At least I got to practice embedding a survey.

October 23rd, 2009

If my husband had to tell you the one thing about me and my family that drives him the craziest, it would be that we are prone to over-analysis. Indeed, my sister and I can contemplate and discuss a simple, straightforward issue until only the smelly mane and tail of the dead horse’s carcass remain.

This morning over breakfast, as we practiced his spelling words, I said to 8. “Did you ever mention to your teacher about that typo on the list?”

“No,” he said.

“We should probably let her know,” I suggested. “Should I e-mail her, or do you want to tell her at school?”

“I can e-mail her,” he offered simply, without looking up from his cereal. Now there was a simple solution to the whole dilemma that hadn’t occurred to me. I pulled up the teacher’s e-mail address, and using his own account, my son typed this message:

Dear Mrs. c There is a mix up in the word shepherd. From “8″

He clicked send.  A few minutes later, there was this reply.

Thank You!

And there you have it.

Although, right after he clicked send, I heard him gasp a little.

“What?” I asked.

“I forgot to capitalize the -C-,” he lamented.

That’s my boy.

(If you’re interested in the poll results, voters were equally split between e-mailing the teacher and having him tell the teacher, with ‘Nerd Alert’ getting only one vote.)

  | Posted in » Parenting Polls | Track by Leo

I’m trying real hard to be the shepherd.

October 22nd, 2009

I need your help.

Last night, I had this nightmare. It was the future.  My 8 year-old son had grown.  He was maybe 13 – in junior high.  He was in his first spelling bee.  It was round 2.  They gave him his word.  ”Shepherd,”  said the bee-master.

“Shepherd,”  my son repeated slowly.  The crowd was calm, easy word, good speller, but my heart raced. My palms grew sweaty.  I started to worry.

13 year-old dream-version of 8 began to spell. “S…H…E…P” he began.  He looked up and to the left, he considered.  “H…” he paused for too long. “A-R-D.”

NOOOOO!! I screamed and bolted up in my bed, awake and alert. It was just a dream. Spelling bees are still years in our future. I shook off this terrible nightmare, slid into my slippers and stomped down to the refrigerator.  8’s spelling list hung, guiltily, on the refrigerator.  I grabbed it and the red pen on the counter, and I quickly scribbled out the offending SHEPHARD and replaced it with SHEPHERD.  There. Fixed.  I went back to bed and slept a dreamless sleep.

In the calm light of a new day, I need a second opinion or several. So 8’s spelling list came home with an error, a typo, one tiny little mistake.  Is this really an urgent problem I need to fix?  Should I e-mail the teacher?  Should I shake off my Type A tendencies and just let it go?
What to do? WHAT TO DO? You can vote below.

  | Posted in » Parenting Polls | Track by Leo

I, too, dream about cake.

October 21st, 2009

My son’s second grade class recently completed an assignment about their future goals and aspirations.  “What are your Hopes and Dreams?” read the prompt.  They drew pictures and wrote their “Hopes and Dreams” at the bottom.  The teacher posted them outside the classroom.  As I wandered by, they all made me smile, ranging from wishing to ride a bicycle with no training wheels to the more ambitious goal of ending war.  I have to share my favorite, though, from a little girl who won me over by numbering hers:

1) to fly
2) to eat cake
3) and to get a job.

Really, what else is there?

  | Posted in » Kid Speak | Track by Leo

Sick Kid Trump – Rulebook and Examples

October 14th, 2009

“I doubt this is going to clear up by Monday,” I said to my husband on Saturday afternoon, as I laid the back of my hand on my daughter’s fevered forehead for the 5th time in as many minutes and tucked her under her fort of blankets on the couch.  “Let’s just see how it looks tomorrow,”  he sighed, unready to consult the Blackberry and start hammering out our “Sick-Child Back-Up-Care Chart” for the week.

One of the unfortunate consequences of having both parents  work outside the home is the struggle to determine who will miss work to stay home with the sick kid.  It starts to feel like an elaborate negotiation – full of rules, guidelines …  and trump cards.

When Sunday morning arrived, preceded by another night of restless sleep, spiking temperature, and coughing, I broached the topic again while pulling the thermometer from 6’s pallid cheeks.  “Still 102,”  I said, glancing toward Hubs’s Blackberry, and offering two more purple chewable Motrin tablets to 6.  “She’ll probably sleep it off,” he responded, slow to accept the ramifications of family illness.  “We should have a back-up plan now, though, don’t you think?” I said. 

And so it begins – the sophisticated game of Sick Kid Trump. 

Sunday Afternoon

Hubs: Begrudgingly Consulting Blackberry:  Three meetings …  I can put one off until Tuesday morning, take the other two as conference calls and put in a movie.   But I didn’t bring my computer home this weekend.  I’ll have to drive downtown tonight to pick up my computer. … In the Twins Play Off Game AND Taylor Swift Concert Traffic.  You?

Well-played.

Me: Cheerily Checking Google Calendar Because It Completes Me: No class (usually an almost automatic loss for me).  A student meeting, but I could reschedule that one (because Lord knows they always do).  But then, just as I am about to concede  … I do have a meeting in the afternoon with the same committee I bailed on last week when 4 was sick. They don’t have conference capabilities.

Winner:  Me.   Rule:  Can’t miss a meeting with people you had previously canceled on because of a sick kid.  Here, the double cancellation trumps the downtown traffic.

Monday Afternoon

Me:  How’s it going?  Is she better?
Hubs: She’s fine as long as she’s on the Motrin, but when she doesn’t have it, she spikes again.
Me: What do you have going tomorrow?
Hubs:  Let’s just see what she does this afternoon without Motrin.
This approach again?

3 hours later

Hubs:  I don’t think she’s going to make it to school tomorrow.
Me:  I have class. (Usually an automatic trump!)
Hubs:  I already have Thursday off because school’s closed on Thursday.  I can’t miss tomorrow, too. (Multiple days in one week – huge advantage)
Me:  But I have class. (Not sure why this isn’t working.)
Hubs:  Plus, I missed that meeting yesterday. (Sometimes negotiating with a person whose job title is something like “Senior Negotiator” gets frustrating.)
Me: …but…I…have…Class.
Hubs:  I know, but that guy’s only in town for two days.
Me:  I can see if I can find someone to sub.

Winner:  Hubs  Rule:  This was a close round, but Hubs employs good technique, plus with the out of town colleague and several days already off in the week, he ends up slightly ahead here.

Tuesday Afternoon

Hubs:  What did the doctor say?
Me:  As suspected she has “flu-like symptoms”, no infections, and she appears to be on the mend.
Hubs:  Good.  Poor thing needs to get back to school.
Me: But doc said she needs to stay home for one more day because her temperature is still over 100.
Hubs: Sighs. (Also, Coughs.)
Me:  I have nothing on the calendar, just the bazillion things I need to do. I can work from home.

Winner:  Draw.  Rule:  When you really can make it happen, you need to; it builds goodwill for future rounds and, well, makes good sense.

You get the idea.  Over the course of the last few days though, I have wondered, as I often do when I am bouncing around in this mad mothering world - just what it is I am trying to win?   On Tuesday afternoon, cuddled up over the lunch hour watching Hannah Montana: The Movie with my daughter while she ate her scrambled eggs and toast (just like my mom used to make),  I was sure I was the winner.  Six hours later, I would have paid my husband to let me get out of the house for a few hours, even if it meant sitting through a “New Hockey Parent” meeting (which it did!).

Happy “illness with flu-like symptoms” season, folks.  Here’s wishing you healthy days and, in the alternative, clear calendars!

  | Posted in » Job of Mom | Track by Leo

Which one is Kevin, again?

September 30th, 2009

I can never remember the name of the third Jonas Brother.  I remember Nick, and I remember Joe.  But I always forget the other one.

“Kevin” my kid reports.

“Oh that’s right,” I say, “he’s the one dating Hannah Montana.”

“Miley Cyrus,” the kids correct, because, of course, “Hannah Montana is just her character … and, anyway, Miley’s dating Nick.”

Right, of course.   “Kevin must be the one who broke up with Taylor Swift on the phone.”

Eye-rolling.  “No, mom, Joe dated Taylor Swift.”

“Kevin must be the diabetic one, then?”   (Still wrong, I learned from google, but at least I stumped them on this one!)

This whole exchange made me realize something.  I’m the mom.  The geeky mom who can’t keep up with the kids and their pop culture.  That’s me.

Saturday Night Live addressed this very phenomenon last weekend.  The thing is, the entire time I watched this skit, I was laughing, thinking only of my own mom.  It wasn’t until this morning, during the Jonas Brothers conversation, that I realized it’s actually me.  I’m the mom.  Damn.

(By the way, I think this was about the only funny skit in the entire season opener.  We recorded the whole show, of course, because 10:30 on a Saturday night is far past our bedtime, and Megan Fox is on my husband’s celebrity top five list … where I believe she may occupy numbers 1 through 5).

  | Posted in » Links for Laughs | Track by Leo

Walking to school uphill, barefoot, in the snow was easier with sugar.

September 29th, 2009

We haven’t had an Anecdote on Aging in awhile.

Remember when we were kids, and we used to pour sugar on our cereal out of these diner-style sugar dispensers.  Then, when the cereal was gone, we could eat the milk-soaked-sugar off the bottom of the bowl by the spoonful? 

How many of us would let our kids pour barrels of sugar on their cereal?!   Instead we feed them their breakfast sprinkled with  a bit of flaxseed and a gummy vite on the side.

*Hat-tip for this those-were-the-days moment to my friend Vince.  Thanks, Vinny.

  | Posted in » Anecdotes on Aging | Track by Leo