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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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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“Mama, do NOT put that on the internet.”

I promised I wouldn’t.

I lied to my kids, and I have no regret.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anna, caught dancing, claire, dancing video, kids dancing

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It’s my firm belief that self-esteem is not inherited.

I came to that conclusion last night while having dinner with my daughters and a friend.

My poor daughters have me as a mother and their father as a father. (I have to clarify because, you know, these days…) The pair of us combined have about enough self-esteem to fill a shot glass, which, ironically, is where we find it. My shot glass-full of self-esteem is probably one of those over-sized ones you find at an interstate gas station next to the shellacked baby gator heads display, but that means I only have slightly more than Patrick.

Having a lack of self-esteem can be a good thing in a marriage because you’ll never feel like you’re good enough for someone with whom to cheat.

SCORE!

We encourage our girls to do their best and be their best. We bestow upon them every positive motivator appropriate for its situation. But I do like to mix those in with a nice balance of back-handed comments like, “How can such a smart kid not remember to close her mouth when she chews?”

Related: It’s a good thing Mensa applications don’t have a test on table manners. I have a good feeling there’s a correlation between geniuses and open-mouth chewing.

I’m not shy about showing off my skills of birthing genius children. No really, one is a tested genius. I like to take all the credit for their smarts because clearly extra brain cells were passed on to them in my womb. Genius is a nature deal, not nurture.

Related: I like to make up scientific facts to support my delusional beliefs.

At dinner with my friend last night, we started talking about teaching and teachers and how the school system is fucking up the next generation. We met while teaching across the hall from one another back when I actually earned an actual paycheck that actually helped support my family. Bygones.

In that conversation, we got around to talking about gifted classes. We haven’t really spoken with our kids about what it means to be in a “gifted” class or what it means to have a label, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to ask my kid who was sitting next to me (different from the other kid who shall not be named for privacy purposes) what she thought “gifted” meant.

“Gifted means I’m better than everyone else.”

This is when my friend and I died and our drinks spewed from our noses.

And then we died some more and couldn’t talk for at least 46 seconds while my kids stared at us like the buffoons we are.

Like a good parent, I explained to her that, “NO, gifted does not mean you’re ‘better than everyone else.’ It means you learn differently and your teacher teaches to your class differently than the other classes. It means you might do more or different work than the other classes in your grade.”

She happened to have been split up from her regular classmates and was a “guest” in another teacher’s classroom that day because schools don’t believe in substitute teachers anymore.

Her response to me: “I can tell that Mr. So-and-So’s class isn’t gifted.”

Again, my friend and I lose our shit and die from holding back iced tea from coming out of our noses.

Though we asked why she thought she could tell why Mr. So-and-So’s class wasn’t gifted, but we never got a straight answer out of her. But we have a feeling it has something to do with the fact that she thinks she’s better than everyone else.

Seeing as her two parents only see ourselves as better than Florida Gators fans, we can’t really try to teach her how to think any less of herself.

© 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: gifted, kids, school, self esteem

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There must be some kind of omen about a chicken crossing the road right in front of you. Or maybe an old wive’s tale. Or maybe this is normal when you’re not in Suburbia.

Watching a chicken cross the road right in front of your car isn’t something that happens every day to a suburbanite. Or really, happens ever in my Pleasantville planned community. Though I did see some girls riding horses on the main road through our manufactured town once, and it wasn’t even during the holiday parade.

A chicken crossed the road in front of my car this past weekend when I was out in Downtown MethHead, Florida with my girls, mom, sister, and her kids. I’m pretty sure I heard it cluck, “BAWK BAWK, MOTHERFUCKER!” as it passed by. Now that I think about it, that chicken probably knows Jenny’s Beyonce.

We were coming from the U-Pick, side-of-the-road farm where we picked strawberries with our own hands, and for the whole 20 minutes it took us to pick 6 quarts of farm-fresh fruits, we were damn farmers.

Clearly the chicken who crossed the road smelled our freshly dirtied feet from afar, and it felt safe crossing in front of my minivan.

Picking strawberries in the boonies was a teachable moment for our suburban kids.

“See, kids. Your food doesn’t really come from plastic bags! Your food comes from people with very dirty feet. And, kids, if you want some Oxy, you can follow that chicken back to its coop where it nests in some methhead family’s living room. Just bring me back some farm-fresh eggs.”

I’m never at a loss for finding ways to teach my children the ways of life in Florida.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: anna, chicken cross the road, claire, kids, nolan, picking strawberries

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A few weeks ago, they Lynchipoo house started the LISTERINE® and REACH® Healthy Habits for a Lifetime Oral Care Challenge, which is ironic because it’s a mouthful to say.

Since starting the Challenge and making a more conscious effort to take better care of our mouths, my seven-year-old, Anna, is pretty much obsessed with mouth rinse. She plans out which ones she’ll use after she finishes the bottle she’s currently using and makes sure the ones she wants are safe for kids. (Her current favorite is the LISTERINE® Smart Rinse Berry Shield.) If her sister doesn’t use mouthwash after she brushes, Anna makes sure to call her out and insist Claire rinses.

I’ve basically created a mini OCD monster. Which, if you there was something we could have picked for her to obsess over, there could be worse things than using mouth rinse. (Think: eating couch cushions, sleeping with a blowdryer, or eating her dead husband’s ashes.)

As my girls start losing more teeth and growing their “forever” teeth, they won’t want to end up like their ancestors and have to chew their steak with their hardened gums. And to encourage this OCD behavior of regular teeth brushing and mouth rinsing, we’ve mounted photos of rotten mouthes on the girls’ bathroom walls.

OK, that’s a lie, but if it ever comes to that extreme need for maintaining proper oral care, we’d totally do it.

Disclosure: This post and the previous one linked above are part of a sponsored series in partnership with The Motherhood and Listerine®. All opinions are my own as I highly doubt Listerine® would recommend you post photos of rotten teeth on your bathroom walls as motivation for using mouthwash. Find out more details on having a healthy mouth and teaching kids good brushing habits, visit the Healthy Habits for a Lifetime informational page at Walmart.com.

© Angie [A Whole Lot of Nothing] for A Whole Lot of Nothing • Your Favorite Blog, 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: healthy habits, healthy mouth, listerine, oral care, Sponsored, the motherhood

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If you don’t reward a child with more stuff, what do you do as a reward?

No, really. I want to know.

The last thing we need in this MessyHouse is more stuff. My girls are becoming addicted to getting more stuff and thinking they need more stuff. As much as we said we wouldn’t raise them to be dependent on a “carrot” as a reward for good behavior, it seems that it’s the only thing that really works. Except that “carrot” is more often a new headband, new toy, new shirt, or the promise of a new car when they turn 16 than it is an actual carrot.

And as much as it would work to threaten them with bodily harm and/or publicly shaming them, that’s not our style. Though if they looked this cute if they were really scared of us, maybe we’d try that tactic.

“Stay in bed all night until the sun comes up and you can have something from the Treasure Box!”

“If you quit crying here at Target for more stickers, you can have stickers at home.”

“Good job on your reading test! Let’s go have ice cream thereby developing your brain to want sweet treats as a reward so as an adult you’ll use a sleeve of Thin Mints as a ‘reward’ for cleaning the bathroom!”

Not only is that perpetuating the desire for extrinsic rewards, but it’s not teaching them to be intrinsically motivated.

We want them to want to do good things because they feel better about themselves. Instead, they have shelves and boxes and underneath their beds full of stuff.

Exhibit:

The Playroom, circa 2008

I need your parenting advice.

What (aside from Fire & Brimstone and the threat of physical violence) do you use as motivation for your kids to do the right thing and be their best person?

© 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: extrinsic motivation, intrinsic motivation, parenting advice, raising girls, reward system

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