Silicon Valley Moms Blog

Food Fight

Dinner is the only meal in which I require everyone to sit down at the table.  It’s an important tradition from my childhood.  As a busy working mom, dinnertime is the time to reconnect with my family.  We talk about our day, about current events, about really anything.  When I get home from a day at the office, I quickly get a wholesome meal on the table so that we can spend time as together as a family.

Yet dinnertime at my house is rapidly reaching Code Red status.  What was once a pleasant meal has turned into a power struggle of epic porportions.  No, my son isn’t refusing to eat dinner.  No, he isn’t exihibiting any bad manners.  In fact, my son will eat everything you put on his plate.

It takes him over 90 minutes to finish.  The battle I face every night is to get my son stay focused to eat dinner in a reasonable amount of time.   

Sleepover Central

Ah, Thanksgiving. 7 kids and 7 adults are packed like sardines in my sister's house on Thanksgiving Eve. Oh, actually there are only 5 adults in the house, as my parents brought their "honeymoon suite," their RV which is a haven of quiet and space. Inside the house, it is a sea of Aero beds and sleeping bags. The Mommies are up and down, being kicked out of beds, taking wee ones to the bathroom, searching for lost special pillows and pet friends in the middle of the night. We have time zone issues with some of the kids just arriving and still adjusting. When morning comes, our littlest (2.5 yrs old) asks "Can I go to the slumber party now?" As if she has been waiting for the party to happen all night long. Honey, I hate to tell you, but that WAS the party. And we get to do it again tonight! Joy.

Soul Food

My mom sent me an email with an essay she wrote some years ago about our family's Thanksgiving celebrations. I think it captures perfectly the essence of what Thanksgiving is really all about, so with her permission I am sharing it here:

It started with a turkey served on a Thursday in late November. A day off from school and work, a football game on TV and maybe even a parade. And we were thankful! Like my children the holiday grew. They came home from college and we added the card games; they married and brought spouses and Pictionary took hold. Grandchildren appeared at the table with the turkey and ever-multiplying side dishes of yams, cranberry salsa and bread pudding. Little heads began to pop up at game time and were dealt a hand or two. Those little heads grew and so did the turkey.

These boots were made for walkin'

I’m always astonished at the amount of energy my children have. From the moment they rolled over for the first time, it seems, each began a journey of perpetual motion which has, well, never stopped. My husband and I learned early on -- I think it was the day my son learned to pull himself up and unlock the front door -- that the only way to ensure peace in our household was to engage in a head-to-head game of “last man standing” and physically wear the children out.

Firing the Housekeeper

We all know that times are tough right now. No matter where you live, families everywhere are struggling to make ends meet.

But I’m feeling pretty lucky right now. I’m so relieved I’m not one of those moms who’s just had to let the housecleaner go, hands wringing at the prospect while she tries to get her head around the fact that she is going to have to clean her own toilets from now on. While my toilets may not always be as pristine as hers, there’s no big shock in store for me. I do it myself. Always have.

As for the rest of the house, I usually judge its day-to-day cleanliness on a scale of “How Mortified Would I Be if a Friend Dropped By For Coffee,” with Only Moderately being my most frequent answer. I know I’m having a good day when the answer isn’t Extremely or Do Not Let Them In Under Any Circumstances. The Not At All – Bring it On answer is usually reserved for those last five minutes prior the arrival of dinner party guests. So nothing's really changed there either.

No More Toys!

“Do NOT throw those toys down onto the ground!  You’ll break it” I said to my son in frustration.  It was the third time he decided to throw down the special Transformers his grandpa had brought back from an international trip (my son’s specific request was for Bumblebee – and wouldn’t you know Grandpa just happened to find a toy store in France that had it).  The Transformers were supposed to be the ones to duking it out in an epic battle – but the pavement seemed to be winning the war.

“It’s okay, mom” he nonchalantly replied.  “”If it breaks, you’ll buy me another one at the store.”

Uh, excuse me? what did you just say? back up it up, buster!  My four year old son thinks that it is perfectly acceptable to trash his toys because he knows more are coming?  When did this kid put that reasoning together?  We aren’t at the store buying toys left and right.

Valuable lessons: I don't really need All That

Since starting to spend less money over the past month, my husband and I have been very pleased to rediscover that we really don't need All That. Stuff. Dining Out. New Shiny Things. Extra Things. More, More, More. We can actually get by just fine on what we have. We've gone back to basics and are both happier for it. (Mostly...I confess that I am missing my The Dailey Method class and the stress relief that affords...must try to fit that back in somehow.)

The kids? Well, one day a few weeks ago, on the way to preschool I was listening to some of NPR's analysis of the financial crisis. It is hard for kids NOT to hear about it, right? News of this is everywhere. They asked what it was about and I said "We all have a money problem. Everyone in the United States...and in the world, has a money problem right now. And that's why Mommy and Daddy aren't spending a lot of money right now. We are only buying the things we need and are only spending as much money as we have." I tried to keep it simple. Some questions were asked. Like can't you just go get some more? They offered to help make some more credit cards for us (no thanks!). It is hard to explain such abstract concepts to 4-year-olds - after all, they see us using credit cards (well, debit cards) all the time and rarely do they see the physical limit of cash. When we do need cash, we go to the bank and push buttons to get some out. Simple, right? How can there be a problem?

Wasn't it only a moment ago?

My youngest child started school today. Looking at her, with her freshly-combed hair, white knee socks and ear-to-ear smile, I can see that she’s anxious but excited, scared but proud, and most of all so very ready for this important transition from preschooler to ‘big kid.’

But, I think, wasn’t it only a moment ago that I sat there fidgeting as my mother fussed with my hair (“keep your head still!”), tying it up in apparently crooked ponytails or putting it in what she still calls the “princess” hairdo?

(For the uninitiated among us, the “princess” do is a form of torture whereby the parent – usually – the mom – stands behind the child and combs every strand of hair from the front of her head tightly back into a clip at the back of her head – often so tightly that the effect is similar to that of a facelift).

Transformation of a princess

Something is happening to my daughter. That thing that no one warns you about when you have kids.

Sure, we’d heard about stranger anxiety. Our mothers warned us about the terrible twos. And we all remember what we were like during the teen years. But what nobody talks about is the fact that some most kids, when they reach the age of five, become (and I say this with the utmost love and affection) beasts.

A working "virtually" mom decides there's no place like home

I have worked from my home, with no office and with the minimization of paper and supplies since my twins were born 4 years ago. "Virtually," some might say - a certain buzz word that has sprung up recently that applies to what I have been doing for the past several years. I am a professional, but I work as little as possible - in that, I strive to work about 10-15 hours a week, so that I can take my three small kids to the park, zoo, museum, swim class and grocery store, be in their classroom at their parent participation preschool, and just, well, be there for them. Sometimes I have to work more than those 15 hours per week, in order to meet a client's deadline, to gain a client that I really want to work with or to do general business development and administrative stuff. But, in general, I like having the control over my business and my work-life balance. But...sometimes, despite best intentions, things can take on a life of their own.

Recently, work has been crazy for me. 15 hours?! Ha. More like 45 hours. With no full-time child care. The juggling has been intense to say the least. My "virtual" office consists mainly of me working at a really teeny tiny fold out desk (it looks like a bureau when not in use) in my bedroom, or at the kitchen table when the kids are not at home (and since they are still young - 3 kids 4-years-old and younger - this doesn't happen often), or at Starbucks or Panera Bread or somewhere else with a WiFi network. It was time for a change. This juggle was not working for me and I started thinking that having some space of my own, a real life physical office, would really help to regain some of my sanity. So I started to hunt for office space. I would have loved something like Cubes & Crayons (the kids nearby, the network of other working parents, a place to really focus on work unlike Starbucks or home at times), but Menlo Park is too far for me currently. I had a vision in my head of what I wanted - not much, just somewhere convenient, with a lock, that was mine. All mine.

I found  a co-working office right in downtown Campbell, about 2 miles from my house and right above Starbucks. Oh, the joy! The lease is month-to-month, so if I find something better or my plans change I am not locked in forever. It is fully furnished with a nice desk and chair, and decorated in a modern, airy feel. It includes internet access, a kitchen, copiers, printers and a conference room. The landlord and other people who work there are nice and friendly. It is perfect...or it should have been.

Mouse Trauma

I think I'm losing my touch.  You see, I was raised on a farm and in the mountains, and even though I've now been in the Palo Alto area forever, I still (in what feels like my DNA) harbor "country girl" memories.  Stuff like the time that mom shot a rattlesnake by the front porch, or having to help birth a calf, and so forth.  Memories like that, juxtaposed with my raised-in-NY husband's domestic squeamishness (OK, I won't go there), make me feel positively "butch" in the 'burbs.  Well,  most of the time.

But I have been vanquished.  By a common mouse.

Three days ago, I opened our bread drawer to see the unmistakable signs of mousedom.  Someone -- some THING -- had eaten its way through the plastic and nibbled on the heel end of a loaf of bread.  Something had crunched its way through the corner of a pretzel bag.  Horrors!  Nasty little live creatures in my DRAWERS.

Summer Bliss.. Well, Sort Of

"Looook, Mommy! .. I have a silly hat!"  TJ runs headlong into me with a plastic bin over his head, giving me a headbutt as I try to clean off the kitchen counter.  Ouch!  That hurt!

Yep. This was the battle cry of my two and half year old toddler.  He has announced the arrival of summer. 7 days a week, without preschool.  Let the games begin!

I knew it was gonna be an adjustment having TJ with me everyday.  I was mentally prepared for it.  Now that TJ had passed the baby phase and is a toddler, I came up with a list of places take TJ.  I tried to focus on the bright side.  Hey, we can go to the beach, have picnic with friends, and hit the swimming pools.  Lots of options because he's old enough to actually understand (somewhat) fun activities, can withstand more than 15 minute car ride, and is flexible with his nap times.  Day by day, I chart out his calendar so we can have some summer fun.

But still, I can't always be out and about, like some camp counselor day in and day out. 

Neighborly Love

We live in the Heritage District of Sunnyvale.  Six years ago we moved into a house owned by my husband's grandparents.  It is cute little house on a corner lot with a nice backyard.  The houses are about 50 years old but most have been kept up nicely.

When we first moved in, our neighborhood was "in transistion."  There weren't very many families with small kids.  In fact, most of our neighbors were well into their seventies and not very friendly.  In short, our neighborhood didn't feel much like one.

 

Please Make Up This Room

Have you ever thought about how the inside of your house looks to someone seeing it for the first time? 

Clearly, if you are fortunate enough to have professionals helping you out in this area – an interior designer, a cleaning team, someone who organizes your closets – this isn’t such a big deal. But for the rest of us, we who have to dig through the dryer to find matching socks, have 12-inch-high stacks of children’s artwork on top of the fridge and always manage to find Cheerios permanently embedded in the carpet when we have company, this exercise can be quite an eye opener.

I was mortified the other day when my neighbor across the street came in unexpectedly for a cup of coffee. Her daughter is in my son’s class, and as we all walked home after school the children, along

New meaning to the word "Homecoming"

When I walked in the door after a 10-day trip away from my family, the first thing my spouse said to me after a kiss hello was “We’re out of bread.”

With a grocery store within walking distance of our house, a fully stocked fridge upon my departure, and ten days away from my family, really?  That’s the first thing you want to say?  How about a “honey, how was your trip?” or “Supplies are low, but I’ll run up to store tonight for you – you’ve been traveling for 15 hours.”

I know being the parent who gets left behind while the other spouse is traveling, isn’t easy.  It’s hard to be the one that has to hold down the fort.  But good grief is it really that hard to go to the store to pick up a few items?!?

How Did My House Get Like This?

Do you ever have those moments where you get home after just being away a few hours and you look around and it's like you're entering someone else's home, a tornado hit, or twelve people were staying as guests on your floor?  Yeah, OK, I know I'm not the only person this happens with but somehow even though my daughter's two, every time I come home and see my house looking like a disaster area, I'm shocked.

Where is this shock coming from?  It's not like I didn't create half the mess.  Really, at least half is from me putting things in a pile that needs to be sorted or leaving something on the table that needs to be put away or not yet getting to the stuff on the floor that was there yesterday but I was just too tired to pick up.  Granted, the rules of the house change significantly when a toddler becomes part of that world, but still I don't understand why I should be so shocked.

Every Woman Deserves a "Wife"

That's what my friend calls it...a wife.  She has someone who comes every afternoon and picks up the house from the wear and tear of the day, does the grocery shopping, covers if the nanny has to go before mom and dad are home, prepares menus, cooks, does a deep clean on weekends, does the dishes, helps get the kids settled for the night, and in short is a wife.  Or at least the traditional definition of a "wife." 

Who wouldn't want that?  It sounded fabulous to me even before I had such long work days.  My husband has been traveling out of the country, and after five days on my own juggling Giggles and BooBoo with work, I was exhausted and begrudgingly ready for a little help. 

My Top 5 Mommy Guilt Offenders

Last week, I spent a good amount of the week in bed, sick as a dog. Because there was quite a bit of Mommy Guilt that accompanied my days curled up under the covers, I wrote up a posting on my personal blog about it: When Mommy is Sick.

This week, I'm back on my feet. Yeah, the things that made me feel guilty when I was sick have ebbed away. But, like the tide that always returns, a new list of guilt-inducing items washes up to greet me on any given day as mom.

I try not to let these things drag me down. I kinda picture my days as mom like my walks on a beach. Sometimes, the beach is totally beautiful and clean, especially after a storm or a spelt of rain has hit. The beach is clear because not many people have returned yet. No paper bags, styrofoam cups, or broken beer bottles. Just smooth, virgin sand, waiting for my footprints, as I trek across, eager to make my mark.

Days like these with TJ seem magical. These are the times when I've just finished something major. Maybe I just completed ordering fabric and materials for the line of shopping cart covers I've designed. Or it could be something monumental, like clicking through that last screen on the TurboTax Wizard and all my papers are filed in newly labeled folders. Or it could be something as simple as getting my weekly grocery runs done. With my fridge newly stocked and meals fresh in my mind for the next couple of days, my time with TJ is filled with lots of fun, play, and creative ideas for first time moments.

An office away from home for a WAHM?

I have worked out of my house for the past 4 years, since having my twins. It wasn't truly a plan, it just sort of ended up that way. I had quit my job at ARM as Corporate Counsel to spend a year or so with my twins, who I thought would be my only children (turns out I was incorrect and that we did not in fact need those fertility drugs, as we now have child #3 - surprise!). I thought I might start my own law firm at some point, but clients started coming to me more quickly than I imagined. So I said, sure, why not? I can work at home while my babies nap, after they go to bed....while I'm at my favorite fenced park (hello Treo/Crackberry/iPhone), making dinner, giving the kids baths, etc. etc. etc.

The division between work to home is not always clear. Ok, it is not clear at all. I have my laptop in the kitchen/great room where our family basically "lives" 24 x 7 (we have a tiny house). I also have an office in my bedroom - one of those fold-up desks and a large file cabinet. My home office went away when we filled up our 3 bedroom house with 3 kids. I REALLY enjoy the flexibility of my work. Yes, I want to have it ALL! I can take off for a week on vacation and it is usually just fine. I am able to enjoy a commute-free existence. I can wear my park mom clothes to work in, unless I am meeting with a client. Not to mention being free from paying a fixed cost for office space each month. However... lately, I have been doing more start-up company business formation work and I am really feeling the need to have a place where I can regularly meet with clients, have conference calls (uninterrupted by wails of disaster in the background), and just be really productive. I can meet clients at my house, but then I have to get my kids out of the house for a while (not easy with 3 kids 4 years and under) and - gasp! - clean the house! Too much trouble.

I heard about a new model of combining childcare and office space recently

Did You Know That Onions Grow in the Dark?

I didn't know that onions grew in the dark until I pulled one out of my closet pantry. I was wondering why my closet was smelling so bad every time I went in to grab TJ a snack. Way down low, in the back corner where it's dark, something was growing wild and free.

When I first caught a pungent whiff of stinky onions, I realized, "Shoot! We didn't finish off the 10 lbs of red onions from Costco in time. Now, they're rotting! Disguuussting!" I quickly held my breath, yanked the sack of remaining offending suckers and made a mental note to self. Next time, put half of the onions in the fridge.  Start with the ones in the closet and you'll be fine.

My husband has constantly berated me for buying garlic and onions in bulk when there are only the three of us. But hey, I'm Chinese. I practically throw bulbs of garlic and onions into my stir fry. And I swear, there's gotta be some Italian in my ancestry, because I can't get enough of my pasta. Diced onions taste so good in sauces, whether red or white. And don't forget salads, too.

So, the first thing I did when I realized my onions were decomposing was quickly destroy the evidence and spray with Oust! "There!" I thought. "Hubby won't even know it ever happened." I breathed a sigh of relief, figuring I caught the stink in time.
 

Gung Hay Fat Choy with Mickey

Gung Hay Fat Choy!  If you are Chinese, you probably have heard this the nth time this week.  And if you're not, you've probably been greeted with this a couple dozen times by now.  During those early dating days, when random queries are asked to fill airspace, I asked hubby whether he knew any Chinese.  "Gung Hay Fat Choy!"  was only second to "Nay Ho Ma?" (How are you?)  When asked, "Do you know what that means?", hubby replied, 'Happy New Year!' in Chinese."

Actually, it literally means, "I wish you wealth and lots of it!".  As a good little Chinese girl growing up in the heart of San Francisco Chinatown (I was born in a hospital named "Chinese Hospital"), I was taught that it was good luck to pronounce this blessing to family and friends.  I was told it should be the first thing out of my mouth, as I greet any and all during Chinese New Year. 

But, in my childhood language, "Gung Hay Fat Choy" just meant one thing:  Cha-Ching!... M-O-N-E-Y! 

An Incurable Romantic

A new year has crept up on me.  And I couldn't be happier.  Other than Christmas, there isn't a better time of the year for me.  Not because of any great New Year Party I often hear about or see glammed up in the movies.  Hey, I'm in bed by 10pm if I had it my way.  Sleep trumps all else for this mom of a toddler.  And it's not because I'm away on vacation somewhere far and away, like Paris or Hawaii. 

No, the reason why my world suddenly becomes shiny and new during the month of January is because I'm a  die-hard romantic.  Now, I'm not talking about the Valentine's Day, hearts-and-boxes-of-chocolate type of romance. I call it Life Romanticism, where I fall in love with life and look for meaning behind every little moment and significance in any old thing. I don't believe in circumstance or randomness. 

So, I thought I'd start the new year off with a confessional:  I am an incurable romantic. Yep, I'm one of those people who (tries to) save every card I get, scrapbook pieces of wrapping paper from my baby/bridal showers, have a box full of letters from my childhood friends, and is often obsessed with finding reasons to celebrate (Hey, it's the

It's raining, it's pouring...the California storms continue

Truthfully all this talk about the 3 big storms has gotten me a bit nervous.  As I write, I can hear the wind howling with an occasional thump outside.  Most likely these noises are benign but my mind goes to the extreme.  Did a chair from our backyard just hit the wall?  Was that a tree falling on our roof?  Is our house going to blow off its foundation?  Oh my gosh we're all going to DIE!

Needless to say, I'm a bit jumpy.

Although there are many things I love about the rainy season, there is one item that I am less than excited about.  I put it off for as long as I can and try to pawn the responsibility onto someone, anyone else.  But, alas, multiple times a day my sweet, obedient, and well mannered Labrador Retriever gets off her bed, walks up and lets me know it is time.

She must go outside to use the facilities.

Dear Shutterfly: will we still be friends in the New Year?

Dear Shutterfly,

Thanks for the $400 credit to my Shutterfly account. Your customer service rep was very nice to me. However, I'm still more than a bit miffed that after I submitted my finished holiday card to you, the message text on the inside front cover reverted to my first draft.  Thank goodness I didn't write anything snarky or incriminating, or I would have a bigger issue with you.

I thought the worst part of the card would be our family photo.  While my 5 year old daughter, Kitty Cat, gave a half-smile and looked decent, her twin brother Guy-Guy refused to smile.  Actually, he refused to make a normal face. He looks like he's having an eye-rolling seizure in the photo. That was pretty bad, but his outfit was even worse - a camouflage shirt and pant get-up, otherwise known as "army-army" in our house.  This is one battle with my husband I should have picked, but didn't when he insisted that army-army on Guy-Guy was just fine for Thanksgiving dinner with his parents.  Maybe so, but it wasn't fine with me for our annual chance at a four-person family photo.  Why is it so hard to get four people in a photo? 

So, Shutterfly, how could our card have been worse?  Well, you know why.

Our Family's 2007 Naughty or Nice? List

Here is our Family's 2007 Naughty or Nice? List that was supposed to be published by Shutterfly in our holiday card, but they screwed up.  Here is life with twin five-year olds summed up in fewer than 1500 characters. I'd love to hear what you had on your hands this year, too!

Our Family's 2007 Naughty or Nice? List:

Dog Envy: If you like someone's dog, ask the owner when she is going to die.  If there are other family members, inquire about their estimated dates of death.  Offer to take care of the dog.

Delaying Tactics: If you don't like karate, tie on your yellow belt, then tie the long ends around a banister with, like, 5 knots.  Guaranteed to tick off your mom and make you 10 minutes late for class.

Boyfriend Criterion per Kitty Cat (5): "Bigger teeth than me."

My Lopsided Christmas Tree

My Christmas tree started changing last year. I swore I would always have a real Christmas tree in the house. I love the smell of pine mixed with holiday baking in the air.

But, with the introduction of a baby, we didn't want the hassle of taking out pine needles out of our little one's mouth. Plus, I already had my hands full changing diapers, much less remembering to water the tree. So, out with the live tree, in with the fake one, complete with lights already hung!

When it came time to put the Christmas tree up this year, it was only a matter of minutes that it was ready for ornaments to be hung. But since TJ is a walking a toddler this year, I had a new problem. Crash! My ornaments were now at arms length away from TJ's experiments with gravity (yeah, bright light balls to hurl onto the ground!)

I love putting together a well-balanced tree. I even pack my ornaments in the order in which they appear on the tree, so that each year, I get a good balance of ornament balls vs. "knick-knack" ornaments, red and green vs. silver and gold, and of course, my all-time favorites sprinkled in a random fashion around the tree. Maybe it's my way of having some sort of order and control. "Beauty" and "Peaceful" are words that come to mind when I finish hanging that final ornament.

Not this year. In order to avoid having smashed ornaments splattered on the floor, I'm forced to hang all my ball ornaments on the upper part of the tree. Plus, TJ insists on helping hang ornaments on the tree, and the only ones he can hang are the ones with the stringed loops. That means all the decorations that require hooks have also migrated to the top of the tree. On top of that, only the ornaments that are soft and can safely fall to the floor are the ones that have to line the bottom of the tree.

So, what I have ended up with is a lopsided Christmas Tree. I have to be honest. I am not used to seeing the tree so disheveled. In fact, throughout the day, I notice the tree looks different each time. You see, TJ loves decorating the tree so much, that he loves taking down the ornaments and rehanging them. So, even when I might have gotten used to seeing the tree a certain way, TJ can get struck with artistic inspiration and the whole thing is tweaked again. 

I used to pass my tree and think, "aaaahhh.. nice.." Now, I think, "aarrggghh.. lopsided tree with balls on top and soft loopy ornaments on the bottom". I know, it was really cute to see TJ hanging ornaments so meticulously. And I know I'm gonna look back fondly on these memories on the first Christmas he'll be away for the holidays. Yeah, one day I'll miss that Lopsided Christmas tree. We'll see.

Bonnie also writes at Just Peachy Baby Blog about her peachy life with baby.

A Promise Is a Promise

Like batteries found in any one of Todder J's toys, my energy reserves have been running down a bit every day by the little munchkin.  Two months shy of his second birthday, TJ dropped his one and only nap of the day.  Yes, I've tried EVERYTHING.  With his favorite lullabyes playing, I've even regressed to rocking him until he falls asleep, plus another 10 minutes, but to no avail.  The minute I start to inch my butt off the glider, TJ whips out of sleep and decries, "ONE MORE SONG!", and clutches me with his death grip.

Every day, for over two months, I repeated this ritual, refusing to accept my fate of no-nap days.  "I'm not losing this one easily.  Even if it kills me, I'm gonna keep putting him down. And one day, he is gonna cave in and accept his fate of one-nap days."  Well, with the holidays in full swing, having to coordinate everything and everybody's calendar, on top of my usual toddler routine, my resolve started waning, white flags waving in my mind.

A Morning Back To Myself

Every year, whenever it got close to my birthday, usually a month before, I'd start planning for my own birthday.  I had kinda gotten used to figuring out how to celebrate my birthday on my own because I had grown up in a family culture that didn't really celebrate birthdays.  And although I had friends in college that helped me blow out my candles, I had a very long stretch of singlehood, up until I got married in my early thirties.  I have gotten really good at figuring out how best to enjoy spending time alone on my special days.

Sometimes, I would prefer a more quiet and reflective way of marking a new year ahead, like driving out to the city to a favorite bakery for a yummy pastry and journal highlights for the year.  Other times, I'd get up early, pack a nice sandwich and apple in my backpack, and drive out to my favorite spot for a day hike.

But, that was in the past, before I was a Mom, before I had a husband.  Now, it seemed weird to ask for a day off and spend it all by myself.  For one thing, I've gotten used to having hubby around, to order the other muffin that I couldn't decide between, not to mention being my captive audience for sentimental birthday thoughts.  The bigger challenge though, is that hubby and I no longer have the luxury of just jumping out of bed, and deciding, "Hhhhmm.. what would we like to do today?"

Generation Rx?

I just had a conversation this weekend with friends of mine that were under the false impression that living in the suburbs of an affluent area means that their children would not be exposed to drugs in the same way as those kids in a big city. Ha, I said. I happened to have grown up in this "suburb" and have stories about the types of drugs I was exposed to in highschool. And that was, um, over twenty years ago.. I had one of those looks that said "get your head out of the sand" - and make sure you educate your kids about drugs.

I was happy to hear that in middle school the kids in our school district go through the D.A.R.E. (or drug abuse resistance) program. My son is not quite in middle school, but I decided it was time to start the education process. With the increased use prescription drugs for kids, they really need to be educated early.  Then I got an email about a series on CBS News with Katie Couric called Generation Rx. The series

Kate's Yearly Pillsbury Warning Letter for Peanut Allergics

The baking has started.  We invited a friend over on Saturday to play and I tossed out the casual "we're baking cookies, if you want to."  The kid jumped at it.  It's easy to forget how much little boys like to make cookies.  Correction: how much KIDS like to make cookies.  What fun!

Last year, in the middle of baking cookies, I got tired of using my Yuppie Martha Stewart sugar cookie dough, so I bought some at Safeway. And was shocked to see that some of the Pillsbury cookie dough contains peanuts. Let me repeat: Some of the store-bought sugar cookie dough contains peanuts.  It's not made on machinery that also touches peanuts. It contains genuine peanut flour.  Why?  who one earth knows.

If your child has a peanut allergy, this is a REMINDER. In case you have let down your guard, and in case you let simple logic direct you (e.g. “it’s a sugar cookie. Those contain butter or shortening/sugar/eggs  

A Touch of Mayberry

I was hanging out early Sunday morning at Peet's Coffee at the corner of Charleston and Middlefield with my hubby and Toddler J (TJ) a couple weeks ago, when we ran into a touch of Mayberry.  You know, the idyllic, small town where life was simple and all the grown ups knew Opie, Sheriff Andy's son, and where Aunt Bee always had pie?

Yep.  Right in Palo Alto, where everyone is usually busy going here or there -- where I least expected it...

We had just finished our cup of coffee.  We try to make it into a Peet's or Starbuck's on the weekends for some coffee time.  We don't stay long because TJ's Toddler-Parking meter usually has a max time-out of 30 minutes.  But, it's worth going to because it gives us some semblance of our pre-kid couple time. 

Unpredictable Thanksgiving Events

Every year during Thanksgiving when the pressure is on for families to spend that "special" time together, there always seems to be unpredictable events that add some extra excitement to the holiday.

Now that my oldest is almost nine and my twins will be in Kindergarten next year, I decided to reclaim the adult space by clearing out the garage to make that a "playspace". Two months and many many hours of purging and trips to Ikea later the garage is set up as a fun space for my three boys and their friends to play. I wanted to have it all done before Thanksgiving so my husband and I could cook and the kids would be safely entertained.

So, what do you think my three boys did on Thanksgiving day - the first day their playspace was open for business? What did they do while their parents were cooking? They went outside and decided to play with rocks and sticks for hours. My eldest made a picture of turkey using our driveway rocks and sticks as his

New Gift for your Mother: A Genome Kit!

I am a WASP.  (White Anglo Saxon Protestant.)  At times I have argued in favor of being called a WASA (sub "agnostic" for the Protestant), but the lineage remains the same:  I am descended from hordes of light-skinned, sun-challenged people, many of whom probably have depressive tendencies, lack a predisposition to "let loose" in public, and like to lounge around the sidelines socially, cracking jokes and quaffing alcoholic beverages.  The wildest bunch is the Norwegian relatives, although if you've ever been privy to any of the Lutheran joke websites, you'll just roll your eyes at that one.

I tell you this because, while I am tempted to generalize and say that MANY mothers in their fifties like to work on the family tree and genealogy-type stuff, my husband has admonished me clearly about this.  "In my (Jewish) family," he said, we don't HAVE a family tree.  They were all killed.

Stops me cold, every time.

But a part of me still has a sneaking theory that family-tree research is a type of late-life nesting activity in older women.  Perhaps from the hind brain?  Something uncontrollable, like small animals digging nests

Halloween Street

I used to be one of those people who would get in the car and drive with my parents to the neighborhood where they used to live when my sister was young in order to go trick-or-treating.  My neighborhood wasn't so great for that time of year because we lived on a substantial hill.  One year we had two trick-or-treaters, another year none.  I'd go to "the old neighborhood" with friends of our family and go house to house; I knew some of the neighbors on that street better than my own neighborhood, and it was fun, but it was always a bit bittersweet since it wasn't really where I lived.

This will be my first year having Halloween where trick-or-treaters come to our house.  Our house.  Our street.  Our neighborhood.  Now, maybe it's not that big of a deal - I know a lot of people around here who take their kids to other neighborhoods to trick-or-treat - but Halloween was always one of my favorite holidays and I never really saw it in its full glory.

The Murphy's Law of Pests

My kids and I have been plauged by biting insects of some type for approximately two to three months now. My husband, who is apparenty not such a tasty morsel - never has been to the bugs, although I disagree - gets a few bites, but not many. The girls in the house, on the other hand, get maybe five bites a day, sometimes as many ten a day. My 3.5 year old daughter's daily vocabulary and rule set now includes "I'm not scratching my bug bites, Mommy." My 16-month-old toddles around scratching her legs and saying "Uh-oh!" The whining, the complaining - it all gets my complete sympathy. I can't stand it. I have even been taking an anti-histamine for my itching.

We don't know what the bugs - They - are. My husband is concerned about the toxicity with bombing the house or whatever it is a pest control company would do. But there comes a point. Which is worse - getting the house bombed and having to leave for 4 hours before it is non-toxic or the risk of getting bit by a West-Nile virus carrying mosquito found in Silicon Valley recently? The biting happened last year too - we all got bit for a while, but then They went away after a month or so (not to do with the weather, it was in the middle of summer). So I have been waiting for the same phenomenon to occur, for Them to GO AWAY at some point....I was still waiting until two days ago.

Wanted:Inner Sex Goddess

Has anyone seen my inner sex goddess?   I lost her some where along the way after getting pregnant.  She doesn't seem to exist anymore.  I have been missing her lately and searching high and low.

My husband and I are ready for baby #2 but how can you have a baby when you have no sex drive?  Getting pregnant is never fun.  Well, it can be lots of fun but it is always so planned that the fun seems to disappear quickly after month one.  We both want it so bad but we can seem to find our inner sex god/goddess.

First of all, when you have a child, sex is hardly

Our loaner kid experience

As I mentioned in an earlier post, a girlfriend recently asked us, a single-kid family, to watch her child for a week.  Well, ten days, actually.  And two nights, if you're counting.  And four hours and thirty-two seconds and 12 nanoseconds....  (Ahem. A slight joke there.)

I jumped at the chance.

For one thing, my son stopped people all summer and told them that he was going to have "a little brother" for a week.  Clearly, this was the peak anticipated experience for summer.  And since he sat through four somewhat stultifying weeks at the local language summer school (poor kid), I figured that he deserved a peak experience.

The second reason was that I knew, down to my mommy toes, that it would be an excellent life lesson for my child to actually have another child share his life.  Up until now, we've only had playdates or visits

Just Call Them Baby Sitter Videos

As if there are not enough things for moms to feel guilty about, now research teams are at it again with an assault on videos. To be fair, I also agree that there is something creepy about infants watching videos. But come on, are ya telling me that parents who spend their days enriching their kids by talking, reading and sharing things about the world around them - that then put their baby/toddler darling in front of a video for under an hour may "delay language development"?

I may feel somewhat defensive because I started my boys watching that wonderful "one hour or less" of video a day when they were toddlers. My philosophy has always been that it is safe to put babies who can't crawl in front of toys (in a safe space) while I showered or cooked dinner. But when they started moving, there were times that putting on a video was my only alternative - other then getting a babysitter. Yeah, maybe I should of just hired a babysitter each day to come over for my 20 minute shower so my sweet toddlers would not have to watch those evil videos... Or maybe not shower at all. And as far as language development, my boys all started talking at an early age and have not stopped. Which is a good thing, I know... really...

And who in their right mind ever thought that videos would make a child smarter? I always thought of them as babysitters. And yes, I dare say I rather enjoy hearing the classical music playing in the Little Einstein videos, which is much better then the average cartoon. Do I think it enriches them? No. But do I think it harms then? No again. Because I spent the rest of the day interacting with them. Maybe we should just call them Baby Sitter instead of Baby Einstein videos and then everyone will be happy.

These studies that show a delay in language did not seem to take into account what these kids did the rest of the day. So, instead of wasting time telling parents what they have done wrong, maybe the studies should be geared to help parents understand what they can do right. For example, explain how to engage children in conversation at all ages, how to read a book so that young kids learn about phonics and using interesting voice sounds to keep older kids engaged.  What is the best way to engage children in the world around them while taking walks, cooking dinner, listening to classical music, at the grocery store and at a museum?  As far as I can see, these studies that show a delay in language did not take into account what these kids did the rest of the day.

Take a click over to Alpha Mom, they also had some things to say:
Isabel Kallman - Minding My Business: Baby videos, what's the big deal?
Alice Bradley -Wonderland: Baby Einstein no make smart? Uh oh.

running away on family-vacation-land to find myself

I know, it has been a while since i have posted.  Between traveling for work, planning parties before BlogHer07, and basically trying to survive the summer as a working mom who has to juggle work, revolving camp schedules, preschool, and swim lessons, my summer has been somewhat... interesting.  This was suppose to be the summer that I pulled back my work schedule and spent more time as a mommy with the girls.  It was suppose to be more of "me" time.

It didn't happen.

I could come up with a billion reasons why my summer of relaxation turned into a summer of work and over-scheduling myself with a ton of projects. I promise, I won't bore you with the excuses nor the details. So.....My husband finally turned to me a month ago and said, "Jill, we need to get away.  We need to spend some "quality" time with the girls.  We need to escape the email, the computers, the work calls, the blogging (friends, please don't tell him about this post!) and spend uninterrupted time with our children.  Away from the house.  Away from the computer.  Away from all the distractions that pull us back to work."

So....

Voila, we are now in San Diego, living it up at the Hotel Del Coronado.   (The song, "Hotel California" keeps running through my head!)

I will now be bringing back stories about The San Diego Zoo (where we actually ate bugs!), the beach and pool at Hotel Del and after today, our ventures to Legoland.  Ah, and the pictures.  I am glued to my camera capturing every move that my daughter's make.  Hey, I need a good picture for our holiday cards!  But most important, we actually are really enjoying time with our daughter's. (Dare I admit that traveling with your five and seven year old kids can actually be fun?) Yes, there are have been a few whines and complaints.  There have been a few outbursts about how I am a bad mom because I don't let them have ice cream at every meal.  Oh, and there has been quite a few of the "picky eater" syndrome moments, since some of the restaurants only serve "whole milk" instead of "lowfat milk".... but we are surviving and enjoying our time together. 

Dear-Powers-That-Be, please let them be this pleasant when they are teenagers.  Amen.

It takes a vacation to put life back in perspective.  In Silicon Valley, many of us are on the work-rat-race.  I am not really sure how to get off, nor sure that I want to get off.  Isn't that strange?  In no specific order.... I really like and enjoy working.  I love running collaborative blogs.  I love my family.  I love being a mommy.  I love gardening and spending free afternoons "playing and planting"  in the backyard.  I love scrap booking (though dare I admit, I haven't printed out pictures and put together my photo albums or scrapbooks in over a year?). I need to make more time for "me" so I can work out and get back in shape!  I want to volunteer in my daughter's classrooms more often.  I want to help out with a few non-profits......  There is sooooo much I want to do, but so little gets accomplished.  Is there anyway to divide me into five people, so everything can get done? 

How in the world can anyone have or do it "all"?  Please, let us know..... I would love to meet (and worship) you!

In the mean time, I will enjoy my last few days in San Diego and then return to Silicon Valley, where I hope to spend August less stressed and focussed on ME - cause in a few weeks, the back-to-school-rat-race begins!   Yippeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

Am I The Only One?

I have been a SAHM for a little over 2 years now.  Love the mom part.  Hate the housekeeper part.  I just can't seem to get everything done.  Our house is only 1200 square feet so it shouldn't be too hard right?  I only have one child!

While at playgroup the other day, I asked the other mom's how they get everything done.  Every single one of them has a house cleaner!!  Some of them once a week, others once a month.  One even has someone who cooks for them!!!!  I was shocked.  Am I the only one without a house cleaner???

I have mixed feelings about this.  I would love to have a house cleaner for sure, but part of me thinks it just isn't right.  Yes, my child and I do lots of things out of the house so we aren't home all the time, but we are still at home a lot.  It seems like I should be able to get it all done, but it doesn't seem to happen.  Maybe it is all the blog reading I do....haha!  Another issue is the money.  Money is already a bit stretched so is paying someone else to do something I could do worth it?

Finally, after thinking about this for a week I decided to write down all I do.  I figured if I saw it all written down I would know whether a house cleaner was worth it or not.  I won't post my list but let's just say it was long (as I am sure you all know)!  I have decided to look into getting some help.  While I don't totally agree, it would free up some of my time to read blogs keep on top of the day to day stuff and might just help my sanity.

Is this a Silicon Valley thing?  Do SAHM's in other states pay for house cleaners?  I seem to be the only one around here that doesn't have one!  Help me out mom's...do you have someone to help you out with house cleaning?

Cross posted at Freitas Family

My Time of Day

My favorite time of the day is 1:00 p.m.  It is the time of day when my daughter goes down for her nap and I have 2 hours all to myself.  I can pee alone.  I can browse blogs without having to hurry through them.  What I do is up to me.

Our family spent the last week in Hawaii.  While it was wonderful, my husband has been home for the last month.  Spending 7 straight days with him was not something I was looking forward to after being together non-stop lately.  Today was the first day that I have had naptime all to myself.

I caught up on lots of blogs.  I had a cup of coffee and got to drink the whole thing while it was still hot.  I also curled up on the couch and napped!  I haven’t done that in a month for fear my husband will think I don’t have enough to do at home.  It was amazing.

I have a tough time giving up my 1:00 p.m. date with myself for anything.  It helps me make it through the day.  If it is cut short I am off the rest of the day.  It allows me to keep my house running, to keep myself together.  It is my time…all mine!

What is your favorite time of day????

Shriek in the Evening

In our household, I'm usually the tough one.  Bugs?  OK.  Dead mice?  Not fond of 'em, but I can cope.  Live mice?  Yup, those too.  Birds?  Yes, yes, I can do it.

Tonight, though, I actually screamed.  In the house.  Ten minutes ago. 

We were sitting in the family room when I noticed some loud chomping coming from the cat food area in the laundry room. 

"I think our cat has worms," said my husband.  I knew what that meant. It meant that I had to go online and figure out what to do with a cat with worms.  Yuck.  So I ignored him.  But he persisted.  For the past week, our cat has been going through cat food at an alarming rate.  And now here she was, eating again.

We heard rustling as the cat apparently attacked the cat food bag, getting more food out by herself. 

"What shall we do about it?" asked my husband.  I was not going to enter into a discussion of cat worms, so as I stood up to go to bed, I said "buy more cat food."  Then I walked into the kitchen on my way to bed.  I turned the corner and ran face to face into the medium-sized raccoon that had been in the laundry room eating the cat food.

The raccoon at first just looked like my cat, but really really scared (so her hair was all fluffed out.) Then I realized that it was a creature and shrieked.  And then, get this:  The raccoon took off through dining room into my house somewhere!  I never saw it leave the house.

Yuck yuck yuck.

For the past fifteen minutes, we have been walking through the house, brooms in hand, looking underneath every piece of furniture to find the ... large hidden raccoon that's somewhere? 

As of tonight, I have officially hung up my "tough mommy" boots. That's it.  Something that weighs 20 lbs, harbors bugs on its body, and has really sharp teeth now feels free to walk through my suburban home.  Oh I will NEVER sleep soundly again.

Mom With Three Young Kids Guide To Entertaining

I just learned the four things a mother of three young kids needs to host a dinner for a few other moms with kids:

1. Catering by Trader Joes packaged, frozen and cold food(or any other convenient store), the "good" paper plates and plastic utensils.
2. Lots of bubbles, costumes and toys for the kids to play with.
3. A bottle of champagne for the moms to drink while the kids perform a "play".
4. Make enough to have left-overs for the next two days to eat for lunch and dinner. Even if your kids say "mom, please, I can't eat another turkey burrito".

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My husband and I enjoyed entertaining BK (before kids) and even after we had our first son. The key to that statement is "first son". Two more sons later (twins), and my courage to entertain was gone. Until now. My twins are 4 so I decided it was time to attempt entertaining again. I invited some blogger mom buddies over and their kids (because blogger moms understand the concept of a "not" so perfect house). Two made it, a total of thee moms and 6 young kids. Yikes? Not so.....

I decided that make your own turkey or bean burritos with lots of chips, salsa, guacamole, and crunchy vegetables would take care of everyone's needs. The best thing about that menu is that the turkey is the only thing that needs to be cooked. I threw in a box of frozen mini burritos and that was it. Unwrap some paper plates and napkins and the table is set. One of my wonderful guests brought a chocolate cake and the other a bottle of champagne. Not so bad at all.

I set up bubbles, chalk, ride on cars, scooters and a mini trampoline from Target. The costume box was filled and ready to go. And what do you know, everyone had fun. The kids were playing and the moms were chatting. Maybe it is possible for moms with three young kids to entertain, as long as there are super sized bubbles, burritos and champagne (bubbles for moms) available.

A Tiny Trick of the Light

My son has discovered the kaleidoscope. No surprise, really, that he'd love it, turning it this way and that to see how the light and the shapes change. It's fundamentally appealing, this idea that if we shift our view just the tiniest bit, we can see something different and unexpected.

Daily life works kind of the same way. He is a different kid at school versus at home, at the grocery store and around town versus new environments. At home he's generally sunny, more verbal, open and engaged, while at school he can be quieter, more withdrawn, harder to reach. Out in the world, he tends to be curious and energetic and generally excited to see new things among the familiar (a ferry! a fountain! a bridge! a tunnel!) A little shift in scene, a big shift in mood, a different boy.

This afternoon, at his request, I took him across a bridge, through a tunnel and to Sausalito. I had had visions of a companionable afternoon spent meandering among the tourists, stopping for a slice of pizza and an ice-cream, throwing a few pennies in a fountain together before getting back in the car, back through the tunnel, back over the bridge, back home to Daddy. Not quite.

Now for the pop quiz: In retrospect, I should have: a) planned this outing for the morning, when he'd be fresher b) given him lunch first and foregone the pizza idea, lovely though it was c) gone to the ATM BEFORE we left the city (the reason for this will become clearer in a moment) d) stopped with the expectations already e) a, c and d f) all of the above The correct answer is either "E" or "F", depending on your particular pain threshold.

Here's what happened: Much enjoyment at the crossing of the bridge, followed by delight at the rainbow tunnel, followed first by mild-moving-to-extreme disagreement about stopping and parking the car, followed by lengthy full-scale meltdown, falling to the sidewalk screaming (I couldn't bear to raise my eyes to see if we were attracting compassionate or judgmental stares--or both), followed by brief respite involving eight pennies and one fountain, followed by slight improvement upon news that a bagel might be imminent, followed by extreme disappointment that trip to ATM preceded bagel, followed by agreement that slice of pizza would be better than bagel, followed by loud disagreement about washing hands in narrow eight-table pizza cafe (to kind and knowing looks by proprietors), followed by immediate satisfaction and calm upon receiving first a glass of milk, then a slice of pizza (thoughtfully cut up into child-sized pieces), followed by smiles and sweetness and quiet munching. As he was closing in on the last few bites of pizza, an older English couple came in and sat across from us. I caught the woman's eye and said, "Believe it or not, he was a screaming maniac about a half-hour ago." She smiled gently. "That's funny, I was just thinking what a well-behaved little angel he was." I thanked her, and we left.

On the way back, he asked if we could go into a toy store, where he picked out a replica cable-car as a souvenir. He held my hand peacefully as we walked back to the car. Now, for extra credit: was it "autistic" rigidity? Simple hunger? A combination? To find the answer, I guess we need to take a deep breath, shift the kaleidoscope and try again.

This piece is also posted at my personal blog, The Family Room.

Another phone bites the dust

Today when I went to turn my car on, I picked my cup out of the cupholder and saw a small grey antenna poking up, dismally. 

Damn.  I drowned another one.

I fished my poor cellphone up and looked at it. The cute little window on the front no longer displayed anything but tea.  It's currently drying on the dishrack, but I know from past experience that it's dead.  Darn it.

This is the second cellphone that I've drowned in tea. I'm not sure what it is about me, but my poor phones, even the nice, well-performing phones, seem to be susceptible to drowning.

According to the folks at lifehack.com, lots of people drop their cellphones in water.  Pools, the ocean, bathtubs, even toilets!  So tea isn't all that bad, compared to some options, I guess.  But I tend to put my cellphone into the tea and leave it there, usually overnight, which is the real kiss of death.  I put milk in my tea, you see, and I guess that IC's aren't really set up to withstand protein.

I really did like the lady at lifehack, though, who said that when she got HER phone wet, she just threw it into the dryer.  "It banged a lot," she wrote, "but it worked again."  Other people suggested alcohol, compressed air, and so forth.  Many people mentioned putting it into the oven, but cautioned that you shouldn't do it over 250 degrees, and you can't do it for a second time, because it will melt.  Sounds like middle America is no longer scared of cellphone technology!

Today I drove to work without my phone. It was oddly ... 1999.  I heard numbers on the radio and realized that I couldn't just call them.  I thought of a doctor's appointment and couldn't check it.  The experience made me realize how much our lives have changed in the past few years with these strange little phones.  It's oddly zen-like without a phone.

Zen or not, I need one to keep in touch with my child's school, so this week I'll get my husband's old phone turned on.  I'll use that for a while.  Or according to this  link, I could make one!  Nah.  I'll stick to baked goods.  If I'm nice and don't drown this phone, maybe I can have one of my own again some day.

Hurried Children

The Wall Street Journal contacted the Silicon Valley Moms Blog to find some moms who would share their thoughts on overbooking children with activities. "Helping Overbooked Kids Cut Back," the article resulting from this search and interviews with others, was published this morning. The article discusses the debate on keeping kids busy with structured activities versus free play time. One Professor of family studies at the University of Maryland, Sandra Hofferth, who did a study "found an increase since 1981 in the time kids spend in structured activities".  She said "only one-fourth were what she calls "hurried children," engaged in three or more activities, or four or more hours of activities a week."

I had to opportunity to the talk to writer, Sue Shellenbarger, while I was shopping at Target (my second office). The timing was perfect, the week before I was trying to schedule some old fashioned playdates for my 8 year old son to have one on one time with his friends. We decided this year he would not sign up for baseball so he could have more free time. But it felt like I was trying to book an interview with movie stars; many of my son's friends had organized sport practice two times a week as well as other organized activities scheduled. It was so Silicon Valley, I had marathon sessions with other moms, smartphone versus PDA, trying to find time for our kids to play. We could find an hour here or an hour there but no long stretch of time was available. I felt lucky to have his regular weekly playdate with a neighborhood friend.

The truth is, some kids are very happy being overbooked. Even my 4 year old twins can stay at their preschool until 4pm when needed, and do not want to leave when I come to pick them up. They need to be with other kids and are begging me to start taking soccer classes. My older son needs his downtime so I limit his weekday organized activities.

Finding the right mix is hard, I still feel like my weekdays are filled with mom saying "hurry" we need to be here, "hurry" we need to be there. Hurry, hurry, hurry...... Which leaves me feeling overbooked and stressed (hurried mama). Sometimes I even day dream of sitting by a pool reading a book. Such a peaceful thought. Wonder if I can schedule that as a weekly activity with my three boys?

Related Discussion on the Wall Street Journal Blog "The Juggle" - Over-Scheduling Kids: Hurting or Helping?

Happy Melanoma Month!

Wheee! May is Melanoma Month!  Gosh, that sounds fun.  When did every weird ailment known to man get it's own freaking month, is what I want to know? Is this a DEMOCRATIC THING???  <heh>  Actually, it's pretty sensible and smacks of education, so the answer is probably yes.

I feel pretty comfortable speaking out on skin cancer, since I am, after all, one of the "blue people" in our country (e.g. light skin that looks like nonfat milk on occasion), so here goes:

Last week, I read something from an East Coast person talking about how horrifying it was that people in California don't use sunscreen on their kids.  "On the East Coast we layer on the cream" said the woman, "while you Californians let your kids play outside with none on at all."

Gulp.

You know, she's right.  I let my kid go outside without sunscreen now.  A lot more than I should.  I don't know why.  Lousy parenting?  He hasn't ever gotten a sunburn (which is good), but the sun seems so much stronger now that I worry.  In response to the posting about wearing sunscreen, people wrote in to say things like "lots of things are more important than sunscreen."  Huh?  Yeah, well, lots of things are more important than teaching your child basic manners, too, but I'm going to give that one a try.  Might as well try to avoid skin cancer while I'm at it.

Maybe it's because skin cancer stuff doesn't usually show up until you're in your thirties, and your life is officially your fault?  I remember going to the dermatologist when I was in my early thirties and asking him why I had freckles on my chest area (where the v-neck of a t-shirt is) in the middle of December.  "It's sun damage," he said.  Yikes.

Robyn said it well when she admonished us all to slather sunscreen on us. 

Here is a UV Index Forecast Map for the USA. Type your zip code here to see an index for your town.

Did you know that Davis, California, has an entire program devoted to Sun Safety?  Granted, it routinely gets up to about, um, 105 up in Davis, but I was impressed. 

Did you know that you can buy bike helmets with sun visors? And that they're better for your kids?  And that doctors are now saying that you should wear sun-protective clothing as your first-line defense against the sun, instead of just using sunscreen?

I have stocked up on sunscreens and will be trying to get  them onto my kid (he's getting faster - it's a bit harder to do now than when he was young).  I bought him a hat and am trying to convince him that it's cool (losing battle).  And I try to wear my own hat, wear some sunscreen, and put sunscreen on the backs of my hands now (I garden.)  I hope that's good enough to start with. 

Good luck!  (Hint: Keep some in your car.)

Cough Syrup or Antifreeze?

Every time I consider giving my boys OTC medicine, I end up frozen in fear. 15 years of experience in the computer technology field did not prepare me for motherhood, much less being the doctor on call. I usually stretch it out to the last possible moment. If they have a headache, we try food, water and a cold wash cloth before giving into pain medication. If the have a cough, I wait and see if they can sleep after a nice hot shower with lots of steam and then a vaporizer with Eucalyptus oil. My neighbor is from Russia and swears by home remedies, so she usually passes some interesting herbal tea mixture on for me to use for the kids.

This may sound like I am one of those organic mamas, but it only seems to apply to my kids. I don't feel like I know enough about medicine to make educated decisions for my kids, but feel fine making decisions for myself. Even though I took a natural childbirth class, I was sooooo happy to have my epidural. When I have a headache, I run to the cabinet for headache medication.

Lately I have been following the stories of the tainted pet foods and tainted cough syrup, What I find most disturbing is that the same chemical used in antifreeze was found in medicine like cough syrup (most recently in Panama). This news is does not help my fear of giving OTC medicine to my kids. How do we know what is really in the cough syrup we buy at the pharmacy? And better yet, does medication like cough syrup even work in the first place?  Even though Mother Nature also offers its own dangers for my family, for now I will stick with the herbal tea and Eucalyptus oil.
 

Happy Spring!

A neighbor giggled at me today. I was out in the street chatting with my baby red plum tree when she power-walked by.  "You are a very scrawny tree," I was saying.  "Better bulk up!"

Spring is my favorite time of year.  Every single day I walk around the yard looking to see what's grown, what's blooming, and what new adventure is happening outside.  Last year my friend Jill gave me some azaleas that have grown a good 8 inches, and they are brilliantly blooming a magenta color right now.  The peonies are peeking up and the stargazer lilies are coming up for the second year.  I just finished tying nice little knots in my finished-up paperwhite greens, and my beloved lilacs have finished blooming for the season (darn it).  The camellias are all still going.  I have decided that camellias are the "energizer bunny" of my garden.

Everybody's roses look better than mine, although my climbing roses are gorgeous.  I moved them last year, so it must be the dirt.  My son and his friends run through the gardens, and my son walked in the other day, holding a small vase. He had picked the first rhododendron bud, climbed on the countertop to put it into the vase, and then we put the vase on his little kitchen table.  I smiled at a friend about it.  "When he's twenty and loves flowers, it will be because of this," I said.

Even though I'm no longer at home gardening all the time, and even though I've rejoined the hyperactive silicon valley race, my garden continues on.  Sometimes I just walk outside and lie on the lawn so that I can smell the plants, watch them grow, and look at the beautiful colors.

I just bought a new kind of lavender at the local nursery. It's pink!  How cool.  The magnolia trees are bursting with buds, and the maple trees are starting to grow from scraggley adolescents into real trees.  The fringe flowers just finished blooming, and the weigela - my favorites, are starting to froth their beautiful plumage.  And of course, the wisteria is just finishing up its first blooming.

I drive down the streets and greet the trees that I pass every day. Soon the Crape Myrtles will start blooming. They're on El Camino, all through Menlo park, and their big clusters of magenta flowers are stunning.

I know, I know.  Instead of romping outside and leaning down to smell the new white little flowers that are blooming in the garden, I should probably be inside, looking through a recyclable catalog of solar panels or some other way to "lower my carbon footprint."  Instead of raising flowers, I should probably be planting vegetables and assiduously learning to dry them in the sun, or to juice them, perhaps with a foot-powered juicer.  Reveling is uncool right now.  I should be worried, with damp armpits and a high level of earnestness, and I should be teaching my son to do the right thing.

But it's beautiful out there!  We had a little girl come by for a "bug playdate" last week, and we found snails, roly polies, small beetles, ladybugs, and of course, the now-ubiquitous caterpillar.  Great fun.  Our bluebirds are like old neighbors now. My son still hears stories of when he was two and a bluebird  swooped down and stole an entire taquito off his plate. And for a year after that, we told stories of the  bluebird who lived at the train station and would fly over to watch him.

In America, they tell us that we suffer from the Protestant Ethic, which means that we collectively frown upon loafing and not carrying our weight.  Also, a surfeit of sensuality makes us itch. 

But it's spring and at our house we're lying around, drunk in a bacchanalia of blooms and shoots.  All of the bushes are blooming, reminding me of my Midwestern childhood.  The seeds that we planted are coming up, and a long row of gladioli stands at attention, waiting to dazzle later in the season.

I know that global warming is imminent and that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.  I'm sure there are a billion things I should be doing as a responsible citizen.  But we're just going to hang up a "busy" sign play in the yard again today.  It's spring!

New Skills - The Dirty Way

Sometimes I sit around the playground and chat with the other mommies. This is the time when you realize that everybody out there has a challenge or two.  One of the things that I seem to hear quite a bit is "My child is perfect in public, and a beast at home."

Gosh.  Not our problem.

My child is usually only a beast in public!  This comes of being an only child to "older" parents and living in a neighborhood where there are no children at all, unless you count the ones kept in little bottles (so as not to wrinkle their clothing) and only let out for church, or for the four hundred lessons they have every week.  All of my son's "sharing," "temper," and "patience," learning has taken place directly upon the world's stage.  Poor kid.

But I digress.  We have a lovely new developmental stage going on right now, and mommy's having fun with it in her own way <twinkle>.  Not only that, but it's taking place at HOME!

It's complaining.   If he doesn't like something, he kvetches up a storm. For some reason, terrible parents that we are, we have apparently raised my six year old to think that he is invited to piss and moan if he has to work.  And that everyone is DYING to hear it.  I sure hope this is a developmental stage.

We're a suburban family, very busy, etc. etc. and I didn't really notice this until we had "family work day" about a month ago.  My kid complained the entire time. Amazing.  And it would be far too easy to just throw the sentence "just like his father" into the paragraph, but you see, there's a back-story at the meta level. Daddy's from NYC; mommy's from a farm. Daddy's successful enough so that he doesn't have to go outside and deal with the world much unless he's sitting on a beach chair, and mommy landscaped the entire yard herself, learning spanish in the meantime. See a trend here?  At any rate, daddy is NOT a complainer.  Daddy is an insurmountable force.  He's busy, and usually just ... too busy to do anything outside.  Or that he doesn't feel like doing.  See how it works?  So, while my son has NOT learned complaining from Daddy; nor has he learned going outside and trenching the roses.  Weltanschauung, if you will.

At the end of the family workday, I sat down and had a nice chat with my son. 

"Honey, you complained so much today, that it's clear that you need more practice doing work.  From now on, you will not be allowed to watch any TV or play any video game until you have completed your chores for the day."  And that was it.  Big change.  And boy did it work.  It's been awesome!  When we get home, my son will say "Mommy, what can I do to help out."  The other day, we were turning into the driveway and I saw some bushes that were dry. He said "Can I water those for my chore today?"  Warmed my heart.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday was pretty rough (for a suburban kid.)  I admit it.  First off, he had to take out compost that had been sitting around covered up for two days.  Smelly, yucky stuff.  But he had to walk it out the back door and put it into the compost heap. Sheesh.  Took 7 minutes of histrionics and screams of outrage.  Hilarious.  As someone who was raised on a farm, I dealt with smelly, yucky stuff almost every day of my childhood.  You just suck it up and keep going.  This was a big lesson.  He came back crying and declared that he wouldn't do any chores for a WEEK, and oh my GOSH he had gotten smelly stuff on his pants.  Gulp. This was my kid?  He was such a stoic at 4!

It made me realize that really, unless I want my life to be a living hell in six years, we need to ratchet things up. So he got nice positive reinforcement for his compost-carrying, and then, when we went to Home Depot, I bought him a shovel.  And he got to dig three holes to help mommy.

The complaining! The pain!  The agony!  Who knew?  He and mommy were in the garden for an HOUR while he worked on the holes. Periodically he'd tap an ankle with the shovel and yell "Ouch!," or drop the shovel and sigh mightily... oh my goodness.   

"Is it deep enough?" he quavered for his third hole.  We put the plant container into the hole to see if it would fit. Nope.  Two inches more.  Such Hard Work!  And finally, the hole was deep enough for the plant.  He put it in, gently covered it with dirt, and then skipped away, happy as a clam to play a video game for 10 minutes.

I don't know if he realizes this, but today was the START of his gardening career.  I'm going to drag that kid and his shovel outside every single day until he gets into the swing of things.  He's going to have to weed the vegetable garden (just like I did - and I hated it), he's going to have to do ALL SORTS OF THINGS.  Because I forgot something:  sometimes chores are onerous.  Sometimes they're dirty.  They are *not* just the "ooh, have to unload the dishwasher" type of thing. They are the things that you vaguely remember doing when you were a kid. You remember hating them, you remember doing them because you had to, and you realize, as an adult, that it's because of those chores that you're strong and able to deal with life.  And stuff like ... taxes.

As we grow up as parents, we learn to parent with our strengths.  No matter how much we try to pretend we're someone else, we can't.  For me, there's no way that I can adopt abstract models of discipline for my child (do these three things and get a CHICKEN STICKER!)  I forget them, we miss them, they bore us, and we quit. But working in the garden, I can do.  It's nice to know that I found a tool I can really live with during this developmental step. 

Gotta go - it's time to plant!

Up early

When I visited with two long-time friends recently, we talked about rising early.

Not for me, I opined. I need my sleep, and the thought of being up even a little earlier than just-enough-time-to-get-out-the-door-to-drop-the-kids-at-school seemed a little ridiculous.

Sheri and Kathy shrugged and told me what they do early -- take time for the newspaper, straighten things, walk the dogs. I decided to myself that I'd try it for a month to see what happened.

Well, lots has happened in the past month (don't get me started), but the net is that I'm now up by 6:30 or 7 at the latest, and sometimes much earlier. This morning my eyes popped open at 5:45 and I decided what the heck and got up.

The most amazing part is that there's time on my hands. Time to de-clutter a little (whooo boy, how much fun is that?), time to bake muffins for my children (they are in shock, and wonder why this is happening to them), time to take the clothes out of the dryer and put them in the drawers instead of dressing my family from a laundry basket (and looking like it).

Here's the weird thing: I also gave up my caffeine addiction in the past six weeks. It wasn't all by choice, but my intake is down from a couple of lattes and um, eight to 12 Diet Cokes a day to an occasional glass of iced tea and my morning pot of tea.

I have time in the morning for a pot of tea. Go figure.

Here are some things I've done in the past few weeks that I have wanted to get to: started an adorable quilt for a baby my niece will have any minute now, organized some kindergarten paperwork from my daughter (who is now in third grade), put a photo of my son's 2000 Little League team in a frame, on the wall, instead of leaving it hanging out in a drawer.  It's 9:30 now and I've already dropped two bags of clothes at Goodwill, had the oil changed in my car, left off the dry cleaning and visited with my buds at the coffee shop. Oh yeah, and I'm not dreading the day of work, either. I'm a little more centered than I used to be, I think.

I keep wanting to take my temperature. I'm not sick, but I'm not acting like myself. And I like it.

Clean Talk

I was having brunch with some friends on Saturday morning.  Most of us were mothers of at least one child, though some had more.  Our conversation turned to the cleanliness and organization of our homes.  We all concurred that while our houses were CLEAN, they were definitely cluttered.  It seemed that no matter how many times a day we found ourselves putting toys away, the house always seemed to look more like toys-r-us than domiciles.  As most of us work outside of the home, we rely on paid help with house cleaning.

One mom asked how many of us clean our houses before the housekeeper arrives. We all raised our hands!  We collectively agreed that unless we put away the toys strewn about the house, there is no way the house could be cleaned properly.  One friend said they used the same cleaning person as some of our friends and she had visions of her housekeeper telling everyone how messy her house is..... oh, the humiliation of everyone knowing what a messy house she REALLY has!

There was also consensus about how nice it felt after the house was cleaned.   My friend, V, said that on this day, she doesn't cook.  She just wants to enjoy her pristine kitchen for twenty four hours.  No one would want to see what it looks like the rest of the week!

It's so funny how all my mother friends "get it". But husbands?  Let's be honest, most husbands are clueless!  I remember one day my husband was the first one to come home after the house was cleaned. I called him from work and asked him whether our housekeeper had come and "tidied up the house?"   How did everything look?. He nonchalantly said everything looked fine.  By the time I got home, Meena had already gotten into her toys. The house was in shambles. I missed walking into my freshly cleaned home!

My husband thinks I am nuts.  I get so stressed the night before our housekeeper comes, making sure everything is "clean enough to clean", but it's worth it just to be able enjoy our pristine house...even if it's only for a few seconds.

Being a Silicon Valley Mom is Hard Work

Being a mom in Silicon Valley is hard.  It is even more difficult to be the mom in a one income family.  We live in the land of "keeping up with the Jones', and it is really tough to keep up.

In the Valley, there are more $300 strollers and the kids wearing Polo then anywhere I have ever seen.  People in the local mom's group are always asking for information on the European trips they are taking with their kids or where to stay in Hawaii with their family.  Mom's drive Volvo's, BMW station wagons and, of course, mini vans with every bell and whistle possible.

You are probably thinking that I am jealous....you are right!  I want all of these things!  Now I know that having all of these things don't necessarily make people happy and many of these families are probably in debt.  I would just like to have a little breathing room at the end of each month to save for something like a trip to Hawaii.

I think that staying home is doing great things for my daughter but I really miss the money!!!  It is so hard to be a young family in this area.  I will always be craving things that I can't have but hopefully the time will come where we can start saving to do these things we are not doing now. 

I know that if we stay the course we will have more flexibility with money later down the road. For now I will drive my old Explorer and dream of a day when I may have my own Volvo.  The Jones' ain't got nothing on me!   

It's Easy Being Green

I always hated St. Patrick's Day as a kid because no matter whether I wore some green or not, inevitably I got pinched by the other kids. I couldn't understand why anyone would create a holiday where you get pinched. Every year I dreaded it. I think once I even pushed some other kid for pinching me when I was wearing some green in my outfit that s/he supposedly didn't see. In any case, finally I got into high school where people didn't care so much and I didn't get pinched any more but I still dread St. Patrick's Day for that reason. Today, though, I'm thinking about wearing a different kind of green - on the inside.

My friend, Nadine Weil, writes on her site, Heart of Green, that she had an epiphany. Always aware of nature and the environment, one day she decided to take it on as her personal mission. She has since co-hosted a number of fabulous fundraisers in the Bay Area including the Global Green event that made the cover of San Francisco magazine last month. Tonight, I'm attending an event with her to help raise money for rescuing big cats - leopards and such - through Leopards, Etc., a "nonprofit wild cat education and conservation fund."

My environmental education started in high school, after I outgrew being pinched. I took a class in the subject, where we learned about the planetary ecosystem. I first celebrated Earth Day, and I learned about the ozone hole, global warming, deforestation and all of those unhappy topics. Later I became more aware of issues like animal testing and the fur trade. But I didn't become green overnight and I still wear leather and drive a non-hybrid car. (I wanted a hybrid, but I couldn't want for that version of my vehicle for ergonomic reasons which is another story.) However, with our home, I've done what I can to be eco-friendly and I encourage others to do the same. It's easy.

For our last house, we tried to get a deck built out of composite but never got around to it because we couldn't find a contractor at the time who would do it. Now everybody will. We bought energy saving appliances, but that's about it. In our new house, purchased a few months ago, we've taken more steps in the right direction. We got double-paned windows, we're adding additional insulation, we put in ceiling fans and new bathroom fans (supposedly just circulating with a couple windows open and one of those small fans running during the day helps a lot!) We put in FLOR removable carpet tiles in a few rooms (way cool - highly recommended) and area rugs where we have hard wood floors, we added more energy saving appliances and used low-VOC paint. We had our carpets cleaned at both houses with a non-toxic wet cleaning carpet service, and we reused moving boxes, courtesy of the PAMP Parents Club.

Outside the house, we removed some horribly huge rocks that were suffocating our tree roots, removed a couple of non-native, eco-damaging trees, and for our final act, we planted two baby Redwood trees in the back yard. We recycle as much as we can, although it was easier in Palo Alto where the recycling program is much better than in Menlo Park (part of San Mateo County's program.) However, now Menlo Park is taking steps toward being green and for anyone who lives in Menlo Park, I encourage you to learn more about it.

We didn't go as far as we could've. My sister just bought a new house and they're putting solar panels everywhere. They're already saving money and they can watch it each day. But we do what we can, and if each of us continues on this path, more businesses will evolve that make it even easier for us to be green. I still have organic cotton towels I bought at the Gazoontite store in SF back during the dotcom boom. We always shop at Whole Foods and buy organic, and I've used Planet and Seventh Generation detergents and cleaning products for several years. We take our drycleanables to Gate Cleaners in Palo Alto where they use eco-friendly solutions (vs. scary chemicals) on our clothes.

It makes me feel good to help the environment and even better to know I'm not harming my daughter or our pets by having nasty chemicals in the house. Our next car will be a hybrid and our new family project is to consume less. It just takes a couple steps to go in the right direction. Try it, and don't forget to reward yourself for small achievements. Like our baby Redwoods, with compounded interest over time, each environmental investment will make a big difference.

...
Sarah Granger is a former member of the City of Menlo Park Environmental Quality Commission. Visit her blog at sairy.com.

Hey, You Mean My Kid Costs as Much as a House in Silicon Valley?

Do you buy your kids Nike sneakers, Gap clothes, Pottery Barn beds, organic groceries, iTunes for their iPods or top of the line baby gear? How about private lessons for after-school activies, supplies for sports teams, therapists, or expensive summer camps? Support consultants to train your child to sleep? And maybe even private school along with contributions to their college 529 plans. Don't forget take-out sushi twice a month for family dinner out night. Well then, you may have a million dollar kid. The Wall Street Journal crunched some numbers to present a look at the different costs that go to raising kids in their March 3rd article called "The Million Dollar Kid".

Looking at the long term costs of raising a child, I wonder what a child really needs to be successful as an adult? Do all of these extras make them a better person, or will they loose that sense of urgency to succeed in life if they have so many of their needs met as a child? What is the ROI of spending a over a million dollars on a child versus spending less?

This type of analysis is relevant to Silicon Valley, since the government figure of $279,450 to raise a kid born in 2005 until age 17 is about equal to the down payment on a fixer-upper house. The silver ($776K), gold (1 million) and platinum levels (1.6 million) head in the right direction for our costs raising children. Looking at the Child Spending Spectrum chart from the article, it seems that Silicon Valley probably has a large batch of cute little million or 1.6 million dollar babies being born this very moment. Those little darlings will cost as much as a house by the time they are 17.

Silicon Valley and Hollywood parents may very well be able to add an additional level: Diamond Level (above 2 million). This level is for those who send their kids to a prestigious private school (easily double or triple the $5,870 figure given in the article for Parochial Schools), have personal chefs, nannies for each child, night nannies, join private sports leagues, have numerous other private lessons, extravagant birthday parties, wear Gap as their casual clothes, already know designer names from the clothes in their own closet and lets not even talk about their vacations and vacation houses.  I am sure many use support consultants like Jackie Rosenberg of Babies First Class, Jennifer Waldburger & Jill Spivack of Sleepy Planet, Donna Holloran of Babygroup Inc, and Amy Goldreyer of Hair Whisperer (from the 3/4/07 NYT article "Teaching Movie Moguls to Wipe Drool").

I have to admit, I am not above paying excessively for things that keep the family afloat. We are one of those families going out for sushi twice a month, going for private lessons when needed, buying organic groceries, investing in good summer camps and used a night nanny for our twins (our baby whisperer!). I would hire the Hair Whisperer in a flash if I ever had lice in my house (but I would need a drink anyway). We save money by buying kid clothes at Target, doing our own work around the house (yes, even our own gardening), using a neighbor for piano lessons, eating in, play dates as babysitting, taking short local day trips instead of long vacations and buying used baby and house items. We used two books for sleep and routine training (Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child for sleep and Secrets of the Baby Whisperer for routine).  Because, some needs may seem immediate but what about saving for college and retirement? 

Anyway, the hardest lessons for kids can't be purchased or out-sourced: making your children feel loved, teaching them values and self-esteem. What good is a million dollar kid without those qualities?

Stuck in Contractor Hell

Or perhaps purgatory. I'm not Catholic - is that who has purgatory? I forget. Anyway, I'm stuck in that place where I'm at the mercy of a bunch of people I barely know who are holding my new home ransom and there's no way I can move in until they're done.

These contractors are all nice people. They are getting things done - slowly - but they say they're waiting for each other and do nothing, they don't return my phone calls or email, they don't show up when they say they will, they don't provide estimates when they say they will, their estimates include later dates than they initially promised, the work costs more than originally planned, they find more problems than anticipated, the design didn't quite work as planned, or (my biggest irritant) they just don't communicate all of the details and we end up paying for it with several hours or days lost.

The problems and increased costs I expected - to a certain extent. There are always things that go wrong. But everything else I chalk up to this unspoken law of contractors that they can get away with murder because they're already holding you ransom. Is it really necessary that it be this way?

I have my defense, sure. I always have a few phone numbers in my back pocket (literally) of other contractors I can call and other people who know other contractors who I can call if these fail me. But they do just a good enough job that I let them keep going because at least something is getting done. And I'll take something over nothing.

To be clear, our general contractor has actually done excellent work. He hasn't always gotten things done when he said he would (which begs the question: why did he say he would if he wasn't sure? I never understood that), but his crew works hard and they speak native English which I find extremely helpful.

Back to communication. Is it too much to ask that they attempt some? I'm available 24x7. I'll take phone calls, voicemail, in person meetings, email, text messages, pony express, snailmail, or the carrier pigeon. I frankly don't give a damn - I just want people communicating with me and each other to get the the house done.

I have told them we need to move into our house next weekend. We're paying for 2 houses now. We can't afford this limbo. We can't list or sell our current home until we're in the new one because we have a toddler, cats, me still on some minimal bedrest, and a house overflowing with stuff. (Just take my word for it - we can't. Unless we move twice, stay in a hotel, board our cats... all that would cost more than what we're paying daily for 2 houses.) So we're paying these 2 or 4 or however mortgages they are. I've already forgotten... I'm buried in contractor hell.

But that doesn't even matter. They shouldn't have to know why we need the house ready. They should just do it. Maybe I'm coming across as Cruella DeVille or the Devil in Prada but I can't help it. On some days, I feel like threatening people is the only thing that will work. I do the sweet talk when I can, when I'm emotionally stable. But this stuff is driving me batty and I'm at my wit's end. There's more to the tale - like why we need to move in the first place, but that's for another day.

2 Abducted Boys Found in St. Louis

I was also elated to hear that 2 boys that were abducted 4 years apart were found. Child abduction is every parent's worse nightmare; hearing that they were found alive is good news. But just the thought of what happened left me feeling shaken up.  Shawn, now 15, vanished on Oct. 6 2002 while riding a bicycle to a friend's house (in Southwest St. Louis).  Ben, a Boy Scout and straight-A student, disappeared after stepping off a school bus and running down a road toward his home (also in St. Louis). They were found at the St. Louis apartment of a Pizzeria Manager. Apartment neighbors saw the boys riding their bikes and playing video games but thought they were the sons of their neighbor. Other details of the investigation are not being discussed. Even though it does not happen that often, what can we do to best protect our kids?

I decided education for myself and for my kids is the best use of my anxiety, so I searched my house for a stranger danger video I bought when my oldest son was a toddler. I did not find the video, but I did find information online:

• A website that has a stranger safety DVD.
• Another website that talks about stranger awareness.
• The Polly Klaas Foundation website has information on child safety kits.
• McGruff.com has games and comic books to help educate kids on stranger awareness.

Did I miss anything?

The last mom without a TV in the car

We had a really dumb vacation this year, and it was all my fault.  Oh, we talked about it, and we decided that driving down to Palm Springs on Christmas afternoon would be just ... stoopid, so we decided to fly.  Much more rational.  Makes sense.  We're busy, you see, and flying is more efficient.  Except that I woke up the next day and couldn't do it.  I "needed to drive."  It would be "fun" and "nice to have some together time with the family."  I'd "get to see the state." I bleated and sighed until my sweet husband said that he didn't care and we could do it. 

My family has been going to the desert for holidays for over thirty years. Now that my grandparents are dead, my mother continues the tradition. She goes to her surly retirement community and my brother's family goes to visit her.  We stay in our own resort in a different town, and we shop and dine together.  Sometimes we visit the surly retirement community pool together for the two hours that children are allowed, and we swim under the baleful watch of the walker-wielding denizens.  It's a real bonding experience with pure WASP overtones.  Golf, personal distance, family time, a dash of resentment (handily provided by the retirees, since I can't do it any more), and a cocktail lounge.  What's not to like?

My grandparents lived farther north in Northern California and they always drove to the desert on "the Five," as they call it in Los Angeles.  That power stretch of highway that makes Californians settle in and people from smaller places wonder if we're just insane.

At any rate, we drove to the desert.  It was a nine hour drive down on Tuesday, and a six hour drive back (from Santa Monica) on Sunday.  That gave us, um.... four days of vacation.  And two full days of driving on I-5.  Ain't truckstops cute?

When I have discussed this trip with people I know, a shockingly significant number of them have told me that I should have packed movies for my child.  Nope. Not going to happen.  I try to be polite about it and not use terms like "I don't believe in plugging my child into media to shut him up," but seriously, some of the people I talk with are amazingly pushy.  It seems that for many people in the area, it is considered almost a birthright to have access to keeno entertainment technology, like, from the age of two.  Especially during vacations. Just like mom and dad.

Perhaps I would feel differently if I had more than one child.  But hear me out.  I don't care if other people plug their children in to shut them up.  Sure, I find it a bit tacky, and I personally feel very strongly that it's not the way to raise a kid, but on the other hand, it's a lot quieter!

My child sat in the back seat for both drives.  We listened to lots of things on tape and CD, sang some songs, talked about what we were seeing (and he listened to his parents talk), and he drew pictures, made things, and read.  Sure, he was probably bored out of his skull, but tough noogies.  If he doesn't get a little bored out of his skull at six, how on earth will he get through grad school?  <that was a j o k e.>  Besides, he needs to learn skills to cope with boredom and life.

A year and a half ago I took my child to a large chain mexican restaurant.  We sat down to see the two children at the next table watching a movie on a portable CD player.  What, your kid has such a short attention span that they can't sit through a family meal? Sheesh.

I realize that the portable CD players and movie players in the back of headsets are lovely.  They're ... luxurious.  They're special. They make trips into an extension of the TV room.  But is this really what our children need?  For reality, for the world to be some big, cushy, soft encompassing thing that they just sink into and watch?  I don't think so.  The entire concept drives me batty.

And by extension, the entire concept of luxury and children drives me nuts.  Have you noticed how many things nowadays have totally useless "luxury touches," many aimed at kids?  Like sugar.  My child, thankfully, doesn't have a sweet tooth.  Probably because he's not used to getting sweets.  Believe me, it's hard to not just give him a sweet or piece of gum or whatever.  I mean, heck, it costs, like one cent and I certainly eat what I want to. But I always think about the habits that I'm breeding, and I'm not willing to have some kid with a sugar entitlement syndrome, you know? 

Well, my kid had a "luxurious" trip.  He got to be with his dad and mom, with absolutely nothing in the way, for six days.  We laughed, talked, argued a bit, and looked at the world together.  At times it was very quiet for long periods of time.  Sometimes when I looked back, he was just sitting, looking out the window.

There is a (somewhat jokey) theory that you should try to create as many boring periods of time in your life as possible.  Boring is good, says the theory. It makes your life seem longer.

Well perhaps there's an alternate theory available for childhood. Time spent together with your family, just ... being ... is a gift in today's overscheduled, over-media-ized society.  Out of boredom comes creativity and the ability to cope with the simple stresses of life.  And when you're together as a family, traveling, you can occasionally stop staring out the window or reading a book to just talk to your family.

As dumb as it was to spend that much energy on the road, I enjoyed the enforced time together.  The time that you get in a car isn't like time in an airline terminal.  However, I'm equally happy to report that my urge to drive is gone.  For at least a year.

Resolution #2 - Be a Mom Who Jumps on Trampolines

It is still winter break for my older son, the weather has been rainy and my kids are bouncing off the walls.  Playing in the house has grown old, so in desperation I looked elsewhere to find an outlet for my sons' sonic level of energy. I found a place (Sky High Sports) that has wall to wall trampolines and allows drop-ins. Yes, wall to wall trampolines - a mother of three boys dream! Even better, I found a way to fit in some exercise while increasing the fun for the kids. My solution was to join in on the fun by jumping with the kids. I decided that would be resolution #2 since resolution #1 was to attempt regular family dinners.

"Are you going to jump" the front desk asked me after I signed the release forms for the kids. "You bet!". They looked surprised, but handed me a form anyway. I did not think much about it, I had my Lucy workout oufit on and everything locked in the car. I was ready. I admit that during park dates with my friends and their children, I do at times talk to my friends while watching the kids play.  I also admit that there will be a time in the near future that my kids would rather play with their friends. And, worse, become embarrassed by their mom joining in the fun. So I need to join in while I can.

The beauty of this location was that it is completely closed in; all kids need to pass through the seating areas and lobby before leaving. The parents in theory did not need to closely monitor the kids, especially the older ones. And each jumpy area had professional staff that monitored the kids. So, I wondered, why were one other mother and I the only parents jumping with their kids? I looked around at the moms while I was running from one jumpy to another and decided to make some superficial and completely unscientific observations. Here are the 6 7 different mom types I observed,  which type are you?

Mom Type 1. Moms who jump on the trampolines.

Mom Type 2. Moms who watch their kids jump on the trampolines from the sidelines.

Mom Type 3. Moms who talk to their friends and don't watch the trampoline action.

Mom Type 4. Moms who watch their kids from the section with comfortable chairs and TV's that showed live images of the trampolines.

Mom Type 5. Moms who sit in the section with the comfortable chairs and live images of the kids on the trampolines. But read gossip magazines that talk about weight loss and do not look up at the live images of the kids.

Mom Type 6: Moms with older kids who feel embarrassed when parents are hanging around. These moms can do whatever they want.

UPDATE - Because of reader requests, I had to add one more mom type:

Mom Type 7: This mom wants to jump with their kids but their bodies are not made for that anymore. Instead, they forget the trampoline place and get the kids outside for a game of ball. No jumping required.

Sharing the Holiday Local Linklove

One of my favorite parts of the holiday season is seeing all the great pictures and hearing holiday stories. We had our own thoughts on holiday traditions and are in the process of gathering holiday pictures. To see how the holidays have been for the other local mommybloggers, we thought a holiday linklove would do the trick.

• CityMama has pictures from Christmas in Hawaii
• Mom Writes has Merry Christmas pictures and info on a little girl that did not want to leave the holiday parties
• crazedparent on giving
• State of Grace spent Christmas morning in Joisey, Dude!
• Sairy suggests fighting global warming online through year end contributions
• It's my life was also in New Jersey
• Mother Talkers had some great holiday stories to share
• Three Kid Circus had a last minute freak-out
• The Freitas Family has some Christmas Eve pictures
• Water Owl's Movement shows a Dad that carries his love
• Grandma love at the Silent "I"
• Gratitude 365 talks about birthday memories if your birthday is Christmas break
• Anachronistic Mom talks about reptilian virgin births
• Rookie Moms has a great idea to take pictures of your children modeling new outfits
• Badgermama likes to play with her kids presents
• Foodmomiac went to New Orleans
• Kari's Couch scanned in her holiday cards
• The Mommy Blog went to New York
• One plus two has a holiday song to share
• Maxdon shows some christmas gifts

And the list goes on, any to add?

How Was Your Holiday?

My favorite thing to ask my friends this time of the year is "How was your holiday?" This is the time of year when familys get together, which always seems to have comical  interesting outcomes. Please comment with your stories. If you have pictures to share, send them in a jpg, gif, or png format to info@svmoms.com.

Alex's 2 year old daughter

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Martha sent us a self-potrait from Daniel

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On the left are pictures of the Horniks having fun in Healdsburg. On the right is a picture of Pamela looking annoyed. 

 

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 Leslie sent us this picture of her 20 year old daughter, home from college, on Christmas Day. The picture was titled "Talk to the hand".

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Beth B using her dot-com bubble purchase couch as a fort to keep her twins busy at home for two days while her husband and older son (Ben) were skiing in Tahoe. They did not go for it, one of her twins had regular fits saying "You don't know how to build forts, only Ben can - I miss Ben!".  It was a long two days....

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A sledding picture from Nicole 

 

Filipino Christmas traditions

Don't get me wrong -- I love White Christmases, with all the pretty snow and cozy fires.  And I really enjoy the holiday season here in the Bay Area, with all the lights and activities.  But to my mind, nothing beats the Filipino Christmases of my childhood.  Christmas is the one time I really wish I lived back home.  I haven't lived in Manila for over 12 years, and the last Christmas I spent there was in 1998, but I'm homesick just thinking about it. 

The Philippines probably has one of the longest holiday seasons in the world.  Since we have no Thanksgiving holidays, the decorations go up and the radio stations start playing carols right after Halloween.  We celebrate all throughout December, all the way till January 6th, the Twelfth Day of Christmas, the Feast of the Epihpany.  Every single person, rich or poor, gets into the spirit of the holidays.  The Filipino traditions of hospitality and generosity come into full force.  There are parties everywhere -- rich or poor, people invite friends and family into their homes to share whatever they have. 

Absolutely everything, from streetlights to billboard displays, is decked out for the holidays.  Because a great many Filipinos live below the poverty line, people in the city who cannot afford to decorate their own house make it a point to go out and enjoy all the beautiful decorations -- the rich neighborhoods, shopping malls, and especially the hotels.  Every year my family would designate an evening to go hotel-hopping to listen to carolers singing traditional English and Filipino carols, and gawk at the beautiful lobby displays.

Being one of the most Catholic countries in the world, Christmas is inexorably and prominently linked to the birth of Christ.  The nativity scene (or belen, as we call it), rather than Santa and his reinder, is proudly displayed in households, shopping malls, office buildings and hotels.  In addition to Christmas lights, Filipinos hang star-shaped lanterns, or Parols, which represent the Christmas star that the three kings followed all the way to Bethlehem.  Some parols are simply homemade from sticks and tissue paper, others are elaborately lit creations made of exquisite capiz shell.

Another popular Filipino Christmas tradition is the Misa de Gallo (or mass of the rooster), that people attend at 5AM, every day from December 16 to 24.  We could never wake up early enough to complete all 9 days, but we always tried, year after year, if only to enjoy the piping hot Christmas treats that vendors sell after mass -- tsokolate (hot cocoa), puto and bibingka (both sweet rice cakes).  Early morning is also the one time that the temperature was chilly enough for people to show off their rarely-used sweaters!

Our big Christmas feast actually happens on midnight of the 24th.  After midnight mass (or Simbang Gabi), we head back to my grandmother's home for a huge Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) feast, complete with ham, fetuccine, turkey and a whole roast suckling pig (lechon).  This may sound like an abundance of food (and it is), but my grandmother has seven children and twenty-eight grandchildren, all of whom converge on her house for the big eat-a-thon.  Everybody exchanges presents with everybody, so by 1AM the living room is always a sea of wrapping paper, new toys and excited children.  Our parents would alway try to make us nap in the afternoon so that we could stay up for the feast, but we were always too excited to sleep a wink, and excitement would carry us all the way to 3AM. 

It's pretty difficult to recreate that Filipino Christmas here in Palo Alto, even with the huge Filipino community in the Bay Area.  This year, my parents and sisters are spending Christmas here in Palo Alto with me, but at 4PM PST (just when the clock is striking midnight in Manila), our hearts will be at home with my grandmother, brothers and the rest of our extended Filipino family.  Maligayang Pasko (Merry Christmas) -- there's no place like home!

Baby's First Christmas

My daughter was due last year on Christmas.  We waited and waited and waited... no baby.  We had a bib ready.  We had clothes for her.  We had hats, a stocking, gifts, ornaments, holiday music for baby but still no baby.  We had family in town, friends calling every day, and everyone wanted to see the baby.  Nope, no baby!

The story goes that I began having early contractions before 30 weeks of pregnancy but when week 30 hit, they were often enough doctors put me on medication and partial bed rest to keep the baby from being born.  After several weeks of that, we expected certainly when I went off the meds she would appear; alas, she was comfy as could be.

Finally two weeks after her due date, I got desperate and one day before my self-imposed deadline to gulp a bottle of caster oil, I ate a magnificent Indian dinner and went to a woman chiropractor who reportedly had luck inducing labor.  She said my pelvis was blocked, adjusted it, and as I got into bed that night, my water broke.  Baby was here!  But she was quite late for Christmas, so all of her presents became birth week gifts.

This is her first real Christmas.  She somehow knew it was a special day.  She went to bed early with little fuss, she ate a bite of a gingerbread cookie, and she snuggled her new baby doll, patting its head happily.  She smiled and cooed, she giggled.  We spent all afternoon swinging in the park and she loved that more than anything else.  She played with a stuffed cat given to her granddaddy for Christmas when he was 4 years old.

I don't remember much about Christmas from before I started Kindergarten.  Most of my holiday memories blend together during childhood, and I certainly don't recall my first ones.  But watching my daughter's awe at the lights on our Christmas tree and fascination with opening presents, it gives me a renewed interest in the holiday and anticipation for the years to come.

On little kids "helping"

Its at this time of year that I especially think about the kids helping to make Xmas cookies. They are now teens-boys-and when they were toddlers I would gather up all the cookie ingredients and
have them "help" me. Pleasant picture? Sometimes--when I was in my "patient mom/free afternoon" mode and was ok with having flour everywhere. Those days are but a dim memory-here's the truth:
I think that toddlers "helping" is a great idea in theory. It teaches them to chip in as a family member and contribute to whatever it is you are doing.  All of the books (who writes these books, anyhow?) suggest that having them help with healthy meals will get them to eat the sweet potatos and broccoli and tofu. In what world does this happen? No matter how much stirring and (kid) chopping we had our sons do, they still wouldn't touch the healthy stuff.  They could pick one piece of red pepper out of a salad at a range of across the room. I know that there is a parellel universe out there of toddlers who prefer vegetables (really? or do parents just say that?) but this was not where we resided.

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Something about heightened senses.....the same senses that could hear the cellophane unwrap of gum/whatever from yards away. How many of us out there honestly enjoy it when toddlers "help?"  I always found it a huge chore with extra mess to clean up. Maybe its the control freak in me. Yes, yes, it was cute and all for photos and they did have a good time, and I was doing the "right thing". It had to be one of those "patient mom/free afternoon" days, though.  Where are those days now ?

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I don't have a lot of them.....as for having toddlers help clean up, thats another story. Kids need to pick up their toys and and have them experience the fact that this is life and ya gotta clean up your stuff, kid. I think the same toddlers who eat all of their vegetables also clean up readily..(do these kids exist or do parents just say this?)

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But, have you ever found yourself in the mode of "Geez this is taking an eternity and what am I doing I can do it in a minute." The "experts" say to resist the urge to do it yourself and have them pick up their own toys. Nice theoretical advice if you have one of those rare aforementioned free afternoons. But what if you have dinner cooking and a dog underfoot and a friend coming over etcetera.. oh, and work-lets not forget about work. Such is my world.

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With teens, I strategically place the handvac next to them or the broom or whatever appliance that I hope will incite the male cleaning bug (oxymoron) to action. Deluded soul am I.. It sits..I then move into round two; I then tell them they need to empty the trash/change the cats water/whatever. They'll do it. When I ask them why I always have to ask as opposed to them seeing that things need to be done I get a blank stare of "What?"

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So..life isn't fair this way..when they are little and want to help its a chore most of the time, once we dust off the Norman Rockwell-esque imaes of baking cookies with Mom. And, when they're teens and amply able to help, the "help" button switches to off . Is this nature's little joke on us?  However, they now eat their vegetables

Men are from Mars, women use Venus

One of the (few) good things about the really cold weather that we're having is that it's too cold for bare legs.  So if I skip shaving my legs for a day (or a week) or two, no-one except my husband notices.  Even so, at some point my leg stubble becomes too much for me to bear, and I hunker down in the shower to shave. 

Stubble, nicks, cuts, dry legs.....shaving sucks.   Damn you, all you males, for conditioning us to think that body hair is unfeminine.  Some women are really lucky.  My mother-in-law, for instance, has never had to shave her legs in her entire life.  She's got hair in all the other places where women have it, just not her legs.  It's like she has calf alopecia.   Some women are pretty lucky.  Their hair is thin enough or blonde enough to be almost invisible anyway.  Or they have enough money to get their hair removed by laser.  Or they live in societies where armpit hair and leg hair is acceptable in females (is this really true? do these places really exist?).  But most women are not so lucky.  Like me.  OK, so I don't have hair sprouting from my ears and chin like some really unlucky women.   But it's dark enough to show, so it's got to go.    Sure, I've tried -- and discarded -- depilatories (stinky), epilators (OUCH!!) and plucking (reaaaalllly time-consuming).  Waxing and sugar waxing are both great, but when I'm in a hurry to get some seriously smooth legs, I shave.

My current razor is Gillette's Venus Vibrance.  I have no idea why I bought it.  It's ridiculously expensive, employing the classic bait-and-switch, razor/blade strategy.  $10 for the razor doesn't sound so bad, until you check out the price of the refill blades: $20 for 8 cartridges.    And with a name like Venus Vibrance, I was almost embarassed to be seen buying it, like when I bought condoms for the first time.  My infantile husband won't stop singing his take on the Bananarama song they use in their commercials, "I'm your Venus, I'm your p----..." (hint: rhymes with venus).  I can't figure out why it needs to vibrate anyway.  Gillette's website says the "soothing vibrations... gently exfoliates to instantly more radiant skin".  Frankly, my legs don't come out any smoother than they did before.  I think I just fell for the notion that this razor could actually make shaving easier or more pleasant.  Their website does promse "A whole new shaving experience" -- sounds like you must be a kinky little ho' for that to be true, not that there's anything wrong with that.  Perhaps there is some nifty hidden switch somewhere on the handle that turns this shaver into an actual vibrator.   No wonder they cost so much.  For now, I think I'll just use it to shave.  And plan my move to that mythical country where men like their women a bit more hirsute.

Thankful for Dads that Cooked Thanksgiving Dinner

My sister-in-law and I were sitting in their living room on Thanksgiving eve, playing with the kids, when we both realized an amazing thing: We had not lifted a finger to prepare any food for dinner. Our husbands did the shopping and all the cooking while we kept the kids entertained. I took my boys to the San Francisco Zoo (which is actually open Thanksgiving Day) and my sister-in-law took her boys on an outing.  Is this part of a growing trend or are we just lucky to have husbands that enjoy cooking? Or is this a strategy for segregation of duties since my sister-in-law and I both do not enjoy cooking?

Before we had our delicious boys, my husband and I were a great cooking and entertaining team. We enjoyed planning for what we would serve, having wine while we cooked dinner together and then serving our guests. Some people can cook lavish meals with kids, but I have not been able to. All the distractions make it hard for me to have the same interest in cooking.

I was pleased to find out that my husband enjoys cooking. He uses his engineering background to master recipe measurements and his marketing to add creativity to the dishes. My brother-in-law is a lawyer who uses his talents to fine tune the art of cooking a juicy turkey and making incredible stuffing.

Excuse me for being mushy, but I feel very thankful to have a husband and brother in-law who participate in family events with such enthusiasm. As Mary Tsao adorably demonstrated in her post "Guilty Mommy Doesn't Live Here Anymore", all Dads that cooked Thanksgiving Dinner should give themselves a big pat on the back! And Moms should also give themselves a pat on the back; for all the cooking, caring for kids and entertaining they did on Thanksgiving and every day.

In Search for the Secrets of Holiday Etiquette

The fact that I have recently become very interested in understanding etiquette is quite comical because those who know me understand that I don't have time for etiquette. Chasing after three boys makes it hard to sit down for a proper meal, have a proper conversation, send written thank-you notes (I use email instead) and sometimes even have a chance to say hello to my friends. I have resorted to making my own rules. But I found out I am not alone.

In this morning's New York Times, an article titled "Pass a Drumstick, and an Olive Branch" identified the problem:

"Americans as a whole have lost touch with the ritual of a shared homemade meal. Although we eat home a lot, the food is often from restaurants or the prepared foods section of the grocery store. Families eat in shifts and leave the television on......No wonder we have no idea how to behave on Thanksgiving."

The article also mentioned the Emily Post Institute in Burlington, Vermont. When I visited the site I realized you can email etiquette questions. I am sure they must have a whole team devoted to family issues! There is a section on holiday manners for children. And just in case that is not enough, Peggy Post (who married into the Post family) recently published the book "Excuse Me, but I was Next...How to Handle the Top 100 Manners Dilemmas".

Another article on the same page of the New York Times, "Cutting Through Holiday Jams With Etiquette as Your GPS," presented a compilation of advice from three etiquette and party specialists. The list even includes updated problems like what to do with electronic gear:

"Avoid the cellphone problem by cheerfully requiring everyone to place electronic gear in a basket upon arrival."   

All of this information completely overwhelmed me. Especially the section on cheerfully removing electronic gear from my guests. Which in Silicon Valley could cause major meltdowns from grown men and children. So I decided to just start with the section on kids and thank-you notes. I did not find any rules on email thank-you notes. Which is probably for the best because that is the one thing I hoped would be acceptable etiquette for busy parents. Or maybe that is just another symptom of my crackberry habit.

I hate Play-Doh

I actually love Play-Doh, loved it as a kid, love the way it develops my kids' motor skills and imaginations.  I just hate the mess it makes.  Call me a humbug, but it kind of sucks that my kids love it as much as I did.

I hate the way it gets into every curve and nook and cranny, making it a royal pain to dig out of dough presses, spaghetti makers, hair-growing people molds, all the cool playdoh paraphernalia.  I hate the way it crumbles into bits and scatters all over the floor, gathering dust, dirt and hair that finds its way into the main lump of dough.  I hate the way it can smoosh to a whisper-thin layer and attach itself to my kids' feet, to their clothes, to the floor.  I stash our Play-Doh boxes on the highest shelf in the toy closet, out of sight and reach, to be saved for the rainiest of rainy days.  The problem is, once I take it down and the kids start playing with it, they get hooked.  They clamor for Play-Doh, Play-Doh, PLAYDOH for days on end.  It takes me a while to wean them off the stuff.  This is one reason why I pay exorbitant amounts to send my kids to preschool, so they can have their messy clay fun somewhere else, and not clutter up our small house any further.

Whenever my kids play with it, my stress levels skyrocket.  While they knead and roll and mold and cut, I'm on my hands and knees picking up the stray bits, smooshing them together to make a bigger mound, catching little bits as they fall to the ground, praying it dries up soon so I can suck up all the dried bits with the vacuum cleaner.      Our house has all hardwood floors -- if we had carpet, I think I would ban the stuff altogether or risk having a nervous breakdown.  And God forbid should they mix the colors up and we end up with some grayish mass that no-one wants to play with and I have to buy 10 new cans.  For some reason, Play-Doh just brings out the anal-retentive in me.

There are several alternatives to Play-Doh which we sometimes use.   There are all kinds of dough recipes (The Holiday Zone has a pretty good collection), but as far as I'm concerned, they are just homemade Play-Doh, with all the disadvantages.  There are also the slimy substances you can make, like Gak, Flubber, Oobleck and Silly Putty (which you can buy).  My kids love the gooey texture and are fascinated the way it oozes and spreads. I like the fact that Gak doesn't crumble into bits like Play-Doh, which makes clean-up easier.  Beware, though, once it gets on clothing it is nearly impossible to remove!  I've seen infomercials for something called Floam, which we haven't tried yet and probably never will, because anything we've ever bought from infomercials have been utter crap.  So far, I like Crayola Model Magic the best -- it's lightweight, clean, doesn't crumble or stick or stain.  Best of all, it hardens after 24 hours, so once it's dried, there's no way we can have Model Magic time again until I buy new stuff from the store.  Of course, it's the most expensive of all these options so Model Magic time is even rarer than Play-Doh time.   

In the end however, IMKHO (In My Kids' Humble Opinion), nothing beats Play-Doh.  The colors, the texture, the smell -- the rest just don't seem to captivate them like Play-Doh does.  The fact that it's messy makes it even more fun. And they can literally play with it for hours.  So I just can't find it in my heart to throw it away altogether.  So for the next two or three (or ten) years, every now and then you'll find me poised under the kitchen table waiting for the Play-Doh scraps to fall and wondering whether to curse or bless the day Play-Doh was invented.

Ho Ho Humbug

I'm not completely anti-holidays - especially now I have a child, I want her to do all of the fun kids stuff - I just happen to be one of those people who gets more stressed than excited by them, particularly Christmas.  I haven't really enjoyed that particular holiday since my parents divorced (after 30 years of marriage) and sold the house I grew-up in.  The mystery that went along with that holiday vanished with their marriage and has yet to return.

I'm optimistic that I'll get some of it back when we can celebrate with our little girl over the years, but there's still something missing.  Perhaps it's the fact that I moved to California that same year my parents split and thus left the snow.  I always equate Christmas and snow.  (Sorry natives - that's just the way it is in most of the country.)  And our holiday tradition was really wrapped-up in celebrating in that house.

This year, we'll have a new house.  We close on it December 13th but we probably can't move in until January.  Rotten timing.  What's the big deal?  Well, my husband is one of those rare men who LOVES Christmas.  Adores it.  Makes me jealous he is so into Christmas.  And he wants to put up a tree the day we get back from celebrating Thanksgiving.  This isn't unusual, I suppose, but if he had his way, it would have been up after Halloween.

Being the practical mom, household project manager and recovering humbug, I'm wondering why we need a tree at our current house at all.  There's no room, our mini-toddler will just be yanking ornaments off it, and we won't be able to see it through all of the moving boxes.  But then my husband gives me this sad, weepy look like I'm ruining his favorite holiday forever if I even think about not putting up a tree.  I told him we could put one up at the new house, celebrate there.  It has a fireplace.  Santa can come there.  But he wants to enjoy the tree every night.  (I still don't know where we'll put it.)

Then there's the issue of presents.  Spend, spend, spend for things that people don't need - including us - and more debt.  We have four mortgages while we're overlapping between 2 homes.  Yup.  No money.  None.  It's all wrapped-up in end-of-year property taxes, down payment, 2 mortgages, preparing the new house for moving in, preparing the old house for sale, and moving.  Gee, what fun.  Even my husband, who always argues with me about having to get everyone gifts, is dreading that this year.  We don't have the time to shop even if we did have the cash available.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who will be griping about holiday fear rather than celebrating holiday cheer, but I usually get into the groove around December 19th or so - just in time to ship everything last minute.  I have a plan for the grandparents' gifts this year, but it's still another time-consuming thing.  I'm sure I'll get it done.  We'll figure out Christmas.  It'll be okay.  But I can't help but wonder - will I ever be able to have the fun I did as a kid?  What will it take to get it that way?  Ho hum.  Ho ho humbug.

Things to Do Before You Die

Last week, my father-in-law died.  We were fortunate enough to see him the weekend before he died, and knew he wasn't going to last long, but his death still shocked and saddened us.

I have been thinking about the events of the past week.  One of the things that made it easier for us was that my father-in-law took care of things for us, in his quiet, unassuming way.  He left a manila folder with instructions on what to do when his time came, a living will, a will, and his wishes for a memorial service.  One of the things we learned in dealing with family deaths over the years is that there are so many decisions to make, and grieving family members are not really in a condition to make decisions.  I think my father-in-law's final act of love for his wife and children was to make it as easy for everyone as he could.

None of us really want to think about our own death, but let's face it, it's inevitable.  We don't know when or how, but we know our time will come eventually.  Here are 10 things to consider doing to take care of those you love:

1. Create a Living Will. This says what you want in terms of life support if you are in a coma or "persistent vegetative state."  Remember Terry Schiavo?  Do you want your relatives fighting over what to do?  Let them know clearly what your wishes are, whatever they might be.
2. Make a will.  Go call a lawyer right now.  Stop putting it off. You can do a first pass using WillMaker Pro or other software, but get a lawyer to review it to make sure you got it right and that it conforms to the laws of your state.  I'm a lawyer, and I would not trust myself to do a will for myself and my husband, even though I know the basics of what should go in there.  A poorly drafted will can lead to additional heartache for your family, so do it right. Having a will is especially important if you are a parent.  You need to leave instructions on who will have guardianship over your minor children if you and your spouse both are gone. In your will, you can dispose of your personal, sentimental property, so that if you want your sister Sue to get Great Grandma's wedding ring, it will go to her and not to an estate sale.  If you change your mind or the situation changes, you can always update things later.
3. Create a trust.  Consider putting your money and property into a trust account and setting up trusts for your children.  State laws vary on how to do this, so you should consult a lawyer.  This is important because it is easier to administer later than having things tied up in your estate or in probate.
4. Organize Your Papers. Keep your will, living will, insurance policies, and instructions together in one place that is easy to locate.  It may not be your spouse or someone who lives with you who needs the information, so be sure to mark it "Upon my Death" or "Important Papers."
5. Keep Information on Safety Deposit Boxes Handy. If you have a safety deposit box, put the key, the address of the bank, and instructions in the file.  Your spouse or partner may know about this, but your brother or daughter may not.
6. Make a List of Your Assets. Leave information about your finances, including a list of insurance policies, bank accounts and account numbers, with your will and any trust documents you might have. 
7. Decide What to do with Your Body.  Leave instructions for what to do with your body when you "slough off this mortal coil".  Do you want to be cremated or buried?  Where do you want your remains to lie or your ashes scattered?  Do you want to be an organ donor?  Even if you think your spouse or partner knows or it's on your driver's license, write it all down.
8. Plan your Memorial/Funeral.  What kind of memorial services would you like?  Do you want a religious ceremony or secular?  Is there music you are fond of--special hymns, Bach, or the Rolling Stones?  Is there a song you like that sums up your life?  That music will comfort your relatives, to know it was something you chose.  Do you want a wake or celebration of your life, or something more contemplative?   A big fancy event or a simple one? 
9. Flowers or Not?  Do you want flowers at your service, or prefer donations to a charity?  If you choose charity, which ones?
10. Explain How to Notify People Who Care.  Which organizations and individuals would you like to notify?  If there are people that you think would like to  know of your passing, make a list of them or say, "See my address book for a list of friends."  I once got a photocopy of a letter from the family of an elderly friend from my church in New York, long after I left, letting me know that she had passed.  It really meant a lot to me to know why I had not heard from her in a while, though her family didn't know me. It was so kind of them to inform me, even though they didn't know who I was; to them I was a name in an address book.  To me, their grandma was someone really special.  I was able to let them know what an inspiration she was for me and honor her passing.

Do these things because you love your kids and your family.  Trust me, it will help ease the pain of your passing just a little, and will be considered your final gift of love for your family.

Cross-posted at Glennia's Blog, The Silent I, where she is currently slogging out a post a day for NaBloPoMo and has taken the Vow of Kindness.

Toy Office

We are a two and a half office family. My husband and I are both home office people. We used to share an office (and loved it), but nowadays my husband gets his own office, and I share my office with a 3.5 year old.

About a year ago, my son coined the term "toy office." As in "let's go into the toy office!" And that's what we do. I type, he plays. Toy. Office. It's a great term. Wonderful connotations, too. Good for encouraging a nice white-collar career path later in life. It's an office. You PLAY there. Yeah.

But seriously, I've never really understood the role of women and their workplaces in American homes. We were, um, [insert ironic descriptive term here] enough to have bought a house in the dreaded year 2K real estate gargantua-price-extravaganza. As such, we like to keep an oar in by stopping by open houses sometimes. And in years of looking at Bay area homes, I have never seen a mom's office. Is that wierd or what? Maybe it's the socieconomic area? We looked a lot in Hillsborough and Atherton. But we recently looked (just for grins) at the 9,000 square foot, seven million dollar house down the street a bit. The house, confided the real estate agent, was bought with the proceeds of a well-timed stock sale. (The wife's.) She's involved in some other investments, too, and they commented that she's obviously a big part of the family's financial success.

Does she have a home office? Not on your life. There is a large, leather and mahogany-lined masculine extravaganza of an office. There is a large toy room. A large home theatre. A big room next to the toy room, which oddly enough has a foosball game in it. There's a bedroom for the au pair, a large walk-in closet, a family room that you could house a Guatamalen family of 12 in ... and I couldn't for the life of me figure out where the mom kept her life.

Is it just me? Does nobody else need places and stuff and a workspace, and so forth? Is it a writer-ish thing?

As I look, I have a fourteen-slot organizer, a bulletin board crammed with the requisite tacked-and-forgotten detritus, a hanging file thing, an in box, a four-drawer file cabinet (one entire drawer of which is filled with TRAVEL NOTES!), and so forth.

I've always had a home office. I always will. Even if I just live in one room, there will be a table, a chair, and a typewriter (or similar data entry device).

The thing that I always found really immensely scary are those upper middle class kitchens from the seventies and eighties with the cute little tiny desk built into the kitchen. In my opinion, that's like asking someone to nurse in the bathroom (but of course, that's just my knee-jerk side.)

At any rate, this entire thing comes up because we went to a birthday party today. On the way out, my son piped up with "where was the toy office?"

Next week:

"Where are the books?"

From the historical archives of The Anachronistic Mom blog