Tag: single parent

  • Best Piece of Advice I Ever Received. Period.

    This is the 4th part in my series on the best advice I’ve received. Friends, we have arrived at #1 in the countdown. Drumroll please… The best piece of advice I’ve ever received is: Build a life from which you don’t need a vacation. (I’ll add that I strongly support taking vacations anyway…😉) But how…

  • Best Piece of Advice I Ever Received, Part 3

    And the runner up for Best Piece of Advice I Ever Received is….. “Don’t negotiate against yourself.” An acquaintance (with whom I was involved in a transaction) gave me this advice. She delivered the advice delivered off-handedly while passed each other on a run. Bells instantly rang in my head. Those bells reverberated through me…

  • Best Advice I’ve Ever Received, Part 1

    This is the first part of a series on the best advice I’ve ever received. Over the next four weeks, I’ll write about statements that have altered my life and inspired me for years. Although it’s impossible to rank their importance, I will attempt to count them down, Casey Kasem style. “And coming in at…

  • All the Memberships

    I’m the kind of mom who buys all the memberships.  Science center, botanical garden, zoo: if you can name it, I will buy a membership to it.  I know a family who buys only one membership per year. They go to that place once a month for 12 months and then buy a different membership for the…

  • Interdependence Day

    Today is the 4th of July. It is a great day because I woke up healthy. Three years ago, I feared that I might not. I was in the emergency room, listening intently to the young doctor who had just examined my CT scan. “You have five masses in your abdomen,” she stated perfunctorily. “It…

  • A Pride Month Story

    “Could you hand me those Barbie dolls?” my son asked. “Sure,” I replied, trying to hide my surprise. Not surprise that he would play with Barbies—even my brother had one that he would carry everywhere while he trailed after me. But until now, my son had completely neglected these dolls. Suddenly he was asking for…

  • Excuse Me: I Have an Announcement to Make

    How old does your child have to be before you remember not to declare loudly, “I’m going to go pee in the potty!” when you are with a group of adults? #askingforafriend

  • Visual Calendars Rock

    In my recent post “Where the Wild Kids Are,” I discussed my how I equip myself for life with a super-active child. A visual calendar is another essential in our household. I bought this set of SchKIDules magnets with pictures of all of our common daily activities: I then bought several portable, magnetic dry-erase boards…

  • What’s in your boots?

    This morning as my son was putting his rain boots on, he stopped abruptly. “There’s something in my boot.” I picked up the boot and turned it over, expecting to find a rock. Instead, four cherry tomatoes rolled onto the floor. I picked one off of the ground and saw that it was moldy. “Did…

  • How to become your child’s hero

    What have I done to become a hero to my son? It’s nothing I ever imagined. I thought he hear me in a concert and think how cool it was to have a musician-mom. Or he would see me running a marathon and say, “That’s my mom!” But be has watched those things for his…