Picket Fence Post

Item #1: School Celebration Overload

To celebrate Halloween with his classmates at school, my second grade son had “friendship salad,” where each member of the class was asked to contribute a piece of fruit. Members of my fourth grade daughter’s class were asked to bring in a pumpkin so students could carve them in class. My fourth grade son was asked to bring in an apple for a class project, and had a small party.

To celebrate Thanksgiving, both of my fourth graders’ classes are going to be making “friendship soup,” where each member of the class has been asked to contribute an ingredient, while parent were asked to additionally send in Crock Pots, utensils, bowls, etc. (The Girl has been asked to bring in two 48 ounce cans of chicken broth, while The Boy has been asked to bring in a can of corn niblets. That’s for a soup neither of them have said they’ll eat once it’s made.)

To celebrate “Winter” (not Christmas, not Hanukkah, not Ramadan), my fourth grade son brought home a form the other day asking each class member to bring in a new, wrapped book (no more than $5) for a book swap during the class “Winter” party. Scholastic book orders were attached to the note with the suggestion that we could easily order through them so we’d get the books in time for the party. (The note also said that requests for food and supplies for the “Winter” party will be forthcoming.) I’m certain that I’ll soon receive a similar note from The Girl.

When I received that note about the book swap – in a tough economic climate where people are worried about their jobs — I must say, I became irritated, even though my neighbor, who has a child in fifth grade, said the children have always loved the book swap event. Why couldn’t the kids pick a book they already own and wrap it up with handmade paper bag wrapping paper that they decorate themselves? It would promote recycling and still promote the joy of reading, as the note for the swap indicated was the point of the event. Maybe the kid donating the book could even write a note about why the book was entertaining.

I think what bothers me about this is that it’s coming in the middle of a crazy time of year. Taken alone, out of context, $5 for a book (plus wrapping paper) doesn’t seem like a big deal. But then I have to double the cost because I have two kids in the fourth grade. Then I factor in that the room parents for my three children’s classes will soon be asking for donations (usually $15-20) for gifts for the teachers. (We just went through this with the coaches of my kids’ sports teams where parents contributed a similar amount.) When you also consider the cost of the ingredients for friendship soups and salads, paper goods and store-bought food for a bunch of parties (due to allergies, most of the food has to be purchased so that ingredient are listed), the cost of the game we were asked to buy to contribute to a “game basket” for my second grader’s class as part of a school fundraiser, as well as the other requests that have come home from school in recent weeks and it adds up quickly.

My wish is that all of these in-school celebrations and the “gift-giving” could be made simpler, and occur less frequently. Oh, go ahead. Call me Scrooge.

Priceless Semi-Related Tangent: My preschool-aged nephew, who dressed as a skeleton for Halloween, didn’t have a Halloween party at his school. They had an ”I’m Not Scared” party instead. I kid you not.

UPDATE: My proposal to substitute used books for new books and use paperbag wrapping paper for the fourth grade book swap was shot down because, I was told, there are “reasonably priced” books in the Scholastic book order from which parents could choose. And there are “reasonably priced” books in that book order, but this is more of a principle thing at this point, trying to get away from more consumption. Parents are not ATMs.

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Item #1: New find — The Pajama Diaries

Amidst the glut of post-election analyses, number crunching and U.S. maps colored red and blue, this week I discovered a new comic strip in the Boston Globe. (If it was there before, I hadn’t noticed it until now. My bad.)

The Pajama Diaries, by Terri Libenson, features a character named Jill who is a freelance graphic designer who works out of her house, is married, and has two young girls. (That could be me, only with three kids, only one of whom is a girl.) Jill lives across the street from a family whose home she snarkily dubbed “Perfectville” and uses the DVD player as a babysitter so she can quickly get some work done without interruption from the little people.

After reading through some of her previous comic strips, they hit home, both about the challenges of working from home and about the struggle against the perfect, and they made me laugh. It’s gonna be a new staple in the Picket Fence Post home.

Item #2: Boston Globe Features ‘Mommy Dating’

Ever bring your kids to a local playground and hoped that a mom would talk to you or that a group of moms would welcome you into their fold? That’s called “mommy dating,” according to the Boston Globe  which likens playgrounds to meat markets:

“To the casual observer, the playground may appear a pleasant tableau of mothers and babysitters and, oh, children. But to the initiated, it can be as socially charged as a singles’ bar. The blonde mom over here, the organics-only mom over there, the insecure moms hovering near the swings, pretending to be occupied by the kids. Meanwhile, style is assessed, labels identified, judgments made.”

Now that my kids have gotten older and we don’t hang out at playgrounds like we used to, I’ve become the mom standing on the sidelines at one of my kids’ bazillion games, chugging a caffeinated beverage, and hoping someone won’t point a finger at me and say, “There’s the mom who hates on kids’ sports and the PTO online and in columns. Don’t talk to her.”

Item #3: First Family Gets Ready

On page one of today’s New York Times there’s a feature story entitled, ”A Family Expected to Balance State Dinners with Sleepovers.” The reporter spoke with Michelle Obama’s Chicago friends and how the First Family plans to create its own support system for the girls on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Interesting read.

Image credit: The Pajama Diaries.

* Cross-posted at Suburban Mom: Notes from the Asylum. *

Voting: I took the kids with me to vote in our small town in the western suburbs of Boston this morning at around 10. (There’s no school today.)

We saw no lines as we entered the school gym and were greeted by a sweet Girl Scout. We waited patiently as she explained in a whisper-soft voice, where we needed to go first — to check in by our street address. With my ballot in hand, the kids jockeyed for a good position in which to get a look at it as we crammed ourselves into the polling booth. They couldn’t believe how many people were running for president. They thought it was just John McCain and Barack Obama.

“The Green-Rainbow Party?” my daughter asked incredulously.

“Yep,” I said, as I read aloud all the different presidential/vice presidential candidates and their corresponding parties and the children shook their heads.

They were a bit dismayed when I wouldn’t let them fill in the bubbles with the black pen provided — there was no chance I was going to risk them filling in the wrong circle and ruin my opportunity to vote in this election — but I did let them help me feed the paper ballot into the machine when we were done. The dullness of putting a ballot into a machine made me miss the time when I voted in my first election in my hometown where they have actual levers to pull and a curtain that would dramatically open and record my choices when I was done. It’s anti-climatic to fill in a bubble with a pen.

MSNBC All Day: I’ve had MSNBC on TV all day. I’m a sucker for their “Election Center” in Rockefeller Center and am a big crazy fan of the crew from Morning Joe.

Random Observations:

I thought Barack and Michelle Obama took a really long time filling out their ballots in Chicago. They must have had a huge number of Illinois ballot questions or many contested races. (Massachusetts had three ballot questions.) Their 10-year-old daughter Malia, in her hoodie, looked thoroughly bored and yawned several times.

The first thing that came to my mind when I saw Sarah and Todd Palin leave the polls in Wasilla? Shamefully, it was that, as I looked at the vice presidential candidate, I wondered if she’d already given all the expensive campaign-funded duds away to charity.

Calling the Winner Early: I was disturbed by a piece I saw in today’s New York Times about when the broadcast and cable news networks will project a winner tonight. I’m a big believer — even in the age of the Internet, Twitter and Facebook — of officially holding back on projecting a winner in the presidential race when people are still in the process of voting.

If a candidate concedes, then that person is affecting the voter turnout in places where the votes haven’t yet been cast and it’s not the media’s doing.

But if a candidate hasn’t yet conceded, the decent, patriotic thing to do is to wait until polls have closed before calling a state’s results. If the networks call the entire election before the folks on the west coast have finished voting, that move would essentially tell people who haven’t yet voted that their votes are irrelevant.

The viewers can wait. A little while anyway.

Item #1: Beware of the Mice

If you live in the MetroWest area outside of Boston and pulled one of those plastic Little Tikes Cozy Coupes from someone’s trash thinking it was your lucky day, boy were you wrong. The thing’s filled with mice.

My sister-in-law called me today and related the story of how, when my nephews were playing with their Cozy Coupe outside this week, one of them spotted a mouse sticking its head out of the hole where the steering wheel had been. (The steering wheel was busted soon after the boys got the car.) Horrified, my sister-in-law wheeled it away with the intent of dealing with it later until she realized there wasn’t just one mouse living INSIDE the plastic car, but a whole bunch of them.

She put the car out on its side on the street next to her trashcans this morning, but before the trash haulers arrived, she noticed the Cozy Coupe was gone. She then started feeling guilty that some unsuspecting parent had grabbed the car and might’ve put it inside his or her house not realizing that it’s filled with mice. They’re in for a big surprise.

Item #2: Old Christine Gets Guilted

Speaking of guilt . . . the latest episode of The New Adventures of Old Christine really hit home for me this week as it dealt with maternal guilt, specifically, Julia Louis Dreyfus’ character Christine feeling badly because she was working so much and missing things for her kid, including forgetting to submit the application for her 12-year-old to join a lizard club. She felt so badly that she missed the deadline — as well as a party she’d promise to attend — that she agreed to go on a date with the creepy head of the club in order to secure her son’s admission to the group. Only it didn’t go as planned. (Link to the video here.)

This week I missed several deadlines for my own kids. Papers requiring my signature and homework that I was supposed to initial and correct have been flooding my house like a never-ending onslaught of junk mail. For example, I forgot to sign The Youngest Son’s reading list one night (didn’t write down what he read) and we got the list back marked with a red question mark. Last night, I didn’t have the chance to listen to The Girl read me a passage aloud three times and then grade her reading skills. This morning I had to quickly write a note telling her teacher why the homework wasn’t done.

So when the lizard guy told Christine, “A good mother doesn’t miss deadlines,” I felt that one. Right in the gut.

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It’s not often that I read a story in the sports pages of the newspaper that involve parenting. At least not in a positive way. But when I read a New York Times piece on the Arizona Cardinals’ quarterback Kurt Warner, father of seven (ages 2-16), and how he and his wife raise their kids, I was touched and inspired. Among the things about the Warner family that moved me:

When the family goes out to dinner, the children vote on for which other table they should foot the bill. Anonymously. The diners never find out that the QB and his family singled them out for their generosity.

The family has a set of eight rules for their children. Among the Warner family rules: Share your favorite part of your day with one another at dinner, spend one hour at an art museum while on the road with Dad at a game or traveling, notice the eye color of your waiter or waitress and hold hands with a sibling for 10 minutes if you can’t get along.

That last item, while I can’t see it working in my particular household (at least not without bloodshed, separate corners seems to work best for us, actually, separate counties) I think it’s sweet. In fact, the whole Warner family sounds so sweet that my teeth hurt. But in a good way.

Image credit: Andrew Grant/New York Times.

I’ve gotta hand it to Bruce Handy, a writer and deputy editor at Vanity Fair. He created a sarcastic and sharply humorous phony school form for the New York Times that hits the inanity of the dynamics between parents and schools squarely on the mark. (Go here to see the fake form in full.)

The faux parental registration form for a school known as the “Elm Street School” starts off by saying:

“Greetings, parents. We’re sure you’re every bit as excited about the new school year as we are. (Sigh.) Please take the time to fill out the following registration form. Send it in on the first day of school with your fully inoculated, adequately medicated, lice-free son/daughter.”

Among the pieces of information requested on the form:

– The name of the student’s test-prep tutor.

– The name of the student’s playdate coach.

– Whether the child has dietary restrictions, allergies, biting problems, attention-seeking disorder, mange or early-onset despair.

My favorite part: After the line, “This year I will volunteer for,” there are the following volunteer opportunities from which to choose:

“a. Class parent.

b. The auction.

c. The spring fair.

d. All of the above.

e. None of the above? O.K., then excuse us while we go and work on those college recommendation letters, if you catch our drift.”

Second favorite part of Handy’s satirical form: Asking parents to promise not to “check my BlackBerry during the holiday concert and/or think unsupportive thoughts during the fifth grade string section’s performance of ‘Dreidel, Dreidel.’”

Soccer mom.

Security mom.

Alpha mom.

NASCAR dad. (One of the few father-oriented voting bloc monikers)

Mortgage mom.

Military mom.

Hockey mom.

Now, in today’s New York Times, I stumbled upon yet another entry in the let’s-define-moms-who-vote-in-some-quirky-way that I’d never seen before: Wal-Mart mom.

Why the attempt to label mom voting blocs? “Married women and women with children vote in higher proportions than single women,” an expert on women and politics told NBC this spring. “. . . Whatever affects their families, whether [it] is their children or their spouses or their own aging parents, family issues are of central importance.”

I don’t necessarily agree. Not every mom I know votes on the same issues. Not every mother votes on family issues. Or on education policy.

Believe it or not, it’s been my experience that women base their votes on all kinds of different issues, reflecting their individual values and priorities. And, like dads, they don’t vote in lockstep. Not all the soccer moms I know, for example, vote for the same people.

I’m with blogger and mom of three Erika Jurney who told NBC: “The people who place value on labels like ’security moms’ are pollsters and politicians, but in real life people are multi-dimensional and these tight labels are meaningless.”

Item #1: School Supply Woes in NYC

When it comes to crazy-long school supply lists, apparently my kids’ public schools aren’t the only ones doling them out. The New York Times ran a page one piece about schools in the New York area and elsewhere which are asking parents to shell out big bucks for supplies, including one mom who had ”10 boxes of baby wipes” on her kindergartener’s list.

“. . . [A]ccording to the New York State School Boards Association, supplies run an average of $100 for high school students and $60 for middle schoolers,” the paper reported. In some school districts, the school supply lists have grown so large that school boards have stepped in and placed caps on how much families should be asked to spend:

“In the suburbs of Rochester, the Gates Chilli Central School District last year capped the amount that parents were expected to spend on supplies at $10 a child, adding $100,000 to the budget to make up the difference. The sprawling Fayette County Public Schools in Lexington, Ky., set the limit this fall of $120 a child for the year, including field trips.”

Item #2: How Palin Does It

Answer (according to press reports): Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has a husband named Todd. Who’s the father of their five kids. Who works part-time. And takes care of the children (all but the baby and the eldest – who’s deploying to Iraq this month – are in school all day). The Palin family, you see, works together. Just like the Obama family, only no one’s asking Barack Obama how he’s managing to parent his two school-aged daughters while he’s on the campaign trail. So let’s back off the Palin-is-a-bad-mom garbage, why don’t we. It’s an unbecomingly sexist attack. ‘Nuf said.

Item #3: ‘Hockey Mom’ Humor

The line of the night, as Sarah Palin accepted the Republican’s VP nomination: “You know [what] they say [is] the difference between a hockey mom and a pit-bull? [*pause*] Lipstick.”

Palin’s speech — including the lipstick comment, at 8:50 – can be found here.

There they go again.

Savaging a working mother of small children for her choices instead of just trying to understand her decisions and realize that each family and each woman is very, very different.

This time it’s GOP VP nominee, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a mother of five, who’s in the cross-hairs. She had a baby in April. And returned to work days after giving birth. Before the birth, Palin reportedly got on an airplane while her amniotic fluid was leaking after consulting with her doctor. Now, because she went back to work, because she boarded that plane and because she’s got a baby and is running for vice president, people are all over her. Calling her a bad mom and questioning her competency, particularly because her 4-month-old has Down Syndrome. (And I’m not even talkin’ about Palin’s policy positions, qualifications or her teenage daughter’s private situation which even her opponent says should be kept out of the political arena. Let’s leave those items aside and focus on the attacks on her bio.)

Today’s New York Times has a page one story about what they coyly dubbed, “The Mommy Wars: Special Campaign Edition:”

“. . . [T]his time the battle lines are drawn inside out, with social conservatives, usually staunch advocates for stay-at-home motherhood, mostly defending [Palin], while some others, including plenty of working mothers, worry that she is taking on too much.”

The article continued:

“In interviews, many women, citing their own difficulties with less demanding jobs, said it would be impossible for Ms. Palin to succeed both at motherhood and in the nation’s second-highest elected position at once . . . Many women expressed incredulity — some of it polite, some angry — that Ms. Palin would pursue the vice presidency given her younger son’s age and condition.”

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Item #1: Golden Smiles

The U.S. Women’s Soccer team triumphantly won gold this week at the Beijing Olympics. Not only did they emerge victorious, the players — whose ranks included moms of young kiddos – inspired a whole new generation of soccer players, as you can see by the beautiful photo to the left. Makes ya want to cheer, “U-S-A!”

Item #2: Parents Followin’ College Kids

The New York Times ran a story that I found disturbing. It was about a mini “trend” among parents who, once their offspring goes away to college, decide to buy a second home in the town where their kid is attending school:

“. . . [S]ome parents are investing in college towns in an unexpected new way: they’re following their kids to college. From South Bend, Ind., to Oxford, Miss., from Hanover, N.H., to Knoxville, Tenn., they are buying second homes for themselves near campuses where their children are enrolled.

Many, like [M.J. and Jim Berrien], want front-row seats to watch their family athletes perform. Some seek a gathering place for football games or family holidays. Others long for a retreat with the amenities of a college town — and why not the one where they have children attending?”

One of the parents said she’d “been seduced” by a college town, while another said the college community would make “an ideal retirement place.” Some said that their kids (and their kids’ friends) are thrilled with having access to the home, free laundry plus home-cooked meals parents cook when they’re in town.

Helen E. Johnson, author of Don’t Tell Me What to Do, Just Send Money:The Essential Parenting Guide to the College Years, told the paper that she hopes parents are buying the homes for the “right reasons,” and urged them to seriously ponder the answers to these questions: “Would I like to be in this town even if my child wasn’t?” and “Does this have more to do with my need than theirs?” Then she threw in this killer line, “You might be making your child more fragile, not less.”

Another contrarian opinion was voiced by DenYelle Keynon of the University of South Dakota who has studied “the parent-student relationship” once the kid goes to college. She told the Times: “Research has found that the parent-child relationship grows better once the child has left the house. Parents should be careful not interrupt that process.”

Ouch.

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