A few weeks ago, I stood on the front lawn at my son's school for their Memorial Day celebration, listening to the principal play guitar and lead the students in the sweetest rendition of “This Land Is Your Land,” the flag flapping gently in the breeze. If you close your eyes and imagine a fairytale that takes place at a school, this is what it would look like. And like most fairytales, I didn’t ...
What Happens On the Hillside… Is Pretty Awesome.
One Sunday a few weeks ago, I looked out my bedroom window to a perfect sunny day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I threw on a pair of capris and my silver Sperrys (the kind you wear with no socks) and headed to Max’s lacrosse game. Minutes after my arrival, the skies darkened to the point where I fully expected to hear a loud, booming voice, the temperature dropped 15 degrees, and we were in ...
Walking In A Winter Smotherland
It’s a funny thing, being Jewish in December. Chanukah came early this year. Not Thanksgivikah early, but early enough that it still caught me off-guard. Whenever there’s more than a week between the last night of Chanukah and winter break, I get cocky. I feel like I’ve been given the gift of time. But that feeling is very short-lived, because in reality, there’s only one thing that happens when ...
Camp Crazy
Every summer, there’s a catch phrase that’s blurted out so frequently during my interactions with parents that I often wonder if they secretly believe it’s the key to unlock the holy grail of childrearing: I’m not THAT parent. It’s never followed by any type of explanation of who THAT parent is. In my line of work, it’s assumed that I know. Spoiler alert: I KNOW. There’s another phrase ...
Have That Removed!
Every time someone in my family trips, we immediately point to whatever it was that was tripped over and say, “Have that removed.” In case you don’t recognize the line (I didn’t until I met my husband; since then, I’ve heard and said it more times than I care to admit. Apparently we trip a lot.), it’s from “Stripes.” I’ve only seen bits and pieces of “Stripes,” my kids haven’t seen any of it… and ...
Learning to Lose
Anyone who’s ever had a child in kindergarten soccer knows the sweetest thing about it (aside from those tiny little uniforms and shin guards and nets you could fold up and put in your purse) is that everybody wins. To ensure that everybody wins, goalies are not a thing. Both of my kids loved kindergarten soccer. They couldn’t wait to get their trophies at the end, which was an inevitability, ...