Grasshopper New Media Presents...

If only babies came with manuals and toddlers came with warranties.
That terrible whining noise that my two-year-old is making should definitely be enough to send him back to the manufacturer, if one existed.  I take comfort in knowing that this is just a phase.  That’s what people keep telling me, at least.
There’s a relatively new […]

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 […]

I was sitting alone on a bench by a duck pond, our ignored lunch by my side, while my two-year old daughter Fern, a dozen yards away, slowly fed her rice cake to an indulgent Canada goose. I suppose I must have looked like a safe parent, because just then a chummy 10-year old girl […]

I’ve written boatloads about various fruity ideas for the past 3 weeks, today I want to finish the series by discussing some ways to preserve summer vegetables.
Common ways to preserve veggies are canning and freezing. Drying is also a good method; however I have no experience with drying foods so I will leave that […]

Confession: when I ask my boys to clean their bedroom it usually ends in a huge weeping pile of me. After hours without progress and constantly breaking down tasks and repeat repeat repeating myself I am left wanting never to face this challenge again. So I wait and wait and then rinse and […]

When Little Man was a newborn, J and I practiced Dr. Harvey Karp’s suggestions from The Happiest Baby on the Block as though they were the dogma from some new and compelling religion. We swaddled him, laid him on his side, shushed and shook him (gently), and let him suck to his heart’s content. […]

Every 6-8 weeks, I try to go away by myself for a weekend. Even before we completed our adoption, Peter and I agreed that I would take time off once in a while as compensation for the weekends he’s on call at the hospital and seldom makes it home.
It’s easy to explain to K and […]

You may have heard of the management strategy known as The Sandwich - tell them something they got right, tell ‘em what they did wrong, then finish by telling them another thing they got right.
Well, I’ve found that it works with the kids as well. If my kids mess up, I first tell them something […]

Should summer vacation be a full on vacation from learning or should parents try to work some educational activities in there? What about actual school work, such as math workbooks or non-fiction reading? How do you handle summer vacation with your children?
I really believe that three months is too long to go without any structured […]

Jack Jack is going to be three in less than a month. I hardly consider him a toddler; he certainly doesn’t toddle anywhere. Does he have to actually be in preschool to transition from toddler to preschooler? Either way, toddler, preschooler, whatever, he is in a trying stage. We really never […]