The Expanding Life

Since becoming a mother, almost eighteen years ago, I’ve often thought about how to describe what I do all day. Lots of words come up, but the word I always come back to is maintenance. The apartment  building I grew up in had a maintenance man; I’m a maintenance mom. Around the house, I take [...]

To begin, as Chandler on Friends would say, “Could the name Avon-by-the-Sea be any lovlier?” I think not. “Avon” conjures up Shakespearean sonnets (or coral-colored lipsticks, depending on your frame of reference). “By-the-Sea” is delightful in its hyphenation, and also sounds Seussical or e.e. cumm

We can think “boardwalk” and be in Belmar forty-five minutes later. After parking the car in front of a modest Victorian house on Tenth Avenue, we can choose to enjoy an ice-cream cone from Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out (the Jersey Shore shamelessly promotes its affiliation with Bruce Springsteen) before

The day after we took our daughter out of kindergarten to begin the homeschooling experiment that became the unschooling adventure that became the best possible lives the members of our family could ever have, I began to seek out educational philosophies, theories, and practices. Bloom’s Taxonomy st

The first thing that’s special about Point Pleasant is the little community where you park your car. Once you’re off the main road, you find yourself within a grid of streets dotted with small beach cottages—little homes, mostly with gravel instead of grass out front, and flower pots on the porches,

Growing up in New Jersey, there was one summer destination: the Jersey shore. Just knowing it was there made the less blissful aspects of living in New Jersey tolerable. Actually being there made New Jersey a wonderful place to live. The Jersey shore has many moods, and in an attempt to define them,

. . . are good for us, it seems. Like watering the garden. When my daughter was a little girl, she loved being outside. One of the things I used to do while keeping her company was water the garden. She would be busy inspecting odd leaves and aiding wayward bugs while I was busy [...]

I love blog carnivals, and the Carnival of Homeschooling is very special to me because it’s the first blog carnival I ever met. We hit it off right away and have been friends for years now. This week’s edition is at Sprittibee, and here are my favorite entries: Growing Wild is a fascinating read for

As I write this, my daughter sleeps. It is noon. My teenaged daughter is sleeping. She’s not home sick. She’s just home. She’s just sleeping. When I was her age, that would have been a crime. Can you remember how much you wanted to sleep when you were a teenager? I can. Remembering the sound [...]

There’s a television commercial I’ve seen a lot lately. The product being advertised has something to do with arthritis relief, and the voice-over proclaims that “a body at rest tends to stay at rest” while “a body in motion tends to stay in motion.” Issac Newton proved that, and it’s definitely bee