When the boys were little, the amount of papers and artwork they used to bring home from school (not to mention what they produced at home) was ridiculous. I bought a plastic storage container for each of them and put select items in them to save for posterity. Every now and then, I’d come across something that I didn’t want to put in a time capsule. Of course, I didn’t want it laying around the house, either. I needed a place where I could look at it whenever I wanted to, but it was out of the way at all other times. Enter my kitchen cabinets. The insides of the…
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- Childhood Memories, Confessions, Do I Really Want My Readers To Know This?, Food, My Mom Has Mad Skillz
Old Habits Die Hard.
When he was little, J–like so many other young kids–had a strong aversion to bread crust. Unfortunately for him, I had a strong aversion to making a sandwich and then cutting off the crusts for my kid. Call me mean if you want, but I just figured that if he didn’t like the bread crust that much, he could just eat around it. I did help him out a little bit, though, by cutting his sandwiches into quarters on the diagonal. This way, he could nibble what he considered “the good stuff” all the way down to the crust. That picture above, though? That was my sandwich, from yesterday’s lunch.…
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Creative Parenting 101: Put Your Kids To Work
Some of the best (and funniest) moments in parenting for me have been when I suddenly figured out why my parents did something a certain way when raising my sister and me. Let me give you an example. Our mom loves to put on garage sales. LOVES. I don’t think she’s a fan of the work (sorting, pricing, displaying) before the sale–not too many people are, I imagine–but she loves making money from stuff she’s had sitting around the house (and who wouldn’t love that?). Back in the 70’s when we were kids in the south suburbs of Chicago, Mom had a couple of garage sales each year. Each time,…
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He Never Made THAT Mistake Again…
When you’re a parent and dealing with a little person who’s getting older every day and whose brain isn’t as malleable as he was when he was a baby, it can be very difficult to find ways to teach right and wrong. What works for one of your offspring may not work for the other, and that’s definitely been the case in this house. D has always had a sense of not wanting to make mistakes, ever. Of course, nobody is perfect, and it was only natural that he made some poor choices on his path to becoming the fine young man he is today. For example, there was the…
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Creative Parenting 101: Take A Picture. It’ll Last Longer!
I often say that photographs are my favorite souvenirs. In addition to the wonderful memory* that you can preserve with just one picture, a picture–or thirty–takes up much less space than, say, that jumbo Disney World snowglobe that costs you the same amount as a brand-new Geo Metro and will be in next year’s garage sale. My pictures-take-up-less-space philosophy came in handy when the older boy was younger. We discovered early-on that he had packrat-like tendencies. He came by it honestly; his mother’s** side of the family has the packrat gene in a big way. With intensive therapy***, I finally learned how to get rid of stuff. Halleluyah! When our…
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Calling All Mamas!
One of my most popular posts is being featured on Mamapedia today! Mamapedia is a website where Moms (What about Dads??? “Dadapedia”? Hmm. I’ll get back to you.) can post questions on anything having to do with raising children–ANYTHING–and other moms can answer those questions. They feature bloggers in their section called “Mamapedia Voices”. Click here to read my post; I’m looking forward to contributing some brand, spankin’ new stuff to them very soon!
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A Rare Stroke of Genius
Note: This post is part of Fatherhood Friday at Dad Blogs, where all the cool kids are hanging out. (Moms are welcome over there!) I *might* even have a column called “Teen Angst” there. Welcome to my visitors from DB; thanks for stopping in! I have *finally* figured it out. My kids, like so many other teenagers (and frankly, some adults!), are terrible at giving me phone messages. It is totally annoying to find out, sometimes days later, that someone called for me when I wasn’t home, especially if they asked for me to return the call. I tried telling the kids to avoid answering the phone at all if…
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Creative Parenting 101: Holding Onto Your Babies, One Illegible Page At A Time
Every now and then here at the Scrawl I like to throw in a “Creative Parenting 101” post. It’s been a while, and I thought that Fatherhood Friday would be a good day to bring it back this week. Whether you are a parent or not, you absolutely know that each little bit of childhood is a fleeting thing. Once those crazy kids grow a bit and move beyond the current stage they’re in, it’s all over (most of the time! I’m not talking about when they move out and then move back…). That’s why I have mentally frozen moments in time for my own selfish purposes; for example, I…
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Eight Crazy Posts! (#8) (Finally!) (Whew!)
In this, the last of eight crazy posts, I have a few reflections on and memories of Hanukkah 2008 that I’d like to share. Last Sunday: First night of Hanukkah. Awesome night; had to dust off the cellphone rules (and adjust them a bit) because the thirteen-year-old was getting a cellphone for Hanukkah! If you did not read my first post in March about cellphone rules for your kid, it’s a must-read. Click here! It was quite exciting and I took video, but because we used the actual video camera (instead of the “video feature” on my regular digital camera), it can only be burned to DVD and not uploaded…
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Creative Parenting 101: Taking Time Outs To The Next Level
I watch alot of the television show “Supernanny”. Actually, my entire family does. It’s good entertainment for us since: A. Our boys are waaay beyond the years/age of the children who are featured, and 2. We get a perverse sort of pleasure out of seeing how some of the parents on the show just don’t have a clue that they actually created the mess (I wrote *some*. I would even go as far to say *most*.) Jim and I were never really the “Time Out”/”Naughty Step” kind of parents. In fact, although we put them in “Time Out” on more than a few occasions (especially the younger one), there are…