{Originally published on the Busy Dad Blog.}

How do you define a parent? Of course, there’s the biological way, but if our celebrity counterparts have taught us anything this year, a forty pound DNA match and Bugaboo stroller a true parent does not make.
No, to be a real parent you need to get into character a tad more (ironic isn’t it?). How do you know when you’ve successfully crossed over and truly embraced the biggest role of your life?

Here’s my list:

1. You don’t know what you’d do if they never invented the phrase “we’ll see.” Who is the genius who thought of this? He or she should get a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize. It’s the platinum card of our parental phrase arsenal. Why? Because it allows you to defer the “no” (and the whining) to a later, more convenient time or locale. When a request is made, the answer “we’ll see” is a win-win. The child holds onto the hope that this request may still be granted, and therefore withholds all protest. The parent buys extra time, during which the child may forget about the request altogether, or you’ve made it home, where whining can be sufficiently contained.
2. Your currency reference shifts to Bionicle (or other) toys – In my younger days, the CD served as my go-to currency reference. “What? Sixty bucks for this shirt? I could buy like four CDs with that!” As I got older, it became rounds – “Aw man! I could have bought at least five rounds with that. I’m never playing blackjack again!” Now that my transformation is complete, my money bitching resembles something more like this: “What? $3.30 a gallon? That’s like 1/3 of a Bionicle!”

Originally published on SoapboxMom

Have you heard John Mayer play the guitar? Better yet, have you been lucky enough to attend one of his concerts so that you could actually watch him play the guitar? Ahhh, grace in motion.

Before going to his concert this summer, I listened to his music, but didn’t truly appreciate it. I mean, it was nice to have playing in the background, nice to sing along with occasionally, but didn’t exactly make me sit down and breathe it in, you know what I mean?

Then I saw him perform live. Oh. my. goodness…

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Originally published on Missives from Suburbia

Before we left for Egypt, more than one friend called it the “trip of a lifetime”. Between you and me, I smirked to myself just a bit, because I’ve been fortunate to travel to incredible places all over the world, and I’ve had many trips that I would classify as “trips of a lifetime”.

I’m not going to back down completely – I still think I’m a lucky, lucky girl when it comes to my travel experiences, and I’ve had many “once in a lifetime” experiences – but standing in the shadow of the Pyramid of Khufu, the only remaining member of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, filled cynical little me with awe. Hubby and I kept repeating, “We’re at the pyramids. We’re at the pyramids.” It’s so surreal that we had to remind ourselves we were actually there.

Within minutes, we were climbing the pyramid’s external stairs, leaning and stepping on stones that were thousands and thousands of years old and worn smooth and shiny from the touch of countless hands and feet. Stooping and crawling, we scaled the interior passageway to the main chamber.

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Originally published on The Suburban Scrawl

Let’s face it: teenagers are good at making others, especially their parents, nervous. If you’re the parent of a young child, you are probably dreading the teen years because of all the horror stories you’ve heard from others, not to mention the memory of what you did at that age. In fact, the Teen Years are nothing to be scared of. All you need are a few tools to help you navigate the road, including a sense of humor and lots of patience!

My two teen-aged boys are great kids, and my husband and I are very proud of the consistency with which we’ve raised them. One of the most successful strategies we’ve used with our boys is to let them know what we expect in advance and sometimes in writing (you never know when you’re going to need proof of policy; also, it’s best to close those loopholes from the get-go!).

We used this strategy for the first time when we set up our older son with his cell phone on his fourteenth birthday. Unlike most of his friends, who were gifted with a no-obligation cell hone by their parents a couple of years before, our son knew that it was absolutely a big deal when we decided he was ready for one. When he read the rules we prescribed for his cell phone, he was – in a very un-teen like manner – seemingly relieved. A teen from another planet? No. Just a great kid.

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