Now that the joy of no school has faded into that perpetual, annoying chorus of “Mom, what are we going to do today?”, I’m searching for entertainment. Preferably the low-cost, expend-lots-of-kid-energy kind of entertainment. Here are a few local options that are fun and free (or relatively inexpensive).
Inside (where the air-conditioning’s free):
• Beaucatcher Cinemas and the new Biltmore Regal Grande offer free kid movies every Tuesday and Wednesday at 10 a.m. You’ll pay $1 at the Carmike
Proposed state budget cuts to our educational system will mean fewer teachers in schools and more students in individual classrooms. I’m all for trimming fat, but our schools are in danger of becoming Jack Sprat. The cuts would take more than a pound of flesh — the process would harm our kids.
Study after study confirms that students in smaller classes are more focused and have fewer behavioral problems than students in larger classes (a recent study in the Journal of Educational Psychology
I often refer to laundry as the Sisyphean stone of parenthood. It’s the number one never-ending chore of parenting. Number two, after laundry, comes grocery shopping.
I don’t remember much about grocery shopping when I was single or coupled but childfree. It was something I did quickly, after work, maybe once or twice a week — not one of the boulders I had to push uphill daily.
Now grocery shopping’s one of the chores I dread the most. Why? Because not a day goes by that I don’t need to
Seems like yesterday I was changing diapers, while today I’m explaining the term “suicide bomber.”
The thrilling part, that no one explains to you before you produce offspring, is that it’s a constantly changing challenge. As your kids metamorph, so must your parenting.
At first, parenting is oh so physical. Babies are lousy at taking care of themselves, so it’s up to parents to do everything for them. Once babies evolve into toddlers, the physicality bumps up a notch with the advent of the
“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country,” wrote Kurt Vonnegut.
I recently walked into a party full of folks I went to high school with and experienced a similar epiphany, though without too much terror.
The party came about when our high school-era garage band, whose members reconnected via Facebook, organized a reunion. The band, comprised of members from two rival high schools and two different classes, succumbed to the
My kids are veggie-challenged, green-phobic, liable to screech annoyingly before letting a sliver of broccoli touch their lips.
The irony of this is that they’re both vegetarians. While I’ve never offered them meat, neither have I kept them away from it. The result is that they don’t much like it, which I figure is better both for their health and that of the earth.
Despite their purported vegetarianism, my kids don’t consume lots of vegetables. In fact, the majority of their caloric needs
The lowly chicken has been big news around town lately.
For one, the Asheville City Chickens movement pushed through changes to the city’s animal control ordinance governing urban chickens last week at Asheville City Council. Now those of us with houses so close together you can use two paper cups and a string to chat can keep chickens, too. Thanks to the ACC, the minimum distance between a coop and your neighbor’s home has been reduced —
We never forget our best teachers. But do we remember to thank them for what they’ve done for us?
I need a reminder to thank the teachers in my life, as well as to thank those currently teaching my elementary-school-aged kids. Tuesday, May 5, is National Teacher Day, which offers me both reminder and opportunity.
We all have at least a few teachers in our lives that truly changed the way we think — either about ourselves or about the world outside ourselves. And if we have kids, we’re
In honor of Earth Day, I talked to Enviro-spouse about his work on climate change with the Sustainability Institute and how it affects the kids of today and tomorrow.
My questions were: “How do we parent through climate change? How do we prepare our kids for the changes they’ll live through?”
Here’s some of what he said (translated from Geek Speak).
For our kids’ physical health, we need to quickly and steadily reduce fossil-fuel emissions to prevent catastrophic climate change. We’ll need
I’ve been seeing lots of those stick family car stickers around town, mostly on the back windows of mommy vans and stud-daddy SUVs. Driving to and from Charlottesville, Va., last weekend, practically every van I passed contained a traveling family boldly advertising their family/pet configuration on the rear windshield.
What’s the point of these stickers? What are these folks really advertising? How happy their families are? Is it part of a religious movement? Are they saying, “Here’s my
My angel-faced son was not quite 2 years old when the director of his church preschool called to tell me my boy had dropped a wooden block on his foot, then yelled, “S**t!”
While an understandable use of profanity given the situation, his outburst clearly wasn’t appropriate to the setting.
There was no question the boy was imitating Mommy, so I took full responsibility and told the preschool director that I’d work on curbing my vulgar tendencies. Luckily, the preschool director had a sense
Big news here in Edgy land. This is my final Edgy Mama column. I’m traveling a new career path, one that other Ashevillians have taken, though I’ll be the first female to dip my big toe into the vat o’ hops.
Yes, I’m going to open another brewery in Asheville-number 6 or 7, depending on when certain in-the-works breweries put the barley to the pedal.
Why another brewery? Because I’m a craft beer addict with nothing better to do than quaff brewskis and watch my waistline expand to Rush
My girl and her best buddy are taking a spy class together. Yes, a number of Asheville parents are paying for their kids to learn how to spy.
The way our kids do it, spying involves them sneaking quietly around the house and spending hours writing notes to each other in secret code-pretty healthy entertainment, overall. A couple of times I’ve come around a corner only to shriek in surprise after running smack into a half-hidden kid. Hearing the floorboards creak behind me as I’m trying to
I’m all about low-key, low-cost birthday parties. I’ve thrown some for my kids that have cost next to nothing, and a few that inexplicably went over budget. (OK, maybe not inexplicably. Buying cupcakes and pizza for 30 kids and supplying beer to parents so they won’t leave their spawn and run can add up).
As birthday season approaches (lots of spring and summer births), here are a few recessionary ideas for throwing fun — but cheap — par-tays for your kidlings:
“I’m not going to clean up my room unless you help me,” says the boy.
“Do NOT give your mother ultimatums,” I say.
“But Mom, I don’t have any old tomatoes,” he replies.
Experts say that chores help kids learn responsibility and build self-esteem. That’s great, but I need more non-negotiable child labor around here.
We’ve tried a variety of ways to implement chores, from tying them to allowance to making chore charts to telling the kids that this is what you do when you’re part of a family,
I’m writing this column at home, while my girl sleeps after a long night of vomiting.
She may have picked up one of the myriad tummy bugs currently bouncing around her school. Or I may have fed my child a tainted peanut.
At least that’s what occurred to me at 2 a.m. as I was cleaning the toilet for the third time in two hours. See, yesterday she wanted to make trail mix, so I bought the proper ingredients, we mixed it up, and she ate a bowlful (the boy’s in an anti-peanut phase, and I won’t
Between my two kids, I breast-fed for a total of about 3 1/2 years. Yes, I spent that many years exposing my boobs in a variety of places to feed my kids, who never took a bottle and went straight from breast-feeding to drinking from a sippy cup.
I finished nursing my youngest almost five years ago but have fond memories of those years. For one, it’s a heckuva a lot easier to lift your shirt than to cook dinner for a family. Some days, I wish my kids were still so easy to feed.
