Professor Mom

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

archives

May 31, 2010
Duty redux
I hope you are all enjoying a fabulous Memorial Day weekend. I'm going to spend part of mine cooking for the annual pool potluck in our neighborhood. I'm bringing my sesame noodle dish (I would link to the recipe from last year's post, but the formatting is off--I'll post the recipe tomorrow, or at some point this week) and probably a Greek spinach pie. I'll be back with a fresh post tomorrow. Until then, I'm re-posting a past Memorial Day post, in the hope it captures the spirit of the day. **************** Setting: My office on a warm Friday afternoon in March, three years ago. The rain...
Character Sketches, Children, Cooking, Holidays, Parenting, Students, Teaching
May 28, 2010
Sisyphus
It's L.'s last day of school today. Yesterday he brought home his backpack filled with binders of school work, and piles of sketches, and other odds and ends. He had an autograph book, too, that classmates had signed. "Look!" he showed me. "Ms. M. signed it, too!" He spent a long time yesterday evening writing out the most beautiful card to his teacher, and arranging and rearranging the gift bag for her and making cards for the resource room teachers. He's never, ever done any of this before, or cared to do it. But amid all these shining glimpses into how good the year has been, there were...
Children, Cooking, Food for Thought, Parenting, School Daze
May 27, 2010
The talent show
Yesterday morning I sat on the low, stone wall at the local park where my son's school holds their end-of-year talent show. I was early--45 minutes early, to be exact. But I dropped L. off and rushed over to the park so I could get the best seat--the same spot where we have parked ourselves now for five different years, and watched all the kids perform songs and dances, and where I have always--every year--smiled and clapped through that big lump in my throat. Scott was going to be a little late, since he had to drop T. off at school and I saved him a seat, draping our towel across two spots...
Children, Dads, Growing Up Is Hard to Do, Moms, Parenting, School Daze
May 26, 2010
Unplugged
Not only did our toaster give it up this past weekend, but our computer has also decided to cash it all in as well. Accepting this fact was a process that took us all through grief, anger, denial, and then finally acceptance. The computer's absence in our house for four days now has been both a) a curse and b) a blessing. At first I was scared. What would L. do without the computer? What would happen to those thoughtfully crafted after-school schedules we make, with the carefully alloted computer time that is the glue holding it all together? How would he function without the beloved laptop...
Children, Family, Family Activities, Life, Parenting
May 25, 2010
Impossible logic
Our toaster gave up the ghost this past week, and on Saturday we threw it out. Then T. and I watched The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars--it seemed fitting, somehow. "But what if the toaster feels sad?" T. asked me after the movie was over. I thought about the toaster, languishing at the bottom of our green garbage bin in the garage. I had cursed the toaster several times last week when it burned waffle after waffle, and even set off the fire alarm one weekday morning. "I don't think it will be sad," I reassured T. "It's a toaster." "Maybe it's not one of those talking toasters," T. said. "...
Childhood, Children, Lessons from Little Ones, Memories, Moms, Parenting
May 24, 2010
The last summer
My brother-in-law has a t-shirt that reads something like this: Three Reasons I Became a Teacher: June, July, and August. When Scott and I saw him with it, we laughed in understanding, but with a little shade of bitterness, too, because really very few teachers can afford to take off three WHOLE months out of the summer, given how little teachers are paid during the year--you're always trying to find creative ways to make a few extra pennies during those "off" months. But just as I was feeling sorry for myself, I thought about how lucky we are. Because even if we don't get those months off we...
Children, Family, Greece, Growing Up Is Hard to Do, Memories, Parenting
May 21, 2010
Detour
I was going to try a new recipe/experiment yesterday, and then post about it for today. Last night, while I was falling asleep on the couch waiting for Law & Order: SVU to start, Scott and I flipped channels and watched the end of Man v. Food. Have you seen this show? In a nutshell, super-eater Adam Richman travels around to famous food spots and then tries to set records by downing massive amounts of food within a certain time limit. It's an oddly mesmerizing show, even though I often find myself cringing and wincing at the amount of food the guy can put down. "Can you imagine what his...
Children, Food for Thought, Moms, Parenting, Recipes
May 20, 2010
Going to the mountain
I'm doing something new and exciting (well, for me, at least) with my summer school students this year. I've set up a Facebook page for both my courses, and I'm requiring my students to "friend" me so they can have access to the links and discussion pages I'm posting in order to supplement the course material. So far, reading through my students' updates is kind of like stepping into another country--one where everyone speaks another language. I'm used to my own Facebook friends and their grammatically correct, succinct, and often poetic status updates but really, the language used by the...
College, College Life, College Preparation, Students, Teaching, Teenagers, Work
May 19, 2010
Not my finer moment
Last night, at bath time, T. was fussy. She's rarely fussy, even when she's at her most tired she tends to get punchy and silly, not fussy. But last night I bent over to shampoo her hair and she kicked her legs out in protest and caught me square in the face, soaking me with water. I was a little mad. Well, really kind of mad. Mama then became some kind of swooping alter-mama figure, all crazy-haired and glittery-eyed and angry. "Why did you DO THAT?" I asked T., who stared, horrified at what she'd done. But then, saucy girl that she is, she stuck her lip out and kicked again, splashing me...
Children, Daughters, Moms, Parenting, Social & Emotional Issues, Special Needs
May 18, 2010
Poisoned
On my way home from work yesterday afternoon, I checked my e-mail one last time and found a link to this alarming story. Have you seen it? A new study now links ADHD in children to exposure to pesticides commonly found in fruits and vegetables. Studies like that make me want to cry. Studies like that often make me cry. Then they make me angry. Because we parents just can't seem to win. We work so hard to provide only the best for our kids; we take our folic acid in pregnancy, we eat right, we make our own baby food, we breastfeed, we practice attachment parenting, we research the right...
Parenting
May 17, 2010
Legacy of crows
On Saturday morning, a spectacular day by all counts: cool like a March day, but the sunshine was warm--summer sun, not early spring sun--I sat on the back porch with my dad and watched the kids painting. My dad brought out a few blank “canvases” for them (pieces of flat boards you can buy from Home Depot—they’re really meant to put under vinyl flooring, but my dad buys them, cuts them to canvas size, and they are perfect for painting on) and the kids were creating abstract art masterpieces. I watched L. dab on stripes of green, blue and orange paint. He gave T. an impromptu lesson on...
Children, Dads, Family, Grandparents, Growing Up Is Hard to Do, Lessons to Live By, Moms, Parenting
May 14, 2010
Bounty
We're on the road again this weekend--to see my parents and siblings in the DC area. We're feeling pretty capable and confident: emboldened by our 13 hour road trip this past March, we're trying something different with the kids--leaving in the afternoon instead of our usual morning-with-a-stop-for-doughnuts departure. The main reason for this is that we just haven't had the time to GET ready to leave on a weekday morning. I've been in all-day meetings since Monday and there is too much laundry to finish up before the weekend, and too much prep I need to do before summer school starts next...
Cooking, Family, Family Travel, Food for Thought, Greece, Juggling, Parenting, Recipes, Work
May 13, 2010
The stubborn glimmer
Do you know how sometimes you can have pent-up nerves and worries about something and not truly know you have them until the nerves and worries vanish, popping like a balloon? Only then can you exhale and realize that they were there, wrapping themselves around your mind and heart, like some stubborn vine. It's been that way with this whole end-of-grade testing process. Although I am proud of myself this year in that I did not let the whole experience consume us all the way it did last year (I was a basket case last year, I confess), the week of L.'s math and reading tests and the week of...
Children, Education, Parenting, School Daze, Special Needs
May 12, 2010
Mother load
I sat in a workshop session yesterday, one that started a little too early for my taste. But still, I was there, right on time, early though it was. One of the speakers, however, was not. He was running late, we were told. When he finally did show up, breathless and a little rumpled looking, he made several jokes about being on "dad duty" while his wife was out-of-town. He'd managed to get the kids fed, and off to school but he conveyed--willingly and in a comic way--that this had been a major feat on his part. The audience laughed along with him. They found his self-deprecating jokes about...
Children, Juggling, Moms, Motherhood, Parenting, Teaching, Work
May 11, 2010
Three-line love
If I can Mommy brag for a moment, L. made the most wonderful Mother's Day haiku for me at school. When he gave his poem (set against a backdrop of blue and green and purple watercolors) to me at breakfast on Sunday I was touched and surprised and the tears sprang to my eyes immediately. I have come to expect lovely cards and pictures made at school from T., but I haven't received anything like that from L. since he was in first grade. I felt a surge of gratitude for L.'s fourth grade teacher--for all the fourth grade teachers who gave their time and skills to help the kids create something so...
Children, Moms, Parenting, School Daze, Special Needs
May 10, 2010
Sunday snapshot
We had brunch Sunday about forty minutes from where we live, at a wonderful co-op market with open-air seating out on a lively little green, in a funky, atmosphere-filled little town that years ago I ached and ached to live in. Now, though, I was okay with the fact that we didn't in fact live there, and I didn't feel envious of all those funky families who get to live a mere stone's throw away from all that open-air hipness and the co-op with the wide array of vegetarian food and the live music every weekend. I wondered what had changed, what had caused that restless ache I used to feel when...
Character Sketches, Children, Holidays, Lessons to Live By, Moms, Parenting
May 7, 2010
Full
For my first Mother's Day (the first Mother's Day when I had a child out there in the world--my very first Mother's Day I was seven months pregnant), when L. was just 10 months old, my mom sent me a white t-shirt with "Mom" printed on the front. This was an unlikely gift, actually, for both the giver and the recipient (I'm not a t-shirt person), but she'd gotten the T-shirt for free and I was, after all, a "Mom" finally. I still have the shirt. I keep it folded in my drawer and it's moved with me three times now. I'm as attached to it as I would be to any thoughtful gift from someone I love--...
Children, Moms, Mother's Day, Parenting
May 6, 2010
Camp, the four-letter word
Now, with exams almost behind us, and with only three weeks left in L.'s school year, and six weeks left for T., we're starting to think (worry) about the summer. We're already in the process of registering T. for a week-long day camp--something to keep her busy in August after swim team is over, and L. is back in school. I'm also working on a list of activities/day trips I'd love to do with the kids. Summer is not the easiest time for us--or for L. It's probably not easy for a lot of kids and parents, too. While L. fights structure at home, having a structured day, as he does at school,...
Activities with Children, Children, Family Activities, Parenting, Special Needs, Summer
May 5, 2010
Wisdom
Someone asked me my age recently (how could they?) and I told them I was forty. The word still doesn't roll off my tongue well, and I still wince when I say it. In my mind I'm still stuck somewhere around age 25, or maybe 26, at the oldest. Sometimes I'll have flashes of my nine-year old self, too, or me at sixteen. I'm sure, twenty years down the road, I'll think about forty-year old me and wonder how I was ever bothered about being that age--forty will seem so much younger, of course, than sixty. A few weeks ago I took the kids to our local children's museum. I sat by myself and people-...
Babies, Children, Friends, Moms, Parenting, Shout Out, Shout-outs, Social & Emotional Issues
May 4, 2010
Making the grade
In the walk-up line outside of L.'s school yesterday I heard one frazzled parent tell a friend, "I hardly slept a wink last night I was so worried about the EOG's." Another parent said: "We've implemented EOG boot camp all month--I think we're in good shape." My stomach did a little lurch, because I had slept okay, actually. I've stayed up many, many nights worrying about my kids, but I can't say I plan on losing any sleep over end-of-grade testing. But then, as I listened to the chatting back and forth about the tests this week, self-doubts began to creep in. Parenting is like that: you go...
Children, Dads, Moms, Parenting, School Daze, Testing
May 3, 2010
Bag of Tricks: End-of-grade testing survival tips, by L.
One of the best things about writing for Family Education is that I get to write every day. One of the hardest things is that...I get to write every day. Most of the time I have lots to say, every day. Maybe too much, you might say. But on Sunday morning, as we sat outside on the porch eating pancakes and sweating already even though it was only 9:00 am, I mentioned to my family that I had nothing to write about. I've been grading all weekend--in every spare moment, first thing after breakfast, and into the night. I've been dreaming about grading, and waking up, hoping it was all indeed done...
Bag of Tricks, Children, Guest Post, Parenting, School Daze, Writing