Jan14
Houndstooth and Green
Jan10
Sensitive Boy
My husband and I are faced with a very delicate and difficult situation at home. We have a very sensitive son who gets his feelings hurt easily. He is well liked at school and most of the time gets along well with his classmates. Like most eight-year-old kids, he’s trying to figure out the social rules of second grade.
My husband was a worrier as a kid, and it seems like my son has a very similar personality. Just yesterday, he came out of school upset about something. It takes some coercing to get him to talk to us, but I finally got the information out of him. Turns out, he made a mistake in music class, and he was embarrassed by it. I asked him if anyone made fun of him, no they didn’t, he said.
He is a tender-hearted little boy, and that’s why everyone loves him. He always stands up for people who get picked on at school. I just worry that he will become the chum in the shark tank if he doesn’t learn to thicken his skin a little. He’s an honorable boy, is so sweet to his sister, does well in school, and I don’t want to mess up his personality for something that could just be a phase that most kids go through. We have set up a reward system that we give him one star for every day that he doesn’t cry. He and his sister are working toward a visit to Disneyland.
My husband and I have had numerous disagreements on the approach to “toughen him up.” My son is not as socially astute as his younger sister (she is a force to be reckoned with, even at age five), and he is quick to tear up. Sometimes I think he will grow out of it, but I still reinforce that it is not acceptable for any reason to cry at school. My husband thinks we should have some tough love solutions, but I fear that will only lead to resentment.
If you are a parent of a child that has gone through this, I would love to hear from you. Any suggestions? Are we on the right path?
Thanks for reading!
Dec6
House Hunting and Superstitions
Dear Readers:
OK, I’ve got a good one for you. My husband and I have been looking for houses here in Orange County for a full year now since we sold our house in San Diego in January. We had rented it out since we moved to Orange County in September 2010 because the housing market was at it’s worst. It only slightly improved by the time we sold it, but we wanted our assets to be liquid in case we found a house and wanted to move on it.
We’ve been narrowing our search parameters down to the current city that we live in because the kids are in a great school, and it’s central to the freeways, shopping centers and the beach. This also narrows our choices as well, good houses in our price range are few and far between and get snapped up very quickly. We’ve put in a few offers, but were either outbid or in the case of one short sale house, the owner clearly didn’t want to give up his house, and made the situation so thorny that we walked away.
So, my husband has put a moratorium on talking about, tweeting or posting on Facebook the specifics on any deal we are working on. Which brings me to the point of my post. How superstitious are you about bidding on a house? What are your rules regarding posting, tweeting or talking about it to friends, family or complete strangers on the internet? I would really like to know.
Nov14
Do They Teach Irony At That School?
Something happened a couple of weeks ago at my kids school during the Friday Flag Ceremony that gave me pause for thought. For those of you that aren’t parents, this is the time the school takes to make announcements, give out awards, celebrate birthdays at the school and its done before school starts on Friday morning. This school is usually pretty good about teaching good health and nutrition, and many teachers have already observed the kids while they were eating their lunches and made suggestions on what parents should include or exclude on future lunches. My don’s teacher says it is because the kids get too wound up in class with some of the foods they eat (understandable, but it could also be because there are 20 boys in his class). Now, I am definitely not a major offender in packing the kids’ lunches. I don’t let them drink soda at all, not even at home, and we limit candy. My kids are allowed only one juice box a day, usually drunk at school, the rest of the time they drink water. I certainly wouldn’t even dream of packing those items in their lunches. So, onto the announcement that piqued my curiosity at the assembly. The school introduced a program that encourages competition between the grades. Fine. The competition is for each grade level to collect pop tops. Not fine. Pop tops are found on cans of soda. So this school encourages drinking sugary, fattening sodas when it benefits them? I don’t really even know what this program does, the school claims it benefits charities. I’m not going to allow the kids to participate in this absurdity. I’m still boggled by this.
May24
Weight Loss Results
My “Jared” pants: while putting away clothes tonight, I noticed how big my sweats were. I still wear these occasionally while hanging out at home or dropping off my son at school in the mornings, but I have to pull the drawstrings tighter each time I wear them. They are C9 sweats from Target, a size Small, believe it or not. I remember how excited I was last winter that I could finally fit into a Small again, and they were even a little snug then. That was probably 10-15 ago. I’m really excited right now, this is a real ego booster and will help me push myself to never put that weight on again!
May24
Weight Loss Results
My “Jared” pants: while putting away clothes tonight, I noticed how big my sweats were. I still wear these occasionally while hanging out at home or dropping off my son at school in the mornings, but I have to pull the drawstrings tighter each time I wear them. They are C9 sweats from Target, a size Small, believe it or not. I remember how excited I was last winter that I could finally fit into a Small again, and they were even a little snug then. That was probably 10-15 ago. I’m really excited right now, this is a real ego booster and will help me push myself to never put that weight on again!
May22
Adding a Blog on Tumblr
Dear Readers,
I have been contemplating changing things on the blog to be more adaptable to my moods for posting different media, and not just a text-heavy blog. I was wanting to move to Tumblr for a while now, so I finally decided to go for it. I’m not abandoning this blog, I’m going to keep this blog open for writing longer posts, which I will post on both sites, and I’m going to keep this blog for archiving my past writings.
Here is the link to the Tumblr site:
Http://www.girlbehindtheorangecurtain.tumblr.com
Thank you for your continued reading!
Aimee
