Picking up on those Facebook games that ask others to describe you in three words, we imagined what our husbands might come up with if posed such a question. (Although Nicole cheated and actually asked hers. Maybe it's better left to our imaginations.) How would your significant other describe you? Which words would you prefer? Comment on our Facebook page.
E-mail accounts are getting out of hand, aren't they? It's so easy to start new ones, and then all of a sudden you're checking all over the place and missing mail because you forgot passwords. We checked in today to count up how many accounts we've accumulated, and how much in need of consolidation we are. Share your own e-mail overload on our Facebook page.
The Tony Awards is this Sunday (go Hamilton!) and we'll be live-tweeting the ceremony and probably some red-carpet action beforehand. Since we have Twitter on our minds, we thought we'd share some of our favorite entertainment tweeters, in case like us you get an appreciable amount of your pop culture by reading tweets about it. Among those mentioned:
Hamilton: Especially @Lin_Manuel, but also @LacketyLac, @ChrisisSingin, @DaveedDiggs, @leslieodomjr, @Anthony_Ramos1, @OakSmash, @phillipasoo, @reneeelisegolds
Pop Culture Happy Hour: @nprmonkeysee, @ghweldon, @idislikestephen
Extra Hot Great: @taraariano, @tomatonation
Writers: @sepinwall, @TheFienPrint, @fuggirls
Actors: @joshmalina, @mindykaling
Too many handles to handle? Just follow Terri's entertainment list for all these and more.
After all that twittering, we checked in with So You Think You Can Dance (from which we would like to see no more bare-skin costumes, no more vomiting children, and no more dancing moms) and then moved on to our Parks and Recreation marathon, which this week included the Season 5 episodes "Bailout," "Partridge," "Animal Control," and "Article Two." For next week, we'll be finishing up Season 5 with "Jerry's Retirement," "Swing Vote," and "Are You Better Off?" Also, if you're following along on our West Wing watch coordinated to the West Wing Weekly podcast, watch "Lord John Marbury" for next week. And don't forget to follow us in our live-tweeting Sunday night!
When it comes to youth sports, it turns out that two of us were accomplished young athletes and two of us were clever shirkers of organized sports. Listen to find out who skied and skated and swam and who conscientiously defended the part of the soccer field with nobody in it, then share your own sporty exploits on our Facebook page.
Have you heard that food nutrition labels are changing, in ways that make them easier to read and somehow more judge-y about your devotion to PopTarts and Cheetos and Oreos. Do you welcome this nutritional kick in the pants, or will you be covering that box with your hand every time you pour yourself some Cap'n Crunch? Share your strategies on our Facebook page.
Pro podcasting tip from Terri: If you're trying to podcast and people can't seem to hear you, check the mute button on your microphone. It's that thing that's flashing in your face. After a false start due to self-made technical difficulties, we come to you without a scintillating eyebrow discussion but with some other topics of interest. Here's your road map to our conversation:
0:43 Intros and What's New With You — So we're a little slap-happy, but it's a Friday. What better time? (If Amanda's mention of slapsgiving makes you want to go watch How I Met Your Mother clips instead of listening to this podcast, we understand.
4:00 School Traditions — It's the time of year for graduations and field days and other events that schools schedule at the least convenient times possible just to stick it to working parents one last time.
14:31 Party Permutations — Speaking of celebrations, an article on "dadchelor" parties had us shaking our heads — dudes, just make the baby shower coed already. But it got us thinking of some more valid variations we could totally get behind.
22:18 Interview of the Week — Pediatric OT Meghan Corridan chatted with Catherine about manipulative toys. No, not toys that secretly manipulate you into buy more — they're talking Legos and all of the many alternatives.
35:52 Shameless Self-Promotion — Amanda thinks you should all go buy her books The Everything Kids’ Learning Activities Book and On-the-Go Fun for Kids so you have a million things to do with your kids this summer AND keep them learning; Catherine has some "Summer Activities for Bored Kids" on her verywell site; Terri recommends taking a look at our Tumblr page for listening and looking at pullquotes; and Nicole has an article of interest on accommodations and modifications.
Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.
As Amanda puts it, "We go from cozy to yummy to hip to really kind of scary" in our list of things we've won in raffles or tricky trays or other low-stakes games of chance. Have you won anything noteworthy or beloved? Comment on our Facebook page.
Sometimes we do things that embarrass our kids, and sometimes we just embarrass ourselves. But always, on the spur of the moment and with Mom adrenaline coursing through our veins, it seems like a good idea at the time. Have you done something silly for you kids (or "to you kids," as they may feel)? Share in the comments on our Facebook page.
This week's episode marks our transition from talking about Dancing With the Stars to talking about So You Think You Can Dance. But the first episode of the new kiddie version of the dance competition has us so disheartened and uncomfortable that we spend most of the podcast talking about the huge number of trailers we watched for upcoming fall and midseason TV series. We hope you like time travel, because that's the "designated completely random theme that a whole bunch of shows independently settled on" for this season. Also, apparently stay-at-home dads are still hi-larious, which makes us think somehow we've time-traveled into the past ourselves. If you'd like to take a look at what we're talking about, we followed the links to trailers from this Entertainment Weekly page, though you can play the winner for "Most Tear-Jerking/Least Comprehensible Trailer" above. Traveling back in time even further, we continued our Parks and Recreation marathon with the Season 5 episodes "Ann's Decision," "Emergency Response," "Leslie and Ben," and "Correspondent's Lunch." For those marathoning along with us, next week brings "Bailout," "Partridge," "Animal Control," and "Article Two."
News that Twitter is making some changes — hooray for graphics no longer taking up character space! — got us thinking of other improvements we'd like to see in our favorite succinct social-media source. If you have some improvements to recommend (or just want to co-sign our cry for editing capabilities), talk to us in the comments on our Facebook page.
We talked about Chewbacca Mom in this week's group chat, and one of the things we most related to is having your fun toys and other personal objects of value appropriated by your kids. So for today's Speed Round, we made our report of offenses against our personal property rights, including appropriated pens, cosmetics, and toiletries. Of course, disrespect for personal property can go both ways, right? If your kid's absconded with your stuff (or vice versa), tell us about it in the comments on our Facebook page.
A parent support group and a parent people can't stop laughing with inspired our topics this week. Here's a road map to our conversation for your fast-forwarding convenience.
00:35 Intros and What's New With You? — This week, we've been keeping busy not winning the Hamilton lottery, not being very successful at public speaking, and not remembering to keep our lengthy Facebook discussions to the hours when Nicole is awake.
05:43 How Important Is It for Your Kid to Have Friends? — And is it important to your kid, or to you? We consider the problem of kids having no friends, kids having the wrong friends, kids caring not enough about friends or too caring much, until really we all just have to lie down in a dark room with a wet rag over our eyes. It is too much.
15:36 Chewbacca Mom — Fortunately, the Internet erupted this week with just the right thing to cheer us up: a mom laughing with unbridled glee at the Chewbacca mask she bought entirely for herself. We wonder what it is that caught everyone's imagination about this thing, just how for real it is, and why we can't seem to go viral like that. C'mon, listeners! Do we need to put on masks for you?
26:52 Interview of the Week — Terri talked with Robert Rummel-Hudson about another thing with the potential to make parents either smile or lie down in a dark room: getting kids with special needs involved in extracurricular activities. The result is often a successful inclusion experience with large dollops of cringeworthy not-wonderfulness.
29:42 Shameless Self-Promotion — Amanda has an article on "8 Multisensory Techniques for Teaching Reading"; Terri wants you to visit her blog Parenting Isn't Pretty, which may or may not have a new post today; Nicole shares a Q&A on inclusion; and Catherine recommends Fun Ways to Exercise With Your Kids and Family, which you should just think of as ways to play.
Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.
With a former Californian, a transplanted Canadian, a Midwesterner, and a New Englander on our panel, we thought we'd see how our tastes range in terms of liking food hot and spicy. Let's just say we're not exactly passing the sriracha. Do you like it spicy, bland, or somewhere in between? Comment on our Facebook page.
Another season of Dancing With the Stars has pirouetted away, with our season-long favorite Nyle taking the mirror-ball trophy. We come to you one day late this week so we can talk all the dancing and fabulousness and blatant filler of the deluxe two-night finale. After a mention of a Kickstarter campaign to help the Deaf West production of Spring Awakening pay for its performance at the Tony Awards, we move on to Catherine's latest book-club book, The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon, which is more creepy than she expected (maybe a good thing for some folks, not for her). We skip over our weekly Parks and Recreation marathon because we just didn't have time to watch this week, but we did take in "The Short List," the episode of The West Wing covered by The West Wing Weekly last week, and chat about it a bit. For next week, the Season 5 Parks and Rec eps "Ann's Decision," "Emergency Response," "Leslie and Ben," and "Correspondents' Lunch" are still up, and "In Excelsis Deo" is the West Wing one to watch.
Which strikes more terror in your heart: wrangling kids through an airport and a plane flight, or being stuck with them in a car for hours upon hours? We consider family travel transportation on today's speed round, and it turns out we have a lot of caveats. Share your preferred conveyance on our Facebook page.
A discussion of favorite clothing reveals that we hang onto comfortable garments long after they have started to disintegrate; we buy in bulk when we find something we like; and all it takes is a pair of Converse sneakers to make old people cool. Do you have a piece of clothing you love, maybe even beyond all reason? Confess in the comments or on our Facebook page.
Naming a favorite book on the spur of the moment comes easy to three of us, who apparently have a lot of reading time on their hands, and not at all to one of us, who can only shamelessly self-promote her own work, and why not? If you can name your favored reading material just like that, tell us about it on our Facebook page.
Today, we're fretting about Facebook. Here's a road-map to our conversation so you can tune in where you like:
00:56 Intros and What's New With You — Catherine's traveling this week, and based on her recent flight, she can share a bit of human nature: If someone is removed from a flight due to a possible heart attack, fellow passengers will waste no time trying to claim the empty aisle seat. Meanwhile, Nicole has a bug guy coming to rid her home of black widows, so there's all sorts of life-and-death drama going on.
05:58 The Facebook Police — Used to be, moms would watch the neighborhood, and you always knew that if your kid was up to mischief, it would be handled and reported. For today's moms, the surveillance detail includes social media, but we haven't quite figured out yet what you do with that incriminating information. We discuss the merits of watching, ratting out, and maintaining blissful ignorance.
19:10 Big Day — Besides feeling the pressure to monitor other people's kids, we're feeling some Facebook heat to make a grand gesture for every birthday, anniversary, holiday, and who knows what-all. Is it allowable, Facebook etiquette mavens, to just blow it off, or does that make you a bad friend/spouse/child? How much time do you have to devote to finding old pictures and writing meaningful posts and feting every friend? We're beat.
30:45 Interview of the Week — Of course, sometimes kids take a break from social media to hit the playing field, and there's plenty of ways for parents to behave badly there too. Catherine interviews Janis Meredith, author of 11 Habits for Happy and Positive Sports Parents and the website JBM Thinks, about ways to stop doing those things you know you shouldn't be doing but just can't seem to find a way around.
42:08 Shameless Self-Promotion — Amanda has a new blog post up called My Kids Have Both Learning and Attention Issues and Autism, and It's Complicated; Terri has an old behavior plan on her Mothers With Attitude site that she's stll proud of; Nicole has some great articles o her own at The Inclusive Class; and Catherine will have some new sports parenting articles up on her VeryWell site sometime soon.
Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.
Get-togethers are great, but would you rather have a full house or a few friends over? Does it depend on who has to clean, who has to cook, and who you might wind up having to talk to? Listen to hear our real-world socialization preferences, and comment about your own on our Facebook page.
Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. We've all worn shoes that remind us with every step that we've made a bad footwear decision. For today's Speed Round, we combed our anguished memories for the Worst. Shoes. Ever. Do you recall a pair of footwear you'd give that distinction? Share in the comments on our Facebook page.
So one of our final three Dancing With the Stars contestants is a big pile of meh as far as we're concerned, and one of the folks who went home is someone whose joy we enjoyed, but all things considered, it's not been a bad season under the mirror ball. We give our thoughts on this week's dances, wins, and losses, and look forward to next week's two days of finals (look for our podcast on Wednesday). We also continue our Parks and Rec marathon with the season-five episodes "Pawnee Commons," "Ron and Diane," "Two Parties," and "Women in Garbage"; watch "Enemies" along with the West Wing Weekly podcast; and work in a quick chat about the recent slaughter of not-yet-renewed shows and the way Lin-Manuel Miranda's Twitter presence is reinforcing all our worst procrastinating habits. If you're following along on our marathons (and not procrastinating), next week we'll be watching the Parks and Rec episodes "Ann's Decision," "Emergency Response," "Leslie and Ben," and "Correspondent's Lunch," and the West Wing episode "The Short List."
Though we don't watch soap operas anymore (unless you count Downton Abbey, which we do, or all the nighttime dramas that traffic in soap-opera tropes), we can all remember which ones we spent serious time with in our youth and young adulthood. Which soaps do you remember fondly? Share on our Facebook page.
After reading a news story on the return of The Match Game (hosted by Alec Baldwin), we decided to have a little quiz of our own on the topic of our favorite game shows. Do you have a game that always has you guessing along? Share on our Facebook page.
We're down one regular podcaster this week, as Amanda has no voice to speak of or speak with, but our old friend Katherine Lee, who writes about parenting for verywell.com, kindly stepped in to give us a fourth. Here's a road map to what we talked about for your fast-forwarding convenience:
01:15 Intros and What's New With You — We've been staying up late podcasting and cleaning up after dogs and watching PBS ... and now that we're up and ready to broadcast, we're interrupted by SOS calls from school. But we'll soldier on and chat as best we can.
5:33 School Transitions — One of the things we're chatting about is those transitions that don't get as much attention: the pre-K to K, K to 1st, and elementary to middle school jumps that are probably more meaningful for parents than kids. (Cue up Track 1 on our Cry Playlist if you need to.)
16:14 Spanking — How is spanking still a thing? As Katherine has written, new research is pretty resounding in the conclusion that spanking is both harmful and ineffective. We talk about why the message is not getting through and the things the Internet does to make research look unreliable. (Watch the John Oliver segment Katherine mentions.)
28:24 Interview of the Week — We don't have Amanda in person, but we have her in a prerecorded interview with her husband, Jon, who chats with us once a month on parenting kids with special needs. Today they're talking about time management — who's good at it, who's not, and the balancing of inattention and routine.
38:53 Shameless Self-Promotion — Katherine has articles on the spanking study and how to handle your child’s mistakes that will be up on verywell.com when verywell decides, “Oh, very well”; Terri has gone forth and tumblr'd again, this time with stuff the Internet needs; Nicole reminds us that we can still take her online course on inclusive education; and Catherine shares an article on what not to say to your sports kid.
Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.
Fantasize with us today about a world where you could afford a fabulous house ... a private jet ... an international lifestyle ... a cook to cater to your every whim ... even Hamilton tickets! What would you buy if you could buy anything? Comment on our Facebook page.