Maybe we’re weird, but I swear this kind of stuff happens here all the time. We’ll be out enjoying the day or running errands, something will catch one of the guys’ attention and before I …

Boots  loves critters – anything with fur, feathers and fins. He’s always loved winged creatures the best, so I suppose it was inevitable that once the infomercials hit we would be buying a butterfly kit …

I started out with good intentions, declaring as school let out that the guys would read for a half hour each day.
That soon devolved to bribing – they’d earn one “Mom Buck” for each 30 …

If there’s an app on my phone Big Guy is going to play with it – especially since I’ve taken the games off my geriatric-by-today’s standards Blackberry so I could install Major League Baseball At …

It’s not that I had the “bad math experience” in school that a recent newspaper article talks about – though I’m not sure what a “bad math experience” is because the article never defines it.
At …

Seeing that I’d already compromised my principles a year ago by using “fruit” snacks to help Big Guy learn to add and subtract, I had no ethical problem whatsoever with sending Boots to hell in …

Mom’s Two Commandments of Summer: Thou shalt stay out of my hair in the mornings so I can work, and thou shalt read and like it.
It’s a given that the first is not going to …

For Big Guy, the timing couldn’t have been better on Dad’s arrival at his base in Afghanistan.
Dad was getting settled just as Big Guy’s school had a round of parent-teacher conferences. Big Guy’s went well, …

This is another fine mess Dad has gotten me into.
Most nights before he deployed, the routine was for Big Guy to take his bath, brush his teeth and then curl up to another heart-warming episode …

It’s not been quite a week, but the great ca-nation experiment is dead as the green flower flopping over the side of the bottle.
Big Guy still blames me, and he’s right that we did leave …

Even Boots can see the beginning of the end now. The blooms aren’t as full as they were, and the red flower is brown around the edges.
“Why, Mommy? The ones at school are still giant …

Green is very late to the party – still barely showing up in fact – and Big Guy is starting to take that personally. Green, you see, is his favorite color, and the fact …

Ah, here comes yellow. The color isn’t as wide-spread as on the red and blue, but it looks really cool. I’m not a big fan of yellow, but I have to admit it makes the …

It started out innocently, when Big Guy brought home a “Pirates of the Caribbean” book as part of his voluntary school reading program – a program that became much more interesting, by the way, once …

Though yellow had taken the early lead at school, at home red and blue quickly pulled out in front at home in our flowers-and-food-coloring experiment. I wondered if the flowers were picking up on vibes …

From the same fun folks who brought you Chia Cam – the plants are all now officially dead, by the way – we introduce Ca-nation Cam. It’s the science project that was so much fun …

It’s a math drill with no flash cards!
It’s exercise without leaving the patio!
And it’s also an idea I blatantly stole from Parents Math Night at Big Guy’s school – but, hey, there’s nothing wrong with …

I’m certain it was the bright-blue goggle-eyed pug on the cover that drew Big Guy’s attention. The fact that I was trying to steer him to what I thought was more age-appropriate reading material – …

We’ve read the books, and we’ve eaten the cake at the library. That’s all old Cat in the Hat now. What else could we do to celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday and Read Across America, I …

What could possibly be more annoying than a 6-year-old who fritters away every dime on candy or a bright shiny object that’s going to hold his interest only for as long as it takes to …

Take one over-sized wall map of the United States.
Add quick sheets filled with random information about various states.
Combine with a boy’s passion for racing, stir with a DryErase marker and marinate for 36 events over …

A few weeks into spelling tests and I was tired of dancing, though at least it burned off the calories from the fruit-snack math.
Even worse: Big Guy was a little bored with the homework boogie, …

Parental advisory: The following trick incorporates two great evils I usually avoid at all costs – corn syrup and artificial dye. It’s an awful, awful idea. Except it happens to work.
It’s hardly an original idea …