This month marks my one year bloggiversary. What a wild ride this has been!
In celebration, the Mommybloggers are hosting my debutant ball over at their place. So put on your lace gloves, save me some room on your dance card, and stop over for a glass of lemonade.
When I got back from the conference, my parents were already here waiting for me, cleaning and organizing my house and building shelves like an elite trained strike force the government can only dream of employing. My garage went from this:
to this:
in the course of a few days. I can PARK in there now for the love of PETE! Who ever heard of such a thing? Maybe I’ll just install a strobe light and start a discothèque instead.
Last week my home was filled with friends and family. Now that they’ve all left, I return to my blogging nerdery like a wino to his bottle.
My new post is up over at Parenting and here’s the schedule for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn discussion. Feel free to post comments here or comment on your own blog and leave a link in my comments.
Chapters 1-10 Saturday, August 12th
Chapters 11-26 Saturday, August 19th
Chapters 27-37 Saturday, August 26th
Chapters 38-45 Saturday, September 2nd
Chapters 46-End Saturday, September 9th
That’s about 100 pages per week. You don’t have to stick to the schedule and you can definitely go WAY “off topic” in your discussion. If you’re discussing it, that makes it “on topic”. Happy reading. It really is a fabulous book.
One fine collegiate day I was walking on BYU campus when I spotted a guy across the quad who looked SO familiar. It was amazing. I was sure I had seen him somewhere before, but not once, not twice, but over and over and over again. I felt I had seen him so many times that we had possibly been very good friends at another time in my life, possibly even relatives.
My casual glances turned into stares and eventually I made a direct beeline for the dude with one question on my mind. “Do you recognize me?” He looked so familiar that I simply HAD to discover our past connection.
As I drew closer, he began looking at me and smiling, a quizzical look on his face. I smiled and continued to close in, never breaking eye contact until I stopped, alarmed, 3 feet in front of him. It was Steve Young. No relation to Daring “Young” Mom.
My eyes widened. I turned on my heel and marched firmly back across the quad.
I’m the girl who walked up to Melissa my first 10 minutes at BlogHer and asked her name and whether or not she had a blog. Yeah, she’s tampering with a little blog called Suburban Bliss.
I got an email at the conference from my father-in-law Pops telling me that Guy Kawasaki would be at the FilmLoop booth and I should go over and say hi. “Sure,” says I. “I’ll go chat it up.”
So I walk over to the booth and start asking everyone their names. I can’t remember his name at this point but I’m sure if I hear it, it’ll ring a bell. None of their names are soundin’ familiar. So I start asking if there’s anyone else who might be working the booth later on and what their names might be. Do they know anyone else in the company with another name than the ones they’ve been listing?
The woman at the booth finally comes out and asks me why I want to know.
Me: Well, I’m supposed to meet somebody named “Guy Something”.
Booth-Lady with British Accent: You mean Guy Kawasaki?
Me: Ye-AH! That’s it. He here?
BLBA: He’ll be here tomorrow but I’m sure he’ll be absolutely swarmed.
Me: Cool. I’ll just stop by.
BLBA: He’ll really be swarmed. Would you like me to set up an appointment with him?
Me: I… I… don’t know who he… is? My father-in-law told me to say hi.
BLBA: We should probably set up an appointment.
Me: No, I really don’t have a clue who he is. I’ll just try to catch him tomorrow.
The next day in a moment of Zen I not only see Guy across an empty ballroom, but I actually recognize him (okay, how many Asian MEN were actually at BlogHer?) and yell out, “HEY! Are you Guy?”
“Yeah” he says in that there’s-a-Wikipedia-entry-about-me-but-I-still-try-to-act-like-a-regular-“Guy” tone of voice. I explain that although I have no idea who he is, I’d really like to take a picture with him to pass along to my daddy-in-law. He humors me.
Pops – This one’s for you!
Aggressive kids.
I don’t really have them, unless you call ripping your brother’s arms off, chewing on them and then beating him over the head with them aggressive. She only really does that sort of thing when he does something really insane like look at her while she’s eating marshmallows, so I wouldn’t exactly call her aggressive. He’s only got a few arms anyway and I think once they’re all gone, the problem will pretty much be solved.
Truly though, this is a major issue that I often hear parents talking about. Either we worry that our own child is too aggressive or we have playdates with kids who gank toys, bite chunks out of other kids’ flesh or show up at your house with a fist fulla steel.
Please leave tips for either circumstance. What do you do to help tame your own child’s out-of-control aggression? How much discipline is too much? Have you found a great way to calm Nina down before she detonates her bomb of toddleric rage on the playground?
On the other hand, how do you deal with other people’s children who you feel are too aggressive towards your own? Do you think it’s acceptable to discipline someone else’s child as a form of protection? Do you think your child should fight their own battles? How do you address the issue with the other parent?
Personally, I think that biting or hitting back are a lazy way to solve the problem and may do more harm than good. A more appropriate way to manage the behavior would be to use a little love and logic parenting. “Oh, that’s such a bummer. Now you have two choices. Either you need to untie Timmy and take the play-doh out of his mouth, or you need to at least ask his mom what color of play-doh he likes being force-fed best.”
When your child is being bullied by someone else and the other parent is present, I think it’s more appropriate to mention it to the other parent than to try to attempt to discipline the child yourself. For the most part, I try to teach my kids to deal with it and stand up for themselves. That’s why I’ve hired my own professional ninja to work with them on technique and help them with their wardrobe.
Now please, tell me what you do. Not everyone has the means to hire their own personal ninja or the patience to parent with the love and the logicality.
This post originally appeared on The Parenting Post on July 31, 2006.
We’ve been fishless for months since my last attempt at explaining death to Laylee. For some reason, last week I decided we were ready to try it again. Please meet the newest member of our family:
Me: What should we call the fish?
Laylee: He’s Jack again.
Me: Jack-Again? That’s a funny name.
Laylee: Yeah. I called him that because he’s Jack… Again.
You see, Laylee is a strong believer in resurrection… resurrection and cloning… by a God who drives a car, sneaks around in the dark like the tooth-fairy, and can be enticed to do your bidding if you simply use “the magic word.”
Laylee: Look mama. My knee is getting better.
Me: Wow. What a great blessing.
Laylee: Last night Heavenly Father came down in his car — well he came down out of heaven into my room and he put new skin onto it. But I didn’t see him because I was sleeping.
Me: Sort of. He just made your body special so it could heal itself.
Laylee: When you go away to Calin-forna , he can come down and make me a new mommy and then when you get back I’ll have two Kathryns. And he can make another Daddy and another Magoo.
Me: He doesn’t actually really do that. Not that he can’t. He can do anything. He just doesn’t.
Laylee (having seen her first set of twins recently): But that girl had two little babies! I want us to have two Magoos too.
Me: Well, that won’t happen but I bet some time Mommy can grow a new baby in her tummy.
Laylee: Okay, but I want a girl baby.
Me: We’ll have to see.
Laylee: We can just drive up to heaven and say, “Excuse me, Heavenly Father. Can we have a girl baby please?”
Me: Then we’ll just have to see what he decides.
Laylee: But we can say “PLEASE…”
Today, I’m catching up on all the things I missed at home, helping my mom move me into the new house. She is a whirlwind of productivity and organization. My Dad is a rock-star of building and home repair. Bob Veela should quake in his presence.
Please head over to parenting.com for my latest post over there.
The conference was a blast. I met amazing, intelligent powerhouse bloggers who have a passion for writing and are working through their blogs to make the world a better place to live. It was so fun, in fact, that Chris and I both “accidentally missed” our flights back home yesterday morning. I’ll be doing at least a couple of posts this week about what went down. I’ll try to focus on the things I learned that could be pertinent to the women bloggers who read my site and shy away from the ephemera of BlogHer, questions like:
Why was our good friend Johnson’s baby repeatedly put in a corner? How did I end up with that tattoo on my arm? Can Kelly-Nelly be trusted to find fabulous cheesecake in the state of California? Why did Mir act as an enabler, allowing Chris and I to miss our flights? When asked on video if we’d been drinking, due to our extremely giddy behavior, did someone respond “I’m a little drunk, she’s Mormon”? (Apparently the two have a similar giggleular response.) Were we informed that this video will appear on the website of a major PR Firm?
