One Mom, Three Kids, Many Adventures
Sometimes you don’t notice a sound until it stops. Then, in the sudden quiet, you realize just how loud it had been – and how much the undercurrent had been getting under you skin. I’m not a fan of background noise. My brain gets overloaded by superfluous auditory input. I don’t like having music on… Continue reading Turning Down the Background Noise
It has taken me a couple weeks to put together some initial thoughts about virtual schooling. When I write, I try to be both positive and authentic. The Venn Diagram of those aspirations has yielded exactly nothing since the start of the school year. The best I can say is that we’re surviving. We have… Continue reading First Impressions of Virtual Schooling
The kids and I are obsessed with Hamilton. Yes, I know we’re about five years late to the phenomenon. Don’t judge me, just be glad that we’ve finally showed up to the party. My kids have watched the stage recording more times than I have and my eleven-year-old demonstrates a staggering, and at times uncomfortable,… Continue reading Civics Lessons
Captain’s Log: quarantine month five, day four. I appear to have lapsed into a fugue state sometime in the past several weeks and lost the capacity for rational thought. This is the only explanation I can think of for why a trampoline was delivered to our house today. It came with a sprinkler attachment. Pray… Continue reading Quarantine Trampolines and Other Lapses in Judgement
Over the past five months, I have spent more time with my kids than usual. This has not entirely been by choice. As we found ourselves unexpectedly schooling from home, working from home, and generally being stuck at home, our rhythms and routines naturally shifted. We stayed up later, watched movies after dinner, occasionally watched… Continue reading The Best 30 Minutes of the Day
Just over a year ago we added a dog to our family. Buddy Baudelaire is a two-year-old boxer/lab mix. Maybe. No part of that is certain because he’s a shelter rescue. Whatever his age and genealogy, he’s black and white, very energetic, extremely loving, and stronger than a fully-grown brontosaurus. As we celebrated Buddy’s “gotcha… Continue reading Reflections on the Year of the Dog
My kids and I took a mini-vacation last week. Several days before our departure for a small cabin rental in Tennessee, it occurred to me that this would be our first overnight adventure with just the four of us. In the four years since the divorce, my revised nuclear family had never taken a solo… Continue reading We’re Still Just Us – Even On Vacation
I’m not entirely sure how my son ended up with over a dozen nerf guns. When he was born, I swore that we would be a weapon-free household. We would buck the stereotypes of masculine play. Surely it was a social construct and nothing more that caused boys to be wild and reckless and inexorably… Continue reading A Grudging Acceptance of Nerf Guns
Just because school is out for the summer, it doesn’t mean we’re loafing off, academically. There is plenty of Summer Math to be had. You just have to look for it. For example, take this story problem. If two children and one mom all clamber aboard a single-seater kayak, how far away from the dock… Continue reading Summer Math Lessons
My daughter turned to me just before bedtime the other night and said – “This summer is actually pretty great.” And you know what? She’s right. I had a lot of anxiety going into the summer. We were so tired from the long weeks of crisis schooling. Everyone was burned out, stressed out, and grieving… Continue reading Life in the Bubble
