It is finished. The school year. I survived. So did my students. I will remember many things from this past year, including the students who – in hopes of a good grade – declared me “hotter” than Megan Fox. Sycophancy is alive and well, I’m happy to say. I will remember a group of students […]
Hilarious Family Moments
I Am the DH: Being Married to Ironic Mom (Part I)
A couple of days ago, I asked my husband if he wanted to guest post, which in retrospect was akin to asking a pyromaniac if he wanted to play with a box of matches. My husband is the man who brought you the term “sniper fire” (referring to the speed at which beginner ice skaters […]
Dinner, Eye Spy, and the Letter "D"
It’s the chaos of dinner preparation. I’m mopping up ham juice with environmentally unfriendly paper towels, using up the last half of the roll. William spies the empty cardboard cylinder and—like a cat smelling catnip–claims the roll. He uses it as a megaphone and begins making play-by-play announcements of the dinner preparation before him. “Daddy […]
Kids Using Google: The Cons
This past Sunday, I once again tried to sleep in beyond 6:30, the time when my seven-year-old twins opted to wake. “Just go play computer games,” I told Vivian. William was already safely absorbed in some violent cartoon on TV that was three inches from his face. Vivian left. The world was quiet, and the […]
Kids Using Google: The Pros
Just over a week ago, while I was sleeping in, seven-year-old Vivian wrote and self-published a book. It was Sunday. My husband had left for work, William was watching cartoons, and Vivian was bored. Because I’m a good mother and had been out until 1 a.m., I told her to go play computer games. I […]
Father's Day Failure
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while (say, since Monday), you’ll know that I’m not a contender for Mother-of-the-Year. Well, here’s a newsflash. I’m also not a contender for Wife-of-the-Year or Daughter-of-the-Year. No holiday makes that more obvious than Father’s Day. Here’s my evidence: I don’t send my dad a card or buy […]
Joke Telling and Kids
I love how kids tell jokes. It’s chaos theory at its best. From my unscientific observations, there are two initial stages of kids’ lack of development with regard to joke telling. Stage One: The Surreal Phase In the surreal phase, kids will tell jokes greatly influenced by the postmodern movement. These jokes tend to follow […]
Parenting Techniques That Guarantee Kids Will Need Therapy
I don’t read parenting books. They simultaneously bore and annoy me, like watching the Canucks play in Boston. The last thing I want to do when I finally lasso my seven-year-old twins to their beds (besides watch Luongo let in another goal) is read Perfect Parenting for Dummies. I already know I’m an idiot when […]
Suburban CSI and Killer Rabbits
Last week, I stood on our porch and waved goodbye to visitors. After they drove off, I looked at the railing and noticed two things: (1) it is in desperate need of a paint job, and (2) there was a wishbone drying on it. It was a bit of a puzzle. I never save wishbones, […]
Math, Kids, and Fidelity
I like giving my kids math problems. It’s comedy in action. When Vivian and William were five, I blogged about fun-with-math. I wrote: A couple of years ago, in a good parenting moment, I started playing math with them while driving. I gave them number problems, and they figured out the answer (or not). The […]