When Is The Make-The-Lunch Fairy Coming To My House?

The kids were tucked all snug in their beds, visions of lunchboxes packed with delicious food filled their heads ... and I was standing in the kitchen, post-work day, after supervising homework/showers/changing into PJs/picking clothes for tomorrow/eating dinner/brushing teeth/reading books, and finally tucking them in, with some help from Late Blooming Dad.  But now I was alone in the kitchen, eyes scanning the fridge forlornly, searching for inspiration.   What to make them?  What to make them they'd actually eat some tomorrow if I made it for their lunch boxes tonight?  It's then I had a vision:  a vision of the Make-The-Lunch Fairy.

Our kids get visits from the Tooth Fairy whenever they lose a tooth.  Why can't we weary moms get a visit from the Make-The-Lunch Fairy whenever we are overwhelmed by life, and underwhelmed by the prospect of making yet another round of lunch box lunches?

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Advice For Twin Moms, Nearly Six Years In

Yesterday, at a kids' birthday party, I was standing by the bouncy house watching my boy/girl twins, now five-and-three-quarters,  bounce themselves into a gleeful state, when a pregnant woman approached me.  Her own kid, a three-year-old girl, was bouncing along with mine, and she'd ascertained mine were twins.  "Any advice?" she asked, explaining, "I'm about to have twin boys."

I was instantly transported back to those early days of twin momhood, when I felt as if I'd been instantly propelled into a giant bouncy house the moment the c-section began.

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Kids And The Culture Of Cruelty

Maybe it started with the sniping between roommates on MTV's THE REAL WORLD, the grand-daddy of today's mis-named "reality" tv shows.  Or maybe it was SURVIVOR, which featured a weekly climax in which someone was always "voted off the island."  But whenever it started, it seems as if every "reality" show has one thing in common with every other "reality" show:  somebody's always getting eliminated.  Along the way, the contestants are generally humiliated and subject to verbal, even physical, abuse.  But that's just TV.  It doesn't mean our culture, the one in which we're raising our kids, is pervasively cruel, does it?

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Working Mom's Latest Fear: Will I Be Sucked Into The School Volunteer Vortex?

There are 43 committees at my kids' school's parent booster club.

Is it just me, or does that sound like school volunteer overkill? 

Since my kids have been in kindergarten -- two weeks -- I have filled out dozens of forms from the club, not to mention the kids' teachers, all to do with what activities I can volunteer to be a part of, in the classroom and outside of it, ranging from re-shelving library books to driving kids to and from field trips to helping to organize and run any of the myriad of fund-raising events and activities that occur throughout the year. I've been told of mandatory commitments per child at the school, e.g., every family has to work one traffic safety shift, at pickup or drop-off, per child, during the year. I have been invited to no less than four volunteer events, and I've already missed two of those. I've been asked to contribute the "suggested" amount per child -- and nothing that you can pay in ten installments is cheap --  because, though a public education is free, a great one is not -- especially nowadays.  Every day brings more mail in the kids' backpacks, offering additional ways to get involved.

If I get another piece of paper from the parent association, it's quite possible my head is going to explode.

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Kindergarten On The Spin Cycle

It seems an endless weekday spin cycle in the week and a half since kindergarten began.  (The Spin Cycle is what my childhood friend and now fellow Late Blooming Mom, Lauren, calls it -- and that's exactly how it feels.)

Kids' chatter drifts in from their bedroom around 6:35 a.m.  By 6:40, it's up-and-at-'em, with Late Blooming Dad standing over the kids urging them to dress in the clothes they picked out the night before, so as to avoid delays.  What happens?  Delays anyway.  Little minds change:  "I don't want to wear that shirt."  "Where's my sweat band?"  "Can you help me put on my socks?"   If one happens to start playing with a toy, the other wants it ... even as dad insists, "This isn't playtime now."

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Kindergarten Jitters

Thing 1, the boy around here, has been, as the expression goes, "acting out." He may only be five and three-quarters, but he might as well be a teenager given the attitude he's suddenly acquired. There's been some "I hate you"'s to Late Blooming Mom and Dad, some "I'll never play with you again!" to his sister, and a lot of throwing small objects across the room. There's been defiance -- "I won't eat chicken for dinner again!" -- and attempts at negotiation -- "I'll put my toys away IF you let me watch TV." And there has been some kicking, though the victims have generally been the wall next to his bed, or the floor (sorry yet again, downstairs neighbors).

But there have also been some "I need a hug"s, and some teary, "I'm going to be shy" moments when Thing 1 confesses he is afraid to be in a kindergarten classroom without his sister, Thing 2.

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Never Too Young For Cultcha

I took my five-and-half-year-olds to see Shakespeare yesterday. 

It was family-friendly Shakespeare -- THE TAMING OF THE SHREW trimmed to about an hour's length, performed outdoors under the trees, with rock n' roll, acrobatics, and juggling interspersed; characters with mohawks and dyed pink hair; entrances and exits made on skateboards and bicycles built for two.  But it was still Shakespeare:  the dialogue, monologues, characters, story, all his, and pretty much intact despite the cuts.  (Thank you, Actors' Gang, who've dubbed this particular production of their annual Shakespeare for Families series "Katie the Curst.")

It was a small deposit in the kids' "cultcha" bank account ("cultcha" is what my Brooklyn-born, Manhattan dwelling parents thrived on).

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