crazedparent

Cooking with kids...

So the peeps over at Blogging Baby have pretty much covered the weekend NYT with its many many stories about kids. I won't rehash, gets me too fired up. So check out their posts about rude kids and online tools for divorcing parents.

They did miss one article that happened to be my favorite story...Writer Patricia Leigh Brown wrote a wonderful piece about taking her son to Oaxaca, Mexico for a cooking class. Gabe, her  11-year old boy, is a chef in the making. Check out A Budding Chef Gets a Taste of Mexico. It's so sweet. One of the reasons I enjoyed reading it is because Nolan loves to cook as well and I hope to someday take him to the same school in Oaxaca.

Let's just hope Nolan has a better experience than poor Gabe!

Blogosphere: best of blogs...

They say good things come in small packages (like little blue boxes). This good thing comes in the form of a paper back book.

Peter Kuhns and Adrienne Crew just released their book, Blogophere: Best of Blogs sizing up, well duh, the best blogs on the web. Lo and behold, who should be listed????

Crazedparent.

That's right. This wee little blog I started more than a year ago is listed as one of the best parenting blogs on the web. Dig it.

Other blogging peeps listed are DotMoms,  The Mommy Blog by Mindy and My Whim is Law by Betsy.

Toot toot, props to the peeps, whoo-hooo, yeah-boy!

Giving thanks...

Happy Turkey Day (or Tur ducken day if you're BMC)!!

I love Thanksgiving Day. It's my favorite holiday of the year because it's all about spending time with the peeps you love and grubbin' good eats. And what I love most is thinking about all the people and things that bring me the most bliss in my life. Yo, I'm talkin' about givin' thanks.

What am I most thankful for?

-My gorgeous, sweet and eternally wonderful husband. Thanksgiving always brings one single, very special memory...it's when I fell madly in love with man that I would later marry. Our courtship began 16 years ago this weekend. 16 YEARS and we've been inseparable. (And for those of you trying to calcuate how old I am, we were 17 when we starting dating, okay?)

-My adorable, cute-as-buttons, melt-your-heart little boys...Nolan and Quin are my heart and soul. I'm blessed to have these such happy, spirited sons who bring me nothing by joy and crankiness, all day, every day.

-My family...immediate and in-laws. I'm a lucky gal who has many folks to love for many reasons. And with all the disasters and sadness that have wreaked havoc on our world this year, I'm especially thankful that my family is healthy and safe.

-New friends...I've made some wondeful new friends this year. But Qui-qui-ri-qui and her family rock. I've always been one to think that everything happens for a reason. And I believe one of the reasons I gave birth to little Q. on the day I did was first, because the child needed to damn well get out of my belly and second, to bring a new friend into my world. She's like a long, lost sister. 

-Getting the Axe...Go Bears! Just gotta love my Golden Bears treadin' all over the Cardinals on their own turf. HAH!

-Givin' the Axe...That's right. I gave my old company that axe and said adios to corporate America. All so I could do what I love most...write.

-Dr. Noah Drake coming back to General Hospital...so what that I don't have a television and will probably never see Rick Springfield's return to his infamous role. He's still a hottie.

My list can go on for days. What are you most thankful for this year?

Gimme, gimme...

The words many of us will be hearing from here until Christmas. The dreaded "gimme that!"..."I want this toy!" Hate it. Any time we go out and Nol sees something he wants, I just say 'put it on the list," referring to The Santa List, which is great because he'll completely forget about it in two seconds. But I need to do a better job teaching him that Christmas is not about what we get, it's what we give too...beyone material things. And as for what HE gets...that's another story.

CNN has a good story about how to deal with "gimme" syndrome.

Lookin' good Mr. Kotter...

Psst... Hey you. Have you seen the latest look of DotMoms? Ouch! Hot stuff.

Seriously, I've been a part of DotMoms for more than a year and some fantastic things are happening. But it all starts with Julie Moos who created DotMoms and continues with the wonderfully talented writers.

Pay DotMoms a visit today, will ya?

Stone soup...

I got an email from Nol's preschool teacher asking the parents to bring in ingredients to make stone soup this week in the Thanksgiving spirit.

"Nolan!" I said with excitement. "You're going to make stone soup this week!" Now, keep in mind I'd never even heard of stone soup before but it sounded like fun. He answered back "No mama! I don't want stone soup! It has rocks in it! I don't want to eat rocks."

I laughed and told him he was being silly. His teacher wouldn't cook a soup with rocks in it. Hah! Imagine my surprise when I picked him up and saw the big-ass stone sitting in the soup tureen. Turns out Stone Soup is a children's literary classic by Marcia Brown, but based on a fable. Even won the esteemed Caldecott Medal. They'd been reading the book at school for the past week.

It also turns out that along with onions, carrots, celery, broth, barely and potatos, you cook the soup with a stone. It was pretty tasty too...the soup, not the stone. As with all cool things he does at school, Nol brought the concept home by picking up rocks along the stroll to the crazedparent casa and getting out his cooking gear to make his own version of stone soup.

You learn something new everday. Maybe I need to go back to preschool.

Make your own stone soup by checking out this recipe via the wonderful FamilyFun.

An imperfect world...

Now this is the kind of thing we need to hear more of as parents..."imperfection is okay."

Check out what author and psychologist Rob Evans had to say to an auditorium filled with parents in Wellesley, Mass. about letting your kids fail...

"The invitation to fail and learn from mistakes is a crucial building block to the ability to cope with disappointment, he said. But opportunities to fail are too infrequent in today's climate of perfection-driven, fix-it parenting, Evans said.

Pressure to have perfect children who can compete in a more complex economy and world which offers more choices has led to unparalleled freedom. But it comes at a price, he said. When choices were fewer, certainty was easier to come by."

Do you feel pressure to have the perfect child?

Modern love and such...

Lots of good reads for parents this weekend in The New York Times.

My picks...

-The Problem with an Almost-Perfect Genetic World...writer Amy Harmon looks at the challenges posed with genetic testing.

-The Prodigy Puzzle...Fantastic feature in the Sunday magazine. Is your kid a genius? Check out the lives of the few mentioned in this story.

- Sending a Lost Boy to the Wilderness to Find Himself...This comes from the Modern Love column and it's a tear-jerker story about a mom and dad forced to send their 14-year-old son to a wilderness camp because he's becoming a danger to the family and to himself. It's one of those stories you read and think, "what would I do?"

Enjoy!

And then come the school projects...

Conan Knoll, editor of Freelance News, thought he was a top-notch parent. Until her son brought home a school project. The most recent? Building a ship. Knoll riffs on the fact that to build this ship requires her son's use of some pretty adult gear...and Xacto knife and glue gun. Ouch.

"Look, I’ve spent years saying, “Don’t touch, it’s hot,” or, “Don’t touch, it’s sharp.” Why would I suddenly arm my child with lethal weapons? I prefer to help out and lie like a rug to the teacher when asked if Junior did the entire project alone.

Oh, unless Junior’s teacher is reading this, of course. Then I want to assure you that Junior did his recent project entirely by himself. And you probably should just stop reading this right now and head on over to the cooking column where she has some yummy recipes today.

Check out the full story here...next up on her son's list is building a mission. Can't wait to hear that story.

Any good school project stories? Do tell.

A well-loved bod...

Mindy over at The Mommy Blog posted a beautifully written story on DotMoms...In "A Mommy's Body is Well-loved," she explains to her kids how the remnants of baby belly, c-section scars and stretch marks are the signs of a well-loved mama. It's one of the sweetest stories I've read.

After describing the difference between a worn book and book that hasn't been touched, she writes:

"A mother's body is the same way. It has wrinkles and stretches and soft places it didn't have when it was just a girl's body. Those are all the signs of a well-loved body. Each of you has left your marks on me, and I wear those marks with pride and love."

Post-baby tummy bulge is one of those things that really never goes away (unless you're Posh Spice or Catherine Zeta Jones and get a tummy tuck right after you deliver). You could do 1,000 crunches a day for months and that little pudge never. goes. away.

A few years after the first baby, you start to notice your tummy is a bit flatter. But then you go and have number baby number two, and it takes a little longer to get those abs back into shape. If you have three and four? Kiss it goodbye.

So Mindy's article is espeically perfect because it's a nice way for moms to think of our pudgy tummies in a positive way. The mommy badge of honor...