In becoming a parent, one life adjustment I still haven’t quite accepted is with my food. Sometimes, my husband will text me “What do you want for dinner tonight?” And I’ll think real hard and respond with something like “Thai drunken noodles with chili sauce” and then he’ll reply back with, “You do remember we have…
On the topic of how “at home” you can make yourself on an airplane, there are many questions. Some have easy answers. Can you wear yoga pants? By all means (hear that, United Airlines?). Can you scarf down your leftover barbecue ribs smothered in hickory-smoke sauce? Let’s not. Whether you can slip off your shoes,…
Baby years are not like regular people years. Things move fast. When my daughter was an infant, my husband and I would glance at her just about every morning and say, “Whoa, she looks different today.” This flipbook-like pace of development can make it incredibly difficult for parents to go back to work. You feel like…
Gone are the days when parents could swing by the drugstore for a new Trapper Keeper and declare back-to-school shopping done. The lists of required school supplies are intense. It’s not surprising that moms and dads will drop an estimated $519 per household on school items this year, according to Deloitte’s annual…
Back in my earlier days, all I had to do was make one decision—window or aisle?—and then I’d be given a seat number and and then I would get on an airplane and sit in that seat and thus would conclude my mental exertion on this issue. Alas, that was then. Now that I have a partner and two young children, selecting the…
I always go for the window seat. I’d like to say it’s because I get to marvel at the beauty of our planet from above, but really, I just need a place to rest my head as I close my eyes and drool for a few uncomfortable hours. In my thirty-something years of air travel, I’ve never questioned my seating preference—until…
One of the hallmarks of the Montessori method is an emphasis on independence. I’m seeing this firsthand as—I kid you not—my seven-month-old infant came home from his first week of Montessori having learned how to hold his own bottle with two hands like a Stanley Cup champion. Simone Davies, a Montessori teacher and…
Want to get your little kid excited about helping out around the house? Give them an official title. I tell you this as the mother of a renowned “orange monitor,” a position I gave my daughter when she was five. Her job was to alert me and her dad when we were running low on oranges, and then at the store, select new…
Last night, as I was laying down with my six-year-old daughter Maggie in her bed, she said to me, “I wish this week would never end.” I was trying to think of what was special about the past few days when she continued: “Next week, I’m moving up to a new swim class and it’s in the deep end.”
Lifehacker contributor Starre Julia Vartan wrote about the importance of taking mental health days from your job. Mental health is health, and taking care of ourselves should be a priority. But what about our kids? I’ve heard from parents who’ve admitted they let their children occasionally miss school in order to…
If you’ve ever wanted to experience the symphony, but couldn’t—concerts are too expensive, you have kids who can’t sit for long stretches, tickets are tough to snag—here is your chance. Go to an open rehearsal.
I hate to be a summer scrooge, but it’s time to declare that pool parties with lots of kids are typically just not safe. Parents can get distracted (it’s a party, after all) or misjudge their children’s swimming capabilities or feel a false sense of security because, look, there are so many adults here. The fact is…
Maybe it’s an old photo that does it. A picture of yourself in your previous life. You look at the spark you once had and and then you look at your world now—it’s consumed by a child who needs, needs, needs. You suddenly wonder: How did I get here?
“Five more minutes!” is a thing parents say to their young children when it’s time for them to wrap up whatever they’re doing—swimming, having a lightsaber battle with their pals, making galactic slime. And then, when the time is up, here is what happens: The kids seem shocked, confused and might start sobbing. I have…
Babies cry. It’s a feature, not a bug. Sure, we all know this before getting into the whole parenthood thing, but I don’t think any experience—being seated next to a tiny screamer on an airplane, holding a shrieking nephew as his bottle is prepped, or even living above an infant in full sleep-training mode—could ever…
So your kid is heading off to college, and you want to give them one last hurrah before they enter the great land of dorm room pranks, energy drinks and figuring out how the hell to be an adult. What to do? Throw them a trunk party.
My dad was the first person to introduce me to shadow puppets. When my sister and I were tiny kids, he would tuck us into bed, turn off the lights and then cast an image of a dog against the wall. He’d curl in his index finger, lift his thumb and open and close his pinkie while barking. Sometimes, he’d do a bunny or…
Many of us can remember the first time we used our money—our very own money—to purchase something we’ve been pining for. Maybe it was a Sharp boombox or a pair of roller skates or a see-through phone. We saved up our allowance and all those $2 bills that Aunt Tess would slip into her birthday cards and exchanged it…
Once, I saw my husband showing our daughter some YouTube videos of the rides at a local theme park. These were not the new wild rides, but the slow kiddie ones. He pointed out the details. “See, you drive around in a loop,” he said. She stared at the screen intently.
