I let Mean Lady out this week. We were at the park, enjoying an unusually balmy northeast November weekend afternoon. The park is a huge wooden castle-like structure that was built by the community several years ago, and it holds hundreds of kids. Maybe thousands. And they were all there that day. Thousands of them. Screaming. Running. Jumping. Pushing. Screaming. Mostly screaming. And Mean Lady just had to come out.

Mean Lady didn’t like it when she saw a girl of about 6 run right onto a bouncy bridge where there was a 2-year old playing, toddling back and forth on his wee wobbly legs. And stand right where he was. And then jump. Hard. 2-year old predictably fell down and cried. Little girl ran off, but not before the Mean Lady cornered her and said that Jumping Hard like that on a bouncy bridge where there is a kid smaller than you is Not Cool. Little girl’s eyes got big and round and she edged away from Mean Lady, keeping a close eye on her for the next hour.
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As a kid, I loved summer vacation. Who wouldn’t? No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks, don’t let the school doors hit you on the way out. Summer vacation was great.

Then I became a parent. Suddenly as a working parent I’m juggling summer day care, extra costs of all-day care versus after-school care, kids with nothing to do all day, me trying to come up with new! fun! activities! and I’m hating summer vacation. Hate. Hate. Hate. Even later as a stay-at-home mom I hated it. The days stretched on forever to a chorus of “What are we doing today, Mama?” as if someone had suddenly appointed me Entertainment Director and I’d be expected to wander the Lido Deck with my perky Julie McCoy clipboard and hat. No thanks. I’ll go back to hating summer vacation.

Let’s get rid of it.

Summer vacation is bad for kids anyway.
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Despite having spent 12 years of my life with an airline pilot and traveling all over the world, I can count the number of my first-class flights on just two fingers. One. Two. That’s right, as a member of the traveling class of airline employees and families of airline employees we had to show comportment and respect to the passengers paying full price (that’s you), which meant No Kids in First Class. And because I always had anywhere between one and three kids with me, I sat in back in steerage. With the kids. And with everyone else’s kids. Your kids, my kids, conspiring to drive other passengers crazy.

Just for fun, let’s talk a moment about Things Kids Do On Planes:
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When I was a kid everyone walked to school. Everyone. If we didn’t walk, we biked. Even in kindergarten. Of course, this was the time Way Back When Before Things Were Safe, when we rode seatbeltless piled into the backs of station wagons and we all owned cap guns and we always had scabbed knees from learning to roller skate and we walked alone to the candy store every week with our Saturday allowance in hand and as toddlers we sported coffee table cornered bruises on our foreheads.

So what happened?

I’d like to think we can pinpoint one event, one moment in our collective social history that forever transformed kids from the independent little beings they used to be
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How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat?

That bowl of cold congealed peas, eaten alone after the table was deserted except by one solitary small weeping figure, was not going to disappear by itself.

Later, the rule was that vegetables were to be eaten before even a bite of bread could be consumed. You dared not even think of dessert until and unless your plate was scraped clean first. You had to consume every last inedible something-went-wrong-in-the-freezer lima bean before anyone else even touched — and then refused to eat — theirs.
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Why should I care about your kid’s penis? Well, because you care about it. And assuming your kid has a penis, at some point you had to make a decision about circumcision. Did you or didn’t you? That’s the question being thrown around amid passion and tears over on Momversations this week.

I have two sons. They are both intact. When the first was born 13 years ago, there we were in the hospital and the doctor started talking about circumcision. I assumed it was routine. I hadn’t thought about it.
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There are two basic types of parents: those whose kids eat junk food and those whose kids don’t. With the proliferation of processed, colorful, and highly-marketed snacks and other “food” items aimed straight for kids these days, junk food is almost unavoidable. Or is it? There’s a debate being waged between the parents who think a little—or a lot—of junk is okay and those who police their kids’ lunchboxes with zeal.

Which are you?
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Half my kids spent a significant number of years sleeping in my bed. By the time #3 and #4 came around, I was convinced that AP parenting was the way to go. I carried them around in slings all day, breastfed until the cows finally came home to replace me, and welcomed the little buggers into my bed.

It took forever to get them out again.

Right now I’m wondering by how long I shortened my life span from being forced for years to occupy an 8-inch swatch of bed-edge by a two-foot tall torture expert with sharp pointy toes and kicking legs.
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I think New Year’s Resolutions are silly. Why pick this arbitrary time to re-create yourself? Doing that only sets you up for failure, the thinking that my life will be sooo much better if only I lose weight/cook healthier meals/spend more time with my kids. It’s the pressure. And on top of that, the guilt. Seriously, who needs that? So here’s what to do instead:

Figure out where you are now, in this moment, and be okay with it.

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As a kid, Halloween was my second-favorite holiday. Okay, third. At any rate, there was candy involved, and if I played my cards right I’d have candy straight through until Christmas. Score.

As a mom I hate Halloween. People knocking on my door all night, begging for free stuff? No, no, and no. If it wasn’t for the fact that the little ones look so awfully cute being nudged up to the door in their costumes, I would shut off my light and refuse to answer the door. Because the real reason I hate Halloween is that people just don’t play by the rules. My rules.
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