Saturday, May 27, 2006

Crocs - the new flip flop?


What is it about Crocs? The Edmonton Sun says that they are this summers newest trend. We succumbed to the subtle, viral marketing that the company has employed and bought a pair for my daughter. They are cute, they are pink, and they are her new best friends. Even my husband thinks they are great, and he is not that much into shoes. His are brown, I just ordered purple for myself and my son requested khaki. I guess it is better than getting matching tattoos?

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Wine and other parental supports


Ok, there is not anything else in this post besides wine, but I was feeling lame about a catchy title....

We like wine. We like to drink it in the winter and in the summer. In the winter, we like reds, mostly Rhone varietals. In the summer, we tend towards dry whites, our new favorite is Greuner Veltliner (GruVes). But we mostly like wine. Fortunately, a couple others on the internet do too. Here are some of our favorite wine spots:

Vinography: A Wine Blog
I first found this when I was looking for information on the ZAP festival

MarkOldman.com - Outsmarting Wine
Mark turned us onto GruVes!

Wine Spectator Online
We subscribe so we can check out the points on specific bottles

Share some of your favorites....

P.S. I guess if I am going to post this in the survival section, I should indicate that wine often helps us get through the tougher aspects of parenting. As a tip, I would recommend checking out K&L, Beltramos and even CostCo for good wine selections. And as a resource, I am happy to come over and taste any bottle of wine you open that you are worried might be corked.

Monday, May 8, 2006

Kindergarten moms and that weird little feeling


We started kindergarten last year (ok, it was my son who started kindergarten, not me, but in valley lexicon, we all did it!), and among a certain circle of friends, that makes me a bit of an expert. Besides the fact we go to school, my son also goes to after school care as well as several extracurricular activities designed to make him very well rounded. So, I get lots of questions from my friends along these lines:

"When does Chess/Science/Basketball start?"
"What do the kids do from 2:05 to 3:30pm when the programs start?"
"What is the bus schedule?"
"What about this peanut free school thing, how do you work around that?"
"What do you mean, they don't have hot lunch for kinders?"

So, I answer a lot of questions - I like that, I like being someone who knows things. But the hardest part about this Q&A is that I don't have a good way to explain the other things that happen. That feeling I got on the first day of school when my son waved his goodbye, stood in line with his classmates and walked into the classroom, with not much of a backward glance over his shoulder. Or the time when the parents were invited into the classroom for a reading and writing performance and my son stood at the front of his classroom and delivered his lines with emphasis and enthusiasm. Or the time when we walked into his after school program and he was leading his friends in a rousing game of kickball.

Something happens during these times, a feeling that I am not in touch with but that makes me pause. It is a warm, kind of constricting feeling near my heart, and sometimes it makes me want to cry, other times I think I will burst with pride. The child with whom I had thought I would not make it through the first six weeks of life is now onto a new chapter in his life, one that does not involve so much of me, one that demonstrates a new found self reliance, and as far as I can tell, it is a beautiful thing.

How do I tell my friends that kindergarten is so much more than figuring out the schedule or deciding what to pack for lunch. Maybe I won't tell them, it would be fun for them to discover it on their own.....

Monday, May 1, 2006

When did I become the tech support person?



I have worked in technology and out of technology, and live in Silicon Valley, so I guess that makes me an "expert" in all things technology. Why do I have to be the tech support person at home?

Funny, at work I am concerned with being a decision maker or influencer of technology decisions. At home, it drives me nuts! I am the one who does all the research before buying a computer; I install all software and new hardware; I care about adding new memory to make the computer go faster so we can download more video; I download the video! I take care of the network (do we really need DSL and wireless?); if heaven forbid something bad happens to the computer, I am on the phone to tech support.

All this because I like using technology, I tend to be a little bit of an early adopter, and because my husband is decidly not a techno-geek. Sometimes I wish I didn't have this responsibility. Guess I will do what my parents did: wait until the kids get older and then turn the whole thing over to them!