Winter Sports are finally here, but instead of delighting in the new snow-cover, I’m skidding around on the icy territory of teaching my girls to ski. Not downhill sking, whereby a child gets snapped into a secure pair of metal-edged rockets, rides the Magic Carpet up, and zooms back down. We’re going cross-country in our [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Spilt Milk Column'
SKI NANNY
January 30th, 2012 1 Comment
Tags: cross-country skiing · Parenting · ski nanny · Tiger Mom
TONGUE SUSHI
January 18th, 2012 1 Comment
Saturday morning dance party in the yoga studio. C is doing her wild-child, hair-tossing dance to Lady Gaga, sashaying across the floor to the insistent beat of “Poker Face.” A is arranging her stuffed animals in a corner, constructing a house for Lambie and Penguin out of yoga blocks. After a few songs, I slip [...]
Tags: honesty · Katy Perry · kissing · Lady Gaga · Parenting · Sexuality
ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS
January 2nd, 2012 No Comments
The moon rose huge and red over Searsburg Mountain as we drove home from my mother’s. I stopped the car to marvel at the impossible color, a glowing apple suspended in the winter sky. “Look, girls, the moon is red!” But the girls were absorbed in Judy Moody, MD and didn’t care about lunar phenomenon. I [...]
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HOLIDAY BLAH BLAH BLAH
January 2nd, 2012 1 Comment
Here we go again, down the long, dark tunnel of December. On the Monday after Thanksgiving, I reclined mutely in the dentist’s chair listening to pop Christmas music piped through the office. In my vulnerable position, I was powerless to request anything but my toothpaste flavor. Male a-cappella groups chimed “The 12 Days of Christmas” [...]
Tags: Christmas · credit card debt · de-cluttering · holiday stress · holidays · perfectionism
MOMS’ NIGHT OUT
December 8th, 2011 4 Comments
I almost went out dancing a few Fridays ago. It seemed like a good idea that Thursday, when I read about the “infectious” Afrobeat band Fenibo playing at a bar downtown. “Sometimes you just have to get out and shake it!” said one vivacious friend, a young pretty mother of three who has a new [...]
Tags: Fenibo · MILF · moms' night out · motherhood · Wild Night on the Catwalk
CAN I HAVE A HUG?
November 17th, 2011 2 Comments
A won’t let me kiss her goodbye at school. She halts me at the door to her classroom and hisses, “NO, Mommy!” when I move in for the embrace. Then she turns and bounds into her First Grade world of friends, teachers, table time, power words, recess, and yogurt parfait. Sometimes she’ll slide onto my [...]
Tags: girl social dynamics · growing up · KGOY · motherhood
MOONTIME LADIES
October 26th, 2011 1 Comment
“Mommy, what’s that string?” Like a curious puppy, Carmen has followed me into the bathroom, where she spies the white cotton curled between my thighs. I pause a beat, then answer: “It’s my moontime.” A lovely euphemism coined by my husband to describe what one friend calls “our monthly hormone poisoning.” “Is it an ow-ie?” [...]
Tags: Are You There God It's Me Margaret · Betty Dodson · menstruation · period · preschooler
BIG DATE IN BED
October 17th, 2011 2 Comments
Last Sunday the perennial rain increased to the intensity of a monsoon. We were shacked up at my in-laws’ house on the Maine coast, shrouded in banks of salt fog. I dressed the girls in their matching blue Kitty raincoats and flowery rubber boots and sent them out into the elements to explore. Three minutes later [...]
Tags: childcare · date night · grandparents · Parenting
PRINCESS SOCCER
September 24th, 2011 No Comments
It’s the sacred hour of bedtime, when little girls and boys should be splashing happily in the bath, brushing their pearly whites, and zipping up fleece pajamas. I always envision this time as a peaceful, lavender-scented family reconnection, with lots of calm hugging, story-telling, and snuggling. In reality, it is a manic free-for-all, with tired [...]
Tags: Cinderella Ate My Daughter · Disney princess · Girls · girls' soccer · princesses · soccer
VACATION… all i ever wanted
September 14th, 2011 1 Comment
August gave me a split personality. I was one woman at home, with my incessant emailing and event planning and counter-wiping—my need to enforce order on the summer chaos of our family—and another woman entirely on vacation, where I walked barefoot on piney paths, swam the icy salt waters of Maine, lay down with my [...]
Tags: Maine · motherhood · stress · summer vacation · vacation