Random &*$# Lenten Observation

You know that you've got a prolific potty mouth when your kids suggest that you give up swearing for Lent.

In the past two years, during the Lenten period, I put a quarter into a jar every time I slipped up and said something naughty. Later, I donated the money, but in a pinch I dipped into it to pay for school lunches.

I must confess, I'm not off to a &*$#%! great start . . . and I haven't even set up the swear jar yet. I think I owe it at least $5.

Holiday Dinners Stress You Out? Play Dysfunctional Family Bingo

This year The Spouse and I are NOT -- I repeat -- NOT hosting a Thanksgiving dinner at our house as we have for several consecutive years. We will not be deep frying our turkey in the backyard while I pray that The Spouse doesn't set something on fire, arguing over whether the corn bread stuffing we've made is moist enough or whether we've made a sufficient amount of mashed potatoes.

But that does not mean we are immune to the stress that often accompanies attending BIG holiday celebrations. (And I'm not even talkin' Christmas yet.) Thus the creation of my 2008 Dysfunctional Family Bingo card that's currently up at my parenting blog, the Picket Fence Post. It's a bingo card whose squares are filled with potentially awful scenarios that could occur during a family holiday dinner. Believe me, this is a game you do not want to win.

For years, my friends and I would joke about secretly playing Dysfunctional Family Bingo, particularly after sharing a number of war stories about our experiences. Now we've opened up the game to everyone. Feel free to play along, or just add your own loony holiday dinner story(stories) in the comments section. Remember, no one ever has a perfect holiday celebration.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Pesky Loose Tooth: It's Out Bay-BEE!

Finally, after well over a month of angst and parental cajoling, The Youngest Boy's loose front tooth finally broke free of its tenuous hold in the 7-year-old's gums.

This has been a long-running saga, involving whining, eating out of the side of one's mouth and me trying to coax the kid into letting me pull it out lest the tooth fall out on its own and get lost when the kid's asleep (or worse yet have the kid accidentally swallow it).

Nevertheless, the stubborn tooth flew out of the kid's mouth while he was eating some frozen mini M&Ms. Ten minutes later, after all three kids plus yours truly were scouring the kitchen floor on our hands and knees for a chocolate-covered baby tooth, I finally found it.

Now all is well and the Tooth Fairy will have a tooth to take when she visits tonight . . . provided Mom and Dad remind her to make her appearance. (She has a spotty track record in this house.)

Dispatches from the Morning Rush

*Cross-posted on the Picket Fence Post.*

Setting:

Morning, just minutes before three kids have to dash outside to make the school bus in time. One child had already shouted, “I hate you!” when Mom insisted that, because it was raining and 50 degrees outside, the child should skip the shorts and wear pants. Three school snacks had been crammed into backpacks, including two non-nut-related items because there are nut allergies in two of the kids’ classes. Water bottles for the snacks had been filled, after a thorough check of the bottles to make sure they didn’t have the poison 7 inside the recycling symbol stamped on the bottom. Lunch money for the three children had been distributed.

Eldest Boy approaches his sloppily pony-tailed mom (who’s dressed in all black yoga attire though she hasn’t been to yoga in months and is so seriously NOT Zen-like). The Boy is wearing a subversive, chesire cat grin.

ELDEST BOY: Moooom. You’ll never guess what [YOUNGEST BOY] just did with a marker.

MOM: (*Groans, imagining all manner of illicit marker action.*) Do I even want to know?

ELDEST BOY: He wrote his name on the rug on the stairs.

Mom fights the urge to break things and calmly summons the Youngest Boy to the kitchen where she’s putting the milk and juice bottles back in the fridge. Considering that Mom hasn’t shouted nor turned purple yet, the Youngest Boy cautiously enters the kitchen.

MOM: What marker did you use? (*Praying silently it wasn’t one of the many permanent Sharpie markers that had been pilfered from her home office.*)

YOUNGEST BOY: (*Crickets*)

THE GIRL: (*Grinning because she hasn’t yet had an argument with Mom this particular morning so she’s sucking up*) He used a washable marker, Mom.

Mom exhales. Looking at the perp she quietly asks:

MOM: Why did you do that?

YOUNGEST BOY: (*Giant pregnant pause.*) I dunno.

Mom thinks she sees a smirk but is hoping there isn’t one as she mulls over what kind of punishment the Youngest Boy will get.

Epilogue:

So much for “washable.” The remains of the teal-colored first grade scrawl — where the Youngest Boy claimed the third stair from the bottom as his own – are still evident on the cream-colored carpet, the first thing one sees upon entering the front door.

Four for Friday: Family Melodrama Edition (A Loose Tooth, Daddy School, Fashion Sense and Potter Mania)

Item #1: Fang No More

For weeks, the Youngest Boy insisted on letting his second loose tooth jut forward in the bottom his mouth as his adult tooth was rising up through the gums behind it, inching the baby tooth outward a little more each day. The discomfort caused him to stop eating anything with a discernible crunch, making feeding the child more than the challenge it is under normal conditions. When he would finally agree to eat, he would tilt his head to the side and eat out of one corner of his mouth, leaving what looked like a permanent streak of dried food remnants curling around the left side of his face. Despite parental offerings to “ease” the tooth from its irritating position – his uncle and his grandfather helpfully offered string-and-doorknob solutions -- he refused intervention.

So everyone, including him, began jokingly referring to him as Fang . . . until the tooth mercifully fell out of his mouth. (There was genuine concern that it was so loose that he’d swallow it in his sleep, thereby denying him the opportunity to put it under his pillow for the Tooth Fairy so he could get a dollar for his “money collection,” as he calls it.)

However as soon as the tooth came out, the Youngest Boy demanded that it return to its rightful place. As the 6-year-old fled the room sobbing, the Eldest Boy asked me if he could touch the tooth, to which I said, “No,” before trying to soothe He-Who-Hath-the-Bloody-Mouth. When the Youngest Boy calmed down, we returned to the kitchen only to find the Eldest Boy standing very still. “I lost the tooth,” he said, which sent his younger brother into another fit and provoked my loud lamentations about kids who don’t listen to me, which, in turn, sent the Eldest Boy out of the room, sobbing.

I did find the tooth, although it took the Youngest Boy two days to come to terms with the loss. (He initially told us he wanted to keep his tooth and insisted we hide it from the Tooth Fairy.) Finally, he agreed to place it under his pillow. The following morning, he got his dollar, thus concluding another in a string of recent, family melodramas.

Item #2: Daddy School

For once, I was not the subject of the children’s ire for daring to do something as irrational as refusing their requests to watch television for 17 consecutive hours, to play videogames until their eyeballs melted or to subsist on nothing more than ginger ale, frozen waffles and ice cream.

While The Spouse was having an argument with the Youngest Boy the other day – I think the dispute was over whether the child needed to wear a coat in 30-degree weather, but many of the pediatric arguments tend to blur together so I can’t be sure – I overheard the boy yell, “You’re the worst daddy in the world! You need to go to grown-up school to learn how to be a good dad!”

I laughed. Guffawed, actually. Out loud. Perhaps a bit too loudly.

After the child went outside to play, The Spouse said to me, “If I have to go to parenting classes, you’re coming with me.”

Item #3: In Today, Out Tomorrow

It seems like just a few years ago when The Girl refused to wear anything that wasn’t pink or some form of a dress or a skirt. Looking inside of her dresser drawers in those days was like looking into the eye of a Pepto-Bismol hurricane.

Not so anymore.

Nowadays, the 9-year-old is into sporty-gal chic, meaning absolutely nothing in pink, nothing frilly, no skirts and no dresses. She prefers bold, primary colors in hues of blue, red or green. I discovered how vehement she actually was about her new fashion preferences when we were getting ready to take The Spouse out to a nice dinner to celebrate a Milestone Birthday and I told her she couldn’t wear jeans. Her response was to vigorously stomp, yell and fall to the floor in abject horror. Later, when I demanded she accompany me to her room to make a more appropriate clothing choice and found some red pants and a fluffy sweater (which I couldn’t get her to stop wearing last year), she yelled, “You’re just trying to make me look fancy!”

In the meantime, the Youngest Son was absolutely blissful as he eagerly donned khakis, a button-down shirt, a tie and a sweater vest, so he could look just like his favorite person in the whole wide world, the guy who he said needed to take parenting classes.

Item #4: Make Way for Potter

My third graders are thrilled that I’ve decided to read the Harry Potter series. (They’re only on their 47th time through all seven books.) I introduced them to the books last summer and since then, they’ve been utterly hooked. In fact, it’s been painfully difficult to try to get my 9-year-old son to read anything other than a Potter book because, as he says, “There’s nothing else I like as much as these.”

Only problem is, the kids are extremely impatient with the pace of my reading. They don’t get that I can’t spend every waking moment reading for pleasure. When I explain that I have things to which I must attend such as work, reading for work, household chores, preparing them meals and sleeping, they look at me quizzically, as if I were speaking in a foreign tongue. And when they excitedly ask me to tell them at what exact scene I left off and I say I can’t remember, they look crestfallen.

For the record, I’m on the second book, but I’ve got a heap of work this weekend, so the likelihood that I’ll get to the book is slim. But try telling that to the kids. They think I’m just made of time.

Missing Accessories

“Just put this one on and stick your other hand in your pocket.”

This is what I, a shining specimen of motherhood, told the Youngest Son this morning, mere minutes before the school bus arrived, when he couldn’t find his mittens (again!) and I could only locate a single, random mitten in our garage.

Why do I bother to allocate each kid a long shelf in the garage, provide each with baskets for accessories like hats and mittens, and try to instill in them a sense of routine (you come home, you empty your backpack, you put your belongings on your shelf in the garage, paperwork on the counter, etc.) when they’re always losing stuff?

Still among the missing: The Girl’s Harry Potter-style winter hat (see image to the left) which I last saw on her head as she boarded the school bus last week.

(Image from this web site.)

Four for Friday: UnFunny, Parents Should Have No Fun, Bad News and Troy Loses a Leg

Item #1: The UnFunny

I’ve been informed by my eldest son Jonah that I am not funny. Not amusing. Not in the slightest. None of my jokes, funny voices/impersonations or silly renditions of popular songs display an inkling of humor. Therefore, he’s told me – nay, begged me – to cease and desist from attempting to engage in anything that I think is humorous while I'm in his presence.

When I occasionally forget about his no-Mom-jokes ban and answer the 77th question in an hour about what I'm making for dinner with a reply like, “Rocks and seagull stew,” he glares at me darkly and growls, “Moooom!”

His father, it should be noted, is NOT banned from trying to make jokes, not because he’s funnier, but because, as our son says, “I don’t have to see him all the time.”

Item #2: I Should Pack It In, I’ve Had My Chance

The same son who has placed a ban on my attempts at all things comedic, recently told me that I shouldn’t complain about the fact that it's hard for me to find time to do grown-up things (things that have nothing to do with my children, like, say, working, reading newspapers or having an uninterrupted conversation with another adult) because, and I quote, “You already had your time to be a kid" -- when you get to be self-centered and only look out for yourself --"and now it’s over.”

Thus, according to his pediatric brand of logic, I should devote the remainder of his childhood, my every waking moment, to serving his happiness. And to refrain from telling jokes.

Item #3: News My Kids Can’t Use

Watching television news or having a news radio station playing in the kitchen or the mini-van has been treacherous this week for those with young children.

First, there was the non-stop footage, even on serious news programs, of Miss Britney’s failed attempt to dance and vamp it up at the MTV awards. “There’s that naked lady on the news again,” my first grader Casey said casually. “Why do they keep showing her?”

Then my third grade daughter Abbey tearfully asked me if it was true what she’d heard from her friends, that one of the co-stars of her beloved “High School Musical” movies, Vanessa Hudgens who plays Gabriella Montez, had been fired by Disney for having a naked picture taken of herself and distributed on the internet. I sighed heavily. I’d hoped she wouldn’t hear about that. I told her that, as far as I could tell from the news I’d read, the teenaged starlet had NOT been fired, that she didn’t mean for people to see her naked and that she was sorry it happened. Then I launching into a finger-wagging this-is-why-you-should-never-let-anyone-take-photos-of-you-naked lecture to the wide-eyed 9-year-old who, for the life of her, couldn’t understand why anyone would want her picture taken while in the buff.

Finally, the news broke that the New England Patriots, in particular their head coach, had been accused of cheating. Fines and penalties were meted out and the team's image is tarnished nationwide. And, after a long week of bad news, The Spouse and I are girding ourselves for a discussion this weekend with our little Patriots fan before the football game about what happens when you break the rules.

Item #4: Troy’s Missing Limb

My “High School Musical” addicted daughter received several HSM items for her birthday, including a set of singing dolls representing the two lead characters, Gabriella Montez and Troy Bolton (played in the flesh by Zac Effron). In order to purchase the hard-to-find dolls in time for her birthday last month, I skipped the whole racing around to various stores business and simply ordered them online. But within a single day of play, Troy’s right leg broke off. (No, I didn’t inquire what Troy was doing to sustain such a serious injury. Maybe he was attempting to do one of Ryan Evans' jazz squares.)

I spent several days trying to glue his leg back into place, but to no avail. For weeks now, Troy has been sitting on a shelf in our kitchen, sadly overseeing days and days of children refusing to eat what their mother has cooked for them. I finally got sick of seeing Troy sitting there and yesterday offered to buy Abbey the new Troy doll now on sale to coincide with the premiere of “High School Musical 2.” Only none of the Troy dolls, neither the old version nor the new one, can be found at my local stores. The only HSM dolls I found on the shelves of local Target and Wal-Marts were Sharpay dolls and naked Gabriella dolls. Just kidding, and badly, as my son says I’m apt to do. The Gabriella dolls were indeed clothed.

So I guess it’s back to the internet in a quest to find a replacement Troy. In the meantime, I’ll superglue the Gabriella doll’s clothes onto her body, just in case.

E-mail Meredith

(Image from Amazon.com.)

More Reasons to Name Me 'Mother of the Year'

Reason #1: When my first grader Casey came home from school on Friday, he told me he had to bum $2 from his teacher to pay for lunch because he said I’d forgotten to put his lunch money in his Red Sox backpack.

But both The Spouse and I distinctly remember putting those two dollars on the kitchen table, next to our little guy’s snack and water bottle. Mysteriously, the money never made it all the way into the backpack. (I suspect foul play via the pilfering hands of an older sibling -- as I never found the bills kicking around the kitchen -- but I have no evidence to back up my contention.)

Reason #2: A day later, while Casey was playing in the playroom with his siblings and the neighbors’ kids, he accidentally got kicked in the face by his sister as she was reenacting a move from the movie “High School Musical 2” (that’s the story they’re telling anyway). The Spouse and I had been chatting in the kitchen with our neighbors when Casey burst into the room with a rapidly growing bump under his right eye.

By this morning, the bump had deflated for the most part. But what it lacked in puffiness it made up for with a deepening, darkening bruise. So when Casey repays his teacher the $2 his idiot parents "forgot" to give him, he is going to do so looking as though he was in a bar brawl over the weekend, which is certain make a great impression on the teacher I have yet to meet. I’ll bet Open House will be . . . interesting.

Reason #3: Oh, to insult to injury, tomorrow is school picture day. Can you say, “Concealer?”

E-mail Meredith

Working from Home: End of Summer Edition

There’s a brand new hole in the wall in my kitchen next to the refrigerator. It’s about an inch or so in diameter.

You can’t miss it.

And the same kids who are responsible for that hole decided to torment me this afternoon as I attempted to complete an assignment. Unsatisfied with the five (!) choices I gave them for their afternoon snack, they must’ve somehow conspired to come to my office, one by one, to repeatedly ask me if they could have a particular item that was not on the snack list. Or maybe this other one. Or this other one. Until I threatened to never feed the ingrates again.

In the meantime, I started smiling to myself as I recalled that famous Staples ad, “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” where the dad is absolutely giddy as he throws school supplies into a shopping carriage and tells his two kids that they’re going back to school soon. A reader recently e-mailed me and inquired about it. So, in the aftermath of this afternoon's madness, I decided to look up the video and found a poor quality version here.

While I was looking for the Staples ad I found this video of a dad and his son preparing for back-
to-school time. The mom does all the hard work and the dad goofs off. Typical.

And, speaking of school, I just had to throw in this link to scenes from an episode of “The Office,” when Michael Scott is a guest speaker at a college business class and, as he is wont to do, says inappropriate things in the lecture hall.

Ahhh. I feel better now. Michael Scott always makes me laugh . . . almost enough to make me forget about that damned hole in the wall. But when The Spouse sees the wall, it’s likely his head will explode. Then we’ll have another mess to clean up.

E-mail Meredith

(Staples image from this web site.)

By the Numbers

FOUR: If you’re a Red Sox fan, you know the significance of this number. It’s the dwindling number of games the Sox have left over the Evil Empire in the American League East. (Thanks bullpen.)

TWO: Number of weeks before the kids go back to school. (Go ahead, ask me if I’ve bought school supplies yet.)

THREE: Number of kid-related birthday parties The Spouse and I have left to host by September 1. Each kid gets a very small children's party and then we're having a small barbecue for the kids’ immediate family. One “Star Wars” themed party down, one “High School Musical,” one Red Sox and another “Star Wars” themed party to go.

FOUR: Number of days until “High School Musical 2” premieres and my daughter has a whole new reason to proclaim her love for Troy Bolton.

SIX: Number of thank you notes I have to press my 6-year-old into writing some time this week.

FIVE: Number of times I’ve ordered my offspring to go and play outside today because playing outside is what kids do. (". . . No, I don’t care if you’re bored.")

TEN: Number of dollars I owe the town library because I was tardy in returning videos we’d borrowed, both of them, sadly, unwatched.

FIVE: Number of tickets we have to a Red Sox game this week with the kids, courtesy of our kids’ Red Sox Nation memberships. (For the backstory related to this, go here.)

TWO HUNDRED: The amount of money I’m expecting we’ll have to shell out when we bring a family of five to the ballpark. I'm joking, of course. The number's likely closer to $2,000.

E-mail Meredith

(Disney image via the Los Angeles Times.)

Three for Thursday: Chopsticks, Junie B. and Flex-Time

Item #1: Chopsticks. Everywhere.

If you asked any one of my three children why nearly all of the chopsticks in our house are scattered all over the place – on the garage floor, under the picnic table on the back deck, and underfoot in the family room – you would get a very simple response: “They’re not CHOPSTICKS! (*eyes rolling*) They’re magic WANDS!” (As in Harry Potter magic wands.)

To which my fruitless response has been: “Then make them MAGICALLY disappear!”

Item #2: Defending Junie B. Jones

Its parents like this, complaining in the New York Times, that just don’t get that the Junie B. Jones books is not s’posed to be grammaticly right. They are meant to be funny. And to make kids wanna read books ‘bout some real kid, like them.

Jeez.

Lie-ten up.

Item #3: Part-Time Shouldn’t Mean Sub-Standard

Citing a recent Pew Research Center study which found that 60 percent of working mothers would prefer to work part-time, “Perfect Madness” author Judith Warner asked in a New York Times op/ed this week why the American workplace doesn’t afford parents the ability to work part-time or flexible schedules without penalizing them with substantial pay and benefit
reductions.
“Only 24 percent of working mothers now work part-time,” Warner wrote. “The reason so few do isn’t complicated: most women can’t afford to. Part-time work doesn’t pay.”

“Feminists have long been leery of part-time work policies, which tend to be disproportionately used by women, mommy-tracking them and placing them at an economic disadvantage within their marriages and in society,” she said, adding that women have tried to forge their own work-family balances, but that this individualistic approach is simply not working.

E-mail Meredith

(Image from the Barnes & Noble web site.)

Of Mosquitoes, Cape Cod and Family Vacation Adventures

I stopped counting at 30.

Bug bites, that is.

It’s hard to enjoy a family vacation by the shores of Cape Cod when you’re busy scratching at bug bites. And pulling a tick out of your youngest son’s curly hair.

While my family of five did enjoy our vacation week — frolicking in the ocean, making a Harry Potteresque-Hogwarts’ sand castle (the kids actually thought they could keep high tide at bay with a series of crude moats), ambling around various downtowns (Wellfleet, Provincetown, Chatham), playing a Mulligan-filled round of mini-golf, sitting on whoopee cushions (purchased at the mini-golf course’s arcade, however the first cushion popped, then the replacement one popped, then I foolishly bought three more), seeing “Ratatouille,” and catching a Cape Cod League baseball game – my personal experience was marred by insects.

At one point, after counting the dozens of bug bites Abbey and I sustained (Casey collected a fair number as well), I became fearful that our rental unit had either bed bugs or fleas. So, under cover of darkness, The Spouse and I inspected all the beds and bedrooms in the beam of a flashlight, and then later inspected the beds and rooms under the full glare of the lamp light as well as in natural light. We found nothing, and assumed that we’d simply been beset by evil, nocturnal mosquitoes.

Throw in the fact that my parents – who were staying in the same Cape Cod town but in a different rental unit – found a live tick crawling through Casey’s hair, and I began feeling itchy all the time. (Reminded me of the nightmare that came home from school with one of the kids earlier this year: Head lice.)

Thankfully, The Spouse could sense my extreme discomfort and agreed to leave a night early. At 10 p.m. When we arrived home – at 12:30 a.m. – we showered all the kids, put our pillows in the dryer on high heat for 20 minutes, and finally got to sleep at 2:30. And blissfully slept all the way through the night, awaking with no new bug bites.

But, all things considered, this vacation wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, in spite of the fact that my father probably re-injured his knee (on which he’d recently had surgery) by walking around on it prematurely on beaches and through the streets of Provincetown in the pouring rain, and in spite of the fact that the slip-cover on the sofa and the rug in one of the bedrooms in our rental unit stunk of unpleasant odors, odors that were impervious to repeated applications of Febreeze.

I wrote an essay for the forthcoming August issue of Parents and Kids – which is now posted on the publication’s web site– advising folks to expect the worst on their family vacations, and then, if they’re lucky, the vacation won’t be as bad as they feared. This vacation wasn’t as bad as the one I had when I was a teenager, where my blind, feeble family dog fell off a deck, broke all her legs and had to be put to sleep, plus the fact that my brother’s leg cast practically melted off his leg after he swam in the ocean with the cast covered by a trash bag. Or the get-away vacation The Spouse and I took with our then-infant twins who rendered us sleepless and covered us with various bodily fluids as we tried to keep them quiet in our very small room at a New Hampshire inn where we were staying.

At least this year, the only thing with which I had to cope was bug bites.

E-mail Meredith

(Image from this web site.)

Four for Friday: Summer of Potter, Anti-Princess Reading List, Part-Time Working Moms and Signed Books

Item #1: It’s the Summer of Potter (Continued)

The Harry Potter mania in my house continues unabated. Now that my nearly 9-year-old twins

have been sucked into the vortex that is Harry Potter, they are unstoppable reading machines.

Now, ordinarily, I’d be cheering this development. But, given that it’s summer and I want them playing outside – ACTIVELY PLAYING (so that they tire themselves out) – all of this reading is complicating things. Actually, it’s complicating one thing: Their nearly 6-year-old brother who can’t yet read. So while his siblings are engrossed in Harry, the little one gets frustrated and either picks fights with them or hounds me in my office. Thus, all-Potter-all-the-time doesn’t exactly bring a smile to my face. (I think I’m going to have to hide the books and extort their return in exchange for some whiffle ball games with their brother outside.)

Item #2: Anti-Princess Reading List

My editor Amy Keroes over at the Mommy Track’d web site – it features news, columns (including mine on TV, movies and media), tips, interviews and products aimed at working moms – has hit upon a genius idea. Tired of reading simply princess-oriented material to her young daughter, she decided to come up with a list of books with strong girl protagonists.
Currently the list contains 35 titles including: Harriet the Spy, Olive’s Pirate Party, Cowgirl Kate and Cocoa, Do Princesses Scrape Their Knees? and Winners Never Quit (by Mia Hamm).

Item #3: Part-Time Working Moms?

A new survey by the Pew Research Center of women’s attitudes toward work and parenthood has found that 60 percent of those polled would prefer to work part-time. This is a marked increase, according to news reports, from 10 years ago when only 48 percent of women found part-time work appealing.

Media coverage of the poll has varied in quality, with some highlighting the fact that 45 percent of men and 38 percent of women think that mothers are better off staying home and not working, while 35 percent of men and 46 percent of women think that moms working part-time is a better arrangement. “It turns out dads are more comfortable with those longer hours, with 72 percent saying full-time work for them is ideal,” reported the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

What did not get as much emphasis was the fact that many work-life analysts say that as work hours creep into what had previously been private, family time, the tension between home and work has grown so intense, that some mothers feel as though they have no choice but to either leave work or work part-time, in positions with little or no benefits, security and pay mere percentages of full-time employment. (Read some material from economist Heather Boushey for more on the media’s coverage of working moms and work.)

Item #4: Signed Copies of ‘Suburban Mom’ at Bellingham Barnes & Noble

Thanks to those who showed up at the book signing for The Book – A Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum – including my editor Heather Kempskie, from Parents and Kids, and my longtime buddies Kerry and Tim and their crew. There are still copies for sale at the Bellingham (MA) Barnes & Noble.

E-mail Meredith

(USA Today graphic.)

Three for Thursday: Candidates’ Wives, Breastfeeding Discrimination (Again!) and Bee Keeper Needed

Item #1: The Working Mom as a Candidate’s Wife

I’ve been monitoring the news media’s coverage of Illinois Senator Barack Obama’s wife Michelle’s decision to temporarily scale back her work while she helps her spouse campaign for president. As I read articles attacking her and clucking their tongues at the “waste” of Michelle Obama’s talent, it reminded me of the media coverage given to former Vermont Governor Howard Dean’s wife Judith Steinberg’s decision NOT to scale back her work as a physician while her husband ran for president. She too was lambasted, but her crime was failing to put aside her work in order to join her spouse on the campaign trail. I delve further into this conundrum – how the spouses of presidential candidates just can’t win no matter what they do with their careers – in this week’s column on Mommy Track’d.

Item #2: Breastfeeding Discrimination, This Time Among Doctors

Yes, you read in this blog with alarming regularity how the medical community sends one message to moms (that moms should breastfeed their infants for a year and stay away from that “poison” known as baby formula), while society sends another message (don’t breastfeed in public, don’t make others uncomfortable and if you have the nerve to try to go back to work while you’re still breastfeeding, you’d better get used to using that pump in a cramped bathroom stall and get that distasteful business done in 10 minutes or less).

Now we have the convergence of the medical field and society in a news story this week, where a woman with a 7-week-old baby — who has to take a 9-hour-long test in order to commence her medical residency – has been denied the opportunity to express her breastmilk every two to three hours. The reason? The spokeswoman for the medial board overseeing the test says that they don’t have to accommodate her because breastfeeding isn’t — get this — a disability.

Well, my friends, it’ll turn into a disability when the would-be resident’s breasts explode with nine hours worth of breastmilk and she develops dangerous infections.
The hypocrisy of this turn of events is stunning.

Item #3: Bee Keeper Needed

The kids and I were eating breakfast on our deck this morning when the youngest one accidentally backed his chair against the railing. I didn’t think anything of it.

Until the bees came out.

And they were mighty angry.

(You’d a-thunk that someone had told them that the Red Sox just lost their third straight game last night and that epic hero pitcher Curt Schilling is on the DL for the next few weeks much to the chagrin of his legions of fans.)

Apparently there’s a bees’ nest somewhere inside (or underneath?) the railing that was disturbed when Casey’s chair hit it.

As they were suddenly buzzing everywhere like bees on speed, one stung Abbey’s bicep plunging her into a wave of tears. Several ice packs, a dose of Benadryl, an application of a baking soda paste and many kisses later, Abbey was taken to the sofa in the family room with a stack of books and some of her favorite CDs. (However I’m still watching her arm which continues to get redder and puffier. I’m hoping a visit to the pediatrician isn’t in our immediate future.)

The Spouse, our resident bee keeper, has been put on notice.

E-mail Meredith

The School Year Has Only Been Over For Mere Hours. . .

. . . and for those of you counting at home, I’ve already been told, “I hate you” and “You’re mean.”

The scene: Kid runs into the room where I’m trying — in vain — to finish an assignment.

Kid: Can I have a snack?

Me: No. (The kid just ate a little while ago and will have a snack later, I think.)

Kid: (*throws self into the sofa, head-first, whines, stomps feet*) Can I have a snack?

Me: (*no response, continues typing*)

Kid: (*whiny*) Can I have a snack?

Me: (*grits teeth then answers calmly*) I already answered that question. (*pause*) No.

Kid: (*drills self into the sofa head-first again, stomps more*) Can I have a snack?

Me: Strike one. (We’ve enacted a three strikes system of discipline for the summer.)

Child runs into the other room screaming, “I hate you! You’re mean! Bad Mommy!” Minutes later, he’s back, as if nothing had just occurred. Standing nearby me and, after molding some clay into the form of a drill asks, “Mom do you like the drill?”

When does school start?

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Okay, I’ll Just Admit That I Can’t Keep Up With Other Moms

Here are five random reasons:

1. I didn’t know that parents are expected to give end-of-the-year gifts to the school bus drivers. (Thankfully, my kind neighbor let me know that parents DO give end-of-the-year presents and offered buy one and let me give her cash later this week.)

2. I’m abundantly happy that tonight’s make-up soccer game for Abbey’s team was canceled. (We had a make-up game last night, have soccer “evaluations” – re: tryouts – tomorrow night, and the final game on Saturday morning. Last week, her team had soccer four out of five days.)

3. I have hardly any fresh food in the house. (The kids were actually begging for fruit and a “balanced meal” last night, after I drove the kids and myself a couple towns over so Casey could get his T-ball photo re-shot and before I dragged us all to Abbey’s soccer game. Don’t even ask me what I’ve packed them for lunches this past week. The contents would make their school nurse/nutritionist scream.)

4. There are five loads of clean laundry (washed by The Spouse) sitting, all wrinkled, on a sofa in the family room. (The only reason there aren’t four more loads sitting, likewise wrinkled, on my bedroom floor is because I finally got to folding them early this morning.)

5. There’s a new mirror, still in its packaging, that’s been sitting atop Jonah’s dust-laden bureau for several months. I just haven’t gotten around to putting it up.

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Three for Thursday

Item #1: Decapitation, Squared

I have this Willow Tree statue (see it above). I purchased one well before Willow Tree figurines became as ubiquitous as neon-colored Crocs in gift shops. It’s called “Tenderness.” When I first saw it lo so many years ago when my eldest son Jonah was a toddler, I was moved, it reminded me of us, and I bought it . . . which was unusual for me because I normally don’t go for knick-knack/statue types of things.

Within a year of getting the figurine and placing it on the fireplace mantel, Jonah accidentally knocked it off with a ball, resulting in the decapitation of the mother’s head. At the time, I raised one of my eyebrows and mused about whether this was some sort of sign, of what, I wasn’t sure.

Because I loved the statue so, I replaced it. And put it on the mantel. Then, a couple weeks ago, while preparing for the end-of-the-“Gilmore-Girls” party that I had with the kids, I accidentally knocked the new figurine to the ground. This time, the heads of both the mother and the son were decapitated. The headless figurine has been sitting on my office desk since the incident. I’ve been mulling whether I should buy this figurine for a third time and whether the dual decapitation means anything, in a karmic kinda way.

Item #2: Brooke Shields and Her ‘Pimp Hand’

A few weeks ago, it was Will Farrell and the potty-mouthed, alcoholic toddler in a hilarious (and not-appropriate-for-the-office video) where the toddler chews out Farrell for not paying the rent on time. Now it’s mom of two Brooke Shields' turn to weave a brief comic tale, this time, as an insane playground mom who likes to holler, “Check yourself before you wreck yourself” at her daughter, and who has a propensity to refer to pimps. Click here to see a short Shields video that’s not only funny, but similarly inappropriate for the office (or for pediatric ears).

Item #3: The Starter Wife

Take a man (a movie mogul) and a woman (not a movie mogul). Have them marry and live in LA. Have them procreate. Then have the man tell the woman – whose role in the family is as a movie mogul’s wife and at-home mother to the child – that he’s leaving her. Oh, and have him tell her via cell phone. Watch as the woman flounders, is socially shunned and then stands strong.

Sure, sounds a bit like bad Lifetime TV. But “The Starter Wife,” a six-hour miniseries on USA Network that starts tonight, stars Debra Messing. And I like her, so I’ll be setting up the DVR and watching this on nights when there is no Red Sox game on TV.

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(Image from Shop.com.)

A Red Sox Debacle: When Mom Screws Up

Last December, I had my laptop, The Spouse’s laptop, our landline phone and my cell phone all spread out across the kitchen table. I was trying, for hours upon end, to get through to the Boston Red Sox ticket telephone line or online ticket purchasing queue. I was trying to buy two decent tickets for The Spouse and I (as our big birthday gifts to one another) and four tickets for The Spouse and the three kids to see a game.

It was a hectic morning. I was fueled by caffeine and frustrated after hours of failure. So when both a laptop AND the landline phone had opportunities open up simultaneously, I should’ve known I was just askin’ for trouble.

Long story short: I wrote down the wrong date for The Spouse-kids’ game. And, because I didn’t check the tickets when they were mailed to me, I didn’t notice when the game for which we had four tickets was played. Instead, I got the kids all revved up about their upcoming game. They went to school and told all their friends. On so-called game day, they dressed in their Sox gear. And then, as I was getting the tickets to hand them to The Spouse I happened to notice that the game for which we had tickets had occurred a week earlier.

The only thing that spared me a verbal tongue lashing from all fronts was the tears in my eyes and the ashen look that took over my face when I realized my disappointing and costly mistake.

In a vain attempt to redeem myself, I signed all three kids up for membership in the Red Sox Kid Nation club, which promises with each membership, the opportunity to buy a pair of tickets.
Of course this means that if we do get tickets for each kid and a grown-up, we’ll have to pay for parking three separate times, as opposed to one. But when you disappoint your kids during their one chance to see the Sox this season, you do what you gotta do.

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Book Signing Thanks, Mother's Day Postmortem

The “A Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum” book signing on Saturday at Tatnuck Bookseller in Westborough, MA went well, in spite of my fears that it would be just me, and a pile of books, looking pathetic. And lonely.

I got to meet fellow Boston area mom blogger Chicky Chicky Baby, and frequent blog commenter Angela in person. (It’s surreal to meet folks with whom you’ve only enjoyed a virtual relationship.)

Thanks to my friends and family, a decent number of books were sold. (There are still a handful in the bookstore bearing my John Hancock-like signature if ya hurry.) ‘Twas a good day, particularly when The Spouse cracked open a bottle of champagne afterward to celebrate my first, official book signing.

As for Mother’s Day – the holiday which I maligned last week – I got to celebrate with my own mom at my house on Saturday with a casual cook-out. On Sunday morning, I was greeted at 8:30 a.m. (they let me sleep!) by Jonah who proceeded to read me a series of knock-knock jokes from a book. He was joined by Casey about 10 minutes later who snuggled next to me. A few minutes later, Abbey invited us all to the kitchen table for green pancakes (green being my favorite color), fresh fruit and coffee in a Rosie the Riveter mug, along with sweet cards and a business-related gift that kind of frightens me: A Blackberry.

After church, the five of us went to my sister-in-law Ellen’s house for a barbecue, celebrated Mother’s Day with my mother-in-law and, during post-meal family frivolity, I accidentally hit Ellen in the neck with a Nerf football, shortly after The Spouse hit Ellen’s preschool-aged daughter in the head with the same football. (FYI — The Spouse and I were playing catch with everyone, not simply winging footballs around the yard trying to knock down unsuspecting relatives.)

The day was capped off by Jonah’s sleepwalking – he was sobbing and crying while turning on all the lights in his brother’s room, then started an argument with me — and two depressing TV shows. On Mother’s Day evening, the last thing I wanted to see was a “Desperate Housewives” where (*spoilers ahead*) Lynette is suspected of having cancer and then a “Brothers & Sisters” episode where one half of a set of premature twins dies in his mother’s arms.

Talk about a downer. Geez.

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Three for Thursday

I know, I’ve been remiss in blogging over the past few days. I blame my overstuffed burrito of a schedule which, this week, has included: Kids’ soccer practices, baseball/T-ball practices and games, writing assignments, an unexpectedly unwieldy family heritage homework assignment for my second graders that requires that we exhume our ancestors in order to ask them what their favorite foods and traditions were and whether they ever sang “Yankee Doodle Dandy” while eating American cheese, an unexpected dinner with a family member from Philly, “24” (curses those evil-doers!), correcting students’ papers, the Red Sox, Mother’s Day, door-to-door solicitors that won’t take no for an answer, global warming and Sheryl “Spare a Square” Crow.

Plus I’m out of coffee. I’d venture down to my neighborhood Dunkin’ Donuts for my fix, but then I might run into that Sox fan who taunted my 5-year-old a few weeks ago because my son was wearing a Yankees hat. (Remember that guy who, a few commenters and e-mailers suggested that if I were a good parent I would’ve hunted down in the parking lot and threatened with a plastic coffee stirrer a la Jack Bauer?)

Aaannywaay . . . here are three for Thursday:

Item #1: Rotten Kids on the Playground

In honor of my foul mood today, I thought I’d mention this darkly sarcastic blog entry from Motherhood Uncensored: A mom kvetches about parents who don’t reprimand their offspring when they are ill-behaved or hurt other children while on the playground. Warning, this site has some, er, interesting artwork on its banner (i.e. – condoms) so make sure no supervisors (that includes the pediatric kind) are around when you read the entry.

Item #2: Motherhood Manifesto on a PBS Station Near You (If You’re Lucky)

I wrote about a new documentary “The Motherhood Manifesto” — which examines the status of American mothers and families when it comes to public policies, childcare and employment — for Mommy Track’d a few weeks ago, when the only way to watch it was to buy the DVD through the advocacy group Moms Rising. But now many PBS stations have signed on to air the documentary in honor of Mother’s Day. Click here to find out when and if the documentary is airing on your local PBS affiliate.

Item #3: Mother’s Day Stinks

Okay, maybe I’m still reeling from my lack of caffeine . . . no, wait a second. It’s not the lack of caffeine that’s prompting me to write those un-American words, “Mother’s Day Stinks” (I wanted to use stronger language, but I’m trying, mostly in vain, to be at least somewhat classy.) I’ve long hated Mother’s Day because of the enormous pressure it puts on the mothers, who are actively being moms to little heathen-like creatures, to treat the veteran moms like royalty. We already honor our mothers and grandmothers on their birthdays and their wedding anniversaries and work hard to pick out perfect gifts for Christmas/Hanukkah . . .

I have a column in The Book (*shameless self-promotion ahead*), “A Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum”) entitled, “Mother’s Day for Those Who Need It” where I gripe that the moms who need the day off the most — the ones with wee little children and who aren’t getting any sleep — are the same ones who are, right now, racing around town trying to find the right present for their mothers, mothers-in-law and grandmothers, PLUS making sure that there’s some sort of celebratory meal planned.

A friend of mine – who shall remain nameless because she fears getting excommunicated by her mother-in-law – said to me today: “Let’s call it what it is. It’s a day for People Who Used to Mother.”

That being said, of course I’ll be thrilled to see YOU Mom, at the book signing on Saturday (in Westborough, MA at Tatnuck Books). But don’t expect my house to be clean when we go back there after the event. I’ll try to have some eats available that won’t send you to the ER with food poisoning. But one thing’s for certain. There will be coffee, and, if you’re on your best behavior at the book store, perhaps a cocktail.

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