Professor Mom

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

archives

October 29, 2010
Carving time
My kids have been very patient about this whole pumpkin-carving business. We bought our pumpkins last weekend, as we do every year, from our local farmer's market. We always buy four pumpkins, one for each of us, in descending order from largest (Scott's pumpkin) to the smallest, (T.'s pumpkin). Years ago T. dubbed me "medium Mama" when she was trying to describe my size in relation to everyone else, so that name has stuck. My pumpkin is always medium-sized, for Medium Mama. Timing the pumpkin carving around these parts is tricky: carve your pumpkins too early and you are guaranteeing a heat...
Baking, Children, Food for Thought, Holidays, Parenting, Recipes
October 28, 2010
Stepping out
One Wednesday out of every month is a Whirlwind Wednesday. On this particular Wednesday, I always have two meetings: one in the early afternoon and one two hours later. Because of how these two meetings are sandwiched into the day, I have to leave work early, pick up L. early from school, then drive across town to pick up T. early from school. Then I take the kids to Scott's work, where they will bounce around his office while he teaches his last class of the day, and I turn around and head back to work, and back to that last meeting. When I do finally get there I'm usually a few minutes late...
Children, Dads, Juggling, Moms, Parenting, Social & Emotional Issues, Stress, Work
October 27, 2010
Turn, turn, turn
Our house has been decorated to the nines for some weeks now in preparation for Halloween. The day we broke out the decorations T. was beside herself with excitement. As we pulled out the Rubbermaid bins with the decorations we spied the Christmas bins lurking not far behind them, and then on top of a shelf I found the Thanksgiving placements from the preschool years: T.'s with her funny handprint leaves and L.'s with a splash of colors. It struck me then that maybe what I love the most about this time of the year is that the fall and winter holidays give us a chance to pull out all the...
Children, Growing Up Is Hard to Do, Holidays, Parenting, Social & Emotional Issues
October 26, 2010
Fallout
We don't leave our kids much. When they were babies, we had the occasional night out, timed for when grandparents visited. In the past few years, our sitter money has gone to cover meetings, and every now and then, we have left the kids with a grandparent and skipped out to see a film. But that is more of an annual, or semi-annual occurrence--certainly not a monthly one. Will it shock you too much to know we have never, ever, the both of us together, left them for a whole night? Lately we've been making resolutions that we need more "us" time together, especially given the strain this past...
Babies, balance, Children, Moms, Parenting, Siblings, Social & Emotional Issues
October 25, 2010
DIY hope
Oh wait, you were expecting chocolate-pumpkin brownies, weren't you? L. and I had the house to ourselves for most of Sunday. My mom left on the train Sunday morning, to go back to Maryland, and Scott and T. headed off to camp for an afternoon of Y-Princessy hikes, crafts, playing, polucking, and campfires. L. and I had a blank slate ahead of us, which can be both a little daunting and incredibly liberating. We had loosely planned an outing to the art museum, because L. has been asking to go back there for awhile; strange because the last time we went he dug his heels in and said he hated the...
Children, Family, Family Activities, Halloween, Parenting, Siblings, Social & Emotional Issues, Special Needs
October 22, 2010
The elusive brownie
A long, long time ago, in a land far away, we were graduate students, living in an apartment on the second floor of an old Victorian house in Rochester, NY. The first year we lived there, a young college student by the name of Matthew lived below us. He had an old Honda, but the remarkable and unusual thing about the car is that it had been entirely painted in psychedelic spray-painted designs. He was an unusual character--he would meditate in the hallway by the front door to the house, causing us both to do double-takes every time we happened upon him in the cross-legged position at the...
Baking, Character Sketches, Cooking, Food for Thought, Graduate School, Parenting, Recipes
October 21, 2010
Ritual-talk
This week and last week, we've been talking about conversation rituals in my freshman composition classes. Recently we spent a week discussing public space--what it is, and how we come to learn the rituals for moving acceptably in and out of it. I thought about--not for the first time--how so much of teaching involves helping students understand that so much about success in college has to do with how a student learns to develop and use rituals to help them succeed in the classroom: sitting always in the front row, for instance, taking out your book when you first come in, taking notes,...
Children, Parenting, Social & Emotional Issues, Special Needs, Students, Teaching
October 20, 2010
Of course
I should know better. Because, of course, Murphy's Law, Section VI, Article 3.5 the Parenting Clause centers wholly around the notion of The Jinx, something I'm very familiar with, and have always had the utmost respect for. For instance: If your problem-sleeper child suddenly starts sleeping through the night and you make a public note of that, then, of course, you'll be up again at 2:00 and 4:00 and 6:00. If your newly potty-trained toddler has gone a full three days without a single accident and you are foolish enough to publicly make note of that, he/she will promptly wet someone else's...
Children, Family, Juggling, Parenting, Work
October 19, 2010
Safe harbor
T. has a cold. It's not one of those stay-home-from-school colds (thank goodness), but one of those I-feel-cruddy-at-night colds. Most nights, on average, T. sleeps in her own bed until about 6:00 am or so. On weekends she'll wake and come rushing into our room, where she'll climb into bed between us, snuggle down, throw her arm across my neck, and we all go back to sleep--until 8:30 or even 9:00 in the morning. As T.'s grown older, she's been spending more and more time in her own bed, just as I expected she would. But with this cold, she's been coming into our bed at 11:00 at night these...
Children, Growing Up Is Hard to Do, Parenting, Sleep, Social & Emotional Issues
October 18, 2010
Balance
On Saturday morning, while we were eating our pumpkin muffins, washed down by lots of coffee (and warm Ovaltine, in T.'s case), I used my iPod to scroll through a long list of weekend activities going on in these parts. Fall festivals, the state fair, special museum exhibits--the list seemed endless. "What should we do?" I asked. "I want to stay in my pajamas," T. said, after no more than two seconds of thought. For a minute I felt the instinct to reject this suggestion. Sometimes, when the weekend comes, I feel obligated to make the most of it, whatever I think that means--to take the kids...
Baking, Children, Cooking, Family, Family Activities, Food for Thought, Juggling, Parenting, Recipes
October 15, 2010
Shout outs
I just love stumbling across a new recipe website and spending too much time gobbling up--with my eyes--the recipes, photos and the writing. There are lots and lots and lots of recipe websites and blogs out there but they don't all click with me to the extent that I feel drawn to them for days, reading recipes hungrily, and mentally preparing meal plans and grocery lists. These past few weeks I've been having a lot of fun in the kitchen (and outside of it, too) exploring making the switch from a vegetarian to a vegan diet. A friend recently told me that a vegan is a "grown-up" vegetarian and...
Cooking, Food for Thought, Parenting, Recipes, Vegetarianism
October 14, 2010
Dixie
Last spring I told T. a made-up story, about a little girl who had no toys, and who made a doll for herself. For some reason, she was enchanted by this story, and I promptly made a sock doll for her, which she loved, and carried around for awhile until the hair fell off. The big summer project for us was to make another doll--this time out of cloth. T. named her Dixie, and she carried her around for awhile until Dixie began to disintegrate (my sewing skills are not all that). Now, she sits slumped in a white basket in T.'s room, where she can watch the goings-on without worrying about the...
Books, Parenting, Reading, Social & Emotional Issues
October 13, 2010
Eat with care
I had a strange dream the other night: in it T., and a friend, were eating salami. T. was blithely munching away when slowly a horrified look spread over her face. "Is this meat?" She asked, dropping the salami like it was on fire. And I don't remember anything else after that. I know why I had the dream. One day last week T. came home asking what salami was. Apparently a girl next to her in the cafeteria had a tupperware full of salami slices, and she waved them in front of T. T. was confused. Salami? She asked the girl what salami was, and the girl said, "it's smooshed-up meat." "What kind...
Children, Food for Thought, Parenting, Vegetarian Eating, Vegetarianism
October 12, 2010
The mighty pen
Despite the fact that L. hardly ever writes at school, and that writing is sometimes painful and always very difficult for him, he's always been a writer at heart. By this I mean that his first impulse, when feeling some injustice or the need for a connection, he sits down to write a letter. Years ago we took the kids to Cape Hatteras and L. wanted to climb the lighthouse there. A surly, snappish official lighthouse person told L., right at the door to the lighthouse, that he didn't meet the height requirement and, therefore, couldn't enter. While rules are rules, the official lighthouse...
Children, Early Learning, Parenting, School Daze, Social & Emotional Issues, Special Needs, Writing
October 11, 2010
Double sides
L. is back in school today, after two weeks off for Fall Break. Last week he finally settled into a rhythm at home--he was relaxed and approachable, happy and visibly de-stressed. I thought about that old saying about vacations: how you need the first week to recover from work, and then the second week to really enjoy yourself and unwind. Then, of course, just when you feel more relaxed, you have to go back, and so it begins again. And so we begin again. I'm optimistic on the outside about L.'s return to school. L. is optimistic that this next quarter will be a good one, and I want to be...
Children, Moms, Parenting, School Daze, Social & Emotional Issues
October 8, 2010
Jewel trees
I have a weakness for glittery things, including beads and shiny stones. This is probably why, weeks ago, I bought on impulse some jars of those clear glass stones that are sold to fill up vases and centerpieces. Years ago I had scored an enormous bag of white and crystal-clear ones at a yard sale and I still remember how the kids enjoyed scooping up handfuls of them, and watching the light catch on the glass as they cascaded from their fingers onto the ground. Oh, the things you can do with glass stones. We put them into our stepping stones, remember? You can, of course, use glass stones as...
Activities for Children. Family Activities, Arts & Crafts, Children, Moms, Parenting
October 7, 2010
Dressing for acceptance, Part II
I had so many, many interesting responses from friends and family to the question I posed on Tuesday, about "dressing for acceptance" at school. When I posted the link to the piece on my Facebook page, I had a dozen or so responses by mid-morning, and a very interesting and thought-provoking conversation unfolded, one that gave me much to think about. Many of my friends pointed out in their comments that learning to dress in socially acceptable ways, ways that prevent "negative visibility" is a life-long skill, if you will, that all children need to learn, if only to help pave the way as they...
Children, Moms, Parenting, School Daze, Social & Emotional Issues
October 5, 2010
Dressing for acceptance?
At last week's marathon IEP meeting, as we were talking about L.'s social skills and discussing all the teasing that's been going on, one of L.'s teachers made the suggestion--and she prefaced this with "I know this is going to be controversial but..."--that perhaps we could encourage L. to dress in ways that would make him stand-out less, just to smooth the path for him a little more. Of course my initial, gut reaction--probably the one you just had--screamed out how ridiculous and wrong this suggestion was, and how strongly such an idea goes against what Scott and I work hard to teach our...
Bullying, Children, Dads, Moms, Parenting, School Daze
October 4, 2010
It takes a village to stop bullying
Have you watched this video clip yet? In it, Ellen Degeneres speaks out against the epidemic of bullying that is on the rise in our country. She is specifically speaking about Rutger's student Tyler Clemente's recent suicide, carried out because a roommate and friend filmed him being intimate with another man and then streamed the video over the internet. Earlier in the week I was shocked and pained to hear about Asher Brown, an eighth-grader in Texas who shot himself after enduring over a year of constant teasing and bullying. Brown was a victim of bullying primarily because of his small...
Bullying, Children, Parenting, School Daze, Social & Emotional Issues
October 1, 2010
Sticky rice balls
If you've been following this blog long enough, you probably know about our school lunch battles with L. Maybe you followed Operation Bento Box, and wondered, alongside us, whether or not a plastic compartment box could really change L.'s rigid school lunch behaviors. Maybe you were excited, along with us, over the healthy, gluten-free, super-doughnut L. ate for awhile, or the mini waffles (not so healthy), he used to eat. Part of what makes daily life so challenging around here sometimes is that we often feel that everything is a work-in-progress with L., a battleground, a source of worry...
Cooking, Food for Thought, Lunch, Moms, Parenting, Recipes