Babymanners

Bill is turning out to be a charming boy.  At 21 months he is smallish and skinny, but with hazel eyes, a winning smile, and an irresistible giggle, he has also begun cultivating the social graces the Cap’n and I hold so dear.  (Read about ‘em here, here, and here.)  When I sneeze, he says, [...]

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Table manners

I decided early on that one of my jobs as a pedantic parent is to teach my children table manners.  The Cap’n and I figure this goes hand-in-hand with our philosophy that kids will live up or down to parents’ expectations, and that it is never too early to establish the foundations of good manners.  [...]

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Cleaning and nostalgia

Well, not really. But I do remember the dean of faculty at my high school telling me (after learning that I’d sweated through the previous summer at McDonald’s for minimum wage) that whenever he saw restaurant experience on a teaching candidate’s resume, he was always favorably impressed.  He told me, this is someone who is [...]

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It all comes down to…diet

In last Friday’s Jerusalem Post, there appeared an article in the Magazine section in which a macrobiotic chef claims she cured herself of cancer through a dramatic change in diet and lifestyle.   A woman I know claims her child with Asperger’s Syndrome has responded dramatically to a gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free diet.  And when I was [...]

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Saying “please”

The Cap’n and I are sticklers for the word “please.”  From the time our children learn to talk, we teach them the formulas for requests, such as “May I please have/do…” and “Would you please do/give me…” We have both had occasion to notice that many parents do not teach this little word.  Many is [...]

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Karma

I’ve already said my piece about smoking.  The litter, the smell, not to mention the deleterious effects on a person’s health are evident to all.  And yet some people still choose to smoke.  Fine by me. What is not fine by me is the chucking of still-smoldering cigarettes by smokers to fall wherever gravity takes [...]

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Fourth child

After bringing three girls into the world, there seems to be an impression that the Cap’n and I had a fourth child in order to have a boy. In my grandparents’ day, boys were valued more than girls. (I often got this feeling even in my day, as well.) I have a letter my grandmother [...]

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Nosy questions

A woman once wrote to Miss Manners (aka Haragamam) with a story about a man she had sat next to on a plane trip.  In the story, the man had asked her, “Are you a career girl?”  What should she have answered? asked the woman.  Miss Manners answered that she was perfectly within her rights [...]

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Smoking (and other smelly habits)

Many years ago, my brother developed a pithy answer to the question, “Mind if I smoke?”  He would respond, “Not at all.  Mind if I fart?” This raises my main issue with smoking in public.  I respect the right of smokers to engage in a habit that is bad for their own health.  I respect [...]

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Thank you

Among the many chores that get added to a new mom’s already lengthy list is that of writing thank-you notes for gifts and meals from friends, neighbors, and family. Many people are put off by writing thank-you notes, as attested to by the dearth of thank-you notes the Cap’n and I have received since buying [...]

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Professional curiosity

A man finds himself sitting at a Shabbat table lined with religious Jews next to a physician whom he’s never met. This is an informal, social occasion. Yet when the physician learns that the man sitting next to him has triplets, he asks, “Oh, did your wife have hormone injections?” A physician sits at the [...]

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