A New Year, Lots to Celebrate in 2013

It's 2013 and I can proudly say that I've made no resolutions, although I have made a few, um, suggestions for myself for the new year.

As I skimmed through my brand, spankin' new 2013 calendar -- trying to ignore that nagging, superstitious feeling that anything with the number 13 is inherently unlucky -- and was taken aback when I realized several things:

I completely forgot to book my kids' annual doctor's appointments last year. Whoops.

My eldest two kids are not only going into high school this fall, but are going to turn 15 this summer.

Our "puppy" will turn 4 this spring.

Easter is very early this year.

Oh, and 2013 will mark the year that I become a published novelist. Seriously. Remember that book I talked about earlier, Mortified: A Novel About Oversharing? Well, it's going to be published this spring. More deets on this later . . .

After I marked down all the birthdays and anniversaries on the calendar, I thought about 2012 and what promises the new year holds and came up with several things we've got goin' on in the plus column:

-- I made it through Christmas without getting the swine flu or a stomach bug, both of which have sullied previous celebrations of Yuletide splendor.

-- The Youngest Boy did NOT freak out when he discovered that there was NOT a bow-and-arrow set beneath the Christmas tree. Katniss, he is not.

-- The older two went to a boy-girl New Year's Eve party while The Spouse, The Youngest Boy and I ate Chinese food (the adults had the take-out, the kid had leftover pizza . . . because I've been a lazy chef as of late. No judging!) and watched the second Lord of the Rings film, The Two Towers, because we wanted to have a quiet, family evening, save for our partying teens.

-- Our ice rink (pictured above) is actually operational! Longtime Picket Fence Post readers know that the subject of our backyard ice rink has been a source of tremendous angst for The Spouse, with the exception of one, spectacular year (the same year I got swine flu for Christmas, apparently because I'd been a wicked girl during the prior 12 months). Our history when it comes to this brand of home recreation is, shall we say, checkered, thus my joy at the fact that kids are actually SKATING on the rink into which The Spouse has invested so much money time.

-- The Spouse and I are both gainfully employed on a full-time basis. I'm currently on winter break from the university where I teach and am busily working on new syllabi for the spring semester. I'm very enthused about a course I'm developing.

Things in the minus column:

-- I haven't attended a yoga class in months. It was either sleep or yoga. I couldn't do both, so yoga got the shaft. And the kids have noticed. The Spouse has noticed. How did they notice, you might ask, other than by assessing muscle tone? Because when I'm actively practicing yoga I will experience moments, or stretches of zen-like, "yo dude" calm. That zen thing, my friends, has been noticeably absent, my patience practically nonexistent. Piling on a stress-filled Christmas season didn't help. Therefore, it is VITAL that I find a yoga class that fits into my crazy schedule. Soon!

-- I haven't had a real date with my husband since we celebrated our 20th anniversary in the beginning of November. (We did go to see Lincoln a few weeks ago while the kids saw a different movie with friends, but since the kids were in another theater and it was in the middle of the day, I don't consider that a date.) This situation, like the yoga one, also needs to be rectified.

Overall, the Picket Fence Post family is heading into 2013 with hope and eagerness, and I, personally, plan to laugh like a maniac when I gaze at our family calendar and discover that all five of us are scheduled  for something at the same time in different locations. Or maybe I'll just cancel all of our appointments and have us all go ice skating in our yard.

Back from the Brink (Otherwise Known as Being Buried in Work)

The Picket Fence Post family has not fallen off of the face of the earth, nor has it been swept away in the winds of the hurricane.

We've been here, in the Picket Fence Post domicile in the suburbs of Boston, with our three middle schoolers who've been busy doing their adolescent things (including busting a cell phone, overdoing it with the noxious and likely toxic Axe body spray and testing their, uh, independence). We've been here with our freshly emboldened canine thief who aggressively dives at any unattended food with surprising swiftness given his stout build (like that slice of apple pie Max stole from my plate the other night the second I got up from the sofa). We've gone to soccer games, hockey games, band rehearsals, basketball tryouts, and I broke my left ring-finger (I think it was broken but I didn't go to the doctor to confirm because I'm an idiot) while "helping" the kids prep for said basketball tryouts.

We shelled out a healthy fistful of greenbacks for a hideously stupid-looking orange bodysuit (see above), also known as our 11-year-old's Halloween costume. We mourned the horrific conclusion of a Red Sox season which, sadly, resembled the kinds of seasons I used to experience when I was but a young Sox fan in my Sox jacket decorated with my Dwight Evans button, never imagining I'd have to wait until I was the mother of three to see a Boston World Series victory.

Together, the five of us in the Picket Fence Post family have shared laughs during the new episodes of Modern Family (loved the bit about Luke besting Phil at magic) and The Middle. The Eldest Boy and I are still catching up on the new season of The Mentalist, a show we like to watch together.

But I haven't been doing any writing. For weeks. And it's been driving me crazy. It's like trying to hold your breath for too long. It's unnatural and not at all good for you, at least it's not good for me.

Likewise, I haven't done a few other things that I normally do at this time of the year, like take the family apple picking, visit a pumpkin patch where we pay too much for giant gourds, carve said gourds and leave them to rot in a moldly heap on our front doorstep until Thanksgiving, or go to the Big E, the New England fair held in western Massachusetts and indulge in overly caloric, fried grub that would make Michael Bloomberg woozy.

Why? Why have I been off of my writing game and missed my celebrate-my-favorite-season-of-autumn-activities? I've become a full-time assistant professor teaching writing and journalism at a local institution of higher learning. In short order, I needed to craft not just a syllabus for the writing course, but create a new course about online and social media. In addition to teaching/grading and researching/designing a class, I've been helping to advise the staff of the student newspaper two nights a week.

The other big thing that has rendered me exhausted to the point where I don't think mere flavored coffee alone is potent enough to keep me awake over the long-term (I may have to look into those Turbo shot thingies at Dunkin' Donuts) is a non-fiction book project I've been researching for months. I'm in the process of conducting dozens of interviews as well as observing an educational process (can't give you the details now) three mornings a week. We're talking EARLY in the morning. Six o'clock hour early. The if-I-don't-get-caffeine-into-my-system-NOW-somebody's-gonna-get-hurt early.

However, despite sleep deprivation, autumnal celebration deprivation and coping with pediatric complaints about my new gig (one of the kids accused me of ruining this individual's life by taking a full-time job because, you know, I have nothing better to do than to concoct ways in which I can wreck his life, right?), I'm hopeful that things are becoming somewhat manageable right now, or maybe it's just the sleep deprivation talking.

Image credit: SuperFanSuits.com and Jordin Althaus/ABC.

American Parenting Requires 'Redefining Fun,' Being Okay with Missing Stuff

The New York Times' parenting blogger had it right when she wrote that, in order for American parents to have "fun" during their non-working hours, they need to redefine the word as we're seeing large hunks of our time commandeered by our children's extracurricular activities. Naming travel hockey tournaments, "Family Art Night" at school and team parties as activities in which her family partakes, KJ Dell'Antonia wrote, "This is what we signed up for, with our big, boisterous family."

She pointed to a recent essay by a mother who started raising her children in Europe but, upon moving to the United States, was gob-smacked to discover that the contemporary American parenting culture is completely child-centered. (The writer, Jennifer Conlin was commenting on the "French parents are better" conversation we've been having lately in the wake of the pro-Parisian parenting book Bringing Up Bebe.)

"Now our entire adult life revolves around the children's activities," Conlin wrote in the New York Times. As she detailed a crazy-busy set of weekends when her children were participating in musicals, softball, ensemble competitions, a forensics tournament (?!), baseball and a Science Olympiad, Conlin said, "It's easier to preach benign parenting from one's pretty perch in Paris than it is to import those traits to the trenches of America."

However Dell'Antonia said this all-in brand of contemporary parenting is "as fun as we make it" and again reminds us -- chastises us actually -- that "this . . . is what we have signed up for." I, respectfully, disagree. I didn't sign up for having my weekends sucked up in the vortex of children's activities. I didn't dictate (a la the Tiger Mom) what activities the Picket Fence Post children should or shouldn't do other than to limit them to one sport per season. I've allowed them to choose their activities and then tried to shoehorn those activities into a family life with two working parents, two 13-year-olds, a 10-year-old and a dog. But the shoehorning can be messy business.

My life is currently one big logistical nightmare as all three of my children play sports (soccer, hockey, basketball, lacrosse), two are in bands (one plays in three bands), one is on the Student Council, one belongs to a monthly book club, two take additional once-weekly math classes and one is going to start reffing soccer this spring. And that doesn't include the events they have at school like Colonial Days, talent shows, Art Nights, etc.

My biggest fear, aside from forgetting to bring a kid to some practice or event (The Spouse and I mistakenly missed a tryout session for our son's 2012/13 hockey team . . . whoops!), is that I'll accidentally strand someone somewhere. Leave no kid behind, that's my number one priority.

However there are many occasions when, if I can't get a kid to an activity because, shockingly enough, The Spouse and I actually have something of our own that conflicts with their stuff or we happen to want to do something other than a kid-centric activity. (For example, we had scheduled a St. Patrick's Day dinner at another family's home when a hockey game was rescheduled, with little notice, for that night. We went to the dinner.) The children just have to be okay with missing that activity from time to time. Our family, we tell them, is comprised of five people and sometimes, Mom and Dad or the family unit as a whole, comes first. We can't do everything, we tell them, and if they miss 25 percent of some activity, well, that's the price of being part of a team, the family team. Contrary to Dell'Antonia's assertion, I'm not at all content to surrender all my free time to trying to pretend that a picnic on the sidelines of a kids' soccer game is as good as enjoying a sparkling conversation with The Spouse about politics and current events at a nice restaurant that doesn't have paper placemats. We need date nights every once and a while.

It has taken quite some time for me to be okay with our approach, to not be wracked with guilt if we miss something, to not feel badly that I'm not enjoying all the child-centered events as much as other parents claim they do. I've had to try not to beat myself up if I mistakenly forget something. I can only do what I can do, as long as I don't leave a kid behind. (Have I mentioned that I'm paranoid that I'll do that?)

That being said, I still get resentful when a coach or the head of a particular activity acts as though his or her gig is the only one on a child's plate and exacts a punishment on the child should he or she be late or miss an activity because sometimes a parent simply can't get the kid there. Frankly, it's impossible for me to divide myself into thirds and deliver everyone everywhere simultaneously. I likewise don't cotton to attempts to lay guilt upon parents for missing events when there are a freakin' bazillion of them; they're not all litmus tests on our fitness and attentiveness as mothers and fathers.

I realize, as parents of older children have told me repeatedly, that this insanely, jam-packed period of my life has an expiration date. Sooner than I'd like to think, all three kids will be off to college and the house will suddenly be eerily quiet. I won't be worrying about leaving anyone behind on a soccer field because they will have left the home to start a new chapter of their lives. I'm trying to keep all of this in mind when I caffeinatealways choose the kid thing. I can't put my life on the shelf until the kids are in college. There's got to be some kind of balance . . . and a whole lotta coffee

It's Spring and the Rush is On (Hockey, Lacrosse, Soccer, School Projects, Concerts, Easter & Passover)

It used to be that the month of December -- when the Picket Fence Post family celebrates both Christmas and Hanukkah -- seemed like my most tension-filled time of the year. My "To Do" lists were gigantic and the pressure to get everything right -- gifts, holiday cards, "big" meals, decorations -- could be intense. But as my kids have gotten older, I've come to believe that the spring has actually supplanted Christmas/Hanukkah time as one of the more intense time of the year? Why? Let me count the ways:

Hockey is still on-going in its pop-up-out-of-nowhere practices and games, wreaking havoc on my family calendar.

Lacrosse has begun (this is our first foray into youth lacrosse) and the sport has an extremely intense practice schedule (three practices a week and one game on the weekends . . . and The Spouse volunteered to assistant coach, after he head-coached two basketball team and assisted on another this winter). One of my children, who shall not be named, plays on both hockey and lacrosse teams, whose practices and games overlap until hockey concludes next month, ending the August to April season. (Yes, August to April. For grade schoolers.)

My e-mail box is getting deluged with missives from coaches/league organizers for the Picket Fence Post kids' travel soccer teams, establishing practice times and locations, then changing said times and locations at the last minute. (I now only pencil in these dates.) I currently am unclear as to where and when the games and practices will be for those teams and how they'll fit fit into the hockey/lacrosse picture.

The Girl has also become an official soccer referee (she had to take a long class to become certified) and is supposed to be officiating youth soccer games for the first time this spring. I've got no clue as to how this is going to work. I'm also hoping no lunatic sports parents give her a hard time.

School bands are suddenly switching into high gear with band competitions and performances cropping up all over the place like weeds. I just found out from a fellow band mom that after last week's jazz band performance, a week after a jazz band's talent show performance, a week after an out-of-state band competition, that there's another concert this week AND a competition on Saturday (but I knew about Saturday's, and it's local, yippee). That unanticipated concert happens to be at the same time as a hockey practice AND a book club meeting for a group I really want to join. (I missed the last meeting because of kid-related stuff.) The Spouse has a work engagement that night as well. Don't yet know what that night's going to look like.

Spring class projects. When the flowering trees start to blossom, we know that the smell of drying glue and a forest of tri-fold boards are bound to be taking over our dining room, because if it's spring, it's time for at-home school projects. This usually leads to 11th-hour pleadings from The Ungratefuls for me to rush out and get supplies that they "didn't know" they needed, despite the detailed supplies list their teachers gave them weeks ago.

Then there are the twin religious holidays which require that I temporarily re-locate those school projects from the dining room (usually they're shoved into my horrifically disorganized closet like everything else) in order to prepare for Passover and Easter. We typically host Passover dinner for The Spouse's family and then share Easter Sunday with my family. But before that occurs, I've got to buy lots of matzo (The Spouse and The Girl are the only ones to eat matzo for the Passover week, unlike the rest of us bread-eaters who only indulge in matzo during our formal Passover dinner) and other Passover accoutrements. Plus, I've got to buy tons of eggs (need 'em for both holidays) and an egg dying kit and Easter candy, actually remember to dye the Easter eggs with the kids and make whatever it is I'm going to bring to Easter dinner, provided we're not hosting.

*deep, cleansing breath*

It's all good, I keep telling myself. It'll be fine. We'll figure out a way to handle all of this and, in the meantime, I'll just have to color my hair more frequently to keep stress-induced gray hair at bay.

Quick Hits from the Homefront: Strep Again, Broken Bulb, Calendar Chaos

Strep Again

The kids had been in school for less than a week when The Girl came down with strep throat and has been home sick from school for two days. Today, 24 hours after first taking her antibiotics, she's still feeling poorly. She's developed a strep-related rash, isn’t eating much, complains of pain in her throat and the rest of us in the Picket Fence Post family are crossing our fingers that we’ll be spared.

It’s simply too early in the season to get sick. I felt like I was sick for most of last fall/winter (including that bout with the swine flu). Seriously. I'm hoping this isn't a bad omen.

Broken Bulb

During a family barbecue over Labor Day weekend at the Picket Fence Post home, the good intentions of the environmentally conscious wreaked havoc in The Eldest Boy’s bedroom. He and one of his cousins were in his room when the clip-on lamp that had been secured to the top bunk of his bunk bed fell down and that curlicue light bulb (otherwise known as a compact fluorescent bulb) broke. Pieces fell onto his bed and his rug.

This led to panic among some of the folks at the event after The Spouse looked up the EPA’s guidelines for picking up a busted CFL because those bulbs contain mercury, albeit less than 1/100th of the amount of mercury in those old glass thermometers, according to the EPA. After The Spouse cleaned up the debris and opened the windows, we decided to throw out the old comforter upon which much of the debris landed. (I went out this week and bought a new one, as well as new sheets.)

This leads me to wonder what’s going to happen when regular, incandescent bulbs are no longer available. When you have kids in the house, lamps are going to get knocked over. It’s a part of life. And light bulbs often break. If we have to fret about whether we should call a Haz-Mat team every time a bulb breaks, I’m going to have to start doing lots more yoga.

Calendar Chaos

I knew it. I knew it. I knew it!

I spent a good hour or so on Tuesday morning working on coordinating all the disparate calendars under my purview (school calendars for two schools, two different soccer calendars and a hockey calendar . . . not including my yoga or work calendar) and inputting all the appointments into the online calendar I share with The Spouse as well as writing them down on the paper calendar we keep in the kitchen.

It was bad enough that for Saturday we already had on the youth sports schedule: The Youngest Boy’s 7 a.m. hockey practice, The Girl’s soccer game two hours later and The Eldest Boy’s game in the afternoon, plus The Youngest Boy’s 6 a.m. game on Sunday morning (we'd have to be there by 5:30) followed by the starting of the church year and my religious education teacher training session at 9 (I’m going to be a teacher for The Youngest Boy’s church school classes for half the year).

But, just this afternoon, we received an e-mail scheduling a new hockey game, in less than 48 hours, for Saturday morning, meaning that instead of the Saturday practice, we will have to get The Youngest Boy to the ice rink by 6 a.m. meaning we'll have to leave our house by 5:30 a.m. Calgon, take me away, please!

So, I’ve decided that I'm not going to maintain any more illusions that the family calendar is manageable. It’s not. It just isn't. And it’s not my fault. It's an uncontrollable hot mess that's beyond my control. I’m just going to have to roll with it, buy cups of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee and try my best to get to where I need to go. If I don’t make stuff, if I'm late, it won’t be the end of the world. We can’t do everything . . . at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Image credits: Mamas Health, Calendar Clip Art.

Me & The Mom from 'The Middle:' Trying to Get (And Stay) Organized for School

Image credit: ABC

While watching The Middle’s season premiere this week I felt as though I was a kindred spirit with the lead character, Frankie Heck, played by Patricia Heaton.

After a disastrous first day of school in the Heck household – everyone got up late, the grade-school-aged boy’s backpack still had a rotting sandwich from the previous school year inside, the kids (including the teen boy who was still in his boxers but was holding his clothes in his hand) missed the bus – Frankie vowed to change things when it came to school, “get in front" of the things they needed to do” for once in their lives.

The following morning, Frankie got up early and prepared a hot breakfast of bacon and eggs (which seriously confused her kids because she never does that), got and set an alarm for her teenage son so he could get himself up, bought her youngest a new backpack, baked a freezer full of brownies so she’d be prepared for a year’s worth of school bake sales, filled out all school paperwork immediately, dashed off a check for her daughter’s cross country team sweatshirt right away and met with her youngest son’s teacher on day three of school to give her a head’s up on his idiosyncratic behavior.

I’ve been trying to do a similar thing since the Picket Fence Post kids have returned to school. Thus far, I’ve filled out and returned every form immediately (or at least I’ve handed them to the kids, whether they’ve submitted them is anyone’s guess). I’ve grabbed my BlackBerry and the family calendar in our kitchen and recorded the dates and times for things like school picture day, curriculum nights and parental information nights so as to not inadvertently miss them. I’ve been writing the day’s events on our white board in the kitchen (next to the fridge and the family calendar) the evening beforehand after the kids are in bed so everyone can see what’s on the agenda and plan accordingly.

After a disastrous first day of school in the Heck household – everyone got up late, the grade-school-aged boy’s backpack still had a rotting sandwich from the previous school year inside, the kids (even the teen boy in boxers, holding his clothes in his hand) missed the bus – Frankie vowed to change things when it came to school, “get in front of them” for once.

The following morning, Frankie got up early and prepared a hot breakfast of bacon and eggs (which seriously confused her kids because she never does that), got and set an alarm for her teenage son so he could get himself up, bought her youngest a new backpack, baked a freezer full of brownies so she’d be prepared for a year’s worth of school bake sales, filled out all school paperwork immediately, dashed off a check for her daughter’s cross country team sweatshirt right away and met with her youngest son’s teacher on day three of school to give her a head’s up on his idiosyncratic behavior.

I’ve been trying to do a similar thing since the Picket Fence Post kids have returned to school. Thus far, I’ve filled out and returned every form immediately (or at least I’ve handed them to the kids, whether they’ve submitted them is anyone’s guess). I’ve grabbed my BlackBerry and the family calendar in our kitchen and recorded the dates and times for things like school picture day, curriculum nights and parental information nights so as to not inadvertently miss them. I’ve been writing the day’s events on our white board the evening beforehand after the kids are in bed so everyone can see what’s on the agenda and plan accordingly.

Then I went to two different back-to-school nights and learned that one kid had reading assignments he was already supposed to be doing at home but hadn’t been. Teachers referred to some textbooks that the students had been given, assuming that we parents knew all about them. (I know that my kids had to – and promptly did – put covers on their textbooks. The Spouse helped them turn paper grocery bags into book covers the night the books came home, but I personally didn’t had a chance to comb through all their books. I did peek at a social studies text though.)

The two boys are in their school bands but neither child can seem to remember exactly when they’re supposed to go to school early and when they’re supposed to bring their instruments to school. Given that The Youngest Boy has a giant xylophone in a rolling case, it’s kind of important to know when he’s expected to lug it there. Though I’m really big on getting the kids to be responsible for their own things and assignments – how will they learn if they don’t make mistakes? – I must admit I’ve sent e-mails to their band teachers attempting to clear the confusion so the kids don’t spring a “Hey mom you need to drive me to school!” announcement while I’m still in my PJs and they have to leave immediately.

For the fictional Frankie Heck on The Middle, her valiant attempts to “get in front” of all the school madness backfired, went kaflooey and she gave up. Hopefully, that won’t be my fate too. I’m still doggedly hanging on the illusion that I can keep on top of this school stuff. Then again, it’s only September.

Image credit: ABC.