Monthly Archives: May 2012

Posted inEmotional Intelligence • Parenting • relationships

Crushed!

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I never thought it would come to this. I thought my daughter’s crush was cute. She likes a boy. She wants to marry him. How sweet that is in her four-and-a-half-year-old world. That’s why I was so shocked and sad about what happened last week.

We went to a birthday party. When she got the invitation, my daughter was beside herself! “Aiden! We’re going to Aiden’s party!” She loved Aiden. Aiden was the kid I heard about every day in the car after preschool, as in, “I didn’t get to marry Aiden today.” Apparently Aiden isn’t the marrying kind, but that was ok with her, she still had a shot with his brother, Liam, who she’d fallen for first anyway.

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Posted inParents • Seniors

The Man Who Cried “Wolf!”

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I’ve had enough emergency calls for one week. Thursday morning, I walked out of the house with the kids, and, as I got them in the car, I smelled natural gas. It was faint, but I smelled it. The whole neighborhood has gas heat, so it could have been coming from anywhere. Just to be safe, I called 911 from the car. “Stay there,” they said. “We’ll meet you there.” Really? I thought. I’ve got to get these kids to school. Crap.

A few minutes later, a fire truck pulled up, sirens blaring, my daughter asking, “Is that them?” Not thinking it was a siren kind of emergency, I said no, but I was wrong. Clad in full gear, the firemen came walking up, “Did you call?”

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Posted inEmotional Growth • Parents • relationships

Happy Mother(s) Day!

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I lost my mother ten years ago. I gained a mother three years ago. How many people can say that?

My first mother, who I will call my “real” mother — no offense to my birth mother –raised me through infancy, kissed my boo-boos, dressed me up for school, taught me to play the piano and sewed killer Halloween costumes.

My second mother – my birth mother — gave birth to me when she was too young to keep me, but she thought about me every day, and wished that someday she could see me again.

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Posted inParenting

Bye bye binky: The art of the deal

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We recently had a visitor – the kind who sneaks in during the night and leaves toys. You guessed it, the Pacifier Fairy graced our presence just a few short weeks ago. What did she leave? An American Girl doll. Yes, a $105 doll. At the American Girl Store register, I checked my surroundings to make sure nobody I knew saw me buy this ridiculously expensive doll. That was before they gave me the gigantic American Girl shopping bag to carry her out to the mall. As I walked out to the parking lot, a perfect stranger said to me, “That’s a mighty expensive doll.” So much for deflecting comments.

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