To all the mothers out there, I hope you have a fabulous day.  Surrounded by your loved ones.  Who hopefully are doing chores for you

My morning began with my 3 and 5 yr olds snuggling in bed with me.  I use the term snuggling loosely, to include climbing on top of my head, tying my hair in knots, kneeing me in the stomach, and fighting over who is laying on what side of the bed.  Nothing like breaking up a preschoolers brawl at 6am to wake you up.

As annoying as it is to be awoken in this manner when all you want to do is sleep another hour or five, the perspective of having older children makes me realize how short this season is.  This is how they show they love me, in part by fighting over who gets to sit the closest to me.  My older children don’t come and snuggle in bed anymore, being their mother is decidedly less physical.  And so I take a deep breath and get out of bed with them.

Really isn’t that what Mother’s Day is all about?  Not the sappy sweet sentimental cards, the handprinted cards, the breakfast in bed, or whatever else the media tells us that Mother’s Day should be all about.

Happy Mother’s Day.  I wish a tantrum free day to everyone.

A new study says that a stay at home  mother is worth nearly $117,000 a year, if she were paid a real world salary.  (Working mothers are worth $68, 405)

The eighth annual survey by salary.com calculated a mom’s market value by studying pay levels for 10 job titles with duties that a typical mom performs, ranging from housekeeper and day care center teacher to van driver, psychologist and chief executive officer.   Most of the figure for the salary was from overtime since the job extends beyond the typical 40 hours per week.

What do you think?  I’ll admit that my first thought was that it was not nearly enough.  Followed closely by, I need a raise!

As I march on toward 40 this year I have taken up running again.  Let me say it right here I have never been, nor will I ever be, someone who enjoys exercising.  In past years when I decided again to exercise after a long respite it was for vanity.  I wanted to be able to have my cake and eat it too.   And not have it show in my waistline.  This time I have health reasons in mind.

I have seen friends getting older.  People I know who have slowly gained weight over the years and now are trying to lose some of it because their joints ache, or they have high blood pressure.  And I have realized that the older I get the more difficult it is to actually lose a couple pounds.  And ho boy do I sound positively geriatric right now or what?

This past week I read this article which states that workouts sculpt the heart as well as the muscles. Since the heart is a muscle, this shouldn’t be surprising news.

The findings “strongly refute” the idea that people are able to become competitive athletes due to their heart structure, and instead demonstrate that it is athletic training itself that is largely responsible for “athlete’s heart,” the investigators write.

Turns out we aren’t born with a genetic superiority, at least when it comes to the ability of our hearts to pump blood through our bodies.  I guess none of us have an excuse anymore, huh?

I have been having an interesting conversation with a friend of mine tonight.  It sort of goes hand in hand with the discussion of free range kids and what we were allowed to do as children.

My husband lived that idyllic (mythical?) childhood where he would go out in the morning and ride his bike, go to the nearby river, play with friends, go to the park, all without ever telling his parents where he was or when he would be home.  I often wonder if some of his stories are tainted with revisionist history, colored with a bit of what he wishes were true.

I was not allowed to do those things.  I had to ask explicit permission to go places and do things.  Reasonable requests were granted, but I was not allowed to go and “hang out” at the mall, ride my bike miles from home with no destination.  We lived on the water and I was allowed to go with a girlfriend and neighbor to the beach, where we would slather ourselves with baby oil and fry our skin nice and crispy.   So it isn’t like I was chained to my bedroom radiator.

Obviously we all have boundaries with our children.  Do you let them go and hang out at the mall with friends?  Do you let them ride to the baseball field and hang out with their friends?  These are examples only.

I trust my kids much more when they are NOT with their friends.  I know I have heard someone else say it before, but when you get a group of boys together it is like their brain power divides.  Instead of two boys having the brain power of 2 boys, they have 1/2 of a brain.  Four boys, 1/4 of a brain.  Something about the mass mentality makes them forget to think.

So I think this is a new area where I am struggling.  It is easy for me to assess if I think my children are old enough to say ride a subway.  But going to a movie without parental supervision, that makes me break out into a cold sweat.

Our daffodils have bloomed.  And they are being loved.  To death.

It is so hard to squash the exuberant, enthusiastic sniffing of the flowers, even though it means the flower heads end up on the ground.

I really like to clean. For the record there are plenty of other things that I don’t like to do.  Like fold laundry and put it away. Pull weeds in my garden.  Unload the dishwasher.

This past weekend I did a deep cleaning of our family room.  I wasn’t expecting it to take quite as long as it did.  Mostly because we clean in there every single day.  Vacuum every night.  Dust every couple days.  But when I pulled the couch away from the wall, I was shocked by the amount of dust that was back there.  Also small toys seems to have been back there procreating and plotting to take over our home.

What I did do was involve the kids in the cleaning this time.  I had them help go through the bookcase and take out some books that we never use and can donate.  They went through the small toy baskets and got rid of the broken matchbox cars, put toys back in their proper homes, and decided that some of the baby toys can also go to other homes.

I let them help wash the windows and dust all the bookcases.  They replaced the CDs and DVDs into their proper cases and we got rid of the scratched ones that no longer work.  They used the Magic Eraser to wash spots off the walls and baseboards.  They removed the covers from the throw pillows for washing and vacuumed out the windowsills. They used the crevice tool to vacuum in between the couch cushions.

In short they saw all that was involved to really deep clean a room, something I thought happened magically  until I had a house of my own.

And you know what?  Having them help made the job easier and more fun, for me anyway.  Over the past week I have noticed that they seem to have a vested interest in the upkeep too.

According to a recent survey, Briton’s feel that the manners in their society have gone downhill. Nearly 90% of the people responding to the survey blame parents who are not teaching their children manners and celebrities behaving badly that have glamorized it.

And 75% of them thought that manners should be taught in schools.

Don’t teachers have enough to do in school? Sure, they should require the basic polite behaviors of please, thank-you and speaking respectfully to other people. But I have to wonder, if people are so upset about the lack of manners, why aren’t they teaching them to their children themselves.

Modeling good behavior is always better than just telling children what to do. Children see everything. If you are telling them to be polite and kind to others, and yet do not act that way yourself, they will see the contradiction. Likewise if children see you act respectfully to others, they won’t even question that it is the way to behave. No matter what they see celebrities doing on the television.

Like my grandmother used to say, “Little pitchers have big ears.”  You should make sure that they are overhearing the right things.

Remember when I wrote about Lenore Skenazy, the mother who allowed her nine year old son to ride the subway in NYC alone. She has started a new website, Free Range Kids

Do you ever let your kid ride a bike to the library? Walk alone to school? Take a bus, solo? Or are you thinking about it? If so, you are raising a Free Range Kid! At Free Range, we believe in safe kids. We believe in helmets, car seats and safety belts. We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail. Most of us grew up Free Range and lived to tell the tale. Our kids deserve no less. This site dedicated to sane parenting.

Lately, I have had conversations with parents about some of these things, people who do not feel comfortable leaving their 13 or 14 year old kids home alone, let alone allowing them to babysit like I was doing at that age. People who will not allow their children to play outside in the front yard, because a pedophile might just drive by and decide to kidnap him/her. And honestly much of the time I do not allow my kids to do something not because *I* don’t think they are capable, but because it isn’t socially acceptable, like allowing my nine year old to ride his bike one mile to town to get a book out of the library.

According to Stats.org, a non profit no-partisan organization– whose mission is to correct scientific misinformation in the media resulting from bad science, politics, or a simple lack of information or knowledge; and to act as a resource for journalists and policy makers on major scientific issues and controversies–
the reality of stranger abductions is much less than what we perceive:

According to the Justice Department, there are only about 115 such incidents each year.

And while that is 115 too many, it is much less than what the media would have you think.

I will be following Lenore Skenazy’s new website with interest.

I love taking online quizzes. I am not sure why. I also love to go back and try and change my answers so that I can get a better score. Surely I am not alone in doing this, right?

I know that it is silly, but the overachiever in me can’t help it. Yes, even if it is a quiz that tells you how long you are expected to live. I am forced to go back and say that I eat fish twice a day every single day and run while I am eating it just so I can see my life expectancy go up to 125 years old.

I liked this particular quiz, the Vitality Compass, I had read about at the NY Times, because it plots each answer on a graph.

the quiz results [are] based on a complex, 106-page algorithm developed by Dr. Robert Kane, a physician and a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

Also, the premise seems to be mostly common sense, the things that we should all be doing anyway. (And the sort of behaviors we should be modeling for our children, too.) Eating healthy, exercising, being social. I can definitely use improvement on that last one. Most social circle these days is mostly related to my children and their activities, and while that is perfectly acceptable, it would be nice to have some social activities that belonged just to me. Now to just find a way to add a few hours to my day.  Oh wait, that is making me feel stressed…

I saw that I can raise my life expectancy by not getting stressed, or angry, or depressed. (uh, yeah.) By eating more servings of vegetables and fruit. By not salting my food. And by going to church. If I made those changes I could add a little over four years to my life expectancy, bringing me up to a life expectancy of 97 years old.

Also, I should be drinking at least a glass or two of wine nightly. That will not be a problem to incorporate. No, I am not an alcoholic in training, I am drinking for my health!

With all of these things in mind, I am well on my way to making improvements and living to be 97 years old, most of them healthy. You know, unless I get by a car tomorrow, which is always possible.

Now that the weather has turned warm, we are in the full swing of Little League season, which, for those of you who are not initiated, is the longest season ever. My boys are out in the yard constantly playing catch, hitting balls, working on their pitching.

One of my favorite things is to watch my older boys work with their younger siblings, helping them to perfect their skills. It warms my heart that all the years, time and effort my husband and I have put into the older boys have paid off with more than just stellar baseball skills.