Professor Mom

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

archives

February 26, 2010
Friday Snapshots
It's my husband's birthday today, his FORTIETH. I turned forty six months ago--painfully, and with lots of foot-dragging. I've felt a little lonely about it, too, being the only one in our house who's that old. But now my husband gets to join me on the other side, in this strange, uncomfortable-feeling new decade--the one that will find us negotiating together our children's teenage years. He's been close-lipped about how he feels about forty, but I'm sure there's some angst in there, somewhere, buried under all the nonchalance. Yesterday T. asked me how old Papa was going to be. "Forty," I...
Birthdays, Dads, Growing Up Is Hard to Do, Moms, Parenting, Snapshots
February 25, 2010
Revelation
I went to a parenting group meeting on Tuesday night. It's always a little strange for me to head out somewhere when it's dark outside, and the kids are winding down (or winding up, as the case may be) for bedtime. By the time the meeting was done it was 8:45 at night, and I still needed to stop at the grocery store for toilet paper. I walked past the bakery section and bought a small personal-sized coconut pie for Scott. It's his birthday week, after all. I also bought a small, personal-sized chocolate cream pie for myself--just because. On my way home I called up Scott. It was 9:20 at that...
Babies, Children, Dads, Moms, Parenting
February 24, 2010
Measuring up
Not long ago, I was at Starbucks waiting for a friend. It was an unseasonably balmy day for February, so I was sitting outside, enjoying the sun and the warm breeze. A few minutes later two young college girls came and sat at the table next to me. They were both tall and thin, with those straight up and down, sinewy bodies that all those other clothes out there are made for--you know, those skinny jeans and tight layered shirts. I couldn't help eavesdrop a little on their conversation. They were talking in a gossipy way about a friend of theirs, who was having problems with her back. Girl 1:...
Children, Daughters, Girls, Growing Up Is Hard to Do, Moms, Parenting, Self-Image, Somebody Pinch Me
February 23, 2010
DMV Me
I had great plans for something else to write about for today, but then I spent one hour and 45 minutes at the DMV yesterday, waiting to get my license renewed. Scott came with me because he needed to get his own license renewed. His birthday is on Friday, so he's was being very timely with his renewal. My own license expired six months ago. You know how putting off something just makes it worse? Well, it's true. When I found out my license was expired, it was only just a little expired. But then I kept putting of the trip to the DMV because, well, who wants to go to the DMV, anyway? Who has...
Children, Growing Up Is Hard to Do, Life in General, Moms, Parenting
February 22, 2010
The stuff that binds
If you've been following this blog for awhile now, you might have picked up on the fact that here at Professor Mom's house, we're a family that loves a good tradition. And while we might muddle through much of this parenting business, there is one thing I've held onto steadfastly through it all: traditions are important--they are the splashier counterpart to that other important part of daily life: routines. Perhaps the most difficult part of adjusting to parenthood is how you have to give yourself over to routines, so early on. Without routines, the days and nights become sloppy and chaotic...
Children, Family, Growing Up Is Hard to Do, Life, Memories, Parenting, Tradition
February 19, 2010
We've got your back
My husband got sick this week. Not have-to-stay-home sick, but that yucky-head-cold type of sick that makes you feel as if someone pumped your head full of lead. My office mate was sick, too. Same type of thing. She got sick on Valentine's Day, yet found herself in her kitchen with a jacket on cooking up a meal for her family--not because they needed her to do it, but because she wanted to. I told her I was going home later that day to make some soup for Scott. "He's really struggling," I told her, and we exchanged knowing glances because "really struggling" is code among women for my-husband...
Cooking, Dads, Food for Thought, Health, Moms, Parenting, Recipes
February 18, 2010
Lifeline
Last month I went to our Asperger’s Support Group meeting to listen to a talk on…puberty. I think—I hope—we are two or three years away from THAT, but following the line of thought that has so far served us well—that it’s never too early to prepare for something you know is coming down the pike—I decided it would be good to go. Somewhere, in-between the PowerPoint slide on personal hygiene and the diagram about raging hormones I thought to myself: If going through puberty was bad, then dealing with kids who are going through it is going to be a virtual nightmare. And dealing with Asperger’s...
Children, Language, Lessons to Live By, Moms, Parenting, Special Needs
February 17, 2010
From the somebody pinch me files...
My kids have entered into what can only be described as the tattle-tale stage. They love tattle-telling on each other, it seems, and will spend more time coming to find me in the house just so they can tell on their sibling than it would take for them to just try and work things out together. They've mastered the tattle-tale voice, too--L. got it down first because, I discovered recently, he heard it on Phineas and Ferb. The voice goes like this: "MaaaaaMaaaaaa! L. poked me with his FINGeeeeeeer!" In fairness to T., when she tells on L. it's usually about concrete things that he did do, like...
Children, Moms, Parenting, Siblings, Somebody Pinch Me
February 16, 2010
It's a girl thing
We bought T. an American Girl doll for her birthday this year and she also received two more as generous hand-me-downs from friends whose daughters no longer played with them. Ironically, the doll we forked $95 out for as a birthday present is T.'s least favorite. The other two have quickly become her most beloved possessions. They go with us everywhere, in fact. Sometimes it's Kit Kittredge's turn to go about town; other days it's Molly McIntire's turn to see the sights. Every morning we have to factor into our schedules an extra 7 minutes so T. can buckle one of those two into the seat belt...
Children, Games and Toys, Gender Roles, Moms, Parenting, Toys
February 15, 2010
Love lessons
We took the kids to an early dinner last night, at our favorite Vietnamese restaurant. Let's just say we've had better, more romantic Valentine's Day dinners in the past. L. spent the entire car ride there and the time before dinner in a deep funk, throwing out insults and perseverating round and round on the fact that T. brought Molly McIntire to dinner. Then he ate soup for about ten minutes and spent the rest of the meal trying to use a toothpick to break into the candy machine behind our table. And T. wanted Molly McIntire to have her own seat and cried until I had the brainstorm idea to...
Children, Holidays, Lessons to Live By, Marriage, Parenting, Tradition
February 12, 2010
The jinx
Shhhh...we're moving through a good patch now, with L. Things are not perfect, but some school-related things and sleep-related things that were very, very difficult have improved, lifted a little, letting the sun shine through. Maybe it's not a cloudless day every day, but we'll settle for partly cloudy; for that gap in the clouds that surprises us now and again, with a patch of clear blue sky. Of course, now that I've said that, I have surely jinxed it all. ********** When L. and T. were babies, and we were struggling through so many sleepless nights and nap problems and colic we lived in...
Babies, Children, Dads, Moms, Parenting, Sleep
February 11, 2010
Thursday snapshot
On Tuesday in class I asked my students whether someone would volunteer to read the poem we were working on, Jamaica Kincaid's Girl (if you haven't read this poem, follow to link and read it--it's worth it!). I usually never have trouble finding volunteers. There are always a few students who want to read, and many students who don't. But this time no hands shot up. "Come on!" I encouraged them. "Someone must want to read this!" "Can we popcorn read?" a student asked. Popcorn read? I'm not sure what rock I've been under, but I had never, ever heard this term before. My students giggled at my...
Activities for children, Children, College Preparation, Snapshots, Students, Teaching
February 10, 2010
Skeletons, or elephants
After I had taught my last class on Monday, and was in my office buttoning up my coat and gathering my bags, in the hopes I could slip out of there maybe fifteen minutes early and run a quick errand before picking L. up from school, my office phone rang. It was my Department Chair, my boss, asking me if I could meet with her for a few minutes to go over my annual evaluation. Fun. And while sitting through any assessment of your job performance is never actually fun, it is interesting and sometimes eye-opening, even if the stress of it all sets your heart racing and your palms sweating just a...
Academia, Children, Juggling, Moms, Motherhood, Parenting, Teaching, Work
February 9, 2010
Gaps
I've been doing some mental "spring cleaning" lately, so try and bear with me through yet another meandering, contemplative post... The other night at bedtime L. drew an intricate diagram of his own brain, with detailed descriptions of his different "nodes"--for example, a history node, a science node, a learning node, a storage node. We talked for a bit about this idea of a storage node; a reasonable idea, really, when you think about how much we do ferret away over a lifetime, burying and digging up again memory after memory, dusting them off, lingering carefully at different times over...
Childhood, Children, Italy, Life, Memory, Parenting, Travel
February 8, 2010
Awakening
My entire family lives in either Maryland, or DC, so I spent a good chunk of my weekend talking with family members on the phone, and ogling the photos of "Snowmageddon 2010" that both family and friends loaded onto their Facebook pages. I felt a little left out, actually, and a little jealous. It's hard sometimes to be the only sibling who lives out-of-state, even if the big snowstorm kept everyone apart--for the weekend, at least. But our weekend definitely lacked some luster to it, and our gray, rainy, ordinary landscape seemed flat, somehow, especially given the transformation we...
Children, Growing Up Is Hard to Do, Memory, Parenting, Social & Emotiona Issues, Winter
February 5, 2010
Priceless pizza dough
I've already confessed that I'm not much of a meal-planner, although I do try some rough meal planning every week. One regular staple of ours, though, is homemade pizza. Pizza is one of two foods that I can make and be assured that the whole family will eat, L. included. The only other dish L. will eat with us is stir-fry--with noodles, though, not rice. And tofu cooked so it's not spongy. And broccoli that's crispy and not too mushy. And a certain type of sesame stir-fry sauce that I can only buy at the grocery store where I don't usually do my shopping. Pizza night is a breeze, compared to...
Cooking, Family, Food for Thought, Kids, Meal Planning, Parenting
February 4, 2010
(Un)rivaled love
Snow days are fun, and I'm always happy to be handed the gift of extra time with my kids. But the snow days this week have made the fine art of juggling kids and work very tricky, though. The kids have been home from school for three days now, and Tuesday, as I raced off from class to scoop them up from Scott's office, I felt both frazzled and grateful: frazzled that I had lost my precious office hour time that day, yet grateful that I had been given a chance to revisit those old days of tag-team parenting from when the kids were very young. I took the kids for pizza lunch on Tuesday and as...
Children, Juggling, Moms, Parenting, Siblings, Social & Emotional Issues
February 3, 2010
Creative space
When I was a child and we'd make the trek to Greece in the summer to visit our grandparents, my favorite part of the arrival was rushing into the bedroom my sister and I shared when we were there and finding, like lost treasure, the books my grandmother kept on the shelves above our beds. It was an odd collection of novels for children--my favorites being the "Famous Five" books by little known British writer Enid Blyton. Oh, how I longed to be tomboy George and to have a faithful dog companion like Timmy! My sister and I acted out elaborate Famous Five mystery scenarios which were played out...
Children, Friends, Kindergarten, Kindergarten Readiness, Parenting
February 2, 2010
Winter weather must-haves
On the Friday before our big snow storm the stores, of course, were mobbed. I would bet the average family could ride out a snow storm just fine on what they have in their cupboards and pantry and refrigerator (I know we could), but there's something in us that drives us all to the stores before an impending weather event, for fear we may never, ever make it to the stores again and, god forbid, we're left without a loaf of bread or a box of oatmeal. I confess I went to the store on Thursday. We actually needed soy milk, but while I was there I thought about the possibility of snow, and...
Cooking, Family, Food for Thought, Parenting, Recipes
February 1, 2010
Transformed
It snowed this weekend. Not just a tease-of-a-dusting, but a real winter storm, with snow topped by lots of ice. The snow started around 7:00 on Friday and when Scott called on his way home to tell us it was snowing the kids instantly catapulted themselves outside on the front porch, bare feet and all, hands outstretched to catch the flakes. "It's snowing! It's snowing! It's snowing!" It was, indeed, and it continued to snow most of the night. I fell asleep with that warm, excited feeling you get the night before you think something different, and wonderful will happen. Even now, when I think...
Activities with Children, Children, Family, Family Activities, Neighbors, Parenting