Kids and unstructured play

It’s easy to think that kids are part of some sort of superhuman disaster crew.  Really, they can leave a trail of chaos behind them that rivals any jungle.  It can feel so random, so thoughtless.  We pull our hair and think “Another mess?!?!  I just cleaned up the last one!” Usually when I have these thoughts it is because I am busy, moving too quickly – through our day, through the house,...

Mixed beans for 3.11.12

Well, shame on me, I missed last week’s mixed beans update.  I was out buying myself a pretty new laptop, after the great laptop drowning of 2012 and that took up most of Friday, Saturday and Sunday as we shopped, brought it home, figured out our file retrieval system and finally started to figure it all out. It’s been a busy couple of weeks!  Hmm, where to start?  I saw Miss Representation locally, and if...

Members Unite – talking to kids about making...

  Here’s a question for you - how old should our kids be before we start talking about some of the more serious issues in the world?  It’s our nature to protect our kids, yet, does anyone gain when we shelter them from the truth?  I think there’s always a balance to be found, and each family needs to decide what is right for them. In our family, our serious and thoughtful seven year old is plenty old...

Celebrating women on International Women’s D...

Today is International Women’s Day, and the day comes hard on the heels of my second screening of the film Miss Representation.  If you haven’t seen this film, get out to a local event or catch it when it airs (tonight on the Oprah Winfrey Network, check listings.) Between the two, I find myself overwhelmed with thoughts of women and what our lives are like today.  We have such privilege and freedom, yet...

Hunger isn’t a game – here’s how...

Spend enough time online and you’ll notice two things we all spend a lot of time talking about:  kids and food. We talk about parenting, milestones, and we swap cute stories.  Or we swoon over what we like to call food porn - oh, it’s steamy stuff all right. Recipes we’d like to try, photos of outrageous cakes, cupcakes, vast platters of party food. But how often do we slow down and talk about kids and...

Home for a winter holiday!

(this post needs a subtitle – And We All Survived!) Okay, I jest, but we all know that being home for extended periods of time with the kids can be a dream or go south very quickly.  We’re human, we have bad days, we make mistakes.  Locking us all in a house for a week runs a thin line between fun and frantic most days – luckily we land in fun most often.  It’s a relief to get to the end of the day...

Mixed beans for 2.26.12

The fact that I’m writing my weekly recap post early Sunday morning instead of Friday afternoon probably tells you all you need to know about my week. What a week!  My oldest out of school, the three year old with just two mornings of daycare, and a husband who ended up out of town for a few days.  Busy, busy with plenty of early mornings and late nights to spice things up.  We kicked off the week with a made up...

Hard questions

There are some things for which you can never prepare yourself. When you read books while pregnant, none of them go into how to handle the grown up end of a million discussions and questions. Why is that?  I read endless factoids and suggestions on all kinds of topics that never even came up in pregnancy nor my first year with a baby.  Little did I know I’d be wishing for a manual for all the talking.  For the...