Learning to Leap

As most parents, we have a nightly ritual of reading a few books to our kids before bed. This used to be a fairly simple exercise. We'd select a few board books (which are CRUCIAL for very young children, all you newbie parents out there...we lost several unfortunate paper books to slobber, teething, and in general ingestion), sit in the rocking chair with our child, and take them to magical lands of colors and numbers and cuddly animals. As the girls have gotten older, it's gotten a bit more involved to read books to them at night. You see, we made a mistake several years back. We had each read some of these books so many times that we had the pages memorized verbatum. We were so bored with reading these much loved books that we just couldn't take it any more. Something had to change. We were about to lose our minds if we had to read Goodnight Moon one more time. It was going to be more like, "Goonight Lunatic". Here was our mistake: we began looking at ...

I think parents need to revolt. Petition. Refuse to buy the product anymore. Whatever it takes to bring about change. If we would all work together, we could bring some sanity back to the world. Of what am I speaking, you ask? The awful, offensive, vulgar, impossibly complicated packaging of small toys these days. Few things in my life can frustrate me as quickly as trying to open a new toy for my children. Just tonight I experienced the cruelty of the toy packaging masterminds once again. We just finished up our first quarter of homeschooling and my middle child completed a successful first quarter of kindergarten. That deserves a prize! (And lest you forget, MAMA deserves a prize for that as well, but I don't think the spa has an office in the toy department of Target.) The girls had a small sum of discretionary spending cash burning through their pockets (and I know, I know...some of you will take offense at the idea of rewarding success at school with a gift. It should...

I know this statement sounds harsh. Like I hate the environment. Like I am a political activist. Nope. I'm just a Mom. But speaking of harsh sounds, I would like to talk about the new hand dryers at Target and Costco. As you know, when you have small children, you visit public restrooms quite frequently. In fact, sometimes we go places just so I can get the youngest of my crew (who's pretty much bored with our bathrooms at home) to agree to make use of the restroom with no complaint. You should see the things we have to resort to in order to convince her to utilize our bathrooms at home (and yes, I DO clean them once in a while, so that's not it). She just doesn't like it and she's over the bribery thing. Anyway, back to the hand dryers. I have witnessed placid, calm babies suddenly break into fits of crying and seen the shocked, fearful looks on their faces. I mean, really, they are just not prepared for the decibel level on those stupid things. There th...

Tree nuts. Ever since Michael and I began eating nuts and berries earlier this year (well, ok, not the berries so much since they have sugar), we've had a lot of tree nuts. A LOT of tree nuts. Mostly almonds, but occasionally we have walnuts or hazelnuts or what have you. They're great for a little snack and a much better choice than the (preferred) chips or sugary snacks I've spent a lifetime loving. Well, this is all fine and good until you throw our child in the mix. Kids. Don't they always complicate everything? Our oldest child is allergic to tree nuts. Not peanuts, not peanut butter, not anything with peanut oil, etc. JUST tree nuts. We have learned this the hard way. When she tastes even a morsel of something with a tree nut in it, her lips swell and her mouth starts itching (I'm not sure how a mouth itches, but whatever. I believe her.). If there's no medicine around, watch out. She's about to be sick (we've learned this the hard way...

That's right. The 3-yr-old heard me say it. Oh, come on. Do you really think I'd admit it to all of you if I said THAT word to my child? Let me get you up to speed. Last night I made a colossal mistake. In my 3-yr-old's world, it was nearly unforgivable. She almost fired me right there on the spot. As it was, I escaped with a dire warning and she wrote me up to record my offense. I am now operating on probation. What was my great error? Well, it involved this: And this: And this: My baby has beautiful curls. Tight little ringlets which bounce merrily upon her baby cheeks and are the perfect match for her personality. So last night I gave her a much needed bath. The moments after a bath are my favorite (assuming it has been a voluntary bath and not an act of war). They smell all sweet and snuggly and look so cute in their little monkey pajamas (I think baths are one of God's main tools for convincing us to keep at this hard parenting gig...nobody can be mad a...

Toys. They can be your best friend when you find a magical one that keeps your fussy baby happy. They can be your worst enemy when they slowly but surely take over your house. Mothers are all too well acquainted with the "toy war". It starts off slowly, really. At first you don't even notice. I distinctly remember thinking, "gee, we don't have enough toys to fill up the three small built-in shelves in the playroom." I carefully arranged my daughter's few toys on the shelves and, wallah, my playroom was clean. I'm not even really sure when I began to lose the toy war. I think it started around my oldest child's first birthday. For one thing, she received this: This one humongous Elmo was big enough to occupy an entire corner of the playroom. It was bigger than my child. No worries, though. I still had more than enough clutter free space and we were in good shape. Over the years, things like this slowly but surely began to occur: Our toy...

Meet Paul. Lauren met Paul last year in her preK class. They apparently hit it off immediately. There was some kind of connection there. They gazed at each other from across the legos and knew they were kindred spirits. For several months, I heard all about Paul. There was a small communication problem, though. To the ears of a 5-yr-old, the name "Paul" sounded awfully similar to the word "paw". For weeks, I was under the impression my daughter was enamored with a boy named after a dog's foot. Or maybe named after the crush of my life, Michael Landon, in his famous role as "Pa" on Little House. Either way, I was pretty sure there was some communication problems going on here, but I gave up trying to convince her his name was most likely Paul. She would have none of it. Paul came over to play towards the end of the preK year. He and Lauren had a fabulous time finding rocks outside, sharing a snack, and in general enjoying life as only 5-yr-olds...