Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Joey's got a bad habit. I thought I finally had the perfect solution.
There is a bright orange wall in my house. Like, Tigger orange. In fact, the paint is from the Behr Disney line at Home Depot and is called “Bouncy, Bouncy.” You know, like Tigger. Last week, it was a lovely boring shade of beige. Well, to be fair, it wasn’t exactly boring. It was beige, with all kinds of crayon pencil, pen and even paint marks on it. And then, the straw that broke this mama’s metaphorical camel back; Joey took a stamp from a birthday goodie bag and stamped all over the poor wall, making lovely race car tire tracks all over it. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the stamp was in the goodie bag from my own daughter’s birthday party, and I apologize to any other families that had a stamp mishap as a result of my sad, …
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
I see some correlations in my own kids. How about yours?
Do you know what I do on my children’s birthdays? I spend the entire day (in Joey’s case, TWO DAYS) remembering what stage I was in at this time on that day, however many years ago. Kimberly celebrated her fourth birthday this week, and I marked each hour from about 10am till about 7pm, loudly declaring “At this time, four years ago, I was taking a dose of castor oil!” (Yuck, by the way) or “At this time, four years ago, our midwives got here.” Thinking about Kimmie’s labor and delivery for a day made me consider Joey’s, as well. And then I started considering how each of my girls’ labors and deliveries were pretty much exact opposites. And then I started considering that the girls’ personalities are also, pretty much the exact opposite…
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Do your resolutions include your kids?
The New Year is generally a time of resolutions and good intentions. Everyone wants to lose weight, quit smoking, or find a new job. We’re all trying to better ourselves, start fresh, have a clean slate in the coming year. How about our relationships with our kids? Don’t they also deserve a fresh start in the New Year? I think they do, so I spent some time today doing a little inventory on my parenting status. I’m pleased to say that I fared better this year than I did last year when I did this same exercise, which means I’m definitely moving in the right direction. However, there is definitely some room for improvement. Here are some things I’m going to work on in the coming year. Maybe you can work on some of these, too, if any of them …
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
I'm looking forward to my favorite day, and it's not what you think!
It’s almost here! Just days away! I’m so excited! You think I’m talking about Christmas? No way, man. I’m talking about the day after the day after Christmas. Look, we have all this stress leading up to Christmas. Well, I do, anyway. In fact, as I sit to type this, I still have half a dozen presents left to get. Christmas is Sunday. I need to get a move on, here. Of the stuff I have already, nothing is wrapped. For that matter, all my kids’ presents are still in our sunroom, in taped up Amazon boxes. I haven’t even opened them yet. For all I know, the Playskool Alphie I got for Kimmie is in sixteen pieces in there. It’s not that I haven’t wanted to get this stuff done. It’s simply that I’ve been trying to get a LOT of stuff done. …
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Is Tokidoki Barbie, being scalped on eBay, on Santa's naughty list?
Know what’s at the top of my Christmas list? Well, a Vitamix Blender. But also, this. Yes, I would love the Tokidoki Barbie. Have you seen her? Obviously, a collector’s edition, a limited edition of 7,400 dolls, originally at $25, and now selling at nearly $400 a pop. Just as obviously something I’m not likely to find under my tree in a couple weeks. What’s most interesting to me about Tokidoki Barbie is the uproar surrounding her. Parents freaked out about the “tattooed Barbie with pink hair.” Speaking as someone who has sported both pink and purple hair in the past, hey...freaks are people too. And I’m excited we finally have our own Barbie doll. Look, I have issues with Barbie, in general. Both good and bad. I loved Barbie when I …
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
The internet has changed everything about my life, including the way I handle holiday shopping.
I don’t know about you, but Christmas shopping is in full swing at my house. Specifically, at my dining room table. I have only my nephews left to shop for, and I haven’t set foot inside a single brick and mortar establishment. Also, can I just get a high five for being about done with all my holiday shopping before November is even over? Holla! I have friends and family who spend weeks preparing for Black Friday. They gather all the ads, they make their lists, they check them twice, and then they head out on Thanksgiving night. I admire them. That’s some serious dedication, right there. My Black Friday strategy is Avoid, Avoid, Avoid. In fact, for a good long time, I wouldn’t even leave the house on Black Friday, so as to not have to …
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
I might not be as grown up as I thought I was.
My parents have been on vacation for about a week. Well, truth be told, they’re both retired, so define “vacation,” right? They don’t actually go away very often and I’m so glad that they’ve done this. They’re in Florida, primarily visiting my dad’s sister and some other family, but also hitting up a theme park and getting some beach time in. They’re probably lying on a beach with a pair of frosty beverages right now, in fact. I am sitting on the floor in my living room, typing a sentence here, getting down a thought there, while I play Strawberry Shortcake with Kimmie, try to pick up some Barbie dolls, and keep an eye on the clock, because it’s almost time to go get Joey from school. There are three baskets and a dryer full of clean …
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Kimmie is fighting growing up just about every step of the way.
Kimberly is going to be four soon. That’s about the age where I typically stop regarding a child as a “baby” and start thinking of them as a “kid.” This isn’t a scientific unit of measurement, but it’s been working fine till now. Kimmie, however, is not matching up with my little yard stick, and it seems that she has no desire to. It’s not that she’s not hitting milestones or that she’s incredibly short or anything like that. It’s that she’s pretty much convinced that she wants to be a baby forever. For example, she pretty much flatly refuses to use the bathroom, preferring instead, to continue availing herself of pull-ups. This often has quite messy and sometimes disastrous consequences, of which she cares not. On any given day, you …
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
The kids want to take dance and gymnastics classes. I have my own agenda.
I’m not exactly what you’d call a joiner, and I never was. I never took dance classes, for example. I wanted to, for a short time, but my parents were busy saving every penny they earned to send me to the private school I loved, so moot point. And I pretty quickly grew out of my love for ballet shoes and tap costumes. Joey is deep in the throes of that love. Last year she took a basic ballet/tap class, and she loved it. She told her teacher she wants to take more classes and wants pointe shoes and wants to be a ballerina when she grows up and, and, and.... I’m exhausted just thinking about the energy this kid puts into dance. This year, I tried to give her the choice between ballet and jazz, but she wanted to do them both so badly, I …
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
We should probably just not vacation for extended periods with our entire families.
When my husband and I started talking about taking a multi-stopped road trip with the girls, we figured that having several shorter drives would be preferable to one huge, long drive. We did the huge, long drive last year to OBX, and it went okay. Yeah, just okay. By okay, of course, I mean everyone got out alive. So this year, we were looking for something a little better than okay. It’s also true that after a day or two in one location, the adults of my family are pretty much ready to move on to something else. Hey, we’re wanderers at heart. Free spirits! Can’t keep us contained in one theme park! Unless it’s got giant rodents and Tinkerbell. But then, again, that’s actually, like seventeen theme parks, so it probably doesn’t need to …
Jennifer Hughes
8:25 pm on Wednesday, January 18, 2012
So my pregnancy with Nicky is what I refer to as the uneventful pregnancy....literally 2 days of discomfort and nobody would know I was pregnant (just thought I had enormous boobs). My c-section was the same....easy and uneventful...I walked around the hospital the next day....Nicky was born with his eyes wide open, taking in everything around him...he is still that way....looks before he leaps… more ›