“He wants to get his ear pierced.” My daughter nodded. “It seems a little impulsive to me,” I reply. “It’s not. He wanted to do it in New York when he visited me.” The next day I’m talking to Mr. G who logically explains that Jane had her ears pierced multiple times at 16. He throws in a handful of logic and reminds me that if he doesn’t like it, he can just take it out and the hole will eventually close up. We are in the mall, at night. I …
Parenting In Public
Yesterday we went to a museum. Actually I should say that yesterday we went to yet another museum. A museum Mr. G had no interest in going to, a museum that Jane had been to just 10 days prior and the 8th museum in the third country that my son had visited since March 12th. Yesterday my family accompanied me to a museum that only I was interested in and after two hours of looking at paintings they waited for me outside the gift shop while I picked up some …
Rich and Beautiful in Second Grade
When my New York girlfriends visit town we play a game that doesn’t have a name yet. It goes like this: I tell her what it’s like to raise kids in LA and then she counters with anecdotes about what it’s like to raise kids in New York and then we both roll our eyes and hope that we’re doing it right. We hope that we’re doing parenting right because we’re smart enough to know that we really don’t know what we’re doing a lot of the time. Usually it’s …
Teenagers, Coffee and Jobs
Recently Jane asked me if I’d buy a coffee maker. You see she has a soy allergy so Starbucks and the like is not an option for her. There’s soymilk everywhere and when she has it there’s two days of feeling ill. Jane would like to drink some coffee in the morning and since I don’t have a coffee maker and she has the allergy that would require purchasing one. I have thoughts about kids and caffeine. My kids have occasional sodas when we are at a restaurant. We don’t have …
We are now Past the Point of Pretending that Good Parents Don’t Vaccinate
Three days ago it was announced that a local baseball coach has measles. There are at least 70 confirmed measles cases currently in California and it has spread to other states. Measles had been eradicated in the United States 15 years ago but the anti vaccine movement has brought it back. Maybe next they can bring back Polio. Everything old is new again, right? Orange County California. Ground-zero for the anti-vaccination crowd. #MeaslesOutbreak #VaccinateYourKids pic.twitter.com/c8hQ36roO7 — Ed Hall (@halltoons) January 23, 2015 Facebook is full of people who, “Had measles …