Professor Mom

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

archives

July 31, 2009
It's in the stars
T. is a girl who loves her bedtime. She's never been a night owl (unless you count those dreadful colic days, or the months post-op when she decided it was neat to be awake from 3-6 a.m.). Even if she has the chance to stay up to do something fun, she starts to wilt after 7:30 and asks for bed, and jammies, and sleep. As a result, she's had little interest in the world at night. I'm not sure she's ever really seen a starry night sky--at least not to gaze at in wide-eyed wonder. A few years ago L. and I made a star projector. We took an old metal can, punched holes in it with a nail, inserted...
Activities for children, Arts & Crafts, Children, Nature, Summer, Summer Science
July 30, 2009
Operation Bento Box
Sometimes I think I should just quit my job and devote myself full-time to the effort of getting L. to eat. It really IS almost a full-time, high-stress job. We cycle through periods where we just deal, because there are other more pressing things going on; other times, like at the beginning of the school year, we go into panic mode, and scramble to implement reward systems and gimmicks--all of which usually end up not working, or fail too soon. Can you guess? We are in full panic, scramble, search-for-gimmicks mode now. L. surprised us by going through a period this summer where he ate...
Children, Food, Operation Bento Box, Parenting, Recipes, School Daze, Sensory, Special Needs
July 30, 2009
Zucchini Fritters
I had lunch yesterday with my good friend Shannon, who also happens to be my partner in our CSA co-op. We were at her house eating with our children when I asked her if she had any room in her refrigerator for something. She laughed and said, "have you seen my fridge?" Shannon then opened the refrigerator and revealed the gobs of vegetables from our CSA. We then started sharing ideas on how to use and possibly freeze the bounty we have been receiving each week from New Century Farms. Shannon, this recipe is for your zucchini. Chances are, there are a lot of you out there that have surplus...
Healthy Eating, Locally Grown Produce, Recipes
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. was born, but she came...
Children, Dads, Moms, Parenting, Siblings, Social & Emotional Issues
July 28, 2009
Manna from neighbors
On Saturday we returned home from an afternoon out and about and found a huge bag of corn waiting by our front door. Although there was no name attached, we knew the corn had come from our neighbors diagonal to us. We've also, in the past, been the lucky recipients of vine-ripened tomatoes, knobbly homegrown cucumbers, and the odd green pepper or two. Spontaneous neighborly gestures like that always touch me. We're lucky to live in a neighborhood where people truly put down roots. They buy homes so they can grow old in them; grown children return to this neighborhood and buy their own homes,...
Activities for Chlidren, Activities with Children, Baking, Food, Food for Thought, Neighbors, Recipes
July 27, 2009
Here we go again
It's here. The first day of fourth grade for L. We took him school supply shopping on Friday and, some $180 dollars later he had a new backpack, new trapper keeper, new pencils, new ruler, new gym shorts and we had bags of supplies we had dutifully purchased to take in to the class. I completely understand the egalitarian motives behind issuing massive class supply lists for each family, but by the time I pushed the cart outside Target I felt that familiar sinking hollow feeling in my stomach that comes from spending large amounts of money in a short time. How to spend a lot of money School...
Children, Dads, Moms, Parenting, School Daze, Special Needs
July 24, 2009
Have bubbles, will travel (even if by armchair)
It was only fitting that yesterday we came home from a morning of end-of-summer-like activities (meet-the-teacher event for L., and a work meeting for me) to find a package awaiting us. A dear family friend has a yearly tradition of sending us a "Christmas in July" package. This year we unwrapped the mysterious brown parcel to find this: As soon as I picked up the book I felt a surge of regret that the summer is waning, that L. will return to school on Monday, and in ten days I'll be back to work. T. and I set out to look through the entire book, page by page. She's already picked her...
Activities for Chlidren, Books, Children, Parenting, Summer, Summer Science, Travel
July 23, 2009
Sea change
My little girl has grown up a lot this summer. She hasn't so much grown bigger, as she's grown older, more like an elementary school child, and not the preschooler she used to be. When I catch sight of her out of the corner of my eye these days she seems longer-legged, more solid, her face is older, somehow--I can't quite explain it. She's also--inexplicably--become a one-girl, card-carrying member of her own fan club--the Mama Fan Club. She follows me everywhere, heaping praise and compliments upon me constantly--enough to make a person blush; I am so unworthy of it all: "Mama, your eyes are...
Children, Kindergarten, Kindergarten Readiness, Moms, Parenting, Social & Emotional Issues, T.
July 22, 2009
Wrapped Up
While I know intellectually that my boys are growing every day, there are infrequent moments that seem to age them instantly. These random growth milestones aren't in the new parent parenting books. While the books discuss at great length about verbal development, they seldom pinpoint when you might get your first sassy, "okkkk mom!" Or while the experts can give you guidelines for physical development, they cannot tell you how cool it is when your child tackles *that one* piece of playground equipment they have always been too afraid to climb. In the same vein as sassy talk and conquering...
Food, Growing Up, Snacks
July 22, 2009
Bread, life, love
Quite a few years ago, when I was in high school and my sister and I were in Greece for the summer, we took a train to visit an aunt-by-marriage and her son (our cousin) in Thessaloniki, in northern Greece. When I think about the many stand-out moments in my life so far (and there are, fortunately, many) I always think about that particular trip and about the time we dug out hollows in the sand on the beach, wedged our sleeping bags into the cool spots and spent the night under the stars. It's not the going-to-sleep part I remember, but the waking part. For the first and only time so far in...
Cooking, Family, Food for Thought, Greece, Memories, Recipes, Summer
July 21, 2009
Thanks, George
When we took L. out for his birthday dinner earlier this month the conversation turned, as it always does these days, to his latest obsession: Star Wars. He had just watched Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones (when did Star Wars get so complicated? It has taken me forever to get my mind around the fact that there are no longer just three movies) rented as a birthday treat, and his head was still spinning from the film. I have long gotten over the fact that my innocent, round-cheeked, sensitive first-born has developed into a leggy, spectacled NINE year old with an intense fascination in...
Children, Dads, Growing Up Is Hard to Do, Moms, Parenting, Social & Emotional Issues, Special Needs
July 20, 2009
The bad, the ugly, and the good
We've been back from vacation for two days now, and I realized on Saturday that the urge to share bad vacation stories is not unlike the need to share birth stories--particularly birth stories that involve squirm-in-your-seat gruesome details. Even though I had sworn nine years ago I wouldn't be one of those new mothers who went on and on in intimate detail about their labor and birth experience, only days after L.'s birth I found myself to be exactly that kind of woman. (Did I mention I pushed for TWO and a HALF HOURS? What about my birth canal? Did I tell you about my birth canal?) And so,...
Beach, Children, Family Travel, Health, Holidays, Parenting, Summer, Travel with Children
July 17, 2009
The Funeral
The choir sang words that echoed those that my grandmother often shared, "My body got tired. I got to find a resting place. Every day is going to be Sunday, no more tears." I viewed my grandmother’s body from the back of the church. The bind that held our family together was undone and laid to rest in a casket. What did that mean for my family? Her sister, my Aunt May, sat in front of the Jewish family that caused my Aunt May and my grandmother to separate for over thirty years. Aunt May didn’t like that my grandmother was a domestic worker for a white family. When my grandmother would...
Death, Funerals, Grandmothers
July 16, 2009
Taxonomy
My kids have enjoyed our weekly summer science activities so much this summer that they actually asked whether or not we could do summer science at the beach this week. I was impressed. If I had managed to get my act together ahead of time, I could have tried to track this book down at the library; instead, I had to wing it. But being at the beach is like opening the door into a wonderland--every corner of your surroundings is jam-packed with natural treasures and discoveries; there is the rhythm of the tides to explain to the kids, the arc of the sky over the sea to marvel at, the...
Children, Family, Holidays, Parenting, Summer, Summer Science, Travel with Children
July 15, 2009
Crossing lines
In a recent copy of this magazine, there was an interesting article about whether or not it was appropriate to discipline OTHER people's children. If you see a child misbehaving, is it appropriate to step in and correct the behavior? Or, is it grossly insulting to the other parent--is it off-limits, taboo? I have to admit I've had my own feathers ruffled when well-meaning people have stepped in to correct my own children, or to comment on their behavior. And I do think there's a line between making judgmental comments about situations you don't understand as an outsider(this happens to us a...
Children, Discipline, Moms, Parenting, Social & Emotional Issues
July 14, 2009
Busy hands
When L. was two we signed him up for a parent/child art class at the local community center. It was on Wednesday mornings and Scott usually took him. It was the one type of class that L. actually participated in. We'd taken him to parent/child music classes before and he would squirm his body away from the circle of kids and stretch out in the corner somewhere; or he'd wander off and examine the furniture. But he loved the art class. Because he could focus on something tactile he could block out the extra "noise"--the bodies, the sounds, the chaos of the other kids. One morning I had the...
Activities for children, Arts & Crafts, Children
July 13, 2009
One day in July
This week marks another anniversary--I told you July was a roller coaster month for us, didn't I? Five years ago, on July 12th, our baby T had surgery to correct her metopic craniosynostosis--a birth defect she was born with. Scott and I stood in a very sterile, cold, purgatorial-type room at about 6:30 a.m. waiting for the word that it was time to hand over T. for the surgery. She'd been up since 4:00 a.m., poor thing, and I hadn't been allowed to nurse her, or even give her the tiniest sip of water. She had ceased being fussy at that point and was dozing, fitfully, in Scott's arms. Her...
Babies, Children, Health, Metopic Craniosynostosis, Parenting
July 10, 2009
Beach week
It's been all about packing, packing, packing (and laundering, too) at Chez Professor Mom's lately. If you were to walk through our front door you would find piles of bags, several milk crates filled with stuffed animals and books, a collection of assorted buckets and shovels, a bin of dog food, a beach umbrella, and a box of kitchen supplies, and an electric griddle. Why, you might ask? We're headed to the beach tomorrow. We haven't had a family vacation--just the four of us--in years. No expectations, no outside family pressures, no drama that is not our own, no organized activities we feel...
Children, Family, Summer, Vacation
July 9, 2009
Pretty in pink
Remember all those peaches we had? Even after I'd made the pie, and enjoyed several bowls of cereal with fresh peaches sliced on top, we still had lingering peaches, growing softer, and more perfumed with each passing day. Something about the peaches, and the summer, and some quiet moments on the back porch spent thinking about Greece, and missing my grandparents, conjured up a buried memory--a taste, a smell, buried in the recesses of my mind, underneath a blanket of other memories. My grandmother used to make a type of peach granita in the summer. I don't know how--I think she boiled the...
Cooking, Family, Food for Thought, Greece, Parenting, Recipes, Summer
July 8, 2009
Party Hardy
I've made it no secret that I love planning parties. I had a blast last year coming up with goody bag ideas for L.'s eighth pool/Playmobil/knight themed party, but this year was more of a challenge. He's a kid who loves the comforting predictability of sameness, and at first he spent weeks declaring that he wanted the exact same party he had last year. Exact. Right down to the goody bags. But I worked on him, little by little, and in the end he agreed to another theme: Hardy Boys. I love a challenge, I really do, but I knew I wouldn't find any Hardy Boys party favors anywhere. And the cake? I...
Arts & Crafts, Birthdays, Children, Parties, Summer
July 7, 2009
Thirteen
July is always a roller-coaster month for us. Not only is L.'s birthday at the beginning of the month, but our wedding anniversary is the day after it. And although we vowed not to let our important date be eclipsed by L.'s birthday, it's inevitable that it often is--not in a terrible way, mind you. If you are going to have your wedding anniversary overshadowed by another celebration, then it might as well be a celebration of your child's birth--for what better way to express the love you have for each other then to spend that one memorable anniversary in a hospital room ogling that brand-new...
Chihldren, Family, Marriage, Parenthood, Social & Emotional Issues
July 6, 2009
Nine
Nine years ago today I lay in a hospital bed in upstate New York laboring. And laboring. And laboring. There didn't seem to be an end in sight. The day before, my mom and I had taken a taxi to the doctor's office for an ultrasound and the tech, in a deadpan, matter-of-fact voice told me I had no amniotic fluid left and I'd need to be induced. ASAP. (Over the years I've come to realize that medical people always impart critical, urgent information in that same deadpan, matter-of-fact voice the tech used.) No fluid? I was filled with dread. I imagined my baby floating in some bizarre...
Birth Stories, Birthdays, Children, Family, Parenting
July 2, 2009
Trial by fire
As soon as you become a parent, you learn that there exists an ever-growing, long, long list of verbal (and non-verbal) utterances that can strike terror into any parent's heart. You learn this early on, the very first time your baby wakes you in the night with an unusual-sounding cry, or later, when your toddler is on the rampage and a long, long silence is punctuated by a high-pitched, sing-songy "uh-oh". You might find the ever-challenging, always exciting road of parenting peppered with sentences you never thought you'd hear, things like "but I thought it would flush," or this favorite of...
Children, Dads, Moms, Parenting, Sickness
July 1, 2009
Quick fix
Some evenings, after the kids have been tucked into bed and Scott and I are settling in for some quality grown-up time in front of the TV, I'll find myself suddenly craving something...something sweet, something to top off a day well spent (or not well spent--sometimes dessert is the best remedy for a frazzling day); something sweet to savor, maybe with a glass of wine on a weekend evening. Usually what I crave and what I have waiting in the pantry are not one in the same. We don't keep a lot of sweets on hand. We don't tend to buy boxed cookies or keep candy in the house. But I do like to...
Baking, Children, Food for Thought, Moms, Parenting, Recipes