Please… No Snacks!
Last week, I took the boys, as usual, to piano lessons, which take place at our piano teacher’s house. Over the years we’ve been going, the kids’ lesson times have changed — we’ve been there on Fridays before dinner, Wednesdays immediately after school, and now, midday on Saturdays. While one of them practices in the sunroom-turned-music-room off our teacher’s living room, I sit in the living room with the other kid. I always implore the kids to bring something to do while they’re waiting — homework, a book, a word search (James went through a bizarre phase of wanting me …Keep Reading
Settling Down: Thoughts on September
Since my last post was a sort of farewell (“here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?”) to August, I thought I’d check in with an I-love-September post. School has started. Despite a first September week plagued by high humidity and rain, it’s now my favorite, most energizing, soul-pleasing (not to mention hair-pleasing) weather of the year. It’s someplace between warm and cool, the air is crisp, the breezes ideal for sleeping, the sky as blue as it ever gets. For me, life speeds up in a pleasing way, after the doldrums that the summer ends on. My niece just got married …Keep Reading
My Olympic Moment: How Do Ordinary Sports Parents Become … Well, Crazy Sports Parents?
Did everyone see this clip, of the parents of U.S. Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman? They are not just feeling what most parent would feel while watching their child compete, at any level: the sense that you hope like hell that she won’t fall/that he’ll save the goal/that she makes the point. No, Mr. and Mrs. Raisman were living their little girl’s every move. Doing the moves for her in their heads, even with their bodies. It was excruciating to watch. I don’t ever want to be that parent. We have a little bit of Olympic fever in our house. Well, …Keep Reading
Take a Big Gulp and Read This: Does Anyone NEED 32 Ounces of Soda?
I have never had a giant-size or super-size or Big Gulp size soda. In point of fact, I’ve had almost no regular (as in, non-diet) soda in my life, apart from a span between about age 12, when I suddenly decided I liked grape and orange soda or root beer, in cans served up out of garbage pails full of ice at family parties; and age 16-ish, which is when I switched to Tab. Lots of Tab, then Diet Coke. I don’t even drink much of that anymore, since my husband and I decided telling our kids “no soda” while …Keep Reading
Piano Lessons Plus Pizza Plus Soccer: Why Extracurricular Overload is a Bad Idea
My sons don’t do a lot. That is, they don’t do a lot of extra-curricular activities, at least not by today’s standards. Both boys play soccer (using the word “play” loosely here; James may end up being more instinctively athletic, but rest assured no one in this house is going to college on a sports scholarship), and they seem to enjoy it. Both take piano lessons, because I like it. Seriously, that’s why. I always wanted to have learned a musical instrument, and never did. So when a second-hand piano became available to us for next to nothing, I grabbed …Keep Reading
Turning Tikes into Tiger Woods: What’s Wrong With Sports For Babies?
I never have to wait around for very long, or dig very deep, to find something to be either baffled or outraged about when it comes to modern parenting. Yesterday’s crazy-making dose came in the form of a New York Times article about sports for babies. Yes, I meant to write “babies.” The article opens with a quote from a woman named Doreen Bolhuis, whose company, Gymtrix, sells DVDs of activity programs for kids as young as 6 months. There’s something about the idea of promoting organized physical activity for babies and toddlers that, to me, straddles the line between …Keep Reading
The Comforts of Community: What Weeding, Soccer, and a Loose Tooth Taught Me About the People I Need
Just yesterday, on a fine, sunny Sunday afternoon, my husband and I were doing some weeding in our front yard. For us, “some weeding” means cursing and huffing and puffing our way through a summer’s worth of work. We are not natural gardeners, let’s just say, and combining that with a summer that was so ungodly hot much of the time meant that we pretty much let the weeds win for the months of July and August. But suddenly I couldn’t take it anymore — or maybe I just wanted a clear area for the autumn leaves to fill up …Keep Reading
