*Readers: I must apologize to you. I haven’t blogged in over a week, because I simply haven’t had the heart. Last week, 7 year old Jorelys Rivera was raped, beaten and stabbed to death in the town next to mine, and the crime affected me emotionally. She was playing on her playground when she was […]
You know, I find that the longer I live, the less I tend to judge people. This morning I sent my 2 year old son to daycare, and I feel GLAD about it. In fact, I’ve been looking forward to sending him away since Marshall gave me the approval last Tuesday. Of the 4 kids, […]
These wicked child rearing “experts”. Once upon a time there was a child rearing expert who wrote an article on potty training. In that article he/she proposed that after the potty training parent was successful in getting the toddler (or in some cases – preschooler) to sit on the toilet and produce either a liquid […]
The only thing that gives me comfort in my distress is the knowledge that I am not the only mother to suffer this type of humiliation. Yes fellow mothers – you may call me Misery; and I do enjoy your company. In what has apparently become my children’s unending quest to destroy my self-esteem, I […]
Nadjah ripped open her backpack last week and thrust a sheet of paper in my face. It was a permission slip from her school, requesting my signature to allow my student to participate/try out in the school’s first ever Cultural Talent show. “Presentations must be no more than 5 minutes long and must represent a […]
They say that half of all Americans will be obese by the year 2030 if the trends we’ve seen in the last few decades are not reversed. Think about that: Fifty percent! Take a look at the person sitting across from you right now. If they’re not the one who’s obese, then it means that […]
Move over Tiger Mom…or at least scoot over a tad. There is a new ferocious feline matriarch on the prowl, and her name is “Panther Mom.” And, as her name suggests, she is Black. I was visiting Mom Five Times a few days ago when she finally looked up from her incessantly buzzing smart phone. […]
Have you noticed this anti-kid movement gaining steam in recent months and weeks? Large corporations and small businesses alike are beginning to impose bans on small children, preventing parents and children alike from patronizing particular establishments. Hey, we live in a free world and capitalist society and businesses are allowed to admit whomever they please […]
If you didn’t have thick skin before you had kids, you will certainly develop it afterwards. From the moment a child is conceived, he/she changes your life. From morning sickness to stretch marks to, hair loss to weight gain, nothing ever is really the same – and that’s just in the first two years of […]
Move over Cesar Millan! There’s a new canine charmer in town, and his name is Stone Grant. There is only one thing my son loves more than the outdoors, and that’s putting the outdoors in his mouth. Previously I would merely grimace when he put bits of pinecone and rose petals in his mouth, […]
Caroline says I have a permanent scowl on my face. “I never see you smiling,” she burst one day. I looked up from the diaper I was changing/floor I was sweeping/laundry I was washing/child I was chastising (I don’t recall, but surely I was doing one of these many things) and met her concerned gaze. […]
I haven’t spent much time blogging these last few days because I’ve been dealing with an issue at my daughter’s school: specifically, her attitude in class. Nadjah has had a difficult kindergarten experience, to say the least. She spent 2 months of the first semester in Ghana where she was behind her peers, finished up […]
Two weekends ago I abducted The Fabulous Akuba Sheen(!) and Caroline and drove off to the Natural Hair Expo on Camp Creek Rd. I’ve heard about the pomp and pageantry that takes place at this even year after year, but work or child care has always prevented me from attending. This year, I was not […]
Human beings are (usually) born with five senses: smell, touch, sight, taste and hearing. (Had to list them out, in case any geniuses out there didn’t know what they were.) But the on the day that your first child is born- the very day you become a parent – you develop a sixth sense, and […]
It started with a sudden moan that progressively got loader and loader that culminated with him screaming my name. As I pulled him closer to me, he wrapped his legs tighter around my waist, burying his face into my breasts. He would be denied neither attention nor affection. As we rocked and swayed together in […]
Nadjah will be turning 7 in 6 months, which means I have to start gearing up for a chat about sex, and now that it’s 2011, sexuality. 40 years ago, this conversation could have been postponed until she was at least 14 or 15, but with more and more elementary school children engaging in sexual […]
I’ve been mothering for what seems like an eternity, and I have an eternity still to go. One of the good things about having this many kids is that nothing the newest child does comes as a surprise – unless, as Aya did last night, its fishing out a used baby wipe from the toilet […]
Yesterday I was getting the kids ready for church, which was pretty much a catastrophe because it was daylight savings time (and not the good one where we gain an hour) and Marshall had to go to church to do sound, leaving me alone with all the kids. All the same, I managed to press […]
It’s International Women’s Day, a day to celebrate the accomplishments of women everywhere…I think. I haven’t actually researched the holiday (is this actually a “holiday”?). As my contribution to this day to celebrate women, I offer you some advice that I have received from other women that have aided me tremendously thus far: Don’t wear […]
This has been a hard week for two of my mom friends – and indirectly been a hard week on me because I worry about them so much. Their lives are drastically different from one another’s, like some remixed urban version of Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities” centered around two African-American women connected by […]
What do drugs, whores, pimps and violence have to do with the circus? Generally nothing, unless it’s the UniverSoul Circus. No really…the grand finale – the climax of the show – circles around the tale of a redeemed hooker. What ever happened to plain old dancing ponies and tigers that leap through circles of fire? […]