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.
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.
How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat?
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
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?
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
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:
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.