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 'Girls'
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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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
OUR GIRLS, OURSELVES
October 5th, 2011 2 Comments
This 60-second video captures my fears about my daughters growing up in our crazy, body-image-obsessed culture. (“The world is insane,” says meditation teacher Adyashanti. ”Stop expecting it to be otherwise!”) Is it inevitable that A and C will go through the same body-loathing I’ve experienced over the years? As women and mothers, how do we [...]
Tags: beauty pressure · body image · Girls · mothering · self-acceptance · Self-improvement
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
PUPPETS IN PARADISE!
September 10th, 2011 No Comments
After the wreckage of Irene, days of soaking rain, and the adrenalized hustle of Back to School comes the perfect antidote. Puppets in Paradise, a magical outdoor benefit for the Sandglass Theater, held up at Gordon and Mary Hayward’s spectacular gardens in Westminster West, VT. For an amateur gardener like me, strolling these landscaped [...]
Tags: Garden · Gordon Hayward · Puppets in Paradise · Sandglass Theater · Vermont
AMERICAN FEVER
September 4th, 2011 3 Comments
A glossy catalog arrives in the mailbox on Monday afternoon. More dead trees to recycle, along with the enticing reams of Pottery Barn, Hanna Andersen, and J. Crew. If I’d gotten to it first, I would’ve pitched it straight into the recycling bin, hiding it safely beneath a broken-down cereal box. But my girls are [...]
Tags: American Girl Doll · Cinderella Ate My Daughter · Disney princess · girlie-girl culture