Number 2

I’m not going to lie to you. I can’t wait for the day when I don’t have to be intimately involved in my children’s toilet activities. I know it’s a part of life, I know it will all pass, and, I know this is a whole lot easier than dealing with a teenager. But still, [...]

Burnout

I’ve got mommy burnout — and I’m not talking about being a mommy, but rather about meeting and befriending others of my ilk. I know we’re all sort of in the same boat and it’s great to have women with whom to commiserate, but I just don’t feel the need to increase my “friend” roster. [...]

Bonesetter

My eight-year old wants to break her arm — or her leg. I remember thinking casts looked really cool when I was a kid as well. She’s got a friend with her arm in a sling due to a fracture and another friend who has broken her bones three times. I guess there is the [...]

Movieland

I did not see The Dark Knight over the weekend, as a huge chunk of the US population appears to have done. I saw Space Chimps instead. It wasn’t really my first choice but faced with 2 kids — 8 and 4 respectively — and some free time on a Sunday after being home most [...]

Summertime

When I was a kid, one of my favorite TV ads was one for Countrytime Lemonade. It showed a kid, presumably on a farm somewhere, sitting on a tire swing tied to a tree. I had never known anyone who lived like that, but for some reason it just typified the feeling summer is supposed [...]

The Mother Lode

Out of some sort of morbid curiosity, I’ve been watching the two new E! reality shows — Living Lohan and Denise Richards: It’s Complicated. Both purport to be about “regular” women trying to raise normal families in today’s world. Dina Lohan has gone so far as to try and pass the show off as being [...]

Seen but not heard

Would it really be so terrible to go back to the days when children were expected to be quiet and, as they say, “be seen but not heard”? I think about this a lot and even tell my 8-year old daughter that it was the norm not so long ago. Kids have clearly taken center [...]

Word Play

Did you ever notice how parents use certain “safe” words when describing their kids’ behavior? No one ever just comes out and say their child is a brat or spoiled or just plain wrong. It’s always couched in terms like “willful” (codeword for does not listen) or “spirited” (jumps on other people’s couches). I love [...]

Guilty Party

Guilt, guilt, guilt. It’s endless. It’s like a mommy right of passage. I guess I knew when I had kids that I was signing up for a lifetime of worry, but I didn’t realize that a whole load of endless guilt came with the package as well. If I’m with them, I feel guilty for [...]

Failing Grade

According to an article in today’s USA Today, a few schools are considering making 50 the numerical equivalent to an F, as opposed to the number zero. What this hopes to accomplish, (“At some schools, failure goes from zero to 50″) is having more students pass a class. Basically, the way it works is [...]