Surfing the ‘net in our panties: it’s how we do. Though this picture was taken 4 years ago, it could have been taken yesterday, save for the pacifiers and nakedness. Now it’s just me and Patrick who surf the ‘net in our panties.

Pleasantville School [name changed to protect my kids from you weirdo stalkers] will be a BYOT school beginning August 2012
(Bring your own Tech)
Students in 3rd, 4th and 5th are requested to bring an ipad (tablet devise [Kindle Fire, etc.]) or netbook to school daily. Laptops and other devices which have internet access and good battery are also acceptable (iphone, ipod) .

Each classroom will have several devices which students who do not have personal tech will be able to share and use while in the classroom. However, they will not be able to load personal work or applications on the school machines.

Pleasantville School has always been cutting edge and we plan to continue to move our students forward.

The above was included in an email I just received from my girls’ public elementary school’s principal.

I wouldn’t want to be behind the principal’s desk today. I can only imagine the emails and phone calls with which she’s being bombarded.

Honestly, I’m kind of super excited that this is happening at my girls’ school. I’m not happy that I’ll be the one paying for the new tech my 8-year-old will be toting back and forth to school, but if I didn’t pay for it, the school would have to take money away from other things to pay for it.

They’ve already taken substitute teachers, cursive writing, recess for older kids, non-microwaved food, teacher’s aides, proper art & music curriculum, and copy paper out of the budget.

I’d rather buy my kid her own technology and have control over it than have more money taken out of her classroom. GOD KNOWS, they apparently need more money (or maybe just smarter people) for figuring out how to create and assess a standardized test.

To fill you in, Florida is where the State School Board makes arbitrarily tougher requirements for passing standardized tests, only to get the results back and find they set the passing score too high and have to pass an emergency rule lowering the passing score.

Without it, only about a third of students would have passed the writing portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT, compared to 80 percent or better last year.

(Education Commissioner Gerard) Robinson acknowledged some things “slipped through” the Department of Education but promised they would be corrected. The department failed to sufficiently stress changes in this year’s test to school districts and teachers, he said. ~Miami Herald

I don’t want those yahoos responsible for getting my kid the best of what she needs. Whenever I can have control, I accept it without protest.

We are super massively extra fortunate to live in our neighborhood where the elementary school is the #2 ranked public elementary school in the state. Of course, this is Florida, so that’s not saying too much, but out of all the other schools in this assbackwards state, we’re in the tops.

To be one of the best, it unfortunately means making sacrifices. In this case, it’s a monetary sacrifice, and I’m not complaining. In other cases, it’s time sacrifices or discipline sacrifices. But to be the best, the expectations are high, and having been a teacher, I know what it takes and which fights to start.

Buying my 8-year-old $200 worth (I’m looking at you, Kindle Fire) of technology that will help her be a better learner, be a better student, and be a better member of society is not a fight in which I’m participating.

It will be a sacrifice for us to shell out several hundred dollars for her education, but at least we know 3 months ahead of when it’s required. We can be responsible parents by having Anna help out with the purchase so she understands the value of what she’s getting.

We will NOT be those parents who protest the evolution of learning just because it’s uncomfortable and different from how we did things growing up.

We are fortunate to have the opportunity to make this sacrifice.

We’re not above asking for help in supporting our kids, so if you’re buying anything from Amazon.com any time soon, how about using this fancy affiliate link to Amazon so they will pay me for your purchase? My make-believe budget thanks you.

UPDATED with this video that better explains BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology):

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: elementary school, ipad in school, kids, tablet

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I worked at Star Tours during my semester of Disney’s College Program way back in 1997.

Patrick being the massive Star Wars nerd that he is, he’s indoctrinated the children into the lifestyle with my blessing.

Anna is a full-on Star Wars nerd.

Claire is a full-on Star Wars princess.

That’s why we will be buying these Star Wars shirts for our girls at this year’s Star Wars Weekends at Hollywood Studios at Disney World.

I am a Jedi like my father before me.

Cut but dangerous
Yub Nub

These are giant Star Wars nerdlets.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ewok shirt, i am a jedi, star tours, star wars weekend shirts, star wars weekends

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I waffle back and forth between thinking I’m a good parent and thinking I’m the biggest failure parenting has ever seen.

Damn. Now I want a waffle.

One thing I’m not good at doing is follow through, which is why it’s been over 2 months since I started sharing my assvice series on how to raise perfect children. Clearly, I’m doing something right in raising good citizens because my girls are 6-and 7-years-old and haven’t yet been arrested.

I call that a WIN in parenting.

It’s about time I continued the “6 Ways To Raise Perfect Children” series on how to be the perfect parent, and today’s lesson is focused on being self-important.

Maybe not in the conceited kind of self-importance, but “important” in the way that your kids know that they matter in this ass-backward world.

I totally stole the phrase from the movie The Help, because even though I only read 1/2 of the book and didn’t really enjoy the movie, the mantra said by the character, Aibileen to her charge, Mae Mobley, is perfection.

“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.”

Getting past the improper grammar for the sake of historical verbiage accuracy, the message is clear: build your child’s self-esteem. Let them know they are important to your life. They may feel it in the way you treat them and their life, but they may not hear it. We spend a lot of time correcting our chidren’s behaviors, so making a point to let them know their importance in a way that is clear and without question can only help their own self worth.

But let’s not go overboard. No one likes a conceited little brat, so finding that fine line where you can convey your appreciation for your child’s presence in your life without giving them license to think they are better than everyone else is just that, fine.

There are so many other things in our kids’ lives that will teach them to hate parts of themselves, so setting them up with a baseline of importance can (hopefully) help their self-esteem.

6 Ways To Raise Perfect Children

1. Specific Praise

2. “You is important.”

3. Positive Correction

4. Let Them Eavesdrop

5. Believe Them (to a point)

6. Failure

Now that I’ve gone through the first two of the six ways to raise perfect children, and it only took me two months, I’m sure by the end of 2013, you’ll have all my tips to raise your own perfect children.

Good luck not screwing up your kids before I get around to finishing.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 6 ways to raise perfect children, parenting advice, you is important

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This post is sponsored by Country Crock. I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective, and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.
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I totally believe in making sure my girls get all of the vegetables and fruits and vitamins and meats and dairies and grains and whole foods and water and organic non-hydrogenated macrobiotic grass-fed antibiotic-free-range food.

But then I’m slapped back to reality and come to terms with my lack of cooking skills and my girls’ limiting food tastes. In terms of nutrition, we live by the rule of “get it where and when you can.” If that means counting spaghetti sauce as a vegetable serving, so be it. In our house, 100% juice boxes totally count as fruit and reduced-fat hot dogs are a protein.

One of the few vegetables my girls will eat are peas and broccoli. Frozen peas are a staple in our freezer, and they don’t even know they can put butter or honey on them to make them taste better. We don’t have broccoli often in our house, mainly because of the farts, but also because one girl likes cold broccoli and the other likes it hot. And of course, neither one of them eats the stems.

I know. Weirdos.

Creating creative yet easy yet delicious meals is not one of my best qualities. Luckily for me and my kids, there is a very smart lady who’s compiled a collection of creative yet easy yet delicious vegetable dishes that my kids will (probably) eat. In partnership with Country Crock, chef and mom Clare Crespo created a downloadable book of healthy veggie recipes.

image credit countrycrock.com

For this post, I decided to be supermom and make the Sweet Potato Bear Claws, presenting them to my children in all their delicious glory. They would cheer and clap and pound the table with their forks as I exclaimed, “Look what your beautiful, caring mother created for you, the children from which my loins have provided!”

As things go, that did not happen. I decided instead to make one of the recipes on the Country Crock website because it has “easiest” in the name. Easiest Ever Spoonable Cornbread was going to hit the table to cheers and claps and little girls pounding the table with their forks! It would be my greatest accomplishment of the week!

And when I got home from the grocery store with all of the Spoonable Cornbread ingredients, they mocked me saying, “No, Pangie, you cannot make cornbread with yellow cake mix.”

I had bought the wrong Jiffy box featuring a yellow baked goodness on its front. Because of course.

So now I’m left with the ingredients to make Easiest Ever Spoonable Cornbread, an errand to run tomorrow, and the task of making the Sweet Potato Bear Claws the next day.

I’m also looking forward to using the other Clare Crespo-inspired vegetable recipes for my kids because it would be super awesome for them to actually eat more than just hot dogs and peas. I’ll keep you updated…
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Are you looking for quick and simple tips and recipes to make serving veggies more fun? Download the free Clare Crespo Cookbook here for fun and whimsical recipes your family is sure to love!

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: clare crespo, cookbook, country crock, recipe, Sponsored, vegetables

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Like most other stay-at-home moms, I had the choice to stay home and work with no paycheck or work a real job with a real paycheck.

If you’ve never tried being a work-at-home mom (or dad), it looks like the photo here on the right.

Yesterday, I suggested that we toss Hilary Rosen and Ann Romney into a bikini mud wrestling match. It’d be way more interesting to see them continue this round of the Mommy Wars fight covered head to toe in mud than it is to watch heavily make-upped “strategist” talking heads on the news cycles.

My 4-year career as an elementary school teacher paid for my babies to be in daycare and not much more. After my last school year was over, I yelled, “SAYONARA, BITCHES!” and screeched my tires out of that school parking lot, never looking back.

Maybe if I’m yelling “Sayonara, bitches!” at a school-full of elementary students, my talents are not best served as their teacher. I hope I just imagined saying it then instead of actually yelling it out loud like I’m remembering now. 

The weeks and days and hours and minutes and seconds I spent at home with my two babies (ages 2 years and 6 months at the time) were grueling. No really. It wasn’t pleasant to be the sole caretaker for two babies for 10+ hours a day with little to no interaction with adult people with whom I could tell dirty jokes and make inappropriate references about our principal. I missed having a schedule and a job and somewhere to go and the relief of being able to not be on edge that someone could break down and cry at any second.

But now it was me who could break down at any second; I wished I could have been the one to be put into timeout for just 33 minutes of silence and peace. (I don’t have to interject the obligatory statement that I love my kids and love every second I get to spend with them and love create amazing persons from their easily-molded beings, do I?)

I planned my days around nap time, willing/praying/sending sleepy-time vibes to the children to nap on the same schedule so mommy could watch her stories without pleading for them to stop crying because mommy needed to see Cameron Mathison without his shirt on again.

When I discovered I could use the Magical Internet to possibly make some money so we didn’t have to sell blood plasma and semen for diapers, I threw my every attention into building a business I never knew I wanted.

NOTE: Staying up until 2:30am every night doing research does not make for a pleasant morning where you’re the sole caretaker of a toddler and a baby. You’ll miss your stories when it’s nap time because you’ll be falling asleep on their floor and then you’ll feel guilty for sleeping during the day when everyone else you know is a slave to The Man.

I think it’s the guilt that gets to us as stay-at-home moms.

We feel guilty that we can stay in our not-for-yoga yoga pants until 5:30 when we change into non-stretchy pants to show our working partners that we totally DID get dressed.

We feel guilty that our “work” isn’t earning a paycheck for our household budget.

We feel guilty that we don’t have the stress of having a boss to talk smack about.

We stay-at-home moms feel guilty that we are not working a real job for a real paycheck.

But hey, we’re stay-at-home moms. We chose to have this lifestyle of PB&J lunches, shlepping the kids to the pool, and cleaning 4-day old milk out of baby bottles. It’s not real work. It’s chosen work for chosen people.

Now that I have all of this out, I need to take a nap before the now 6- and 7-year-old children come home from school and ruin any chance I had of recharging my sanity before I’m solely responsible for their lives.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: ann romney, hilary rosen, stay at home mom, work at home mom

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It’s a good thing my grandparents were prolific breeders.

One of my mom’s 3 younger sisters and 2 of my cousins are regular readers here, and without their views, I feel like my pretend-famous blog would shrivel up to dust. This weekend, they told me I’m not posting enough.

Apparently, they don’t know how a feed reader works, so they come to my blog several times a day to see if I’ve updated. I’m estimating that their pageviews account for approximately 52% of my traffic.

I don’t want to make my regular readers angry, and they’re a hot group of family, so I don’t want to disappoint.

You don’t want to see anyone in my family get angry, because this is what a happy, laughing face looks like.

In this family, we’re as thick as thieves with fashionably popped collars on our skull & crossbones shirts.

We keep an eye on our sisters while they steal our shit.

But when we get angry, you’ll know it.

When we get sick and tired of your antics, we lie down and ignore you.

We keep the golf gallery quiet for our sisters when they set up to take a tee shot.

And we support our family when they make gender-bending fashion decisions.

We look KILLER-cute in a bubble suit and sun hat.

But we apparently don’t tell our sisters that they have insanely frizzy hair in her annual family photo when we take her picture. Jerk.

Dear family, you’re lucky to know me.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2012, easter, Family

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Typically, my powers as a blogger are used for good, and I hope that continues today with my hesitation to tell my daughter’s story.

I’m hoping to get advice from you on how to punish my daughter.

Because there’s that whole child privacy debate and it’s her story to tell, I won’t be specific on which daughter is in need of punishment. It’s a 50/50 guess, and in the grand scheme, it doesn’t matter which kid is being discussed. She’ll be referred to as Pants on Fire Girl for this story.

I’ll do my best to break down what happened and why I need your help.

Background

Neither one of my daughters gets in serious trouble. They’re not hitters, biters, kickers, blatant disobeyers and never have been. They argue with one another, whine and cry when they want something, tell fibs from time-to-time, and sometimes have to go to time-out for not following directions. They’re typical 6- and 7-year-old girls who have never had to have a call home from a teacher and are model students in their classrooms (to quote their teachers).

Each girls’ classrooms have a discipline chart where they “move their clip” or “go on yellow” if they disobey a classroom rule and lose recess time. If they’ve had to move their clip, their teacher will include a note in their agenda letting the parent know that they broke a rule and to talk at home about what happened at school.

Generally, we believe our girls when they tell us something, and if they aren’t telling the full truth, we can easily tell and can easily draw out the truth.

The Situation

Upon picking up the girls from school yesterday afternoon, Pants on Fire Girl answered the daily question, “How was your day?” with

“You won’t believe what happened, Mama. It’s so funny! When Mrs. Smith (name changed) was writing in my agenda, and she thought that MY agenda was Jane’s (name changed), and she put a frowny face in my agenda! Mrs. Smith is so funny, she didn’t even notice. I didn’t want to interrupt her to show her that she made a mistake, and we were all packing up our backpacks, so she didn’t get a chance to change the frowny face. Isn’t that so funny, Mama?!”

My immediate response was to think that with such an elaborate story, of course it was true. As a retired teacher myself, I know the craziness that can happen at the end of a school day, and of course mistakes are made.

Pants on Fire Girl brought up the funny story about the frowny face mixup 2-3 more times yesterday afternoon, even bringing it up to Patrick when he got home from work.

I wrote in her agenda, “Oh No! Just kidding! ” to let Mrs. Smith know that I had seen the frowny face and we understood it was a mistake.

Just before bedtime, I asked what Jane had done to get her clip moved, and Pants on Fire Girl’s response was odd to me: “I don’t want to talk about it.”

ALARM BELLS

When my girls don’t want to talk about something, something is wrong. From trying to cover up a fib to not wanting to get someone else in trouble to just not wanting to talk about it, when they tell me “I don’t want to talk about it,” that’s my cue to dig further to find out more.

Verification

After bedtime, I emailed Pants on Fire Girl’s teacher. Here is what I emailed:

Hi – I just wanted to check in with you on the frowny face in Pants on Fire Girl’s planner today. She told me it was a mistake in her planner meant for someone else, and I believe her… I just want to double check with you.

Thanks!

Less than 1 minute after I sent the email, I received this response from her teacher:

Hello,

It was not a mistake meant for someone else and she knows why she was on yellow today, as she told me why after sitting out for 5 minutes of recess.  She was putting a pencil in another student’s face, which is not safe.

Let me know if you have any other questions.  Hope this helps!

My heart dropped.

Pants on Fire Girl had created a scenario, supported her story with details, and stuck by that story for 5 solid hours, barely giving away any hint of her mistruths.

I was both mortified that my daughter felt the need to tell an elaborate lie and proud of the details and conviction with which she told the lie.

The girl has a future in acting and storytelling, that’s for damn sure.

Punishment

After receiving the teacher’s email, we talked to Pants on Fire Girl letting her know we knew of the lies. She cried, I cried, she went to sleep, I went to sleep.

But what now?

What is the appropriate punishment for a 6- or 7-year-old for telling such an elaborate lie?

She wouldn’t have been punished for moving her clip; it was a bad choice to make, but not one worth more than a discussion as punishment. But there needs to be an appropriate punishment for repeatedly lying. She doesn’t have anything that she does or likes that if taken away wouldn’t affect anyone else in our household. She doesn’t watch TV shows, play on the computer, or play video games with any sort of regularity.

The only punishment we’ve thought of is to send her to bed 30 minutes early for the rest of the week.

What do you think, friends? What would be an appropriate punishment for her?

Now’s your chance to impart your nuggets of wisdom upon me. PLEASE?!?

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 63 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: parenting advice, punishment

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Remember that time we went to Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure, and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter?

This was that:

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: harry potter, hogsmeade, hogwarts, photographs, Pictures, universal studios

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The only reason to have kids is to create clone humans to take your place when you kick off.

Any other reason to breed pales in comparison to nature’s need to reproduce your genes. Unconditional love, feelings of worthiness, premature ejaculation, and one-upping your sister all fall into a distant 2nd place for reasons to spawn.

Patrick and I are raising our girls for us to each have our own Mini Me, as you can see in this photo I took this past weekend at Star Tours.

We’re successfully raising goofball, Star Wars-loving, Disney World-going nerds who will do pretty much anything for a laugh to replace us when we die.

You’re welcome, universe.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anna, claire, Disney World, hollywood studios, instagram, star tours, star wars, walker

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In the weirdest, most Awesome twist of how the world’s energy works, while I was writing this post, I received an email about Susan Niebur, Why Mommy, of Toddler Planet, who has been suffering from metastatic breast cancers and is currently going through an extremely hard bout.She’s written about how she sees strength in LEGO mini-figures, and her friends around the interwebs are sending virtual mini-figs to help her with her fight.

…and leave you with the image of a very tiny and very strong lego girl inside me, fighting the cancer with her minature sword, side-by-side with the new medicines that at once starve the cancer cells of estrogen and deprive them of their ability to grow and divide.  She is fighting, and I will fight, and my little ones will not crumble, but cheer me on in this new trial. Susan Niebur, Us Lucky

My sister works for LEGOLAND, but seeing as I get anxiety attacks when I try to build anything from my imagination or from a manual, that has no bearing on this post. And really, the fact that she works at LEGOLAND has nothing to do with this either. It really just means that we get to go to LEGOLAND for free. Neener.

Over at Curvy Girl Guide, my super Awesome friend, Nanette, wrote about the new LEGOs for girls. LEGO Friends, as they’re known, has just been released to the masses after a 4-year study conducted by LEGO to try to market to the 50% of the kid population that happens to be female.

Having two girls of my own, I make every effort to guide them into choosing what they want to play with, not what is being marketed to them to want to play with.

Being the socially liberal girl that I am, I was at first miffed at LEGO for making a “girl” line of LEGOs. I read the blog posts and news articles and saw the protests and petitions to get LEGO to stop “marketing to girls.” At first, I was with the angry mom mob.

But when we went to the store and actually looked at them, my girls flipped over getting a set of “Friends” that was both pink and pretty but also challenging for them to build. They spent their Christmas gift cards on getting two sets that they’re dying to put together that they can play together with their already-built Buzz Lightyear ship.

With Anna, my eldest, she has always steered towards more “boy” toys like Toy Story and Star Wars, but Claire has always steered towards more “girl” toys like Barbie and princesses. They’re all of 18 months aparts, so I know there’s no gender bias in how we’re raising them, but they are who they are and they like what they like.

They both love All Things LEGOs, and while I’d love for them to want all of the LEGOs despite the theme of the box, as long as they’re using their brains to build figures, I don’t care what color the bricks are.

There’s nothing made for both girls and boys that is perfect and 100% without any bias.

And when is someone going to get all peeved off at boys not wanting to build a LEGO Pet Care Center or a Friends Salon?

While my girls are busy building houses and dog show sets, I’ll be keeping my distance from the anxiety-causing build-a-thon and thanking LEGO for making a mini-figure with chest hair.

For Susan.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 11 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: lego friends, lego mini figures, why mommy

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