I’m finally dating after my divorce — and my six-year-old loves it
A few productive, insightful, sadly celibate years rolled by after my divorce, and then it happened: I meet a fella. I couldn’t even believe it was happening… until my now six-year-old asked me if I have a boyfriend. When I said yes, she asked to meet him.
Stop letting your kid’s freedom of speech be taken away
As parents, I think we should teach our kids all due caution, but there should be outrage here, too. Outrage that their childhoods — their ability to make bad choices and act stupid and be young — is actively being taken from them. Our kids have to live in constant fear and under a constant scrutiny that no other generation has suffered beneath (and no generation should) to the point that, even in their youth they must act with either the constant maturity of adults, or at least under a constant curtain of paranoia.
I didn’t know if I wanted to be “Mama”
I just held out the test going, “OhmygodLOOKohmygodLOOK” at which point we both burst into tears. He hugged me tightly and said, “Congratulations, Mama!” Mama? No. Call me anything, I thought, but not mama.
How do you feel about being Facebook friends with kids?
My first encounter with kids on Facebook happened a year ago when one of the boys in my daughter’s class sent me a “friend” request on Facebook. He was nine years old. I’m Facebook “friends” with one of his dads, so I accepted the request. This has me wondering: do you think it’s ok to be friends with a minor on Facebook?
How can I safely use the internet to update my family members about our kid?
What’s the best way to digitally share news about your kid with family members? We have a few privacy concerns (primarily about keeping our work lives and private lives separate). Should we start an “old-fashioned” blog? Email updates? Flickr with privacy settings? Facebook friend lists? Tumblr for photo updates? There are so many choices!
Writing a book helped me grow
I found myself in a post-baby slump and realized exactly what activity I needed to do: NaNoWriMo. The month of November is National Novel Writing Month. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) book in 30 days. This comes out to 1667 words a day. The novel can be on anything you want. No one needs to read it. It’s a writing exercise. I have participated in NaNoWriMo a total of five times.
How tubal ligation fits into our family planning
Here I was, ready to talk to a doctor about getting a tubal ligation at twenty-three and with no children. Many doctors will not even consider doing a tubal on a woman unless she is over 30 and/or already has children; they worry that she will one day change her mind. Yet my husband and I had known for months that this was what we wanted.
Leaving motherhood out of conversations
Why do I hurl myself into a defensive monologue about why I don’t want to work with kids? Why does the defensive part of my brain override every other avenue the conversation might have taken? Why don’t I focus on what I DO want to do instead of focusing on what I don’t want?