Becoming a good mom, one hour at a time
I’ve hesitated to write this post. It feels as if all the heartbreak, anger and confusion about the recent mass shooting of the Pulse night club in Orlando has already been better expressed than I could attempt. But I can’t get the Pulse shooting out of my mind. Read more
The other morning I was sitting on the floor, playing with Kiwi. I snuggled in close to her, ruffling her downy hair with my nose.
“I love you,” I whispered.
Then I looked up at Peeper, who was drinking milk at the table.
“Psst,” I started. She looked at me. “I love you.”
Peeper set her glass down.
“Now can I have a popsicle?”
And that’s how I know the value of my love: It is preschooler leverage to get dessert.
Welcome back, strawberry season. And hellooooooooo chocolate strawberry pops!
If you haven’t been stuffing your face with fresh, just-picked, locally grown strawberries, what the heck have you been doing? Just walk by the farmers market and you’ll smell strawberries warming in the sun.
And it’s u-pick season! If you’re in the Portland area, check out this article about the best u-pick berry farms from PDX Parent.
Now, the girls and I aren’t opposed to simply eating strawberries plain by the pint. But if you’re looking for a healthy dessert your kids can help make, you’ve found it. Recipe below!
I am insanely excited to share with you the voice of my blogosphere friend Deborah Bryan. Deb and I e-met through a mutual friend a few years ago, and ever since I have felt a deep connection to her that belies the fact we’ve met in person only once before.
If you don’t already follow her, do yourself a solid and zip over to The Monster in Your Closet stat. Well, right after reading this.
Today you’re wearing a dress with a broken zipper.
That’s just like you.
Wait, that didn’t sound as nice as I meant it.
Let me start over.
Today you wore a lovely dress you haven’t been able to wear for a few months. You were delighted to see how pretty you look in it, but not so delighted when the zipper in back burst all the way to your waist while you leaned over to put on your toddler’s shoes two hours later.
“+%÷@#!” you thought, before deciding—a split second later—that the best immediate solution was to be thankful for your long sweater. You’ve used binder clips to deal with cleavage issues, but they’re harder to use for back wardrobe mishaps without a girlfriend close at hand. There were other options, of course, but this was the one you quickly determined best in light of the circumstances.
Thank goodness for long sweaters! Courtesy yours, you made it to work on time and looking fine.
Do you see the compliment yet? No?
Okay, I’m getting there! Read more
When Kiwi was a few months old, a friend texted me.
“I’m coming over. Be there in 15.”
I was a little surprised—we’d met a month or two earlier in moms’ group, and our babies were mere weeks apart, so we didn’t know each other terribly well. I didn’t really know what to expect.
When she arrived, I welcomed her into my home, trying not to think of the dog hair tumbleweeds and last night’s dinner-coated dishes still on the counter.
“I’m here to guerrilla help,” she said, stepping inside. “You never take me up on my offers to help. But here I am.”
She set down her baby, who was sleeping in her car seat, and asked if I’d rather she do a load of laundry or scrub my shower.
Seriously.
She ended up bouncing Kiwi, who woke up from a two-minute nap and refused to go back to sleep. But that was a bigger help than battling shower scum to a harried, exhausted, desperate mother who spent nearly every minute of the day trying to get a baby to sleep.
My friend did something special that day. She rescued me from one more attempt to bounce my baby to sleep—the time that may have pushed me over the edge. She let me know I wasn’t alone. She showed up when even I didn’t know I needed her. She lived what should be the international mother’s motto: Don’t ask. Just help. Read more
This month, someone must have hit the “play” button on Kiwi, because she just can’t stop playing! (Ok sorry, terrible pun.)
One day, I put a plastic cup on top of my head. (Why? No idea. Seemed natural at the time.) It fell off. And Kiwi nearly fell over, she was laughing so hard. She made a game of it: She’d hand me a random object for me to balance on my head then giggle uncontrollably when it toppled off.
My favorite game? After she finishes nursing, Kiwi faceplants on my bare belly and blows raspberries. The first time she did it, Eric had to stop what he was doing in the other room to check on us because I was laughing so hard.
Her favorite game is chase. She’ll crawl away from me then pause, peeking behind her to see if I’m following. When I come after her, she squeals in delight and motors away—until I catch her. As I tickle her belly and nibble her cheeks, she surrenders in a fit of laughter—until setting off again.
The bruises on my knees from crawling on hardwood and the drool-covered belly barely register. She is happy and I am happy.
I’m even more grateful for this ease of play for both of us because our time together wasn’t always this carefree. In Kiwi’s early months, everything was hard. She cried, and I cried, and neither of us smiled all that much. She was in pain and I was unhappy. On the worst days I had to force myself to play with her—singing nursery rhymes or doing This Little Piggy on her prehensile toes—even though I felt no joy.
The contrast to today is striking—like walking out of a dark movie theater into a July day, it’s almost blinding in its brilliance. Now Kiwi can light me up, and her smile sparks a glow within me that grows with every tickle fest and game of airplane.
I thought of her recently when listening to NPR’s TED Radio Hour. The hour-long show explored the benefits of play. The experts made me realize that when I get down on all fours to crawl-chase Kiwi, or when we do pattacake, or when I have puppets act out a scene from Downton Abbey, I’m growing, too.
Putting me in closer connection with my own inner child is just one more gift Kiwi is giving me. As she plays, so do I, and we’re both better off—and happier—for it.
Five little monkeys jumping on the bed
One fell off and bumped his head
Mama called the doctor and the doctor said,
“For the love of all things holy I am not reading this book one more time!”
I have a love/hate relationship with the book 5 Little Monkeys. After about the sixth time of reading it, all that repetition makes me want to jump off a bed and knock myself in the head.
But the repetition is great for pre-readers: Books that have repeating sequences, like 5 Little Monkeys, strengthens a child’s neural pathways and primes them for learning to read later. For example, all that repetition helps kids add to their vocabulary faster, reports research from the University of Sussex in the UK. And the familiar rhythms of a repetitive book helps that child remember what comes next—a skill that later helps them predict or hypothesize what comes next.
I saw this all in action with Peeper and 5 Little Monkeys. I used to pass the book back to her while we were driving around. After a while, she would “read” the book to herself—including counting down the number of monkeys.
All that repetition really worked!
Turns out the repetitive motion of painting is a great parallel for this story. When I found Raising Fairies and Knights’s Monthly Crafting Book Club, I was in: I wanted to make a fun art project that went along with 5 Little Monkeys, too!
You may also know what a proponent of process art I am. So I didn’t want to create a craft that had a clear expectation of how the craft should look in the end. Instead, I created a project that let Peeper do her own thang while staying true to the spirit of the book. And with my hand-drawn download, you can, too!
Think back to your childhood and, probably, a treasured teddy bear was there to comfort and cuddle you. Your kids might be the same—Peeper is. Although she sleeps with a stuffed Elmo and a Findus the Cat most nights, a few bears are among her most treasured lovies.
I thought it would be fun, then, to structure a homeschool preschool meeting around a bear curriculum. Grrrrr!
Want to use a bear theme to teach your preschooler, too? Here’s the bear curriculum we used at preschool recently.
I started the bear curriculum by reading two books. First we read The Teddy Bear Picnic (which, by the by, is a song). The kids had such a fun time spotting bears in the book that looked like the teddy bears they brought from home!
We also read We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. It’s fun to do motions for each obstacle the family traverses—wave your arms for the wavy grass, tiptoe when they go through the cave. (FYI, you should totally check out Michael Rosen acting out his book—he is hilarious!)
These books also set up the later activities. Read more
In certain circles (*cough, cough* Portlandia), kale is shorthand for all things healthy. Want to make a smoothie? Kale’s in, spinach is out. Whipping up a frittata? Make sure those eggs come from organic-free-range-vegetarian-fed-deliriously-happy hens, and throw in some kale, too, obvi. Making a salad? Forget the romaine; you need to massage some kale instead.
But if your kid is anything like my picky preschooler, kale is not on the menu.
Until now.
(Sort of.)
How my kid started to eat kaleCircles and squares and triangles, oh my! From a round Ritz cracker to angular blocks, shapes fill preschoolers’ lives. It makes sense, then, to teach our kids all about shapes. At a recent homeschool preschool I hosted, we did just that, and here I’m sharing my shapes curriculum.
