Since I believe this is still such an important topic and the ONE thing I would tell people about to reproduce, it’s my favorite piece from the last year. Also because it has ‘prairie dogging’ it’ somewhere in there. How can you not like a story with THAT phrase in it? Frankie Says…. Take care of someone else’s children before you have your own. As a single female, frequent babysitter and auntie since the day I was born (complicated family make-up), I have the distinct authority to recommend that everyone, and I mean everyone should go through an overnight care-taking situation with friends or family prior to popping out their own. This past weekend my sister and her husband took off to Miami for a wedding. They have never left their two children – Jay, age 4 and Lily, age 2 – alone before this getaway, so naturally my sister was freaking out. She still hadn’t weaned Lily and James still won’t sleep alone. I was pretty clear on what I was in for, but thank god I had my niece (from a different sister), Sydney, there to help out. Wednesday night until Sunday morning I played mommy with Sydney, driving around in my Mom-Mobile, with my Mom music playing and my Mom outfits on. Now for me – someone who’s been a live-in nanny, traveled abroad as a nanny, babysits at least a couple times a week – this wasn’t a super stressful weekend. However, if I had put ten of my single, 20-something friends up to the task of Lily and Jay, I think 7 of them would end the weekend with a vasectomy/hysterectomy. On Thursday, Day Number 1, both the kiddies were throwing tantrums because their parents were nowhere to be...

You can only see so many ads featuring a young waitress singing about how she needs a college degree before you say, “Yes, maybe an on-line degree is for me. I have a lot in common with that singing and dancing 20-year-old waitress. I’d like to get a degree while wearing my pajamas.” Taking my cues from Brenda Walsh Bad news, you can’t actually complete your mental health counseling master’s degree in your pajamas. You still have to do internships and colloquia, etc. but you can do a lot of it without getting out of bed. Having a toddler, I can’t take full advantage of this fact – I have to get out of bed every single day; that’s the responsibility that comes with having a child. However, I can frequently stay in pajamas and not brush my hair so that is a definite plus. In order to pay for these on-line courses, I have been forced to take a job outside of the house. This is good because, at least twice a week, my daughter sees me looking human and leaving the home to the mystical world of ‘work’. My first course was in Theories of Development where I learned that girls respect their mothers more if they work outside the home. Sure, my toddler respects me now because of my abilities to do things like reach high shelves, work the DVD player and find her toys (by looking around for them – a concept she does not yet grasp) but eventually – I’m going to need more tricks in my repertoire. I spent two years as a stay at home mom and my laptop was my dearest friend; all my friends lived inside of it. Taking on-line courses was an obvious choice...