Posted in food, kids, silliness on November 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
We celebrated the Bear’s tenth birthday today (only six days late) with a few of his friends and lots of Legos. The cake was a giant yellow Lego surrounded by Duplo people.
It’s made from a 9 x 13 rectangular sheet cake with eight cupcakes. (Since two mixes are required for this, you end up with [...]
Posted in dystopia, economics, ethics, health, kids, local news, medicine, public health, science, stupidity on November 7, 2009 | 5 Comments »
On the phone, during a short break from comforting her daughter who was suffering from swine flu, my sister tells me: “I am so angry at our government!” Now, this is not a woman who routinely turns to the government for help. She votes Republican, largely on fiscal grounds. But my sis has been trying [...]
Posted in academia, health, kids, motherhood, parenting, poverty, privilege, public health, teaching on November 5, 2009 | 4 Comments »
German has this wacky way of expressing good luck: “Schwein haben,” or having swine/pig. It’s clashing with the nomenclature of swine flu, which ain’t such great luck if you get it.
My sister tells me my niece is coming along well – she’s stopped puking, at least – but 19 out of 24 kids were absent [...]
Posted in childbearing, ethics, health, kids, local news, media, medicine, parenting, public health, science, stupidity on November 2, 2009 | 4 Comments »
No, I’m not sick, nor are my kids – and my husband got the swine flu shot this morning, as one of those “lucky” people who are likely more vulnerable than average. But as I was stirring the dinner pots this evening, my sister called to tell me that her daughter (my six-year-old niece) has [...]
Posted in gender stereotypes, kids, memory, parenting, sexism, sexualization on October 31, 2009 | 5 Comments »
‘Tis the season for the annual handwringing about Slut-o-ween – the “sexy” costumes that have become de rigeur for women and now, it seems, prepubescent girls, too. Trixie at The American Virgin posted a picture of Miley Cyrus’ nine-year-old sister dressed up as … a dominatrix? Hard to say, but as my own nine-year-old Bear [...]
Posted in childbearing, embodied experience, kids, lucky me, melancholy, memory, wonder on October 26, 2009 | 9 Comments »
My next-door neighbors, who just welcomed an infant daughter into their lives, had to make a trip to the ER today because she appeared jaundiced. She’ll be fine, the doctors said. She won’t need to be readmitted. They were lucky.
I was glad for my neighbors. But as I heard their story, I also flashed back [...]
Posted in LOLcats, kids, melancholy, memory on October 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
My kids are more creeped out than amused by clowns. They must have got it from me. One of my worst childhood memories dates from when I was 10 or 11. I was in the church basement with my Sunday school class, watching a movie in which a white-painted, bald mime was pursued by a [...]
Posted in books, kids, late talking, media, parenting, weirdness on October 23, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
So I read in the New York Times that the Baby Einstein company is offering a money-back deal for those of us whose kids watched their silly videos and didn’t turn out to be the next Stephen Hawking … yet. I’ll confess to owning the original Baby Mozart, plus Baby Shakespeare and a couple more. [...]
Posted in academia, kids, stupidity, teaching, violence on October 9, 2009 | 4 Comments »
In the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, campuses all over the country beefed up their security. Mine did too. One of our new safeguards was an email alert system to notify members of the university community when an act of violence has occurred or is in progress. It’s basically a great idea. As usual, [...]
Posted in LOLcats, cats, kids, wild rumpus on September 26, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Actually, everything is getting away from me. And it’s doing so a lot less cutely than this, which my boys pronounced the Funniest LOLcat Ever. I didn’t quite LOL along with them – maybe because it’s just, um, a hair’s breadth from being a metaphor for my life?
From I Can Has Cheezburger?
Posted in blogging, kids, parenting, silliness, wild rumpus on September 24, 2009 | 6 Comments »
Both my boys just got tucked in for the night, but I expect them to come untucked again momentarily. They’re a bit like Weebles when you try to coax them into bed: Weebles wobble but they won’t go down. And if you’re old enough to know how the original Weebles slogan went, you might just [...]
Posted in ethics, feminism, gender stereotypes, kids, parenting on September 14, 2009 | 6 Comments »
So the Tiger was invited to a birthday party this weekend, which lots of his first-grade classmates attended. Including the one boy who’s always brimming – nay, boiling over! – with aggressive energy. If this boy (let’s call him Jayden, because all boy names must now end in “N”) successfully reaches adulthood, he may have [...]
Posted in LGBT, embodied experience, kids, late talking, medicine, shame, wonder on September 13, 2009 | 4 Comments »
My son the Tiger is lefthanded. He’s getting pretty good at invented spelling, which our teachers stress in kindergarten and the first grade. His classmates’ writing is often tricky to decipher, but the Tiger’s requires skills in cryptography. Or a mirror. Because if he’s not prompted otherwise, he’ll write right-to-left and produce a perfect mirror [...]
Posted in kids, parenting, politicians, teaching, weirdness, wingnuts on September 7, 2009 | 6 Comments »
My little Bear is now in fourth grade, and that means heaps more homework. When he brought home the first batch last week, he ended up in tears, arguing that kids work all day and shouldn’t have to keep working in the evenings. They do have a longish school day (9 to 3:30) and I [...]
Posted in economy, kids, local news, teaching on August 16, 2009 | 12 Comments »
Today’s Columbus Dispatch features an article entitled “Teacher Salaries Raising Eyebrows.” As the child of two public school teachers, I had to wonder what could cause such eyebrow twitching. According to the Dispatch, teachers in “some districts” (note the weasel word “some”) aren’t bearing their share of the state’s fiscal pain. They’re still getting pay [...]
Posted in contraception, dystopia, kids, parenting, reproductive rights, stupidity on August 9, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Do y’all remember the transitive property from math? Here’s a refresher (though I’m sure you don’t need it): If a=b and b=c, then a=c.
From the Savana Redding case (the one on whether schools may strip-search their students), we know that some school officials consider ibuprofen in the same class as heroin.
A couple of months ago, [...]
Posted in dystopia, economics, health, kids, lucky me, medicine, parenting, poverty, privilege on August 8, 2009 | 8 Comments »
At the Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan has been running a wonderful series, “The View from Your Sickbed,” on his readers’ travails with our broken health care system. And by “wonderful,” I mean that I’ve been moved, enraged, and troubled by virtually every post. The prize for the most Kafkaesque absurdity has to go to the [...]
Posted in LOLcats, cats, kids, parenting, silliness on July 30, 2009 | 9 Comments »
This has been my kids second-favorite toy this summer, topped only by the decrepit typewriter they unearthed while we were in Berlin.
It’s the box from our beloved front-porch furniture. The kids have turned it into a house, of course. Two months later, the porch furniture is still wonderful, but the box has achieved a state [...]
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