Pedigreed Housewife World

The sun is finally out again, and although we’re not really feeling it’s warmth just yet, we wanted to enjoy the rays nonetheless.   One of the things that the kids love to do in our backyard when they aren’t playing on the swing set is to climb “Boot’s Mountain”.   Part of our yard is a steep hill that goes back into the woods.   The kids run up to the top where the woods meet the yard and declare that they have climbed Boot’s mountain (named after an episode of Dora).   I decided that we could have a quick and fun lesson that not only let everybody go outside for a short while, but also incentivized the kids to come back in before we all froze.   I tell the kids after naptime that we can all go outside for a little while.   You would have thought I told the kids that we were going back to Disney World for the joy that they showed.   First we’re going to pick out some balls to play with.   We go over to the ball bin and look inside.   I ...

Before I begin this blog, I must warn that if you don’t have kids or regularly have potty talk in your house, this blog is going to make you feel a little bit squeamish.  If you have kids, however, you won’t bat an eyelash. Today begins the process called potty training at our house.  Don’t freak out - Briana, my 3-year old, has been potty trained for a year now.  She started in pull-ups at 22 months, was potty trained during the day pretty soon after her 2 nd birthday, and completely potty trained (ie nights too) by 26 months.  Now it’s Abigail’s turn. I’m envious of people who tell me stories about how they sat their kids on the potty for 48 hours and at the end of the weekend, their kids were trained…envious and skeptical.  Yes, I believe that it worked for them, but in our house, potty training is a process with 3 distinct phases. PHASE ONE:  POTTY CURIOSITY Phase one is all about generating interest in the potty, but forcing nothing.  This pha...

The kids have been cooped up in the house for the last couple of rainy days and were feeling restless.   After running around screaming happily and giggling turned into running around screaming at each other and crying, I asked the kids to pick something new to do.   Briana asked me, “Can we have an activity, please?”, by which she meant some sort of mommy driven learning opportunity.   I was planning to talk about nutrition to the kids this week, because Briana keeps asking me if things are healthy or not before we eat.   This is an unfortunate side effect of my joining Weight Watchers after Thanksgiving and losing over 40lbs (Go me!) and, as a result, I am currently spending a lot of time looking at nutrition labels and my Weight Watchers’ books.   I wanted to present the idea of balanced nutrition to my girls before they incorrectly intuit what “healthy exercise and eating habits” means and waste too much time throughout their lifetimes revising that image...

Since it is the last week of Black History Month, I decided that we should do a lesson about black history.  The complexity therein for my family is that I don’t think that the kids are old enough for a complete lesson on black history.  I think that right now it is better for their self-esteem to be unaware that there are people in the world that might judge them based on something that they can’t change.  Especially since I think that the lesson will be a little bit more complicated for my kids since I am black and my husband is white, so our kids are mixed.  For that reason, today we are not going to learn about civil rights leaders, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to celebrate black history with my kids.  My intent today is to show the kids people who have done great things and continue to do great things in our world.  I don’t plan to mention that the people are Black, but I hope that the kids subconsciously start to realize that achieving grea...

One of the coolest things in life, no matter how old you are, is watching a magic trick and being completely stupefied as to how it works.   One of the most indulgent things in life, no matter how old you are, is chocolate.   Today I’m combining the two, and using chocolate to demonstrate nature’s great magic trick – phase changes – solids to liquids to gases.   Usually I prep the kids with the ideas we’ll explore the next day before bedtime.   I think that the terminology sinks in a little and the kids have time to start to question things so that we have a more fruitful discussion and experiment the next day.   Last night I was telling Briana before bed that tomorrow we’d be making chocolate lollipops just like her friend Mitchell did for his 3 rd birthday party favors and we’d be looking for how the chocolate can change, based on how hot we make it, from a solid piece of chocolate, to a liquid like hot chocolate, to a gas.   Briana looks up at me an...

I have come to discover that while I was only in labor twice, giving birth to one beautiful girl each time, I actually have 4 kids.   I have Briana and Abigail at home and I have Briana and Abigail away from home – totally different kids.   Ok, not “totally”, but as it relates to listening to me they are quite differently behaved when we are away from home.   That isn’t to say that they are badly behaved when we are out.   They are still very much my wonderful little girls, but apparently excitement overrides my authority when we aren’t at home, especially when it relates to my saying it’s time to go home.   While I want my kids to have a blast on our outings, I worry that their safety will be compromised if they ignore my instructions.   And, to be totally honest with you, I also just hate it when one of my kids is arguing with me or running around crazily while strangers stare disapprovingly at me.   I try to turn a blind eye, and depending on the...