CurrentMom

The Case of the Missing Ziti: Baked Ziti Recipe

Meal Monday

What was wrong this time? I had no clue. With their limited vocabulary of "hi," "nana," "dis," "d'ere," and "wow," I knew I wasn't going to get an answer.

Grumbling to myself, I began to make them a cream cheese and jelly sandwich.  The purple and white flag of defeat.

Earlier in the day, instead of doing laundry, catching up on phone calls, or taking a rest during their nap, I cooked the trips dinner. I made something that was new to them, but included some of their proven faves: pasta, cheese, and spinach. The only new element was tomato sauce. But I already knew that the kids like ketchup, so was it really a stretch?

Starting a New Business: Ready for the Second Act

Startup Sunday

 

For whatever reason, the number two has always figured in my life. You know, I was born on the 22nd. I'm the mother of twins. Goofy stuff like that. Well, as it's turned out, it's taken me just about two years to figure out what new direction my life should take.

My second act, if you will.

Now don't get me wrong. I haven't been just sitting around, mulling, all of this time. You know, that twins thing.

Indeed, my daughters were a major reason I had stepped away from my job as a features editor at a large daily newspaper, two -- yeah, there it is again -- years ago. Since then, I've been taking all the energy and brainpower that I once deployed running a department and turning it instead into swim lessons and field trips, homework and art projects, new "mom" friends and important milestones.

Still, my four year olds are now six. They're reading, dressing themselves, telling silly jokes and then cracking themselves up. At school, they were each named Citizen of the Month -- one for January and the other March.

They are moving forward nicely -- so should I.

Selfish or Selfless Education

Fatherhood Friday

I used to live in the Washington D.C. area. As my oldest son starting approaching school-age, many colleagues of mine who had children ranging from high school to post-college said something to the tune of "you're sending him to private school, right?"

Now, the public schools where we lived were considered top-notch. Plus, my wife and I were both public school products and are strong believers in public schools. The idea of spending $25,000 a year for perhaps an incrementally better education struck me as far-fetched.

Fast forward a few years, where we've moved to the Midwest. When we moved here we were in temporary housing. Not knowing where we would ultimately settle down we enrolled our son at the community religious school. While not $25,000 it was still a considerable cost. But it gave us some stability. 

I also realized the religious education was important to me (and my wife). I never had it, and I take great joy in seeing his awareness, pride and grounding take shape. Perhaps equally important, I derived great value in what it provided the family - namely, a sense of place in a new community. We were quickly welcomed into the community, making great friends and feeling part of something bigger.

The downside is our concerns about the secular instruction. We have some serious concerns about the quality of the education, compounded by the very, very small class size. In short, we're not sure that he's going to be consistently challenged in a well-rounded setting. (The town where we ultimately settled has excellent public schools.)

So, today, we're wrestling with where the priorities ought to be. How to balance the desire for religious education, community and grounding (very much admittedly for both him and us) with the need for a very strong general education? Not to mention the cost factor too. 

Is it selfish or selfless to keep him in the private religious school? Of course this is a very personal decision that each family must make on its own based on its own values and priorities. That said, I'd be curious to hear about your thoughts and experiences.

(Photo credit: babble.com)

Exceeding Our Competence

Image by NASA Goddard Photo and Video via Flickr

Technology Thursday

The disaster in the Gulf has been riveting - in a truly horrifying way. It shows us that our reach exceeds our grasp, insofar as we undertake activities that have catastrophic (albeit--hopefully--rare) failure modes that we don't know how to cope with. The risks we are willing to take, in other words, exceed our risk mitigation and disaster management capabilities. As the toxic oil and gas continues to gush into the Gulf (at the rate, some suggest, of one Exxon Valdez very 2-3 days; some suggest much less and there's controversy over the calculation, regardless), most of us can only sit and watch, stunned, as images of encroaching devastation approach vital coastlines.

After 9/11, the singer-songwriter Bob Hillman wrote a song about the World Trade Center attacks and the towers falling. In it, he sang about being far away and watching the same image over and over on the television:

Lights, Camera, Action: A Working Mom's Imaginary Home Movie

Work Wednesday

When I woke up on Sunday morning, my husband steered me to the front-page New York Times article, "Families' Every Fuss, Archived and Analyzed." "It's fascinating," he said. He was right.

The Times piece reported on the findings of a study by researchers at U.C.L.A.'s Center on Everyday Lives of Families who spent one week videotaping "nearly every, at-home moment" in the lives of 32 families from the Los Angeles area over a three-year period. The goal of the study was to "capture capture a relatively new sociological species: the dual-earner, multiple-child, middle-class American household." In other words, my family.

The 1,450 hours of video - and the article - contained a ton of data about the way we live now: "a fire shower of stress, multitasking and mutual nitpicking," according to the Times. Some of it unsurprising. Like the fact that mothers still do most of the housework, spending 27 percent of their time on it, on average, compared with 18 percent for fathers and 3 percent for children. Some of it unpredictable. For example, the fact that mothers were more likely to be watching TV when alone with a child than fathers, who were more likely to be engaged in some activity. Huh? Some of it eye-opening. Like the correlation between clutter on the fridge door and the amount of clutter elsewhere in the house. (If you can't get enough, you can read more about the study in UCLA Today.) And all of it disturbing.

Sunday's story made me wonder about what the U.C.L.A researchers might have caught on tape had they filmed my family. I'd like to think that we're happier and less harried than the families described in the article. Then, again, we all have our moments. And, thankfully, most of them aren't captured on video for anthropological and archaeological excavation. (Yes, the team included a U.C.L.A. archaeologist who counted objects and measured storage space to explore the effects of consumerism on family life.)

Still, I thought I could imagine some revealing family moments based on some of the observations in the article. So, I did, keeping in mind the team of researchers filming in the background. Any resemblance to real individuals, dead or alive, including my own family, of course, is unintentional. This is entirely a work of fiction . . . .