Who's The Boss?

There's no Halloween Fairy in this house

When I was a kid, my brother and I would Trick or Treat on Halloween for hours.  I can’t ever remember my parents setting a curfew – they must’ve known that we couldn’t stay out much past 9pm.  We'd go in a little tribe of neighborhood children, often unsupervised, to canvas the streets for the best Halloween candy.  My parents only had two rules: never go inside someone’s house and don’t eat any candy that is unwrapped. 

I was a picky eater so many of the chocolate covered candy bars would go into my reject-pile, much to the delight of my chocolate-loving parents.  My parents let us eat to our heart’s desire on Halloween night.  For the rest of the week, my mom would pack a candy or two in our school lunches. And then one day when we came from home from school asking if we could eat another piece of candy, my mother would simply reply “There’s none left; you ate it all.”

I can’t remember if we ever questioned our mom about the mysterious and sudden disappearance of the candy bag.  All I know for sure is that there was no more candy.  Where it went, I’ll never know.

I'm over the Mommy Wars

Don’t tell me you have it harder. Or better. Or that you had no choice. Or that you sacrificed. Don’t tell me you’re a working mom or a stay at home one. Frankly, I just don’t care anymore. I’m over it. “It” being the debate in the Mommy Wars.

Opt-in to Motherhood. Opt-out of Work. Opt to whatever works for your family. On-ramp! Off-ramp! On-board! Oh my!

I don’t care. I won’t judge you. We can be friends no matter which side of the aisle you are on. It’s time for bi-partisan mommy peace talks.

Tell me you’re unhappy. Sometimes, I’m unhappy too. Tell me it was the best decision. It’s worked out great for me as well. Tell me you have regrets. Doesn’t that come with the job? (no pun intended).

Continue reading at Full-Time, All the Time

My child is getting the H1N1 vaccine, why isn't yours?

I wouldn’t consider myself pro-vaccine.  Sure, my son was stuck in his chubby little thigh right on schedule.  But, honestly, I never considered any other options.  If The Vaccine Book had come out while I was pregnant, I would have chosen to slow-vax my son.  He’d eventually got all his shots, but it wouldn’t have been at 3-5 in one sitting.  Instead the book arrived in stores when I was a mother to a toddler who was already more than half way through the rigors of inoculations.  While it certainly made me feel better about the choice we made to vaccinate accordingly to the traditional schedule, it also made me realize that I probably should have done a lot more research before I blindly trusted my pediatrician. 

Considering that I vaccinated my son against many life-threatening illnesses… illnesses that killed some of my own ancestry when they were children, I never understood why I took such a hard stance against the flu shot.  I’ve, personally, only received the seasonal flu shot twice in my life.  The year I was pregnant and the year I was a mother to a newborn.  My son Darius had the flu shot only once when he was 6 months old.  I didn’t even bother to take in him for the recommended second dose hoping that my continued breastfeeding during the flu season would keep him safe.

Yet nearly five years after his one and only flu shot, I am pulling my son out of school 30 minutes early to drive to our pediatrician’s office to get the H1N1 vaccine. 

With H1N1 already causing more deaths in children than the regular seasonal flu (and we haven’t even hit the real cold and flu season), I’m surprised at how many parents are opting out of the vaccine.  One mother in my son’s class said that she was “pro-germs” and would take the risk of her children getting the virus naturally before she’d give them the shot.  I was shocked!  At least a third of the children who’ve died of H1N1 were healthy children before they contracted the virus.  I’m all for building a child’s immunity to common colds, but I’m not sure I can be pro-germ when kids are the most vulnerable to this virus.

There have been two reported cases of H1N1 at my son’s school.  One was a child in the kindergarten class next to my son.  I want to do everything that I can to protect my son.  We’ve amped up our hand-washing, have had lots of talks about how germs are not for sharing, and are keeping a watchful eye to make sure our son stays healthy.  Add to it that my son has contact with many family members who are considered to have compromised immune systems.  I couldn’t take the risk of my son exposing them when they are a high-risk category as well.  It’s not about panic or pandemonium.  Rather, I want to take precautions when we can to make sure that we protect the health of our family.

Lucky for my son, our pediatrician is only doing the flu mist for now.  I don’t have to go back on my word of not having to get any more shots after we finished our round of boosters for Kindergarten.  I’ll be getting the seasonal flu shot this year as well. I know it won’t lessen the risk of getting H1N1, but my son will see how shots are really no big deal when I roll up my shirt sleeve and take the shot in stride. 

You can bet I’m gonna ask for a lollypop too.

Original post for the Silicon Valley Mom's Blog

Boys will be boys

On Friday, I found out that I have a “rough kid.”

We had our first Parent-Teacher Conference on Friday.  While the teachers said lovely things about my clearly brilliant child (wink, wink), they wrote on his assessment that he was “too rough” on the playground.

My kid?  Darius?  Sweet Darius?  He’s a rough kid? Really?

I’m not buying it.

I don’t have a rough kid.  I have a fair kid.  A sensitive kid.  A kid who sticks up for his friends.  Who shares.  A kid who has one very active imagination. A kid who is extremely active.  Who can take a two-mile bike ride without complaining.  Who can run non-stop during school recess and not get tired.

In other words, I have a boy. I typical five year old boy. And it’s becoming more clear to me as he grows that schools just don’t know how to deal with boys.

I'm so much better than a soccer mom, I'm a football one

If I think really long and hard about it, I may be able to recollect watching football 30 times over my lifetime.  Half of those include going to highschool games where I was more likely to be watching a boy I had a crush on than the actual game.  The other half include watching the Super Bowl where I was more likely to be interested in the commercials than the score.  I'm not even sure I could name more than six teams and two of them are in the Bay Area. 

In other words, I'm not a fan of football.

Go ahead, throw stones.  Tell me I'm unAmerican.  I fully acknowledge I'm a loser.  But I grew up with a band-geek brother.  I never tried out for cheerleading.  My dad was more inclined to make a mixed tape than watch a game on Sunday.  And I didn't grow up in Small Town USA or Texas where I'm pretty sure that football is taught in school next to religion.

Second Harvest Food Bank

Every year my company holds a Volunteer Week.  The company does a fantastic job of proactively identifying volunteer opportunities throughout the year for those who are civic-service minded.  But then in late September, they do a big push to get every employee across the nation to volunteer in their community. There’s an entire website to connect volunteers with projects .  In the Bay Area alone, there were over 25 projects for employees to sign-up.

I picked the one closest to my home.  I’ll admit that I was a little disappointed that it meant that I’d lose three hours on a Saturday morning.  Yes, I was being selfish with my time.  I’m a busy working mom with weekends that can be more stressful than my meeting schedule.  I’d much rather have found a community service project that was in the morning during the week… might as well kill two birds with one stone and get a break from work while serving my community.  But alas, I picked convenience of the local over my desire to play hooky at work.

And on last Saturday, I showed up to the Second Harvest Food Bank with 20 other employees of my company to bag produce for needy families in my community.

In three hours, our group of twenty bagged over 750 3-lb bags of carrots.  These carrots weren’t like the carrots you’d see stacked all perfectly in Whole Foods.  These carrots were broken in half or triple the size of a carrot you’d see in the store.  The food bank has a deal with local farmers to buy the carrots that wouldn’t be “sell-able” in a regular grocery store.   Whatever carrots were deemed un-safe for human consumption, we threw into a bin that went to a local pig farmer.  No carrot went to waste that day.

At the end of the three hours, I felt like I had really accomplished something for my community.  Until I heard that our 750 bags wouldn’t even survive a few hours at a local food pantry.  Second Harvest Food Bank serves over 200,000 Bay Area families every MONTH.  That’s over 6500 families a day.  Our Team Leader told us that with the economy in bad shape, they see more and more families each week.  There are people in our community who have to pick paying rent over buying groceries.  That there are children who go hungry on the weekends as their only meal is the free lunch they get at school.  It was heartbreaking.

Suddenly that one grocery bag of food I brought to donate seemed like a pathetic attempt to show my support for my community.  I was thrilled when I learned that Second Harvest has partnered with companies and local farmers to make donations stretch even farther.  For a $15.00 donation, Second Harvest can buy 350 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables.  At my local Farmer’s Market, that would buy 7 pounds of peaches. 

So I’ve marked it in my calendar to regularly go shopping for my community at the Second Harvest website.  I can make a single monetary donation that Second Harvest uses as they see fit.  Or I can virtually shop, knowing exactly what my dollars are buying and how far those dollars are stretching to feed my community.  It still may not be enough. But by spending a mere three hours at the Second Harvest Food Bank, I realized that there is so much more than I can be doing.

Original post for the Silicon Valley Mom's Blog

In three hours, our group of twenty bagged over 750 3-lb bags of carrots.  These carrots weren’t like the carrots you’d see stacked all perfectly in Whole Foods.  These carrots were broken in half or triple the size of a carrot you’d see in the store.  The food bank has a deal with local farmers to buy the carrots that wouldn’t be “sell-able” in a regular grocery store.   Whatever carrots were deemed un-safe for human consumption, we threw into a bin that went to a local pig farmer.  No carrot went to waste that day.

At the end of the three hours, I felt like I had really accomplished something for my community.  Until I heard that our 750 bags wouldn’t even survive a few hours at a local food pantry.  Second Harvest Food Bank serves over 200,000 Bay Area families every MONTH.  That’s over 6500 families a day.  Our Team Leader told us that with the economy in bad shape, they see more and more families each week.  There are people in our community who have to pick paying rent over buying groceries.  That there are children who go hungry on the weekends as their only meal is the free lunch they get at school.  It was heartbreaking.

Suddenly that one grocery bag of food I brought to donate seemed like a pathetic attempt to show my support for my community.  I was thrilled when I learned that Second Harvest has partnered with companies and local farmers to make donations stretch even farther.  For a $15.00 donation, Second Harvest can buy 350 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables.  At my local Farmer’s Market, that would buy 7 pounds of peaches. 

So I’ve marked it in my calendar to regularly go shopping for my community at the Second Harvest website.  I can make a single monetary donation that Second Harvest uses as they see fit.  Or I can virtually shop, knowing exactly what my dollars are buying and how far those dollars are stretching to feed my community.  It still may not be enough. But by spending a mere three hours at the Second Harvest Food Bank, I realized that there is so much more than I can be doing.

Original post for the Silicon Valley Mom's Blog

We did it!

Technically, he did all the work. But I can't stop myself from feeling like we both accomplished this.

One month down, Nine more to go

We survived the first month of school! Darius is adjusting well to his new class, his two teachers, and the much longer, more rigorous learning environment. 

I, on the other hand, have been cranky and acting out.

Go figure.

Neville is taking Darius to school in the mornings on his way to work.  It's great for me to get them out of the house by 7:45 and be able to get focused on work right away.  I have to leave the house at 3pm to pick him up.  Yes, his kindergarten is an all day one.  Yes, I purposely picked a school that way.  No, he's not dying from being in school all day. I knew from the beginning that I'd have to be able to drop work in the late afternoons to be with Darius.

I just didn't realize that I'd have to drop everything else.