Doodaddy » failure

Stomach Pains

doodaddy — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:16:26 +0000

Minor meltdown this morning, but first, let’s define terms for all you non-parents. Drop-off Playdate: E.g. crack for the stay-at-home parent. This is when you leave your kid at someone’s house, and most kids love ‘em. Fern, though, is a bit of a homebody. So when promised (in the most! excited! tone! of! voice!) a drop-off [...]

Cookie Cutter Guilt

doodaddy — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:24:02 +0000

Let me just start by admitting: I try to impress 4-year olds. A couple of weeks ago we hosted one of those kids who makes preschool look like graduate school. She’s well-behaved and articulate — a great little role model for my, um, independent three-year old. So of course I decided that on our first playdate [...]

Blackalicious

doodaddy — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:29:00 +0000

Fern got this cute book on our last vacation -- Pinkalicious -- about a girl who eats too many pink cupcakes and turns, well, pink. Except she couldn't leave it at that -- Blackalicious beckoned.

Kitchen Fail of the Week

doodaddy — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:17:00 +0000

Every week, it seems, I perpetrate some new kitchen catastrophe, and this week’s entry is my pork-chicken-rice-egg-noodle casserole. She’s a way better cook. What the hell was I thinking? To be fair to myself, I was dead tired and not thinking that much, getting a cold and dealing with the kids’ late night persistent cough that just won’t [...]

Pre-pre-teenage rebellion

doodaddy — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:26:16 +0000

In tenth grade, I once saw a cool kid wearing a collared shirt over another collared shirt. Although I was — then as now — completely ignorant of the arcane rules that make an outift fashionable, I could at least decode the two-collar thing, so I dressed like that for months. Every day. Until, in [...]

Bad, Worse, Worsted

doodaddy — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 09:37:00 +0000

My bad days probably don’t seem that bad from the outside: I bribe Fern with salty snacks to be quiet while I put the baby to bed, I miss a hair-brushing or a book-reading. Big deal, right? Channeling me? Then there are the worse days, when I’ve stayed up too late and now there’s a writing deadline [...]

In Which I Cause Boo to Undergo Pain Rather Than Fight With the Paperwork Lady Any More

doodaddy — Fri, 08 May 2009 08:45:17 +0000

We’re preschool-bound (yay!), so I had to wade through a stack of school enrollment forms. It was my first time through that paperwork jungle, and I was proudly undaunted by the dozen or so pages. The worst was deciding whether I’d rather tend the garden or sort art supplies at the school (it’s a co-op). [...]

The Longest Month

doodaddy — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:43:24 +0000

My ladies. Boo toppled off a booster seat, helpless. Her gyrating arms reached for me but missed — this is a scene I still replay in my head daily, even now, a month later. I was too slow, dull, and exhausted to save my own daughter from crashing to the ground. Thanks, O ye Fates — like [...]

Eating Toddlers

doodaddy — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 11:53:00 +0000

On a rare eating day. If you count a cup of whipped cream at Starbucks ‘eating’ Now that you mention it, getting a 3-year old to eat can be really tough. Some say not to try: I know a nursery school teacher who calls kids this age “freshairitarians.” Another friend of mine went all Dr. Spock [...]

Nursery School Dropout

doodaddy — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 12:00:00 +0000

I am not a fearful parent. Apart from a recurring nightmare in which my gargantuan daughter is recruited to play for the Utah Jazz (I mean, really — jazz? In Utah?), I don’t worry about her future all that much. Things will work out as they should. But I gave myself a huge scare a couple [...]