Grasshopper New Media Presents...

September is as natural a month as January for making resolutions. Summer wraps itself up and the sun is softened by cooler mornings and the rumbling bus pulls to the stop and whisks the school-aged Punks away for hours of “reading streets” and “everyday math.”
And Mom walks back to the house holding […]

In Indiana, the beginning of the school year is less that a week away. My nine-year-old is counting down his days of freedom. My thirteen-year-old is actually excited, because she would like more contact with her friends. And my three-year-old is looking forward to going to his school “with the blue floor, […]

       
In real life you get to change jobs. In parenting your job changes you. (You thought I was going to say, “you get to change diapers”, didn’t you?)
In real life you get a salary. In parenting you try to serve celery.
In real life you wonder whether anyone likes you. In parenting you know […]

A typical day with Max now includes a minimum of 30 tantrums, staunch refusals to use the potty, and so much whining I want to stab my eardrums out.
At almost-three, this child of mine is asserting himself in all that he does. He is fiercely independent, maddeningly stubborn - an amplified version of all he […]

Two years ago, when we opened our first photos of the toddlers we were considering adopting, we saw a grinning blond boy with merry eyes and an auburn-haired girl who looked like she was trying not to smile. We noticed that both had smooth skin, clear eyes, and chubby hands. We noticed that the girl […]

The other day, I was scanning my daughter’s room for dishwasher fodder, when I chanced upon her combination lock for her school phys-ed locker. As I looked at it, I saw that the combination was written on tape attached to the side. I asked her, why? Why put your combination on the lock? Her reply […]

Before I became a parent I would sometimes say things like, “I won’t allow my child to behave like that in a public place,” or “I’ll teach my kids to have better manners than that kid” whenever I saw a child behaving poorly. While I have allowed a few temper tantrums to take place in […]

Have you heard the news? Summer is coming to an end. I know, I know. It’s shocking. But, let’s just be grateful for the time we’ve had, okay? This summer was a good one, warm and sunny and full of good times. And rainbows. I definitely remember rainbows.
Do you know what this means? School has […]

There’s talk across the internet about the big yellow bus, school shopping, lunch preparations, and morning routines. ‘Tis the season, folks.
The start of the school year brings with it the usual sadness that summer’s screeching to a halt, and a heart stopping anxiety about sending my 8 year-old into a school crawling with […]

I just started reading a novel written by Gayle Brandeis called Self Storage. Today I came upon these two paragraphs, paragraphs written so beautifully that I want to honor them here:
When I was seven and my mom was near death—pancreatic cancer—my father made me stay in her hospital room. It was horrible. […]