Picturepocket's Blog

Tag: parenting

  • 99 Jobs and Then Some

    Eliana went back to school this week, and I am so, so grateful. For the last year I’ve been her mom and her teacher. The curriculum was through Hillsboro Online Academy, so technically there was another human on the other side of town somewhere grading her work, but I was the one facilitating the learning.…

  • Kids Party Schedule

    7:15 Child wakes you up, “It’s my birthday!” 8:00 Make everyone a “good breakfast.” Everyone only eats two bites. 8:30 Frost and decorate cake layer baked the night before. Abandon ambitious second tier. 9:00 Load car with half contents of refrigerator, craft, picnic and game supplies for “simple” outdoor party. 9:30 Swing by Dollar Tree…

  • Great Expectations

    A lot of our struggles come from wanting things from others that they aren’t providing. Parents don’t like the choices their children make, and kids get disappointed by parents. In-laws and friends don’t show up or shut up at the right times. One of the keys to happiness in relationships is to stop carrying around…

  • Keys to Success

    When I was in fourth grade, my family moved into Married Student Housing so my father could go to graduate school. The apartments came with a small shared music practice room that included an old upright piano. One summer, my mom signed me up for lessons at the rec center and I would practice every…

  • How to P

    I learn more about my own language when I try to explain it to others. One man I tutored was trying to teach his kindergartener how ask to “go to the restroom,” but the words proved too much for the five-year-old. Instead, he taught him to say it like the men at the gym “I…

  • #Goals

    I have been trying to be very conscientious about how much time the kids spend indoors and be sure that everyone, including myself, gets enough sunshine, exercise and fresh air. So, yesterday after Eliana’s online school was over and everyone had had lunch, I put us all in shoes and loaded them up in the…

  • Canceled

    So many cultural things that I grew up with have been canceled. I agree than lots of songs and shows in the 1980s and 1990s were trash, but others have been deleted, not because of problematic content, but because of problematic creators. The Cosby Show for example was a staple of most households for a…

  • The New Jonestown

    Through radio and the internet people have been falling down the rabbit hole—a virtual cult if you will.

  • Aesop’s Fabulous Fables

    So well known are these tales that we use them as shorthand for the point we are making.

  • Chapter 1

    Like a sequel in popular fiction, the second book is usually an exaggeration of the first.