Joys of Single Motherhood

I just got off the phone with a friend who is experiencing some of the same economic doldrums that we are here in Westchester. We were talking about how our kids remembered better times when they were younger: limos to the airport; trips to exotic locations; ball games; basketball games, etc. etc. For Christmas, my daughter wants--in no particular order--jeans (she has five pairs or so), a $359 camera from Costco; a 'cool' ski helmet (not the $50 kind, the $129 kind); cross country skiis; new ski gloves; a new Ipod Touch--she lost the last one--and as many shopping trips to the city as can be managed. Currently she wants different shampoo; and an $80 yearbook even though she's in 9th grade and surely will barely be in it. Oh, and she also wants to take classes on Saturdays at FIT at $450 a pop. My daughter is spoiled but she also remembers better times. She remembers the days when she would pick something up in a store and even before she could put it down I would ask "

The principal at Kid 2's school sent around a nice email the other day talking about the Golden Rule and wondering how many parents had actually had a talk with their kids about it. Hmmm. So I asked Kid 2. He pondered for a moment and said hopefully "Silence is golden?" When I finished laughing to myself, I told him the rule and what it meant and he looked at me like I was crazy. "Well, yeah, it just means to be nice." I think he really wanted to say "Duh Mom" but we've outlawed the use of "duh" in the household so he couldn't. When I told Kid 1 the Silence is golden anecdote, she laughed and replied "Silence is golden, duct tape is silver." I guess that's what they all yell at the movies when the "Silence is golden" message is flashed on the screen. That's the clean Kid 2 story. Here's the other. He came home the other day and announced they'd had a substitute teacher that day. "She had reall

From the NY Times, a great piece on why LBP is different and how it so artfully allows users to build their own games. See it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/29/arts/video-games/29planet.html Kid 2 and I have had great fun building levels together. I think LBP is a genuinely creative building platform. Stephen Frye narrates the tutorials in LBP. Has Stephen Frye ever lent his talents to anything bad or trashy? Which brings me for just a minute to Aion--Kid 2's latest game fixation. I am not particularly happy with the thot of Kid 2 immersing himself in this MM (Massively Multiple) Online Role Playing Game or MMORPG. Even the acronym annoys me. MMORPG....sounds like the noise a hobbit makes when it's eating woodland creatures. It took days to load and now it's taking days to register and from reading the FAQs at length, it does not seem suited for a 10 year old boy. It seems like a winged version of D&D without the dungeons extrapolated to a vividly-arresting vir

The cell phone is quiet. ATT got fed up yesterday and disconnected our service. Today Cablevision cut off our phone service but not the Internet or the cable television. Except that the cable television on the first floor seems to have been disconnected. The phone still sort of works--for incoming calls only. I kind of like the quiet. It's only when I'm Web-less that I feel cut off. Today I went and shopped for the ingredients for a new vegetarian chili recipe I promised Kid 1 I'd make for dinner tonight. Went through the self-checkout and the debit card was declined. Short $23.61. I said "gee, I'll have to go get cash" and out I went. I feel a bit bad for whoever had to put the stuff back but otherwise--oh well. Time to get creative. I took a half package of cream cheese, a bunch of fresh sauteed yellow and red peppers with some garlic and made lasagna. It was fine. Kid 1 liked it and is taking it for lunch tomorrow. Kid 2 did the usual--"I like it"

Kid 1 and I read Elizabeth Kolbert's New Yorker review of Amy Chua's "Battle Hym of the Tiger Mother" last night. I love Elizabeth Kolbert's writings and I wasn't disappointed. I came away shaking my head at the ridiculousness of raising kids in "Tiger" mode. Kid 1 thought it was just plain sad. "Some parents here are like that, Mom" she told me. Over the years, my BFF and I have been simultaneously puzzled, intrigued and awe struck by fellow parents who "make" their kids do things. I'm not talking about clearing the table. I'm talking about years of ice hockey, years of soccer and other activities that these kids actively dislike--yet they cede to their parents' wishes. "How do you even get kids like that?" that's our question. My kids will clear the table, take out the trash and feed the cats but I couldn't make either one of them take up an activity or sport unless they wanted to. I'd have

I wonder sometimes whether my ex-husband ever truly feels any emotion other than anger, or whether it's just when he comes to my house. This weekend they are going skiing in the Poconos and the last time we spoke about an hour ago he told me jauntily "time is the one thing I have plenty of". Now, it's an hour later and he is storming about on the first floor muttering about being late. Kid 2 is attempting to shovel the French toast I just made for him into his mouth while his father looms over him. Meanwhile, Kid 1 is still in the shower. Apparently she fell back to sleep after I woke her up on time. She is fluttering agitatedly choosing clothes and packing. I just heard the inner door slam loudly. That's either her or her lovely anger-challenged father. All quiet now. I guess it's safe to clean up the kitchen and pick up all the strewn clothing and toiletries that may be scattered along the stairway. Lucky me. Teen girls--even my nearly perfect one--are a pai

My poor Kid 1 may have finally hit the math wall. Since 3rd grade, she has somehow been able to overcome the familial math disability. It has never come naturally, that's for sure. She has always had to work hard to do well in math and she accepted this long ago. "How come everything else is so easy and math is haaaarrrd?" she'd whine at age 8. And I'd say "For some kids, it's all hard, so buck up and realize that this is never going to be easy and you're always going to have to work hard and sometimes even harder than your peers who are mostly the offspring of hedge fund managers and corporate lawyers." Or something to that effect. Somehow against heredity and all other odds, she has been placed in advanced math these past two years. She's taking high school algebra in 8th grade and I'm afraid this may be the end of her run as the family math genius. Now she has run up against factoring polynomials and "meter stick violations"

Kid 1 was a 'tweener last month. She rarely texted or used her phone at all. Much of the time she didn't even know where it was. She came home from school most afternoons after Art Club or the extra-help session known as "X Period"--usually for math. Most endearingly to me: she still walked like a child: tummy pushed out a bit, arms swinging with a bouncing gait made easier by walking almost on tip-toe. And then a few weeks ago, everything changed. Suddenly there were lots of texts and lots of time spent hovering over her phone with her best friend. Their two heads bent over the tiny screen like ancient witches trying to read tea leaves. I knew something was up and I strongly suspected I knew what that "something" was. A boy. In the past, several--5 or so--boys have had crushes on Kid 1. She was always surprised and always kind to the crushers. No ridicule, no contempt--nothing negative. She was neither flattered nor repelled. This was different. This was a

In a previous post, I lamented the dearth of details for parents seeking to teach their LDD kids how to compensate for their various learning "quirks". The other day, I received the print version of an article titled "Cognitive Outlaws" from Psychology Today Magazine that details how four successful people compensate for their learning differences every day. This truncated version will probably only interest those with a kiddo with crossed circuits but even that's worthwhile. More later on this..... I found this passage particularly interesting because it seems to describe Kid 2 most closely: "it's the detours that contribute to the rich landscape of creativity and dot-connecting that so often mark the entrepreneur, the innovator, and the creative." Yup, Kid 2 is definitely comfortable with detours. He regularly tells me how during the school day, the teacher was talking about something dull but instead of struggling to listen, he designed-in his