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(Photo credit: Jeremy Brooks via Flickr.com)

If you’re not freaking out, you’re either not the parent of a girl or you’re not paying attention.

A study released earlier this week in the Journal Pediatrics found that more girls are showing signs of puberty at the ages of seven or eight than ever before.

Seven or eight??

There are plenty of articles out there in which you can read about the study’s findings, which were broken down by race and compared to earlier studies.  (Here are two articles: “Early Puberty is Raising Health Concerns,” USA Today; “First Signs of Puberty Seen in Younger Girls,” The New York Times.)  Two primary factors are cited as causes for the increased early onset of breast development and other signs of puberty: the rise in obesity, because body fat produces estrogen; and the still-debated role of environmental chemicals like BPA, found in products we use every day that might mimic estrogen’s effects. 

As the parent of a five-year-old daughter, the idea that she might reach puberty in two years terrifies me.  I know my daughter’s cognitive and emotional development level, and I watch my eight-year-old son’s female classmates and consider their maturity levels, too.  Nowhere in that mix do I find children ready to cope with the swirling confusion that one generally associates with kids in middle school: trying to understand the changes in your own body while sorting through feelings you’ve never had before; looking at members of the opposite—or your own—sex in ways you hadn’t previously and wondering what that means; managing advances from boys and men who see you in ways they didn’t before; and dealing with anger, sadness, and other emotional highs and lows in spectrums that radiate in multiple dimensions and in rapid, dizzying succession. 

All of this is hard enough to go through at eleven, twelve or thirteen.  I know I wasn’t ready for it then and it kicked my ass.  But at seven?  Right now, my daughter deals with her world by filtering all of life’s events, large and small, through her stuffed unicorn.  “Unicorn had a bad day.  She broke her leg and had to go the hospital,” she told me last night.  “It hurt, and she cried, but the doctor put a band-aid on it and made it better.  Now she’s going to rest and she’ll be better tomorrow.  But don’t make noise because she needs a nap.”  This is how “Emmie” copes with her world at the age of five, and two years just aren’t enough to go from the Unicorn crutch to breasts and periods.  She won’t be ready in two years—and neither will I.

On an individual level, we parents can only do so much.  We can try to keep our daughters healthy and minimize chemical exposure.  Realistically, for most of us, participating in modern life means that some exposure is inevitable.  But maybe we can do one step better than we do now.  Look at your child’s diet and cut back on just one serving of fat or sweets per day.  Check into your household-product consumption until you find one thing that might expose your child to BPA or some other potentially harmful chemical, and get rid of it.  Maybe that will be the item that makes that keeps your kid an actual child for just a little bit longer.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s summer!

Okay, if you’re going to aim something at my head in response to my sarcasm, make it an ice-water filled spray bottle or the garden hose.  Please.  Because as we all know: crikey, it’s hot out there.

Because we’re so deeply into the summer heat, most of us are desperately searching for ways to cool off and to keep ourselves and our kids amused and happy without turning into simmering puddles of goo.  This completely understandable desperation can lead to a touch of carelessness here and there, as it did with me, yesterday, when I didn’t argue strongly enough with my son to get his eight-year-old butt OUT OF THE LAKE so I could reapply his sunscreen.  I was so hot, and he was happy, cool and having fun, and I gave in.  Today, my blond-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned boy is bright red.  Parenting fail.

With that incident and other summer activities in mind, here are a few areas where it’s important for parents to be aware of the facts and not let your guard down. 

• “Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning”  – Please read this piece.  I had no idea that a person drowning exhibited the signs (or lack thereof) discussed in this article, despite the fact that last year, one town over from my own, a young child drowned in a city pool while lots of people were present, including lifeguards and at least one of the child’s parents.
• Reapply sunscreen every two hours; use a waterproof variety if your kids will be sweating or cavorting in water.  Why?  See paragraph above for what I failed to do yesterday.  Short-term discomfort and long-term skin health problems can be the consequences of failing to do this
• Use bug spray in the woods, and check for ticks.  I know that a variety of opinions exist about this, and if you despise deet, I respect that.  I’m not a big fan myself.  But we live in the woods, my son loves hiking in forests and with past years’ outbreaks of EEE and West Nile Virus in mind, we use bug spray.  And don’t forget to check for ticks after you’ve been under trees.  Check everywhere; ticks don’t necessarily settle on your body where they land.  Last year I had to take my son to urgent care to have an embedded tick removed from his, well, private area.  If that doesn’t teach you a lesson, nothing will.
• Don’t leave kids in the car unattended. At all.  Every summer, we read about kids who die because their parents left them in the car “for just a minute or two.”  This is so heart-wrenching because it doesn’t have to happen.  Remember that the interior of a parked car in the sun can reach 130 degrees or more in just ten minutes.  You can plug in all sorts of variables and play with that number, but the bottom line is that it’s just not safe to leave kids (or pets) in your car.  For some reason, when we’re going somewhere, my kids like to climb into the car in the garage and wait for me, and I have warned them that they are absolutely forbidden to do this during the summer.  They’ve disobeyed me twice and the scoldings have been severe.  (When safety is involved, Mean Mommy comes out—you betcha.)
• Speaking of pets, don’t forget about Fido and Fluffy, because they’re suffering from the heat, too.  (And they have to wear those dang fur coats.)  Here are some “Hot Weather Tips” for pets from our friends at the ASPCA.
• Food safety.  Summer has its own cuisine; it’s part of the magic of the season.  But food poisoning can put a damper on your celebrations, so spend a couple of minutes checking out this “quick summer food safety guide” from Svelte Gourmand.

Ugh.  What a lot of rules.  But like I tell the kids, learning and integrating these rules into our lives is important so that we can be safe and have a good time.  However, some rules can be tossed out the window and it’s SO much fun to be rebellious, especially if you’re a young kid.  When it’s 95 degrees outside, I say there’s nothing wrong with ice cream for dinner or ice cream twice a day.  (And parents, the calories don’t count, either.)  Turn the hose on each other in your clothes.  Stay up late to enjoy the cool(er) night air.  Do things backwards (dinner for breakfast, dessert before the meal, wear your shirt backwards, call your kids by each others’ names).  Sleep downstairs on the floor if that’s where the cooler air is.  Kids, spend an hour telling your parents what to do.  Parents, whine at your kids for an hour.  And just have fun!

(Photo credit: Attitash. This is not my family; I have no clue who these people are.)

Our vacation is over, but I’ve got one final story to share.

My husband is usually the member of our family who insists on engaging in physical activities with the kids and only later, after several doses of ibuprofen and days of suffering with a wrenched back, will he acknowledge that he can’t quite play soccer or thrash about in the water for hours at a time the way an eight-year-old boy can. 

“He’s eight.  You’re not,” I usually say as I laugh and shake my head.

Last week, it was my husband’s turn to laugh.

In my own defense, the activity in which I chose to participate with my son is billed as a family activity for all ages.  We decided to take in the summer fun at Attitash, a ski resort that operates water slides and other child-magnets in the warmer months.  “Jack” and I took the ski lift up to the top of the Alpine slide, which is basically twin, mile-long sled tracks that descend the mountain at “rider-controlled speeds.”  Think luge for the untrained and ungraceful, but slower and without snow or ice.  Do you see the happy dad and daughter in Attitash’s publicity photo at the top this post?  That was us, except because Jack is older than the girl in the photo, he and I each operated our own sled on opposite tracks.

Now take the image in your head and think “wipe out.”  Yup, that was me.  Sliding down the track, my sled sliding next to me like it just wanted to hang out and be friends, and me thinking as I slid, “Wow, my skin is rubbing raw right now.  I wonder when I’m going to stop.  My clothes will be torn.  I wonder how bad I’ll look.  I wonder how much of an idiot I look like right now.  I wonder what the people on the ski lift above me are thinking as they watch me.  This kind of hurts.  Hmm, I just keep sliding.”  And so on.

Eventually, I stopped.  I got back on my sled and finished the run, more skin intact than I’d imagined, but with my first double-skinned knees since I was about ten years old.  I sported respectable welts on my shoulder and wrist, too.  Now, a week later, everything has scabbed over, and I look, ironically, like an eight-year-old boy. 

Here’s the funny part: I kind of get my husband’s proclivity for playing these silly games for which he’s too old a little better now.  Because while ripping up my knees, shoulder and wrist sucked, going down the Alpine slide next to my son was kind of fun.  And if Jack asks me to do it again next year, I will.

This is a phone call no parent wants to get from preschool.  But it’s the call I received yesterday at noon.

Five-year-old “Emmie’s” teacher told me that Emmie had complained of a bellyache and grown pale and clammy just before her eyes rolled back in her head and she almost fainted.  I literally dropped what I was doing and sped to the preschool, stopping just long enough to open the car door so my husband and son who were a couple of blocks away could climb in.  When I got to the school, small children with large eyes lined the playground fence to gape at the ambulance idling in the parking lot—the ambulance that was there for my daughter.

Five-year-old “Emmie” sat nestled in the arms of the school’s director, who was reading to her from a favorite book in order to distract her.  The paramedics stood by, waiting for me, which I took to be a good sign, because unoccupied paramedics meant that there was no imminent danger.  But when I reached for her, the director handed me a limp, listless child with no color in her face.  I cradled Emmie against me and noted that she could hardly keep her eyes open.  Emmie had nothing to say, and if you know Emmie, that’s not her at all.

Fast forward a few hours, past one emergency room visit and a few tests and Emmie was fine.  All the tests came back negative, and a few speculative medical terms were tossed around as possibilities.  I’ve spent enough time around hospitals and medical mysteries to recognize variable terminology for “Actually, we have no clue what caused this episode” when I hear it.  Emmie recovered so spectacularly that I sought out the nurse to ask her to speed the discharge paperwork because Emmie was back to her super-energetic, never-stop-talking, bouncing, jumping self, and I became concerned that she would disturb the other ER patients.

As I write this post, Emmie is home, playing and interrupting me, and I’m watching her for signs that something has gone awry again.  Knock on wood, I’ve seen none so far.  I hope this is the end of the story.

I would be horribly remiss if I didn’t commend all of the staff at Emmie’s school who did all the right things yesterday when Emmie got sick.  I can only imagine how scary it is when someone else’s child suddenly becomes seriously ill while under your care, and I saw how worried they were.  They did a phenomenal job taking care of Emmie while keeping all of the rest of the kids calm and under control.  Thanks also to the mom-doctor who happened to be there and checked Emmie out while she calmed me.  I’m grateful to be part of such a warm, caring and competent community. 

And Emmie?  She was a trooper through the entire experience.  She was brave and cooperative and, in the end, a poet.  She delivered one of her extra-special Emmie hugs to me at the end of the day, and offered this me this gem:

 “Mommy, I love you how much snowflakes there are in every winter.”

I hugged her back and whispered a little prayer of gratitude in my head.  Thank goodness my little snowflake is okay.

It’s true, but it’s so not fair.

I’m ordinarily not one to cite my own, anecdotal experience as proof of a greater truth—okay, well, maybe I am.  But now actual research supports what I’ve experienced almost every night for the past eight years, and I’m feeling so vindicated that I’m going to share it with you.

Ladies, you know how it is.  You’ve made it through another day with too many temper-tantrums and not enough coffee.  You’ve finally made it to bed and fallen asleep.  You are OUT, and it’s good.

And then you hear a noise.  Maybe it’s a cry.  Maybe it’s a cough.  Or if you’re me and mother to a child like four-and-a-half year old “Emmie,” maybe it’s a string of incomprehensible words spoken in a tongue only known to residents of the Underworld and those they try to possess in their sleep.

Whatever it is, it’s coming from your child.  You hope that it’s part of your dream, but it continues and you have to admit to yourself that it’s real.  So you glance over at your spouse in the hopes that your partner in all things and at all times will volunteer to take this baby-call, but he is fast asleep.  For real.  That kid could be screaming right beside him like someone’s pulling off her toenails and he wouldn’t hear it.  So you curse your beloved and his ability to sleep soundly through his offspring’s cries, and you tend to your child yourself.  Then you can’t fall back asleep, and all the while, he’s slumbering, like, well, a baby (which, as an aside, is the most idiotic simile I think I’ve ever heard).

If this sounds like what goes on in your household, the good news is that you are not crazy.  The bad news is that apparently, these reactions are part of human genetic makeup, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

A study released late last year evaluated which sounds were most likely to wake men and women from sound sleep, and found that the triggers were different.  Women responded to babies’ cries, while men were more likely to awaken at the sounds of threats to the entire home and family, such as buzzing flies or windows rattled by the wind.  (Hey, I didn’t conduct this study.)  So as much as you might want to curse your partner at 3:00 a.m. for sleeping through yet another of the baby’s teething episodes or the preschooler’s nightmares, it really isn’t his fault.  (Note: this study was commissioned by Lemsip, a manufacturer of nighttime cold-and-flu medicine.)

Now before everyone goes crazy telling me about all of the exceptions out there: yes, I know.  There are exceptions to every rule, and some of you are my friends.  But this study doesn’t surprise me because I live it every night.  And now I can’t even get mad at my husband anymore because science says that he sleeps through the kids’ cries because of his biologically driven impulse to protect our family.  Way to go, science.

One more thing: it turns out that yup, women take longer to fall back asleep than men do.  Yeah, thanks, I knew that.  My husband can go through an entire REM cycle before I’ve even returned his “good night.”  I’m still working through a twelve-step program to learn how to forgive him for this.

So ladies, the next time you look at your partner slumbering peacefully beside you while your kid wails, don’t get mad at him.  It isn’t his fault.  As for you, gentlemen: remember that the decision of whether to get out of bed when your child cries at night rests with your partner.  Treat her well, or she will reach into her own evolutionary bag of tricks and find a way to make sure that you do wake up.  And it probably won’t be pretty.

Is anybody else out there parent to a cranky eight-year-old boy?  You know what I mean: full of joy and enthusiasm at being parent to such a sweet, engaging child, you eagerly walk to the bus stop to greet your charming offspring the moment he comes off the bus.  But what emerges from the school bus isn’t the kid you were looking for.  Someone else stomps up the driveway and drags his feet through muddy slush piles.  This sour child immediately begins an interrogation-and-complaint session.

“Do you have a chocolate chip cookie for me?  Why not?  Are you ever gonna have a chocolate chip cookie for me?  School was fine.  I already told you, I like recess best.  No, I didn’t play with M___ today.  Why do you always ask me that?  I don’t wanna do my homework.  Everything hurts ‘Emmie’s’ feelings.  She always says bad stuff to me.  I don’t wanna read a book.  Why don’t I ever get to do anything fun?”  And so on.  (Note: for full effect, you must imagine each of these sentences uttered in the octave of a mosquito that whines up and down the octave scale as it searches for the perfect, fingernail-scraping-down-a-blackboard pitch.)

Until recently, my first response to these periodic episodes was to adopt a stern, teacher-mommy voice as I reminded him of previous conversations.  “Tone, ‘Jack.’”  “That is not an appropriate way to speak to your mother.”  “Haven’t we talked a million times about the whining?  That’s enough.”  But often, these admonitions only earned me pouting and tears in addition to the whining.

Then, a few weeks ago, following a particularly unpleasant episode wherein a bitter Jack listed all of the ways I had allegedly treated him unfairly that day (like ordering him to stop playing on the computer because it was time for him to set the table), the four of us sat down to dinner.  Jack began shoveling food into his mouth in that particularly graceful manner common to eight-year-old boys—the manner that makes you glad you sit next to him at the table, not across from him, so you don’t actually have to watch.  Fifteen minutes later, I noticed something interesting: Jack was cheerful, laughing and silly again.  He was that kid whose company I actually enjoy.

So I began an experiment: every time Jack the Grouch made an unexplained appearance, I shoved food at him.  And every single time, it worked.  Mr. Hyde transformed into Dr. Jekyll, and all it took was a giant bowl of cereal.

I don’t know why I was so slow to realize that my son’s crabbiness is often a result of hunger.  I’m the same way: if I’m hungry and I don’t deal with it immediately, I get bitchy.  My sister displays this reaction as well.  A college friend has long been known to have a dark side known as “Metabolism Man”; he’s a great guy unless he’s hungry.  Then either you find the man some food or remove yourself to a separate room until the problem is addressed.  This physiological reaction is not new to me.

So why did it take me so long to figure out this connection with respect to Jack?  I’m not sure—it could just be that I’m slow on certain things—but I think the difference here is that when we adults are hungry, we recognize that and understand that we need to do something about it.  To my mind, if my kid is hungry, he’s going to tell me he needs to eat.  But that assumption appears to be incorrect.  Jack’s mind is occupied with critical matters like dinosaur traits, soccer games, truly idiotic eight-year-old boy jokes and the quest to discover new palindromes.  (Seriously.)  Basic needs sometimes don’t fit into that puerile mix, and I honestly believe that the kid doesn’t realize he’s hungry.

And that’s where his mother comes in.  If he doesn’t recognize the rumbling in his stomach, then I’ve got to teach him that when he feels like the world has suddenly turned against him, the first thing he needs to do is eat.  I also need to teach him that even when he’s hungry, he has to rein in the whining, the complaining and the accusations, but the truth of the matter is that there isn’t any point to even having those conversations with him until he gets some food in his stomach—often a sizeable quantity of food—and transforms back into a rational child.

So if you are visited sometimes by an inexplicably surly version of the child you love and you’ve been scratching your head trying to figure out where he comes from, especially in that shaky, mid-to-late-afternoon period, consider giving him a snack.  An apple or some cheese and crackers might just give you your child back. 

What about you?  Might you have a Metabolism Boy or Girl on your hands?

WARNING: The exaggerations in this blog post may be dangerous to your health.  Or they may make you paranoid.  (Or you can just relax and laugh at them.)

( ZNJTQNFN96MJ  Please ignore this babble; somebody with some authority said I had to put it here.  It’s just annoying blogger nonsense.  You’ll get to the good stuff in the next line, I promise.) 

Now then . . . As parents, the physical safety of our offspring is our highest priority.  Sure, we want them to do well in school and grow into goodhearted, well-mannered adults who lead fulfilling and productive lives.  We want them to make zillions of dollars (so they can support us in our retirement), rescue wayward turtles and abandoned puppies while helping old ladies across the street and be President of the United States (the first one to keep every one of her promises).  We want a lot.

But before all of that, we want our kids to be safe.

We support their heads when they are seconds old and it continues from there.  We slice grapes into quarters, pad table corners and the teeth of small animals and gate the tops and bottoms of stairwells (and sometimes the odd, visiting relative).  We break a sweat opening our prescription bottles that have been capped to prevent access by small fingers, we teach “stranger danger,” 9-1-1 and “stop, drop and roll.”  We cram their heads into bicycle helmets, cover their soccer-playing legs with shin guards and issue orders like “no playing on the stairs” and “it is not okay to drop-kick your baby sister.”  We buckle them into car seats and steer them toward seat belts while keeping them away from liquid cleaning products, Grandpa’s pill box and that weird guy who lives two doors down.  Then we move onto the big stuff: drugs, drinking, sex.  What’s okay, what’s not, how to avoid the bad stuff and you can always call me if you find yourself in a bad situation.  It doesn’t end until they’re thirty or forty years old and they beg you, please, please, please, stop calling my boss when I have a cold to see if I’m eating the homemade chicken soup you sent me for lunch.

I’m no different from the rest of you.  I’m all about safety.  (Cue my husband, who will now laugh, roll his eyes and confirm that I know every bad thing that has ever happened to any child anywhere, and I’ve printed out an article about it and made him read it.  You heard about the little boy in China who stuck a chopstick in his brain, right?  I don’t make this stuff up.)  I try to look out for my kids every minute I’m with them, and many of the minutes I’m not.

So what I want to know is this: Why does my eight-year-old son already look like a juvenile version of Scarface?  “Jack’s” got blond hair, blue eyes, an adorable gap-toothed grin, a small indentation under one eye and a woozy, W-shaped set of lines under the other.  And while the gap in his smile will disappear one day, the scars under his eyes may not.

You can’t protect your kids against everything.  I couldn’t protect Jack from his own, idiotic behavior a year-and-a-half ago when, unbeknownst to me, he decided to choose a pencil over all of the myriad toys in the playroom and toss it repeatedly into the air until he finally caught it with his face.  (Lots of blood with that one.)  And as much as I yell at my own miniature versions of Fred and Ethel to treat each other with respect, I couldn’t protect Jack last summer when his little sister apparently tried to scratch his eye out.  (She missed, but not by much.)  He still bears the scars from both incidents, and I’m beginning to suspect he always will.

I really do try to keep my kids safe.  But there are some physical injuries I just can’t prevent. 

(Reality check: Jack really does bear the aforementioned scars, and I do wonder if they will ever go away.  But in truth, they’re very minor—probably a lot less significant than the emotional scar he’ll develop when he learns later in life that his mother told everyone she knows and a bunch of people she doesn’t know about his scars on her blog.)

Well, not so much about health as more about those pesky “man-colds.”

WebMD interviewed both me and my husband about the difference between men and women when they get sick.  I wasn’t around for my husband’s interview.  I guess I could have come off a lot worse!

I’m married to a great guy.  Except, of course, when he’s sick . . .

Every parent of a child who is at least two years old knows about the dreaded “why” phase.  It’s adorable for a few weeks.  Then it leaves you banging your head against the car window at traffic lights as you try to come up with reasons why “they” decided green should be the color for Go and red should be the color for Stop.

Well, as a parent, I’ve got my own set of “Why” questions.  If you know any of the answers, please fill me in.

• Why does it take a seven-year-old ten minutes to get out of a car?  What the heck is he doing in there?
• Why does a four-year-old possess the ability to turn an activity as simple as removing laundry from the dryer into a twenty-point interrogation?
• Why is an otherwise almost fearless seven-year-old boy terrified of drinking out of a pink cup?  Just what does he think will happen to him?
• Why is waking up from a nap a traumatic event for small children?  Why are they always so damn upset?
• My daughter repeats everything I say back to me in the form of a question.  Why does my daughter repeat everything I say back to me in the form of a question?
• Why can’t I convince my daughter that I am not picking her up late from preschool?  Ever since the clocks changed, she’s accused me of picking her up late.  It doesn’t matter how many times I explain that it’s getting darker earlier now because we’re getting closer to winter and that she even explains to me that our part of the Earth is tilting away from the sun.  She still lobs the same accusation at me every time.
• Why does Child One, upon overhearing half of an inane answer to a trivial question posed by Child Two, insist upon a full briefing of the conversation that led up to the question and full participation in everything that ensues afterward so that I constantly find myself having two ridiculous conversations at once regarding the fastest setting for the windshield wipers and whether it is fast, very fast or really, really fast?
• Why is the raging debate in my household right now the question of whether “magenta” is a shade of pink, purple or red?
• Why can’t my incredibly smart seven-and-a-half-year-old son remember a single thing he did at school when he gets off the bus?
• Why does every parent-teacher conference I’ve ever attended for my four-and-a-half year old daughter begin with the teachers stating that “Emmie” is at all times the most cooperative, helpful, well-behaved and pleasant child they’ve ever seen, then me and my husband exploding with laughter and, once one of us has recovered, asking the teachers to check to make sure they’ve got the correct file in front of them?
• Why does my daughter like to pull “The Helpless Female” routine in the presence of men, including her father?  The latest example: during a museum visit, she suddenly developed a “fear” of stairs.  “Oh, I can’t go on the stairs.  I’m afraid of the stairs.  You have to carry me.”  (Imagine this plea offered in meek, baby doll voice, with head cocked to one side and eyelashes fluttering.  Seriously.)  Get your own damn mint juleps, Miss Scarlett.
• Why is it that every time I begin speaking into the phone on a writing-related phone call, my cat thinks that I’m talking to her?  (No, this one’s not about kids, but it’s no less grating.)

I’m sure I could come up with more questions, but you get the idea.  I’m even willing to bet you’ve got a few of your own.

Did everyone have a good Thanksgiving?

I hope you did.  Ours was cozy and delicious: we gathered with good friends, shared the cooking, ate turkey, two kinds of potatoes, cranberry sauce, vegetables, bread and four different desserts until yes, I gained two pounds (hey, that’s what New Year’s resolutions are for), and we’re still working our way through the leftovers.  We spent four whole days together as a family, and while the kids did have to be sent to separate corners a few times, I think it’s safe to say we still are glad to be related to one another.

If that’s not a good entry to the holiday season, I don’t know what is.

Looking ahead to December instilled a bit of panic, however (as it always does).  We stuff events into the month like people cram trash into those violet pay-as-you-throw bags.  (That simile was for the locals in my readership.  You deserve something for your troubles.)  We begin with Army-Navy Day, which is a full-fledged holiday around here, and then without pausing for breath we plunge ahead through Hanukkah, my son’s birthday, Christmas, my husband’s and my wedding anniversary and New Year’s Eve—not always in that order.  Then there are the assorted school, synagogue, community and personal events associated with one or more of these holidays.  Almost all are fun, but it’s crazy and as a mom, it’s my job to make sure it all happens for everyone in the family.

So when I advised my family in the car today that the month would be more enjoyable for everyone if we just expected the inevitable craziness and “rolled with punches,” I thought I was being wise.  Everyone nodded or spoke their agreement.

“It’s just going to be nuts,” I repeated to ensure the message sank in, “but let’s not stress about it.  Whatever happens, just go with it.”

Well here’s that karmic kick in the ass again, because the very first thing that happened was that less than an hour later—we were still in the car!—I felt the sore throat, the body aches and several other symptoms of the nastiness that’s been going around hit me squarely in that part of my brain where my optimism resides.

Unacceptable. 

I don’t care what I told my husband and my kids; I will not tolerate this.  There’s no time to be sick now.  This week holds gymnastics and ballet for my daughter, soccer and tennis for my son and swim class for both.  I’ve got my usual writing plus one training, one class to teach, one political dinner, one school board meeting, one fancy annual holiday event for my husband’s firm and a family Korean cultural event just outside of Boston.  Oh and then there’s the preschool cookie walk (bake your own) and a couple of friends’ holiday parties and a favorite children’s author actually IN TOWN.  Then there’s planning for the rest of the month, buying gifts, thinking about holiday cards (while not actually doing anything about them)—oh, hell, you know.  You’re doing it, too.

So the rest of the family can follow my advice and just roll with the punches.  I’m making my stand now: I will not be sick.  The flu can just wait.

I’ll let you know how it works out.