Tag: Children
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Morning Ambushed Me
I’m sitting at the kitchen table on this Christmas Eve morning, chatting with the Little Man and First Reader, patting the cat or the dog when they come within my arm’s reach. It is a pleasant sensation to be here, now, even if I did wake up far too early. I was out of…
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Love and Petnames
I let the dog in from the back porch, and told her with all affection that she is a filthy animal. Which she is. Earlier this year she began a long project of excavating an impressive wallow in my back flower garden (coffweedbedcoff) and she had been rolling in the dust. I then carried…
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Equilibrium
I’m feeling like perhaps I’m reaching some semblance of routine. It will take weeks, if not months, for me to be fully trained and comfortable at the new job. It’s just different enough to be a fresh challenge in ways I hadn’t anticipated… and the cold office isn’t helping any. I did go out…
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The Privilege of Motherhood
The Little Man rolled out of bed and hit the ground talking this morning. “Would you buy me cookie dough mix?” “Why?” “So I can make cookies.” “Why not from scratch?” “I don’t think you want me making cookies from scratch.” “Yes, I do. Why do you need cookies? Did you commit to making cookies…
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Consequence Parenting
The Little Man couldn’t find his favorite sweatjacket this morning. It turned him into the Tasmanian Devil. He was running around the house pulling out drawers, rifling through closets, and yelling back at his sister that he did put it on the coatrack where it was supposed to be. It’s a mystery. I suspect he’ll…
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The Value of Easy
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live life on the easy setting. I tend to find myself deliberately doing things the hard way, and challenging myself with the life-choices I’ve made. Take college, for instance. I chose to go back to it, after a 20 year hiatus, to obtain a degree that…
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Repost: Women and Children First
This was originally published on my blog on Dec 9, 2014, but was lost in the hosting shift. So here it is again, and none the worse for being three years old. If you’re looking for the science and speculation, that’s over on the Mad Genius Club post today, where I continue to talk about…
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Curmudgeon’s Corner: White, Black, and Rusty Knights
This is a repost, it was originally published on the Otherwhere Gazette on Aug. 13. 2015 Written by Sanford Begley Knights: the term has meaning that has come down from the Age of Chivalry. Of course the meaning has changed somewhat, and keeps evolving. The term black knight originally meant someone who was sworn to…
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Chore Lists
Keeping a house running takes a lot of work, and with both parents working full time outside the house, the kids can help. Motivation can sometimes be difficult… Rather than pay the kids allowances, I’m coming up with special chores they can do, and be paid for. They have some that they are expected to…
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Home Executive: The Product
If I’m going to continue in the vein of the home as a business, which is what this series has been doing, I need to consider what a business does, having already touched on how it does it. A business provides some sort of service or product, which in turn brings in a profit for…
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Mother’s Day
It’s the day we celebrate motherhood. I am a mother myself, and I find that today I am remembering those first months of motherhood, before the birth, when I was trying my best to prepare as much as possible for what was coming. I couldn’t possibly prepare myself, but I tried, reading books, talking to…
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Curmudgeon’s Corner: Love is… One Man’s Opinion
Written by Sanford Begley In the seventies most papers carried a series of Love Is… cartoons, mostly things like cooking together or sharing a drink, that sort of thing. All of these were visible things that people in love could do. Sadly, they never really said what love is, just things people in love could…