start thinking about Halloween in theory months in advance (T. started talking about Halloween back in August), but as with all things, actually getting down to doing something about costumes doesn't happen until the 11th hour. I don't think I'm completely alone in this. My kids are pretty unpredictable when it comes to costumes. Last fall, for instance, I shopped early and found T. an adorable vet costume at my favorite thrift store. I spent about six weeks...
Activities for children, Children, Fall, Halloween, Holidays, Parenting
October 15, 2008
When Martha Stewart and Mother Nature meet...
On Monday, while the kids were having "rest time" and watching WordGirl in the family room, I slipped out to check the mail. I had almost made it to the mailbox when a huge acorn fell from the oak tree in the middle of our yard and smacked me square on the top of my head. It hurt! Our neighbor was out in her yard and she shouted something to me about the killer acorns and how bad they are this year. And really, I've never seen so many of them my whole life. This is what our front path looks like right now: And we have collected buckets of these--they are shiny and round and firm. There's...
Activities for children, Arts & Crafts, Fall, Family Activities, Recipes
October 14, 2008
Magic tree house
For a long time, one of L.'s favorite books has been Robert Ingpen's The Afternoon Treehouse. It's not the story that he finds so compelling, but instead the detailed plans and drawings in the book. Ever since he first read it (some three or four years ago), he's wanted a tree house of his own. Then we moved on to Mary Pope Osborne's Magic Tree House books, and while L. wanted little to do with the magic side of things, he did really, really, really still want his own tree house--a place up high where he could retreat and look down on the world below. There's something undeniably magical...
Activities for children, Arts and Crafts, Family, Grandparents, L., Lessons to Live By
October 13, 2008
The long, straight track
Many, many years ago, when I went with my parents to the train station to take my brother back to another semester of graduate school in Mississippi, and my mother was sad about his departure, I remember my brother cheerfully telling all of us not to worry, because Mississippi was just “at the other end of a long track.” It was a comforting thought, really; this idea that there was one long line of steel and wood and we were at one end and there, far away at another point, would be my brother, going about his graduate school life. I think this is what I like most about train trips—this...
Activities for children, Children, Family, Family Travel, Parenting, Social & Emotional Issues, Traveling with Kids
October 9, 2008
The best of everything
I had the chance recently to have coffee with a good friend of mine from high school, whom I hadn't seen in 21 years. We reconnected through the marvels of Facebook, and further happy coincidences gave us the chance to meet for coffee for a few hours on Saturday. It was wonderful in every way. Sometimes you have these encounters--friends coming together again after years and changed circumstances and relocations and life's twists and turns--and you find out you can't really be friends anymore (has this ever happened to you?). But my friend and I discovered we were still good friends,...
Children, Family, Family Travel, Friends, Moms, Parenting, Travel, Work
October 8, 2008
Scrap this!
In between classes yesterday I called Scott, to see what he and L. were up to. L. has a few more days left of Fall Break, and we've reached the point where the novelty of staying home has somewhat worn off, and L. is bouncing off the walls--literally and figuratively. As it turned out, Scott had taken L. to a "creative reuse center"--a truly wonderful place and a great way for kids big and small to learn about recycling and the powers of imagination. If you ever wondered what happens to all the containers and leftover junk (like empty CD cases, plastic sleeves, old wallpaper samples, empty...
Activities for children, Arts & Crafts, Children, Creative Play, Family Activities, Parenting
October 7, 2008
The scary things list
Yesterday afternoon, while I was waiting outside T.'s preschool for the doors to click open at the magic hour, I chatted with a mom I know who has a two-year-old son. I asked her how things were going, and if her child was sleeping well. I always ask the "sleep question" because I know I always appreciated the question when my kids were little (and still do, although it rarely gets asked now), and I often used it as a chance to unload our numerous sleep woes, until the person who asked the question was truly sorry she/he had asked it in the first place. I can still pull out a litany of...
Children, Dads, Moms, Parenting, Parenting Advice, Sleep, Social & Emotional Issues
October 6, 2008
Time to make the doughnuts
I had an attack of Fall Fever this past weekend. On Thursday, while the kids and I were waiting in the waiting room for T.'s speech therapy appointment, I leafed through a local magazine and saw pages of fall events for this month: apple-picking (here?), the state fair, corn mazes at local farms, street fairs. I love the fall--it's my favorite time of the year and, while I'll say again that I am happy about the life we've made here in NC, I'm not happy about sacrificing my favorite season. Fall here is depressing: It stays warm and humid even well into October, and the mosquitoes still abound...
Activities for children, Cooking, Fall, Family, Family Activities, Food for Thought, Holidays, Recipes
October 3, 2008
Why this isn't really much of a column
Do you ever have those afternoons (or days, poor you) when everything starts out headed one way and then things take a sharp detour in another direction? You start out in a good mood, with reasonable expectations about the day, and then, little by little, they erode--and often for no good reason. Or how about those afternoons with the kids when you just can't finish a sentence, let alone a single thought? When you know that if you just had even 30 minutes to yourself to finish something, you'd feel oh-so-better, and you'd be able to stop feeling so grouchy about everything? Or those...
Activities with Children, Children, Lessons from Little Ones, Moms, Parenting
October 2, 2008
Organized chaos
L. had a friend come over to play yesterday afternoon and I made an attempt to help him clean his room. The other day a student told me that his own room is a "study in organized chaos" and I have to say this description fits L.'s room perfectly. I'm sure most eight-year-old boys' rooms are disaster areas as well, but perhaps without the layers of collections and unfinished projects in every corner. After it was all said and done, here's what I found in his room: --three circuit boards, one handmade out of cardboard and wires --several lengths of plastic tubing --one Tiger's Milk wrapper --...
Children, L., Lessons to Live By, Parenting, Parenting Advice
October 1, 2008
Perspective, and a pot of soup
Right after I posted my slightly whiny column yesterday about being sick, I went to class and ran into lots of sick students. This time of the semester always hits the freshmen hard. They've been doing the college thing for almost six weeks now, and the weather has been up and down--cool, then hot, then cool again. Midterms are next week, and they're tired and dragged out. They're homesick and alone. New college students just have trouble pacing themselves, I've found. They throw themselves into the experience with tons of energy, burning the candle at both ends, and then they find themselves...
Cooking, Family, Food for Thought, Recipes, Teaching