My Christmas letter this year is a thank you to all of the people responsible for supporting me in my journey to this place in my life right here, right now. All those people without whom it’s doubtful that I would have my health, my sanity and my sense of humor:

1. For my big, wonderful  family, immediate and extended, who loves me unconditionally, especially my dad, whom I carry in my heart, and who taught me to see the humor in everyday life, and for my mom, who continues to show me how to find joy in the little things in life. And for my wonderful siblings, who make it impossible to take myself too seriously.

2. For my healthy, happy, wonderful kids, who fill my heart with joy, make me laugh, teach me new things every day, and give my life meaning.

3. For all my wonderful friends who love me despite my many flaws, including all the people I’ve reconnected with and/or stay connected with on Facebook and off Facebook, the bunco girls, the book club girls, my amazingly supportive neighbors, the SAHS Pals, my college friends, and Geraldine and Bill, who are each in a category of their own.

4. For the people who love and teach my children, especially Joan, Jorie, Frances, and Anna.

5. For Paris  and the people of St. Christophers, and all the other people who support my faith journey, even when I don’t feel up for the journey.

6. For Ed and Tim, the other people in this world who love my children as much as I do, and who give them a different perspective on life, and teach them things that I can’t.

7. For my colleagues at DePaul, who challenge me in new ways every day, who put up with me on good days and bad, and who don’t expect me to be there by 9:00 every day.

8. For my cleaning woman Todja, who knows where all the bodies are buried.

9. For my piano teacher Perry and my choir director Richard, who make me a better musician (even though I sometimes whine about it.)

10. For the people who read my blog and comment on it, or tell me they like it. I think just about everyone in this group is already covered in one of the above groups, but I just wanted to make sure.

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate. Happy Winter Solstice to those who don’t. And Happy New Year to everyone.

Deb, Emma, David, and Margaret

I’ve been thinking about Twitter. Specifically, about the use of Twitter at conferences.  And then I read this post by Joseph Jaffe, in which he states his strong opinion that Twitter should be banned at conferences.  I couldn’t agree more. But I think he misses a few important points.

A little background.  I recently spoke at a conference where there was a lot of tweeting going on. This wasn’t surprising, as it was a social media-related conference.  To be fair, there were no horribly negative experiences, like this this one.  People were respectful, and were complimentary of my presentation in their tweets. But still, I came away with the very strong opinion that conference organizers should respectfully ask the attendees not to Twitter during presentations, and that the organizers should not facilitate the use of Twitter. I want to say emphatically that I am not criticizing the organizers of the conference I attended.  And I’m not even criticizing the conference attendees who were tweeting. Twitter is still relatively new, and everyone is still experimenting with what works. Further, conference organizers are under a lot of pressure to incorporate social media elements into conferences. I also have to confess that I sent a few tweets myself during the conference. Not a lot. But a few.

But having seen twitter in action (and having had the experience of presenting while people were tweeting), here’s my list of why Twitter should not be used during conferences:

1.  It’s rude.  When people go to the trouble to prepare a presentation for a conference, the audience should have the courtesy to pay attention. And when you have your head in your laptop or your Blackberry, you’re not paying attention. It’s really frustrating to look at your audience and see the tops of people’s heads.

2. It’s disrespectful. It’s too easy to be mean on Twitter.  To type something that crosses the line of funny into snarky. And makes the presenter look foolish. While she’s presenting. So as the presenter, you get paranoid wondering what people are tweeting about you.  And worst-case, if people are tweeting nasty things, the presenter can lose control of the audience. (See above example.)

3. It doesn’t add any value. I understand that the idea of the “backchannel” created by Twitter is to allow people who aren’t in attendance to share in the learnings of the conference, and for conference attendees to build on the ideas presented at the conference. But at the conference I attended, the overwhelming majority of tweets were one-line quotes that the presenter said.  And without the context of the rest of the presentation, I don’t see how that’s going to be of any value to anyone not in the room.  And even if there are nuggets of information, how many people are actually going to wade through hundreds or thousands of tweets to get them? And as for the people in the room, they’re hearing it live, so why would they want to read it again on Twitter?

4. It’s a circle-jerk. (Pardon the expression.) So think about it.  You have people sitting in a presentation tweeting. And the majority of the people who are reading the twitter feed are other people who are sitting in the same room. If anyone outside the room was really that interested, they’d be attending the conference, instead of trying to get snippets of information from the Twitter feed.   So the group is in effect tweeting crap to itself. What is the point of that? Why doesn’t everyone just pay attention instead?

5. It will make conferences less valuable in the long run. Because people who have valuable things to say will stop presenting at conferences because it won’t be worth the risk of humiliation.

And those are my 5 reasons to stop the use of Twitter at conferences.

6:30 a.m. conversation with David:

David:  Look, Mom! Here’s a pretty ornnament.

Me: Be very careful with that one, David. It looks breakable.

David: I’ll be very careful.

CRASH

David (in a sing-song voice): Well, you were right!  It was breakable!

Overheard on the el this morning:

“So I said to Brad, ‘Why don’t we get them movie tickets?’ And he said, ‘You know, I don’t know if they go to the movies all that much as a family.’  And I said, ‘You know what…at this point I don’t even care.’ “

Merry Christmas to you too….

Dear Santa,

I don’t have much time to write this, as I’m kinda rushing from one thing to the next this weekend.  So forgive the typos (you should see my handwriting if you think my typing is bad.)

I’ve been a very good girl all year. Well, maybe 8 on a 10-point scale. Some days a 5.  But I always usually had the best of intentions. Oh never mind. Judge for yourself. Let’s move on.

Here are the things I’d like for Christmas this year:

1. One more week between Thanksgiving and Christmas. If this is too much to ask (I know it’s December 13 already, so it might be hard to swing), an extra weekend would be okay. Or even an hour. Anything you can do will be fine.

2. An extra dose of patience as David asks me for the tenth time in an hour if it’s time to put the lights on the tree yet. (Seriously, what about “we have to wait for the branches to settle” is so hard for a 6-year-old to understand?)

3.  An automatic gift-wrapping machine. This is my least favorite part.  Christmas cards used to be my least favorite part, but I stopped sending them. So now wrapping is my least favorite part.

4. Good weather on December 26 for our road-trip to PA. I really hate to drive in bad weather. Or any hint of bad weather. Or rain. Or fog.

5. Coffee. Or a glass of wine. Coffee and a glass of wine.

I think I should end the list there. I don’t want to appear greedy.

No need to wrap any of this. I know you and the elves are busy.  And I can only imagine what Mrs. Claus is going through, with all she has to do to get the house ready for Christmas. (I’m guessing you’re not much help with the tree and such, since you’re on the road so much in December. I’d be willing to bet that that’s kind of a sore subject around the Claus house. )

Thanks in advance, Santa!

Love,

Deb

My sister and brother-in-law came to stay with the kids while I was out of town last week and as a result, we are now a lot less frayed around the edges. I’m happy to report that:

1. We have new shower curtain liners in both showers. No more mildew.

2. All the lights in the house are now working.

3. I have a complete inventory of everything in both freezers (including which freezer it’s in).

4. The refrigerator is clean, all of the shelves are at the perfect height and the cheese drawer is in a better place (no, not heaven. Just a more logical place in the refrigerator.)

5. Margaret dresses herself with no help from me.

6. The dining room table is reoriented the way it really should be (but I never realized that it should be that way.)

7. All of the Tupperware containers and lids are organized (but unfortunately, none of them match each other.)

8. David and Margaret’s Ikea dressers are assembled and all of their clothes are perfectly folded and organized.

9. I no longer have a coffee table next to the couch (that one’s going back, because I don’t have any place to set my coffee when I’m watching TV.)

So this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for my wonderful sister and brother-in-law, who love me and love my kids and come and help me when I need them and un-fray my house.

1. Why do airports still have screens displaying arriving flights in the gate area when the only people who can go through security are people who are leaving? Please tell me what I’m missing here.

2. Can’t they figure out a better way to package eggs? By my estimation, approximately half of all egg cartons in the supermarket have at least one broken egg. This seems very wasteful.

3. If someone developed a fragrance called “New Baby Smell”, they would sell a lot of it.

4. Mini-vans should have sensors on the sides which beep when you’re too close to the side of the garage. Another option would be to make sure that the color of the van is the same as the paint color of the garage.

5. Don’t keep pet monkeys in your house. Seriously. Or this will happen.

6. Why does the water in the public-restroom sink only turn on after I STOP waving my hand in front of the sensor?

7. I read a statistic that 2% of people respond to SPAM. I’m dying to know who these people are and what they’re thinking.

8. Clorox Bleach-Free Hand-Sanitizer? Really? Sorry, Clorox, you can say “bleach-free” on the package, but Clorox = bleach, and I’m not putting bleach on my hands.

And those are the things I’ve been thinking about.

If you were to walk into my house today, your first impression would likely be of a small, tidy, relatively uncluttered, fairly clean home.

But if you look more closely, you’d begin to see the evidence that there is way more to be done than I am capable of doing on my own. More to be dealt with than can be fit into two days on the weekend. Days which are already full of birthday parties, grocery shopping, church activities and soccer. (Ok, so soccer is over. I’m still going to use it as an excuse.)

Ballpoint pen on the couch. Permanent marker on the kitchen table. Crayon on the wall(s).  Bed-side lamp that doesn’t work (and no, it’s not the bulb. I tried that already.)  Vanity light in the bathroom that has part of a broken light bulb stuck inside it. Mildewy shower curtain liner.  Bedsheets that are sort of a gray-white-light blue shade because I washed them with a blue sweatshirt in hot water, and that I just haven’t gotten around to bleaching yet.  Dining room rug with permanent stains.  12-year-old Accord with half a front bumper.  (It’s the top half, though, so depending on the angle, you don’t necessarily notice it.)

These are things I will get to someday. Things that don’t really bother me on a daily basis. (Actually, things I don’t even see on a daily basis.)

But they are Things I See when company is about to arrive, which it is on Thursday. (Thankfully, it’s  my sister and brother-in-law, who still love me in spite of my imperfect house. And who will also actually address some of these things while they’re there. Not the ballpoint pen on the couch, though. Or the bumper. Those are beyond hope.)

Someday when my kids are older I will have clean walls and unblemished furniture. Kitchen chairs free of yogurt.

But right now our house is frayed around the edges.  Comfy. Lived in. A bit messy. Just like the rest of my life.

So since I found out that the Baby Einstein thing was all a big scam, I’ve been thinking about what I would tell new parents (if asked, that is.  I try really hard – not always successfully – not to give unsolicited advice.)

So here are my “rules” for parenting, for if anyone is interested:

1. Relax. Take a deep breath.

2. Hug your kids a lot and tell them you love them at least once a day. Preferably more.

3. Act delighted to see them when you greet them, and ask them how their day was. (And try to pay attention to the answer for 5 minutes. Which I manage to do about 80% of the time.)

4. Talk to them a lot and use big words.  They may not understand all the big words right away, but they’ll figure them out. That’s how they learn language.

5. Explain why when it makes sense to do so, but don’t be afraid to say, “Because I’m the parent and I said so.”  Because it’s important that they learn to negotiate and persuade, but too much of it gets exhausting. And they need to learn that, in life, sometimes the answer is just no, and they need to accept it.

6. Relatedly, tell them frequently that life isn’t fair.  Better that they understand it than go through life with unrealistic expectations that everything is always fair and just.

7. Be as consistent as you can, but recognize that no one is consistent 100% of the time.  Consistent bedtime routines, regular schedules, plenty of sleep, it’s all good. But breaking the rules sometimes is okay. It helps them be flexible and adaptable. And too much routine can make an adult freaking crazy.

8. Don’t get stressed out if your kid seems to like the caregiver more than you. Kids can never have too many people who love them. And kids know who their mothers are. I know this from personal experience, because growing up, we had a very, very close family friend named Marian, whom I adored. She was like a second mother to me.  There were many days when I wanted to be with her instead of my own mother. To her credit, my mother never felt threatened (or if she did, she never let on.) Despite my attachment to Marian, I always knew who my real mother was.

9. Work full-time, work part-time or don’t work. Do what makes you happy (or whatever makes financial sense.) Happy mother, happy kids. (But if you work, find a caregiver who is delighted to see your child every day.  Thank you, Joanie.)

10. Laugh with your kids a lot. But try not to laugh at them. (At least when they’re around.)

11. Relax. Take a deep breath. (I know I said this already, but it bears repeating.)

Any other advice that you sage parents want to add to the list?

Oh, crap. All those Baby Einstein videos I bought aren’t going to guarantee David’s admission to Harvard? Oops – guess I’ve been duped.

(David who rarely wears a shirt unless he’s leaving the house)

I think Emma was about five when I realized that there’s a reason why most kids don’t get into Harvard, and it’s not that they didn’t watch enough PBS, or they watched too much Barney (thank God those days are over), or they weren’t read to for 20 full minutes a day, or they didn’t play enough Candyland (blech. I hate Candyland.) In many ways, they are who they are from the day they’re born, and the best we can do as parents is stay out of the way and let them be who they’re going to be. (I think Anna Quindlen once said something like that. I know I didn’t make it up.)

It’s nice to be an experienced parent. To not have to get stressed out about how many sight words David knows. Or whether Margaret knows all her colors. Or whether Emma passed her most recent Algebra test. (Ok, let’s not go there.)  There are so many times that I want to say to young parents, “Lighten up. It’s all going to be ok.” (Actually, I do say it sometimes. Not in so many words, though.)

I know, I know. I’ve had my moments.  I didn’t exactly learn all of the lessons the first time around (or maybe I learned them and forgot them in the 10-year gap between David and Emma.) Some of you remember my stress over David not knowing his colors. (In one of my weaker moments, I actually bought colored plastic blocks and drilled him every day for a week before I gave up and figured he’d learn them at some point.)  And my stress over whether he would actually be fully potty-trained by the time he went to pre-school (when he was ALMOST FOUR.) (But guess what? He’s six now, and he goes in the potty every time! And all my stress about it didn’t make any difference!)

I’m not saying that it doesn’t make any difference what we do as parents.  It’s possible to royally screw them up.  But I think that most of us overestimate the long-term effects of the mostly minor daily decisions we make as parents.  Most of it just doesn’t matter.

Now if I could only find those Baby Einstein videos. Where did I put them?

1. Margaret untethered the hot air balloon in the garage and it took me 12 hours to find her.

2. Had to get ready to host bunco.

3. Spending hours and hours making home-made Halloween costumes. No one will believe that one.

4. Catching up on episodes of Glee. (Good show)

5. Catching up on episodes of Modern Family.  (Great show)

6. Catching up on episodes of Dexter, Season 2. (Great show)

7. Trying to practice my art skills so I can stay ahead of David. Futile. He’s already surpassed me. (Not saying much. I can’t even draw a cat that’s recognizable as a cat.)

8. Can’t keep up with news stories about rich, powerful men getting themselves into trouble because they aren’t thinking with their brains. (Not judging, just saying.)

9. Writer’s block. Oh, the pressure.

10. Trying to find the rake. (If you look at my front lawn, you’ll see that I still haven’t found it.)

11. Birthday parties, parent-teacher conferences, weekend get-aways, soccer, work, doctor’s appointments/H1N1 vaccines, Halloween parties, meetings, 10k’s, piano recitals, book club.

But it’s all good…