Early one morning, Thomas started his day by pestering all of us to tell him a scary story. He tried me, Tom, and eventually landed on David as the most likely to come up with something good. They were sitting together eating waffles for breakfast and even though Thomas had been told no several times
Anna started speech therapy recently. So far it’s been really cool to learn about speech and sounds along with her. We’re all learning lots about things like fronting, gliding, stopping, replacing, deleting, and lots of other phonological processes. Anna’s therapist is awesome, and teaches Anna to show us how to correctly say things. Basically, she
I don’t know if all kids go through this phase, but all of MY kids go through a phase where they write random letters in a line and ask me what it says. It hits right at the moment where they realize that the letters and letter sounds they’ve been learning have magical powers. These
Right around the end of August, the laziness of summer starts to feel gluttonous instead of luxurious, and mom decides it’s time to whip our ship into shape. Mostly, this means taking the controls around screentime from Bluey. This doesn’t mean our family is never on screens, it just means Anna and I are working
Thomas is almost six, which means he’s at the apex of the picky-eater curve that all of my kids have traveled. They start out as adventurous eaters that’ll try literally everything and then consume almost everything they try. Then they realize, around 18 months, that they have a choice in the matter, and why would
At a recent doctor’s appointment, our pediatrician was rolling through some general healthy habits for five-year old kids. She was talking through recommendations about stuff like exercise, screen time, eating vegetables, drinking a glass of water with every meal and snack, and, hmmm, hey doctor? Any thoughts on the benefits of wearing a pair of
We aren’t a condiment family. Did you know that? Nearly 10 years of blogging and I’ve never mentioned it. Tom doesn’t like mayonnaise — that’s generally well-known. But neither Tom nor I like ketchup, and we could take or leave most everything else. Tom doesn’t even use salad dressing. (As with everything, I’m much less
One morning after breakfast, I was standing at the counter washing dishes and Anna crawled under the kitchen table. She looked up at the underside of the table and asked, “What’s this, Mommy?” I answered her broadly, not sure if she was asking about the base of the table or pointing at a screw or
I realized the other day that I included Anna in her very first Semantics post without absolutely any pomp and circumstance or even a mention. Anna is talking a lot these days, and even though a lot of what she says only a mother (or 5-year-old brother) can understand, she’s grown a lot since we took
Soon we will all embark on the strangest year of school in recent history. Some kids are going to school at school, some kids are going to school in the mornings on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and some kids are going to school via an Internet connection. And some kids? Some kids are being homeschooled