Archive for March, 2010

Our school has spent the week celebrating Exceptional Children’s Week.

As far as I can tell the week seems to be less about the children and more about the teachers who work with their special needs every day. At our school the teachers include among others those who work with the visually impaired, autistic, learning disabilities, speech, occupational therapists and also the gifted. (I know I’m forgetting some!)

Our school basically treats it like teacher appreciation week but for these specialized teachers.  They had personalized coffee mugs and Starbucks on Monday, little flower bouquets on Tuesday, a very nice luncheon on Wednesday, today is handwritten notes from all the students, and then Friday is candy bar bouquets.

I don’t think these teachers are generally thanked during the regular teacher’s appreciation week in May so it’s nice for their efforts to be recognized.

Has your school been celebrating these teachers or these children this week? Does your …

Continue reading Is your school celebrating Exceptional Children’s Week? »

I’m in the market for a good mom phone. The contract has been up on my sad little phone that merely dials for more than a year, and I have been paralyzed with indecision on choosing a new phone. I’ve watched hours of ads on TV and still don’t know which phone would be the best, most efficient smart mom phone for me.

So I got serious yesterday and Googled “good mom phone” and “mom phone.” Here is some of what I found:

The Mamapedia mostly focused on how to keep your phone safe from little fingers dipped in peanut butter.

About.com had a good list of phones to start investigating.  The list includes info about the iPhone, the Palm Pre, the Blackberry Bold, the Blackberry Pearl, T-Mobile my Touch 3G among others.

But the site I like best was The iPhone  Mom. She blogs about all the apps a mom could need (and not really need) for her iPhone.

According to the blog, the iPhone can help you remember to restart your birth control pills after your down week, track your …

Continue reading Help me pick a good mom smart phone! »

We did watch the premiere of “The Marriage Ref” on Sunday and the one thing that really caught my attention was host Tom Papa’s little routine at the beginning of the show about his single friends trying to find their soul mates. He advised just to settle for the person that they could basically get along with OK. They don’t have to perfect. They just have to be someone you can tolerate for a long period of time. (I’m trying to pull up his exact wording on the joke but the NBC video is taking forever!)

When I was young I did believe Michael was my soul mate. We started dating when I was 19 and he was 21. He always said there’s no such thing as soul mates. He believed there were loads of people you could marry and do relatively well with. That used to hurt my feelings terribly, but now I kind of agree.

I think you can do a very good job finding someone that you do really mesh with and are pretty close to soul mates and those are the marriages that last. Michael and …

Continue reading Is hubby your ‘Soul Mate’? »

“Children are not listening. I’ve taken away video games, computer and TV. Made Walsh run laps around the backyard this afternoon and clean up after the baby. And they are still being wild and not listening to their Mother. The big guns are coming out — I’ve just got to figure out what those are!”

This was my Facebook status last week when Michael was out of town. The kids were going crazy at home, especially around bedtime, and my little guy was getting into trouble at school. And my normal methods of discipline didn’t seem to be having an impact.

I think part of their craziness is because they haven’t had enough physical activity since it’s been so cold for so many weeks.

I also think they get into a pack mentality and feed off of each other – especially close to bed time. All three of them, even the baby, just get sillier and sillier. They laugh wildly and then start the fake Tae Kwon Do battle in the hallway. And then Rose pulls out the opera singing while she …

Continue reading What are your ‘big guns’ for discipline? »