For some reason, my kids’ school decided that this year there would be a mid-winter break in addition to all of the other breaks. Of course, I did basically no planning for it because I am barely managing to keep our regular life going, much less organize some big trip. A little over a week […]
Parenting
The Ensemble
Over the past month, my family life has been a bit consumed by the elementary school play, James and the Giant Peach. Claire tried out in the late fall and was cast as part of the ensemble. Since then, she’s had frequent practices after school. This has required a lot of coordination. The boys finish […]
Report Cards
My kids came home this week with their first term report cards. I opened them up and braced myself. Last year’s report cards were decent, but Claire struggled academically in math and Austin sometimes shut down in big groups. I figured that those flaws were okay because, well, if they were managing to just attend […]
Austin and the Kittens
A few weeks ago, I took Austin out to dinner. Claire had a play date and Tommy was home with Grandpa Tom, so it was just the two of us. I let him choose the restaurant, and he decided that we should get pizza. It was a beautiful night, so we picked a table outside. […]
Claire’s Hero
At the start of fourth grade, Claire came home with an assignment to write about her hero. “I picked you!” she announced to me. She then spent much of the afternoon finding a photo that she liked of me and writing about why I was her hero. It was really sweet and touching. My kid […]
Parent 2
My kids all came home after the first day of school with backpacks full of forms. “You have to fill everything out today!” Claire instructed. Even though I’m a teacher, I still can’t understand how schools make you fill out the same information a dozen times. Can’t they put all this stuff in a database […]