PregnancyFamilyEducation Blogs
June 30, 2009
The other legacy
Yesterday I lauded social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter; now I'm going to vent a little about my e-mail provider. I’ve been getting a little fed-up with AOL lately. It’s not that my e-mails are getting lost, or the service is shoddy, or I’m being deluged with spam, but it’s the handling of the news stories that’s been making me increasingly angry over these past few weeks. I’m tired of major, heartbreaking stories being buried under headlines about failing celebrity marriages. [more]
June 29, 2009
Microcosm
Even though social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are often criticized, I'm a fan of them. I know that they can't come close to one-on-one face time; to a long conversation over coffee, or a walk in the park, or a thoughtful letter sent the old-fashioned way. And my friend's visit this past weekend was a testimony both to the importance of face time, but also to the value of technology in keeping connections alive and possible. I thought a lot this weekend about other old friends--and about how amazing it has been to reconnect with many of them over Facebook.
June 26, 2009
Peachy
A very good friend of mine flew in from Rochester, New York yesterday to spend a long weekend with us. I haven't seen her since 2001, when Scott and I packed up 12-month old L., the cat, houseplants, suitcases, and a high chair into our old Dodge minivan and drove south, leaving behind those graduate school days, and too many friendships. The other day I looked through an old photo album, trying to find some pictures of this friend to show the kids. I was looking for one in particular: in it my friend J. is sitting on our old couch, holding a tiny, brand-new L. in her arms. [more]
June 25, 2009
Grow crystals, grow!
For Christmas this past year, my sister gave L. this really nice crystal growing kit which, alas, we haven't tried yet. It's not that he's uninterested in crystal growing, but growing crystals takes time, and patience, and the ability (and desire) to follow some rather lengthy sets of directions in order to achieve the desired results. And while L. [more]
June 24, 2009
Small change
At no time of the year are my kids more concerned with coins than they are in the summer. Our pool comes complete with a small snack bar, where for a mere .25 cents they can buy a jolly pop popsicle. We keep a baggie of coins in the pool bag for just that purpose, and the kids are forever finding fallen coins everywhere we go and hoarding them for the pool. All nice in theory, however; but the kids have turned the coin finding into a type of competition, with, of course, pretty disastrous results. [more]
June 23, 2009
Unrequited
On Sunday we went out to eat at Scott's favorite Ethiopian restaurant--and while we were there L. surprised us all by striking up a friendship with an eight-year old Ethiopian girl who was also there eating with her family. The people who own the restaurant were friends of theirs, or family, perhaps. They seemed to know each other very well, and not to mind at all that the kids (three of theirs and our two) took over the restaurant and made it their own personal playground. The girl was, as girls L. [more]
June 22, 2009
Twice lucky
I got lucky this Father's Day weekend--I had my dad with me for part of the day on Sunday, and my husband, of course, for all of it. I got to be my dad's daughter for most of the weekend, and to help my kids make the day special for my husband. [more]
June 19, 2009
Divided we stand
I don't know how you other parents of multiple children are faring with the kids at home this summer, but my kids are getting on each other's nerves. Their range of interests are ever widening as they both get older (a problem I think lots of parents with one child of each gender faces) and T. is getting less and less patient with her brother's controlling ways, and more and more physical when it comes to asserting her rights. [more]
June 18, 2009
Making gains
I was browsing through my twitter feeds the other day and I saw an update on the autism news feed I follow that read something like "elementary school kid makes great gains". I'm not one for chatting via twitter-I always feel like I've stepped into an overwhelmingly crowded room there--but I really like checking up on all the odds and ends that come through my feeds. When I clicked over to the link I found it was, as I suspected, another uplifting article about a child with an autism spectrum disorder who was thriving under interventions and making great headway in school. [more]
June 17, 2009
Bang, bubble, and fizz
L. and I have been sending off vinegar and soda bottle rockets since he was about three years old. In fact, one of my many treasured memories is of a sunny afternoon one spring when L. was three--the first time ever we tried the experiment. We were standing in the back yard at our old house, and L. had been waiting all morning for me to get home from work. He had very high expectations for the experiment--as he does these days, too, for any experiment we undertake. Achieving anything less than perfection--or less than the results he imagines in his head--is unacceptable. [more]
