The Toughest Night Something in me snapped. It was the middle of the night and my newborn had been going radioactive every seven minutes. Radioactive was the nickname I had given to the red-faced wail exploding from his body twenty plus times a day. That night when my usually agreeable husband kicked a baby blanket…
Today, after taking my 3 year old to the science museum, I learned that a mushroom is 90% water, a cactus is 85% water, and a tarantula is 65% water. Yesterday, after reading a book about animals, I learned that the white rhino is in danger of extinction. Last week, I learned to appreciate the…
We’re entering that time of the year when only the yucky candy is left in the bottom of the kids’ Halloween baskets, and we’re making Thanksgiving plans while listening to Christmas music. It’s the calm before the storm. The time where we can actually find a parking spot at Target without circling for three hours.…
My family was recently evacuated during the Woosley fires in California. The day before we were evacuated I had spent the entire day watching the news because of the shooting that occurred at Borderline Bar in Thousand Oaks. This hit close to home for me, not only because the bar is within miles of my…
My family was recently evacuated during the Woosley fires in California. The day before we were evacuated I had spent the entire day watching the news because of the shooting that occurred at Borderline Bar in Thousand Oaks. This hit close to home for me, not only because the bar is within miles of my…
Motherhood is one of the most rewarding, but demanding jobs on the planet. Outside of the day-to-day tasks that we need to do to keep another human alive, there’s also the “mental load” that keeps us working even longer after our kiddos have settled down for the night. Being a working, single mom of a…
I expected sleep regressions, I did. I was prepared for them when my son was six weeks old and didn’t really have a sleep schedule yet. I expected it at three months, six months, eight months, 12 months and even 18 months, just like Google and the books told me. But I did not expect…
The number one indication that a child will do well in school early on is if they have strong literacy skills. When you consider all the subjects taught in school, all of them involve reading. Sometimes a child’s only real struggles is reading, but with reading being such a big part of every subject, they…
The thing I dread most as the warm days of summer draw to an end and the air holds the hint of an autumn chill…is packing school lunch. I live in Upstate New York, our children go to school when there’s 3 feet of snow on the ground, and they have recess as long as…
As a male elementary school teacher, I have encountered just about everything you can imagine over the years. I have taught kindergarten through junior high students with most of my teaching spent with 2nd to 4th-grade kids. For unknown reasons to me, it always seemed that I would have the most troubled students placed in…
