's Blog

Yesterday was a pretty normal day at our house.  I went to work.  The boys went to school.  Speed had a play date for the afternoon.  Whiz went to soccer practice.  We made a trip to WholeFoods on our way home…  Through it all, everyone seemed happy and healthy.  That is, until we sat down for dinner.

At dinner Speed was sitting at the table in front of his favorite meal in the world but wouldn’t eat a bite.  He kept saying “I’m too sleepy to eat”.  “I’m too sleepy to eat”.  I’ve been at this a few years now and I know that there’s no such thing as “too sleepy to eat”.  For once I’m a step ahead of him and I see through his ploy to leave the dinner table early and play.  I calmly said “Listen Speed.  You can stay at the table and eat dinner with our family or you can go up to bed.  Those are your only choices”.  Without a word he left the table and headed up to his room.  Deep inside I knew it had all been too easy, but still I began congratulating myself on my brilliant mothering. 

About 20 minutes later it occurred to me that I hadn’t heard anything from the littlest monster (unheard of).  (more…)

Thanks so much to all who have commented to our new blog so far.  As promised we’re cleaning out our ‘treasure chest’ and active readers reap the rewards!

Congrats to this weeks winners!  Kim F. will be receiving Playmobil’s new Circus Ring - a really cool toy big top complete with trapeze artists, a ticket booth, and a lit stage.  Playmobil sets the stage and your kid’s imagination brings it to life!  Pam S. will be receiving Lego’s Technic Cherry Picker.  With a working motor and battery box, these are not your daddy’s Legos!

 Also, I saw a cute blog post about another mom’s first day of kindergarten experience that I thought you all might enjoy.  Click here to read it.  (And she also seems to be a fan of Education.com which is always nice!)

Keep leaving comments….more winners will be announced next week.

Hope you’re all settling into the new school year!

I love Education.com’s back to school gear guide but I was feeling a little jealous that all the gear was for the kids!  Don’t we moms deserve a little treat for keeping the little darlings in one piece all summer and getting them back to the class room clean and healthy with all their supplies purchased and their lunch boxes packed?

One of my best girlfriends just sent me the perfect back-to-school mom gift and suddenly I’m not feeling quite as left out.   It’s a Busy Body Family Organizer.  Yes, I realize it’s sad - ok pathetic - that I’m this juiced about a calendar but …that’s my life right now!  The thing that makes the “BB Book” (as we now call it) is the way the weekly calendar pages are organized - kind of a chart with a column for each family member and a row for each day of the week.  So every morning I can look across a row to see what we have to accomplish as a fearsome foursome.  I can also take periodic looks down each column to make sure neither of my kids is too overbooked for the week.  It’s also pretty stylish and has some fun features like space to write your favorite take out places (not that I’VE ever had a last minute “there’s nothing for dinner” emergency). 

If you’re in the market for a new calendar, check this one out!

I mentioned that I’m volunteering at Whiz’s school for lunch duty once a week.  So far so good, but I just want to say that I think whoever designed individual string cheese packaging should be tied to a chair in an elementary school cafeteria for a 24 hour period and forced to listen to 72 children calling out (with a shrillness only the under 10 set can achieve)….

“Whiz’sMom! can you open my string cheese?” 

“Whiz’sMom!  can you open my string cheese PUUULLEEEZZZEEE?”

“Whiz’sMom - I’m STARVING!  Can you please open my string cheese?” 

“Whiz’sMom!  I can’t open my cheese! Can you heeeelllllp meeeeeee?????”

Why do they even bother printing “pull here” on the package when they know very well those two tabs are never going to pull apart to release that cheese.  They know the opening adult is going to have to resort to scissors or their own teeth so printing “pull here” really just adds insult to injury. 

And there are other kid product packages that seem to have been designed specifically with parental torture in mind right?  What the beeeeepppppp are those metal twist tie things that are voluminously fastened to every toy my kids get?  And is there not a better way to wrap a miniature straw and attach it to the side of a juice box?  Do the designers of those little gems not know that 83% of those straws are opened by someone driving a mini van that’s going 42 miles an hour?!?

So that’s something I’d like to see show up in an upcoming presidential debate…Who’s got the power to make a law that says products packaged for kids have to be able to be opened by kids? 

And for everyone out there packing lunches please have a little mercy on the volunteer lunch lady and skip the string cheese!

By the way, here’s an article on Education.com with lots of fun lunch ideas.  My kids tried the MightyMunch kids meals and loved them. 

What kid products have you used that make YOUR life harder or more frustrating?  What do your kids use that you LOVE because it makes your life easier?  Share your best kid product tips here in a comment.  We’ll choose one commenter at random to win a prize from the Education.com treasure chest (an office full of toys, books, and kid-gear galore).  Be sure to include your email on the comment form so we can contact you if you win (it won’t appear on the website). 

Yesterday was Whiz’s first day of first grade.  As I’ve mentioned, I was pretty anxious about the whole thing, but he had an absolutely smashing day. 

I was at his school at lunch time (I’m volunteering for lunch and recess duty on Wednesdays…can you believe it?  I VOLUNTEERED to be “the lunch lady”.  Am I out of my mind?)  His teacher came up to me with a funny look on her face and said “This morning I asked the students to introduce themselves to the class by telling us something they love.  So they’d say ‘I’m Jimmy and I love pizza’ or ‘I’m Kate and I love soccer’.  When it was Whiz’s turn he proudly stood up and said “I’m Whiz and I love my teacher.” - that’s right ladies and gentlemen, I’m raising Eddie Haskell. (more…)

Ladies and Gentlemen start your engines…it’s officially back to school time!  Things are pretty busy around the Eden household these days.  We’ve got our uniforms, we’ve got our school supplies, we have new lunch boxes and back packs, we’ve met our new teachers, and we are ready to go.  Whiz (a rising first grader) and Speed (a continuing preschooler) could not be more excited.  As far as I can tell, not an ounce of anxiety between them.

So why am I, a woman whose school days are far behind her, so incredibly freaked out about the first day of school?  For the last three nights I’ve been having school anxiety dreams.  Maybe you know the ones?  In one I’m in college and I’m trying to get to class but I keep getting delayed by silly things and end up arriving hours late.  In one I’m in my high school musical (and I’ve never even seen the movie!) but I forgot to practice and I’m getting ready to go on stage without knowing a single line.  And in the most troubling of all, I find myself in math class astonishingly…um…under-dressed and can’t figure out how to leave the room without anyone noticing me.  (more…)

I think most of us, when we put the “For Rent” sign out in front of our womb and decide to have a baby, understand that there are going to be some pretty significant sacrifices involved in the raising of little people.  We know there will be a toll on our bodies, sleepless nights, some degree of change to our career path, and of course, finding a way to pay for college.  But I have yet to meet anyone who claims to have been prepared for all the tiny sacrifices they end up making in the name of being a good parent.

I think my brother holds the gold medal in the tiny sacrifice competition for the time he drank the juice out of his toddler’s jar of “meat sticks” so she could eat them during take off on an airplane trip.  (I know…unfathomable right?) (more…)

Dear Google,

I have the perfect idea for your next killer app.  What the world really needs is an online dating service for families.  No, I’m not talking about some creepy SwingTown enabler, I’m talking about a site that will help families find compatible families to spend time with. 

I’m not trying to take attention away from singles.  I get that it’s rough out there.   You’ve spent a lifetime building a list of the traits you want in a life partner and it seems impossible that you’ll be able to find the needle in your haystack of desire.  But now imagine you’re a family of four - making your list of demands four times as long - and you’re looking for a perfect match with another family of four who’s list is equally long.  It’s a daunting task!

When two people decide to become a couple it can be as simple as mutual attraction and having enough in common to pull together a weekend of activities enjoyable for both. 

When two families get together it’s because the wives like each other, the husbands like each other, each wife likes the other husband (not too much), each husband likes the other wife (not too much), the couples have roughly the same number of kids and those kids are roughly the same ages, none of the children has an unexplainable aversion to any of the other children, the families have roughly the same amount of money so one one feels uncomfortable entertaining or traveling with the other, the parents have similar parenting styles so no one family gets driven crazy by the other family’s kids, they live a reasonable minivan ride apart from each other, the moms have similar work (or not work) schedules, there are no pet incompatibilities, and there are no Yankees/Redsox fan issues.

Are you exhausted yet?  (more…)

Yesterday it was 97 degrees. I was already sweating when I got dressed for my run. (Those who know me understand that I say “run” because it’s more efficient than saying “a-fast-walk-that-lets-me-listen-to-music-that’s-not-about-farm-animals- for-thirty-minutes”).

Anyway, to try to beat the heat I threw on a cropped exercise top that I have to admit I usually reserve for yoga classes and headed downstairs.

My six year old (who I’ll call Whiz in these posts - as in ‘Whiz Kid’ because I sometimes worry he’s a twinge smarter than I am) met me at the bottom and said “Mom. Why do you not have on a bigger shirt?”. (Cute how he said that huh? … “bigger shirt”).
I confidently said “Well, it’s ninety-seven degrees out and I’m going for a run. Is that a problem?”

“Yeah.” He said “It’s a problem”.

Stare down.

(more…)

I haven’t properly introduced my three year old.  To protect his “innocence” (ha!) I’ll call him Speed in these posts.  When my husband introduces our kids to people he calls our six year old “our son most likely to become a lawyer” and Speed “our son most likely to need one”. 

Getting Speed organized to get out of the house is almost always a huge and exhausting ordeal.  Yesterday was no different.  He couldn’t get dressed (every outfit I proposed was “not beautiful enough”), he couldn’t find the shoes he wanted (“the fast ones”) and worst of all he couldn’t find Spider Man (we never leave home without him). 

I was starting to lose it a little and finally puffed “Speed, if we don’t leave the house six minutes ago you’re going to be late for camp.  And I’m going to be late for work”!

He screeched to a halt from a dead run right in front of me, looked me in the eye, and calmly said, “Mom…Don’t Panic”.   (more…)