Grasshopper New Media Presents...

When I was a child, my mother was a heavy smoker.  Every so often she tried to quit smoking, but she never lasted more than a few days, days that my brother and I still remember as tough on us all.  I don’t think she ever yelled at us as much, or as arbitrarily, as [...]

On Sunday Copy Cat bit Pack Rat really, really hard on the hand. Pack Rat was screaming and crying out in pain. Immediately, Copy Cat crawled behind the rocking chair in their playroom because she knew she was in trouble. Dad when in to discipline her, but she cowered even farther behind the chair where [...]

As a parent it is my responsibility to protect and nurture my children. I know I cannot prevent them from getting sick or from falling. And as much as I would love to place them in a bubble so they would always be safe, I know this is not realistic nor healthy for their development [...]

Things are back to normal here after my younger son’s (YS) surgery. Well, maybe I should clarify that. While he was officially cleared this morning and my MIL left last week, we are attempting to get back into our daily schedule. Except that there’s one not so small problem: the bad [...]

I had personally planned to see the exhibit since it had been announced by the Musuem.  One of my favorite artists was to be exhibited – and not just a handful of his work, but four galleries full of his best.  It was a rare opportunity for me to actually see his works in person.  [...]

I’ve been thinking about this lately: How much parenting is enough? What type of steering do I give my kids? How far do I push my morals? How often do I prostelitize about the benefits of being a good person?
I know my job is to teach them, to raise them, to guide them – but [...]

I don’t really know how it happened. It seems I turned around for a moment, and when I looked back we’d accumulated a Game Cube, Nintendo DSes, and, now, a Wii. It alarms me that there are so many video games competing for my children’s attention. At the same time, I cannot [...]

Why don’t I like pack leadership? Because it’s work! Have you ever spent time with a pack of boys? They never. stop. trying. to dominate. Everything is a competition. Everything.
Say for example that one boy mentions that he can jump over a stack of 5 books. The next [...]

Every once in a while I enjoy pulling out my craziest of ideas for all to see. It’s fun to see the reaction from some folks when they realize that I’m deadly earnest about something that is downright lunacy.
Today, I’d like to introduce you to my theory that games are partly responsible for the destruction [...]

When my three year-old H was about 18 months-old, he started dragging his toy phone with him everywhere he went. He would hold it clamped firmly between his cheek and shoulder, carrying on faux conversations as my husband looked at me with a ‘wonder where he gets that?’ expression. I was secretly pleased when he [...]