Fast times and wild living with (the former) Baby Whozit…
Posted in Jessica, Little Boy on Jul 30th, 2011
This one is for all you baseball fans…. So the thing about being athletic non-entities, is that you don’t necessarily know if your kid is good at something or not. Matt and I, it is safe to say, are sports zeroes. So when Simon started hitting balls off a tee last summer, we thought it […]
Posted in Jessica, KIP (Preschool), Little Boy on Jul 28th, 2011
Among the many, many changes coming Simon’s way when he leaves KIP for elementary school in a year or so will be the shuffling of the friend deck. I already know that one of Simon’s friends will be at Hawthorne or at the school where her mom teaches, and another has moved to a different […]
Posted in Jessica, Little Boy on Jul 26th, 2011
The standing refrain when people see Simon these day is something like, “Every time I see him, he’s taller.” To which my standard reply is, “Every time you see him, he is taller!” It’s true. Early this January, when I took him to the doctor he stood 40 3/4 inches tall. Five weeks later, he […]
Posted in Jessica, Little Boy on Jul 23rd, 2011
Sarcasm is, in Simon’s case I suppose, a genetic inevitability. It’s funny how I guessed wrong about so many things involving Simon—his hair color, eye color, and affinity for sports for example—but missed the one prediction sure to come through. Because in the case of sarcasm, we’ve got nature and nurture at work. The writing […]
Posted in Jessica, No Boundaries on Jul 20th, 2011
When I started running in March, my goal was to build endurance and meet some new friends. That part was clear and relatively easy to achieve. As spring arrived and the days got warmer, I started to realize that running might also force me to confront some body image issues. The going here is slower, […]
Posted in Jessica, KIP (Preschool), Little Boy on Jul 18th, 2011
Behavior is a funny thing. I want Simon to be obedient and well behaved in class, so I was happy to learn that all last year he never once required a time-out or even a stern talking to. He was a good boy, and his teachers liked him. On the other hand, I don’t want […]
Posted in Jessica, Little Boy, Simon says... on Jul 13th, 2011
Well, someone around here has baby fever, and it’s not who you think. Two years after I last tried to see if Simon was interested in playing with a doll (he wasn’t), he has taken to Annabelle the lamb, a present from my old boss Karen that arrived shortly after he did. He holds her, […]
Posted in Friends, Jessica, Little Boy on Jul 11th, 2011
(NO apology to epic racist D.W. Griffiths for this one.) To the delight and relief of many of my friends, the Republic of South Sudan became the world’s newest country and the 54th sovereign nation in Africa on July 9, 2011. The Sudanese community of Louisville threw a big party to mark the occasion, and […]
When Simon first started preschool, I couldn’t help profiling the other parents I saw dropping off their kids, especially the other mothers. Woman in a suit or dress with heels, makeup, and “done” hair: Full time professional working mother. Woman in sweats/shorts with sneakers/flip-flops on and–the real giveaway—hair in a pony-tail? Full time stay-at-home-mom. Woman […]
Posted in Jessica, Little Boy, Simon says... on Jul 5th, 2011
Some days Simon has it; other days he adorably does not. Sunday morning, Matt asked Simon to do something, Simon balked, and Matt pressed the point home with an urgent, annoyed tone. The response? “Whatever.” It doesn’t sound like much, but it was delivered with the perfect teenage mix of annoyance, superiority, detachment, and insouciance. […]