Archive for October, 2009

For those who want to know, and there have been many already, I got the boots on eBay from a store where mommies probably shouldn’t be shopping, unless they’re on tonight at the Bada Bing. Just type in “Wonder Woman boots” and you’ll find them. The nice legs are courtesy of my personal trainer, Cheryl. The double chin was extra.

So when I went to the school yesterday to help run my son’s class party, I had to use the new sign-in computer that takes your photo. Sure…

Happy Halloween from MommaSaid.net.

I was making a Staples run to pick up the tickets for my upcoming Kiss Cancer Goodbye event when they made their request. My boys wanted a stapler, some Wite-Out and some modeling clay. I didn’t ask questions. I figured that my sons had some sort of school project. Besides, I was in a hurry, so I dashed out the door with my list and bought what they’d asked for. (more…)

I think this was my window cleaner. It’s hard to know for sure. Whatever it is, it’s “harmful to everyone except cockroaches.” Also, it’s not recommended for cleaning.

It’s also apparently radioactive, and yet, it contains tofu. Plus, it needs a spell-checker.

He couldn’t just stand by and watch me attempt to kill another washing machine. So, my husband Pete took the sheets and blankets out of my hands and redistributed them in the washer before pouring in the detergent and pushing the start button.

“Happy anniversary,” Pete said and kissed me on the cheek. (more…)

Competitive parenting was struck a major blow today thanks to Baby Einstein. You know, the videos that were supposed to turn babies into a geniuses? Turns out, they didn’t, and now Disney is offering refunds to parents who bought the videos.

I have to admit, when I read the article in today’s New York Times, a broad smile spread across my face like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. (The original cartoon, not the Jim Carrey version.) It read: “The unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect.”

Finally! Here’s proof of what I’ve been saying for years: We do not need to create Super Babies who are ready for Harvard shortly after they potty train at 9 months-old and read the entire Harry Potter collection by age 4. We don’t need to make geniuses. We just need to get kids ready for adulthood, and showing babies videos of Native American musical instruments or exotic animals in their natural habitats apparently isn’t the way.

When these videos came out when my son was a baby in 1997, they were part of a broader movement that pressures affluent families to better their babies through Teachable Moments, blah, blah, blah. Thanks to the competitive parenting movement, I felt pressured to make every moment count and if I didn’t, my kids would — gasp! — fall behind.

But I realized soon enough that my kids could (and still do) learn through play, and that pressuring them to be perfect wouldn’t help them at all. It would only give them — and me — a nervous breakdown.

So I said no. I said no the videos promising to make my kids geniuses and to tutoring for A students and all the competitive parenting nonsense that has been pervasive over the last dozen years. I even wrote a book about it. You’re a Good Mom (and Your Kids Aren’t So Bad Either) is for moms who get caught up the the trap of holding flash cards for the kids at stop lights, and for those who don’t dare to.

And now, this. The admission that videos can’t make your baby smarter is, I hope, the beginning of the crumbling of the Berlin Wall of parenting. It is an admission to what videos for babies are really for: A chance for Mom to shave both legs on the same day. That’s it. Anything more would be an empty promise, and, perhaps, a refund.

A heart-tugging photo of the author, bald from chemo.

Some of the comments were a tad harsh, if not biting. The writers are just going to have to get used to that, though I’m not sure if you ever truly can, even when you’re a grown-up who has been called, among other things, an F— Trophy. (more…)

On the Parents TV set with host Juli Auclair.

Luckily, my husband can work from home or else I wouldn’t have made it to the set. I was scheduled to shoot a video about parenting preschoolers, based on my book, Stop Second-Guessing Yourself — The Preschool Years, for Parents TV yesterday at noon. But at 4 a.m., I was getting my son some Motrin for his fever and headache, which had sprung up suddenly. He was going to be home from school.

So, Pete worked from home while Chris slept on the couch and I headed into Manhattan to put on makeup and talk to grown-ups, specifically the always lovely and talented Juli Auclair, a host of Parents TV.

Juli was battling her own headache and oncoming flu-like symptoms, and yet, she looked as fabulous as ever. How does she do that? I was just happy that my hair didn’t have the unshaped chemo curl mess from the last video I’d taped for them. (Yay. We captured that on video. But at least I wasn’t bald.)

As we taped the segment, answering questions on parenting preschoolers from moms around the country, I realized how lucky I am. I’m lucky to be able to work from home much of the time, and to have a husband who can do the same for the times I need to be elsewhere and a kid winds up with a sick day. I’m lucky to get to write for a living because I love it so much, and I’m lucky to get to appear on great programs like Parents TV. I’m also lucky to –KNOCK ON WOOD– not have caught whatever Juli and my son have. Finally, I was lucky to have a good hair day on video.

Pete went back to the office today, and Chris was at home again, but he’s feeling better. I worked from home, in less makeup, but with yet another good hair day. And I’m feeling lucky all over again.

She saw the whole thing.

“So, first you dropped off brownies in your son’s classroom,” my friend Joan said when I ran into her in the school hallway on Friday.

“Then you stopped to coach one of your soccer players in the hallway,” she observed. “And now you’re going to a presentation on the school’s new spelling program.”

Worst of all, she called me the s-word: “Super Mom.”

I know what it looked like. I’d actually made brownies from scratch for my son’s birthday celebration in school, but a real Super Mom would have made sugar-free carrot cake. Yes, I’d mentioned to one of the kids on the soccer team that I coach how well he’d played the previous weekend, but I am just an assistant coach. The head coach has way more responsibilities and clout. And besides, Joan was going to the same meeting. (more…)

The clock in the hallway at the hospital also displayed the date: July 30th. It flashed it over and over and over as though it was taunting me: “You’re never going to make it to November 1st with that baby.” After the ultrasound, my doctor said the baby, my second, probably weighed about 2 pounds. And yet, he wanted to come out then, 11 weeks premature. (more…)

I cannot, will not save the elephants. It’s not that I don’t care about them, or the fact that, as one e-mail sent to me this morning implored, they may go instinct within 15 years. I care. I really do. But some days –okay, most days– I can barely manage my own wheelhouse let alone take on the fate of wild animals half a world away. (more…)