I have finally reached the holy grail of motherhood: both of my kids are in school all day, in the same place. No more dropping one at eight am and one at nine am, no more twelve o’clock preschool pickups and three o’clock grade school pickups. more

I don’t generally pride myself on my parenting. I try to do the best I can, and sometimes I achieve that goal and sometimes I don’t. For the most part, however, I think I pass the basic minimum requirements of good parenting: more

It’s Valentine’s Day. My children just got home from school, and I’m trying to figure out when “I love you” became synonymous with “I hope you die of a sugar overdose.” I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, Valentine’s Day meant giving cheap little cards with pictures of Snoopy or Miss Piggy or the Incredible Hulk to everyone in the class (and that means everyone, including the boy who used to lick his locker and the girl who insisted on talking like a horse), so that nobody’s feelings got hurt. more

Over the summer, I wrote about how my son was diagnosed with Amblyopia, commonly known as “lazy eye,” and how the treatment for it involves wearing a hideous patch over one lens of his glasses while playing a special “video game” designed to strengthen his other eye. more

My son made his first basket during a basketball game on Sunday. This was a momentous occasion. You see, my son is not one of those boys who lives for sports. more

Pretty much everyone, by now, has heard about the Tiger Mother and her evil parenting ways, but if you haven’t, here’s the recap: The Tiger Mother, a/k/a Amy Chua, a Chinese-American professor at Yale Law School, wrote a book called Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, an excerpt of which ran in the Wall Street Journal last Saturday, with the title Why Chinese Mothers are Superior. more

A friend of mine confided in me recently that her son’s teacher is a yeller. However, she didn’t find this out from her son. Instead, another mom in the class called her to ask if her son had ever mentioned that the teacher yelled, because this other mom’s kid complained about it a lot. more

2011 is not sitting well with me. My brain, apparently, is no longer willing to accept the passage of time, and so in a kind of uber-denial, it’s settled on a permanent age of thirty-three. more

After eight and a half years, I have finally surrendered. I fought hard, I fought courageously, and I fought smart, but alas, the terrorists have won. more

Before we had kids, my husband and I both couldn’t stand the holidays. The fake merriness, the endless holiday parties that took over our weekends and prevented us from seeing movies, the obligatory gift giving. more