OK, I do know that the Olympics are not the force for Good I was taught they were as a child. There's a lot of ego, greed and politics involved, and really what is the deal with beach volleyball? How did it suddenly become one of the major sports, simply because of the bikinis? Don't men who want to watch women in bikinis have access to Youtube?--read more >>

DS 4, DS 3 and I went to the science museum this afternoon. We stopped at the gift shop just before leaving, and I made a small purchase. At the cash register DS 4 and I played with a couple of wind up toys -- the cool kind, like spiders with skinny metal legs wound by a metal key. They were display models -- the ones for sale were in boxes marked $14. I agreed with DS they were fun, but no way were we going to buy them. So about 3/4 of the way into the 30 minute drive home, DS casually says, "I accidentially put those toys in your bag, so can we keep them?"

Oh shit shit crap.--read more >>

Now, if your 4 year old had woken up twice in the night vomiting with a fever and chills and barking like a seal and crying because he said his legs hurt, it would be a no-brainer that you wouldn't send him or her to school the next morning, right?--read more >>

I just came home from dropping my 4 year old off at school. He goes to pre-kindergarten at a Catholic school a couple blocks from us. This morning the gym teacher pulled me aside, and said "I need to talk to you." It turns out that all year, my son has been putting his hands in his pants, front and back, and then the other kids refuse to hold hands with him during the games they play in gym. Gosh -- I guess that explains why he doesn't seem to have made any friends at this school. --read more >>

Back in January I wrote about concerns I was having about my 3 year old's language delays:

http://www.hipmama.com/node/36770

Spurred in part by the responses from you lovely mamas, I initiated an evaluation of him with the Dept. of Education. It was kind of funny, because once I'd made the first appointment, I immediately felt less worried. I really thought that they were going to very quickly say that he was well within the range of normal, and that they'd be cross with me for wasting their time. Turns out I needn't have worried about that... --read more >>

http://www.divinecaroline.com/article/22079/48997-book-review--porn

This is a book that was published last year, and is apparently a huge commercial success with lots of spin-offs already, but I saw it for the first time yesterday in a bookstore. Now I'll be the first to say there are things about this book that are problematic (1. Not all women are heterosexual 2. Women do have actual sexual desires about actual sex), but still, it made me laugh.

For the record, I'm white, and live in Queens NYC, the area with the highest proportion of immigrants (some white, some not) in the country, yet also heavily populated by long term white residents, who tend to be politely socially conservative at best, and downright bigoted at worst (think Archie Bunker). I hear people saying things I consider unacceptable way too often. I am generally non-confrontational, and try to live my own life as best I can, but lately have come to feel that there are times when not speaking out is wrong.--read more >>

I have my regular, end of tri-mester, parent-teacher meeting with my 4 year old's pre-K teacher tomorrow. I'm not looking forward to it. Last week T said, out of the blue, "I'm tired of my nonsense." Cue alarm bells in my head. I said, "what nonsense, what are you talking about?" And he said "I use too much glue, I scribble-scrabble, and I don't pay attention." He said this in a very quiet voice with his face buried in an arm-chair.--read more >>

Dunno if anyone remembers that last month DH and I were all excited about going bowling for the first time *ever* last month. I got a stomach bug the night before, so it got postponed. Finally the stars aligned last night. It was so much fun!--read more >>

The title explains it all, I think. The trouble is, we seem to have picked a lousy time movie-wise for our big, "yes, we do deserve an evening out" breakthrough. Hardly anything worthwhile seems to be playing now. The only movie I have a really passionate desire to see is Juno, which DH nixed as being too girly. His choice: Cloverfields, which I've nixed. I'm just not into violence. The thought of seeing something like There Will Be Blood or No Country For Old Men makes me feel bored. Does the fact that it's his birthday mean I have to be self-sacrificing?--read more >>

J turned three in November, and we still can't really communicate with him. I know he understands us when we talk to him, and sometimes he'll perform a simple request, such as throwing something in the trash, but he's more likely to ignore us and refuse to make eye contact if we're asking him to do something, or speaking firmly. He can say at least 400 hundred words (I kept a list at one point), probably more, but he almost never uses them, and when he does it's almost always just as a single word.--read more >>

DS#1, after spending the first 4 years of his life almost entirely with me, has just started pre-school. This is so exciting-- perhaps more for me than for him. I'm thrilled to have more time one-on-one with DS#2 who is 2, and has spent all of his life in the shadow of his more extroverted big brother. I have been looking forward to going to the playground in the crisp Autumn mornings and only having to worry about keeping *one* child from breaking his neck; and thinking, how delightful it will be to go to the grocery store with no arguments over who gets to sit in the cart.--read more >>

This post is inspired by Mamaneen's blog about trying to find a growth chart for her daughter and the responses about books. For a while now I've been thinking that I'd like to ask you all for recommendations of picture books featuring kids of color, in which "difference" is not the theme of the book.--read more >>

My three year old DS has discovered the power of flattery. He said this, and you know what, he got to watch TV.

I think everyone else knew it already, but I have just discovered that Miyazaki is a genius. I had seen Spirited Away, and was impressed, and also saw Kiki's Delivery Service, which was kinda cute, but marred for me by the unremitting perkiness of the American girl who did the dub. But what really got me hooked was My Neighbor Totoro. What a wonderful movie!--read more >>

I’ve been getting progressively more worried about the fact that my efforts to potty train my 3yo, Tommy, over the past six months have resulted only in negative progress. When we started, he was willing to sit on his potty once a day while I read a story. Now he runs away screaming when I suggest it. It has turned into a classic power struggle. All the conventional wisdom I’ve picked up from my peers and those “what to expect” books and their ilk has told me to give it a rest. When I told a neighbor I was making an effort to get him sitting on the potty, she said “why bother?--read more >>

The recent weaning posts have made me realize that one of you might like to have my used paperback copy of the La Leche book, How Weaning Happens. Here's the Amazon link if you want to read about it:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Weaning-Happens-Diane-Bengson/dp/0912500549/sr...
PM me if interested, I will send it free of charge (via media mail -- the cheap way) to the first person who responds. The book is very pro CLW. I bought it hoping for tips on weaning my two year old, and it ended up pursuading me not to bother trying!--read more >>

Shit. I'm supposed to report for jury duty tomorrow. I'm a SAHM, and I have no childcare, not even a regular babysitter. It happens that dh has the day off tomorrow(he works retail, so his days off are during the week), and I plan on going in armed with my boys' birth certificates (and possibly with my two year old, so that I can conspicuously nurse him), and explaining why I can not serve. As far as I can tell, I have no other recourse, besides being absent and facing a $250 fine. There is no way to contact the court house and talk to a *person* about jury duty. Does anyone have any experience with this situation? Will they let me off without much argument on my part, or will they take the fact that I showed up at all as proof that I can serve?--read more >>

Just a few days before dh turned 30, his father and the father's second wife had a baby girl, giving him a sister 30 years younger than himself. The father and his family lived in the Ukraine, and dh never met his sister until she was 7, when he went to Odessa to say goodbye to his father who was dying of cancer. Since then, he has had a close relationship with his sister and her mother, speaking to them at least once a week, sending gifts and sometimes money (the Ukraine is doing terribly economically, and his father's widow makes about $120 a month as a nurse's aide), and he has been to visit them and his other relatives in the city twice more since the trip to say goodbye to his dad, most recently a year and a half ago. He has been planning on going again this September.--read more >>

I threw a tinker toy cannister away because I was consolidating two sets and didn't need both. And now I know my landlord who lives downstairs (we are in a duplex) goes through my trash, because I saw it in a clear plastic recycling bag on the sidewalk this morning. I didn't think it was recyclable because it seems to be a combination of weirdly stiffened cardboard and metal, but if it is and it doesn't end up in a landfill, that's dandy; I'm just weirded out at the thought of him opening up our trash bag. Last week I was on my period, so he would have had to wade through my bloody tampons (which I don't flush because I'm paranoid about clogging toilets) as well as the poopy diapers and slimy bread crusts.--read more >>

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was keeping a food diary for my son (and myself because we're still breastfeeding) because he keeps having episodes of hives. Two weeks later, I'm depressed and discouraged and confused. I was sloppy, and let some days slide, and since I snack all day on everything I can get my hands on, it's really hard to keep track of what goes into me, and I'm still not sure how I can know when something I eat gets passed along to him. So the upshot is, he's had a couple episodes since I started the notebook, and I have as little certainty as ever what could have caused it, and that makes me feel so helpless and stupid. However, from the murky picture the notebook gives me, I'm begining to sense that a possible culprit may be food additives/preservatives. The poor little guy has been miserable and itchy for the last two days after having mac n' cheese from a box two days in a row. Could it be sodium phosphate or sodium tripolyphosphate? I just don't know what all these things are. And could he be allergic to one kind of additive and not another? And if this is the source of the problem how come it hasn't happened everytime he's eaten something with words I can't pronounce on the ingrediant list? I just feel confused and worried and out of my depth, so if anyone can point me to any resources about additives and their relation to allergies, I'd be more grateful than I can say.--read more >>

A dear friend and her seven year old daughter recently came to spend a day with us in NYC. My friend is a home-schooling waldorf kind of mama (different in some ways from me: I'm kind of looking forward to having the kids out of the house, and although I personally like things to be made of wood, I think the preference is mainly aesthetic and suspect that your average kid will get just as much enrichment out of a plastic toy apple as a wooden one). Anyway, as my friend is currently living in Middle-of-Nowhere, PA she was excited about coming to the big city and checking out all the waldorf inspired toy-stores that we would surely have.--read more >>

So DS#2 has had a few episodes of hives this summer, and I have no clue what caused them. I couldn't pinpoint it to any food, or activity or anything. Fortunately he didn't have any trouble breathing or anything like that while he had them. None the less, I realize I've got to bite the bullet and start keeping a food log for him. I've been resisting this partly because of the nuisance factor, but mostly because the thought of how pathetic his diet is being there on paper as a matter of record makes me embarrassed. Today's first entry is play-doh.... Anyway, he is still getting the bulk of his nourishment from me (and at 22 months, he's topping the growth charts-- could this have anything to do with why I'm tired all the time?), so I assume I have to keep track of what I eat too.--read more >>

I was dropping the boys off in the nursery/playroom in the basement of the church on Sunday. Another parent was there trying to get their baby interested in a toy. It was a round, almost spherical chick that "danced" and played the chicken dance music. As soon as they started the music and set it on the floor, my nearly 3YO, who is normally not particularly coordinated, took one look, ran towards it, and with one smooth kick booted it across the room just like a football player kicking off a game. That would have been a good moment to teach about treating things that don't belong to you with respect, but no, I laughed because it looked so funny, and DS had such an incensed look on his face.--read more >>

I'm not pregnant, but last night I dreamed that was in labor and gave birth-- to an egg. About the size of an ostrich egg. I had to crack it open to get the baby out. I remember being really pleased that I had made it through the birth without drugs. Anyone else want to share a freaky birth dream?