Mommy’s Meatballs: Why Keeping Control Over Kids and Food Pays Off. Sometimes.
So the boys started their six weeks at the local YMCA camp yesterday. I love this camp. Love it. But as with any situation where kids gather, bad food options seem to be the norm. I work around it; I try not to get my hackles up when I see the Snack Shack stocked with Nerds and Sour Patch Kids and heaven knows what else. Kids like candy, right? The battle I’m having — already! on day one! — is whether I’ll give them money every single day for a trip to the Shack (or is it Shak?). This intro …Keep Reading
Why Good Parenting is Less Work Than You Think
Here’s a case where being a Mean Mom works in your favor: When you have a big family. It’s obvious, right? You can’t coddle and hover over 14 kids; no one’s arms are that big. Even with four or five kids helicoptering and over-parenting is a stretch. (And four or five is, by today’s standards big, though it’s not by the standards of past generations, especially past generations of Catholic families I grew up around. Take the Canedos, who were on my Catholic-school bus. Every year for the whole six years I was on that bus, Mrs. Canedo shooed another …Keep Reading
Thoughts on Becoming a Middle-Aged Mom
So, in a little over 10 days (13 to be exact, and yes, I just counted on my desk calendar), I’m turning 44. This number makes me feel a little weird. A little oogie. (My mother, as point of comparison, became a grandmother at 44. Whoa.) Indulge me, but I’m feeling a little old. Yes, yes, I know all about the 40s being the new 30s, but I already did my 30s, and when I was in my 20s, guess what? I was in my 20s. I’ve been pacing myself, but nevertheless, I’m now middle aged. Middle aged with two …Keep Reading
Can We Lay Off Mom-Judging Now? Please?
So just today I got involved in an online discussion about a snippet — seriously, just a snippet — of an essay, presumably written by a writer-mom, in which the mom breezily admits that she wishes the singing-and-clapping of a typical mother-child music-and-movement class was done without her participation. She’d rather, she wrote, be sitting in the corner sipping coffee with fellow moms while her child did the clap-and-sing routine with someone else.
