Hi everybody, I just want to point out that my old new blog has changed. I know this is confusing, but bear with me... I'm at the mercy of people who add s's on whims. I posted earlier that my new blog was http://sukiwessling.parentclickblog.com/ -- get rid of that bookmark! Just to make things real

Someone I know lamented her dear departed friend recently: "We used to talk all the time on the phone and see each other. But since she signed up for Facebook, all she does is post what she and her kids are doing all day long. When I call and leave a message, she responds by Facebook!"

There's been a theme running through conversations I've had lately. I and some of my more scientific friends have been noticing a general lack of understanding about how science works and what makes the scientific method worth considering.

First, a caveat. We all know that doctors hav

Is your school going completely nuts about the H1N1 (swine) flu yet? No? Just wait...

OK, it's true that my son's school has not yet broke out in swine-flu hives, but my daughter's homeschool program does seem to have the rumblings of a controversy, so I thought I'd write about it and

Hi Friends. My "new" blog has been offline, so here I am posting to my "old" one. What's old becomes new. That sounds wise in some way!


Today I want to write about supporting a school that my kids

Open Studios is starting this weekend, and it's a wonderful event to take your kids to.

Many areas have Open Studios, but I doubt that so many have such a huge amount of high quality in one concentrated l

In case you have come here and found me silent, please note that you will from now on find me at http://sukiwessling.parentclickblog.com/. Change your bookmarks, please.

It's at this time of year every year that I look at my August calendar and say, Why, oh why am I so busy? I should just set aside the first couple of weeks of August for my personal passions, but every year I am so busy. Last year I had big family events. This year I have family visiting and I just

Transitions have always been hard for both of my kids. When my son was small, sudden changes would send him into hysterics. It was hard to deal with, but at least I could just say, "He has trouble with transitions" and people could sort of accept that.

My daughter, on the other hand,

I just got back from a yearly religious retreat. OK, I say that tongue-in-cheek, but it's sort of like that for me. Every year something else comes up for the first Sunday in June and I have to say, Sorry, I have to go to the Avant Garden Party.

What is THAT? you're probably wonderin

One of the wonders of modern life is all the amazing gadgets that people are inventing. Though not life-saving, they can sometimes be life-altering.

My favorites often are solutions to annoying little problems that happen all the time, but aren't important enough for you to give much

We went to the Maker Faire on Sunday. [You can read about my impressions from previous years right here.] I was curious whether the much higher ticket price would b

For some reason, my photos didn't come out in my blog, so click this link to get to them! And click this link to see the blog that they go with

I was e-mailing with a mom I know recently and she was telling me that one of her children was having trouble adjusting to mom going back to work. Why don't you write about the transition from stay-at-home mom to back to work? she asked me.

I'd like to, but I'm just too darn busy!

You know how when you move into a larger house, and at first it seems like you have so much space, and then suddenly every last nook and cranny is filled?

Imagine if you had a barn...

My sister and I finally did what we'd been threatening to do this past weekend: we wen

I was gathering information for an article and had the occasion to contact two businesses that do pretty much exactly the same thing. Yet contacting them offered two different experiences. Since I often work nights and weekends, I depend on e-mail and voicemail more than I would if I had 9 to 5 hour

I took both of my kids today to a showing of Tomato Plant Girl by the West End Studio Theater in Santa Cruz. It was a fun and educational time. My six-year-old was entranced. I feared that it was too young f

Coming soon to a convention center near you... (if you live near the Bay Area)...

For the last couple of years, we have made the Maker Faire a destination of choice for our family. This year it's happening May 30 and 31, so I th

I noticed a somewhat inflammatory statement come up on an e-mail list I read recently, and the responding posts made it clear that the e-mail had hit on a difference of opinion amongst homeschoolers.

The sender of the first post made a comment to a newbie homeschooler that they can jo

It's the one thing homeschoolers don't want to hear their kids say:

"Mom, I want to start going to a regular school."

My daughter has been punctuating our conversations with this sentiment for the last few days.

She's only six, and it's been well o

When our daughter was born, she was born too fast. I know, most moms worry about the types that are born too slow! Our son was like that. He wasn't quite sure he was ready to face the world yet, and so we waited, and waited...

Our daughter, on the other hand, hardly made it to the hos

I have a friend who has learned a lot about nutrition and how it affects health. I have been conversing with her because I am chasing down yet another connection between diet and health. (See previous postings [1

I haven't written much about my mother, except to criticize her choice of shampoo! I'm not from a sappy, sentimental sort of family, so writing goopy Mother's Day pieces doesn't come naturally to me.

But wr

The other morning I woke up with the realization that I'd been having a stress dream about laundry.

Is there really anything more pathetic to have a dream about? I mean, if I'm going to have stress dreams, I'd like to have, let's see, one about going to Iraq and getting everyone to ge

I just wrote the hardest article I've ever written. A mom I was talking to at a party suggested an idea that sounded great: write about how families cope when a parent gets a life-threatening illness. And the idea was great. But it was a lot of work.

First of all, you just don't want

OK, please hold your applause till I'm finished with my statement:

Today I cleaned out my recipe book.

OK, you can applaud, yell, scream, or laugh, as it suits you.

But seriously, sometimes I'm just in the mood to get things done. I don't remember which f

This morning my six-year-old insisted on going with me on my morning walk. She does this occasionally. Sometimes she does it so often we have to invoke the "every other day" rule. If I don't get a brisk walk in nearly every morning, my back gives out and I become Very Cranky Mommy. And if I don't ge

I've written before about the difficulties, peculiarities, and comedies that come about when you have two children with completely different, unusual personalities. Raising my son for four years did little to prepare us for the challenge of raising our daughter, except for the baby equipment we got

Trying to be good is hard. Take, for instance, my dinner preparation this evening. In our house we cook, as opposed to heating up and/or mixing together. That means I buy individual ingredients, chop them up, and cook them with a variety of herbs and spices in a variety of ways.

I'm t

Homeschooling parents will tell you that the comment they get most often from well-meaning adults is that their homeschooled kids might not get proper socialization while being homeschooled. Usually the well-meaning adult has an example or two to give as proof of the deleterious effect of homeschool

My older sister is much better about organic and natural than I am. I have to admit, when I'm faced with paying a huge amount of money for organic milk vs. being able to afford a cool new piece of jewelry? Hm. Gotta think long and hard about that one.

Anyway, she sent me a link to

A few weeks ago my son's private school had their big spring performance. The other night my daughter's public homeschool program put on their yearly play.

It was a study in contrasts.

I know

Is it a prerogative of youth that allows children to think that they can change the laws of the universe?

Or are my children particularly stubborn?

We all know that children don't believe in physics. Each and every time they land on the ground, having fallen out of a t

My mother and I just bought the same type of camera. This was not planned. Little coincidences like these run through our lives in unpredictable little rivulets.

My mother got hers yesterday, and I got mine today. So my mother has been sending me advice. First piece of advice: the str

More on the visual-spacial learning style. I'm reading Visual-Spacial Learners by Alexandra Shires Golon. She gives a lot of pointers about how to identify the visual-spacial learner -- one of the uses

A couple of days ago I attended the homeschooling support group at the Educational Resource Center. A couple of the moms there were talking about how they put together lesson plans for their kids in advance. One mom said she was concerned th

We ditched the kids today at my parents' house. It was already full of cousins -- what's two more? I felt a little guilty, but it was great. I got all my work done, and we went out for a fabulous dinner.

Limoncello is the new incarnation of a restaurant we used to love, Bella Napoli.

I've been thinking about my shampoo.

It's not really even my shampoo. My mother gave it to me because it makes her scalp itch. So I tried it out and my scalp seems fine. Whether or not it's given me super-model hair...you can be the judge of that.

What's particularly in

Yesterday I got up to no e-mail and no cellphone reception! Oh, horrors! How could I survive?

Good thing the kids and I had decided that on this day of our "Staycation," we would go to the Aquarium. So without further ado or hair-pulling, we were off to Monterey, where they had both I

I have decided to take everyone's advice, all at once. I will be the perfect consumer of medical advice, turning my body into my Temple of Medical Correctness.

I'll start with today's news: