As my regular readers and close family and friends know, I love kids.  However, having a 2-year-old and an 8-month old who is crawling added to the mix is enough to make even the most child-loving person want to run immediately to the nearest birth control center and make permanent the inability to have more.

So far, I have bunkered in my office, informing the girls that I’m working and that I’ll help them if absolutely necessary, but they’re on their own. It’s good practice for them and I feel they need to earn their money honestly anyhow. I walked out once to have my nose assaulted by the smell of a wretchedly stinky diaper. Rachel, who has a cold and is in charge of the 2-year-old, couldn’t smell it; I couldn’t get away from the stench no matter where I went. I was, once again, reminded how nice it is to have children who are all in control of their own bathroom-related functions.

Logan has already been in a fight with the 2-year-old too, who didn’t understand that my boys were trying to build a fort out of blankets and ran underneath of them, knocking them all down. Younger children can bring out the worst in my youngest child, who resorts to meltdowns in order to express his frustration and anger.

The good news about this baby-sitting gig, for me, at least, is that I’m absolutely convinced that I don’t need any more children, no matter how often or hard baby fever seems to strike me. We’re in this whole new phase of life, where my kids are all in school full-time, no one wears diapers, I can go to the store by myself and shop in peace (that once seemed like a fantasy that would never actually play out), they don’t have to be monitored 24/7 and, maybe best of all, we can have really cool conversations. I rather like this stage.

Not to mention that it never hurts to give young girls a taste of what being a mother is really like.

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Have you signed up for my LeapFrog Zippity Learning System giveaway? Leave a comment to enter! Limit one comment, per person, per day.

Perhaps my biggest beef with living here is the legal driving age, which is 14. The license is restricted, but if they pass the tests, kids this age can drive by themselves between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. While I get that kids this young sometimes need to be able to drive farm equipment, I see no good reason for the typical 14- or 15-year-old to be driving. Let’s face it — most teenagers are stupid. They think they’re invincible, they often like speed and they’re inexperienced. Bad combination of factors.

I realize each kid is different and parents have their own reasons for letting their young teenagers drive, including being able to drive themselves to and from school and sports practices. I can definitely see the appeal there, especially in a place where many of us have to drive a fair amount of miles to get to school.

Maybe I’ll change my mind when my daughters turn 14, but for now I’ve told them that there’s no way in this life that they’re getting a driver’s license until they’re 16. I know there are mature, responsible 14- and 15-year-olds out there, but in my opinion, and obviously it’s colored by not having grown up around here, driving is way too heavy of a burden and responsibility for someone that young. My kids definitely won’t be driving or riding in cars full of other teenagers either.

What do you think? Is 14 or 15 too young to drive? Why or why not?

This year I have another kindergartner and the homework that started to trickle in at the beginning of the year has been gaining speed by the week.

Last week, when I went on my writer’s conference/cruise, the kids went with their dad to visit their grandma in the hospital for a couple days, thereby missing school. I got home to find a huge pile of make-up homework for Logan. We’re still not done with it, a week later!

I’m beyond frustrated. Logan, being a completely different kid than Cody, is a perfectionist when it comes to his work. Everything takes him 5 times as long to do as it took Cody. For instance, he had to color a few animals in a picture. Instead of just scribbling one color like many other 5-year-olds do, he had to painstakingly draw colored stripes in each animal. He wanted it to be “pretty so my teacher will really like it.”

The 1 hour+ picture

Completion time: over an hour. Yes, seriously. I was sitting there watching the whole process, so I know he wasn’t messing around.

Tonight he had to create a “Word Monster.” He chose to use a cereal box for this project, cutting the top into little strips for hair and adding multiple bee stickers, and it took him approximately two hours to complete.

Word Monster

It even has a “backbone, so he can be straight,” explained a proud Logan.

The backbone

Sigh.

This is going to be a long, long year.

What is a parent to do? We all know that if I protest the homework, even silently like I did last year with Cody, I’m going to be viewed as a bad, uninvolved parent. At the same time, I’ve already got way too much on my plate and frankly, I don’t have time (or patience) for this sort of homework.

I said it before and I’ll keep saying it: Beyond reading, I don’t think any kid this young should have homework. He’s already gone every day from 7:30 to nearly 4:30. Having to come home and do homework on top of that, when bed time is at 8:00, doesn’t give him a lot of time for kid stuff. At the rate he works, it barely gives him time to eat and bathe, let alone play.

Yes, I understand teachers have to meet certain requirements with their students, I really do. In this situation, though, I think it’s the teacher (who I like very much, incidentally — she does a great job) more than test scores. Case in point: My first grader does not have anywhere close to the amount of homework that my kindergartner does and this was particularly noticeable when the kids missed school.

I’m curious what others have done or would do in this situation. I adore feedback and comments, so please share!

In fact, I love comments so much, I’m going to send a little something to the author of my favorite comment for the month of November, so post to your heart’s content.

Have you dealt with the homework dilemma? What are your thoughts on homework in kindergarten?

Product description from Amazon:

Ready, set, bake! Baking is fun, a great way to connect with kids, and the results are delicious. Whether you’re slathering fluffy, white frosting over a decadent chocolate cake, or forming soft ropes of dough into creative shapes, time spent together in the kitchen creates memories that last a lifetime. Both young and old love a warm surprise when it comes out of the oven. Baking Kids Love brings the magic of baking alive through thirty delicious recipes, designed for 8 to 12-year-olds, that are totally a blast to make–and eat!

Baking instructor Cindy Mushet and her daughter Bella team up with cookware authority Sur La Table to carefully guide kids through the experience of creating awesome masterpieces in the kitchen. Step-by-step instructions for key steps (along with Bella’s personal comments about the recipes), inventive variations, and colorful photography complete the book. Popovers magically rising into puffy, golden pillows, and gooey, warm cheese melting over the sides of a crispy pizza crust–these are just a few of the surprises waiting to be enjoyed in this book. So roll up your sleeves, get a little flour on your hands, and warm your stomach with a treat while sharing a smile. Baking Kids Love is baking that both kids and adults will love.

Enjoy this cool recipe fresh from the cookbook pages and read on to find out how to sign up to win your very own copy.

POPOVER BALLOONS

Makes 12

Popover Balloons

Ingredients:

1¼ cups milk
3 large eggs
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted (see page 10)
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt

Tools:

Measuring cups and spoons
12-cup standard muffin pan
Blender
Oven mitts
Cooling rack
Small offset spatula

1. Before you begin
•    Position an oven rack in the center of the oven, and preheat the oven to 425°F. Generously butter the muffin pan, or coat with pan spray.

2. Make the batter
•    Put the milk, eggs, and butter in the blender. Put the lid on securely and blend on high speed for 1 minute. Turn off the blender, uncover, and add the flour and salt. Re-cover and blend on high speed for another minute.

3. Fill the cups and bake the popovers
•     Divide the batter evenly among the prepared muffin cups. It should come about ²⁄³ of the way up the sides of each cup.
•    Bake for 30 minutes, or until deep golden brown and crispy. Using the oven mitts, transfer the pan to the cooling rack and let cool for 5 minutes before serving. Use the small offset spatula to run around the edges of each popover, to loosen them from the pan. Then pop each one out with the spatula and serve hot.
—From Baking Kids Love by Sur La Table with Cindy Mushet/Andrews McMeel Publishing

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Giveaway ends at 11:59 Central Standard Time, Wednesday, October 21, 2009. Open to residents of the U.S. and Canada only. The winner will be chosen using random.org. Winner will have 24 hours to respond to notification with shipping info. If no response, another winner will be chosen.

Good luck!

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Have you entered the giveaway for The Secrets of Happy Families? Take a second to leave a comment to win (and enjoy a FREE excerpt from the book while you’re at it).

Today I was headed to town by myself, blasting “High School Musical 2” and singing in that loud and obnoxious way you do when you’re alone. By the time Track 5 started though, it occurred to me that perhaps it’s not totally normal to listen to the kids’ music when they’re not even in the vicinity, but hey — sometimes a girl’s just got to sing!

(In case you’re not familiar with the “High School Musical 2″ soundtrack, the best songs on it are “I Don’t Dance” and “Bet On It.” My kids agree — these two are the most requested tracks when we have that particular CD in the player.)

In the past, I’ve also been known to pop in “Wee Sing Silly Songs,” a cassette tape (remember those?) we had when the kids were much younger, and, yes, of course, sing along. Now that my kids have them all on CD, I also like to listen to the set of  kids’ records (I know, I’m showing my age) my sisters and I grew up on. The most popular of them was “Music Machine,” versions 1 and 2. These CDs, despite the lack of needle scratching and skipping, just feel like home to me because we constantly had one or another of them on.

Just don’t laugh if you pass me on the road while I’m rocking out to “Work This Out.” When you’re forced to listen to the kids’ music as often as a lot of us parents are (“Hannah Montana,” anyone?), you can’t help having it grow on you a bit, particularly when you’re still a kid at heart anyway.

Anyone else willing to confess? What kiddie CDs are your guilty pleasures?

We had quite a productive Twitter party this morning, discussing the positives that we all got out of this year’s blogathon. If you’re interested, you can read all about it here on WordCount.

So, now it’s back to the regular program. And I have some questions for you:

How do you think I can improve my blog?
Is there anything in particular you’d like to see here (product reviews, more guest bloggers, more giveaways, etc.)?
What is your favorite part of my blog? Why?
In what ways do you feel I can be of more service to YOU?
What are some of the things that keep you coming back to a blog?

My ultimate goal is to spark discussions and share experiences with each other here. Flexibility in parenting is key, in my opinion, and learning strategies and hearing what others have tried can be incredibly helpful.

This parenting journey is at times satisfying, at times overwhelming, occasionally beautiful or sad, but it is always, always unpredictable. This lack of predictability is precisely why parents need each other. There is no set formula for parenting, no “right” way to do it; it is, like my blog’s title, all about trial and error, experimenting with one method and scrapping it if it doesn’t work. Who better to help out with the trial part and commiserate on the error part than other parents?

So please share, discuss, advise, leave a little of your experiences here for someone else to learn from.

In that vein, having more readers, and thereby participants, will make this site even better. The more people commenting, the more we can all learn from each other. If you feel comfortable passing along my blog’s link to your friends, family, acquaintances, or whomever, I’d greatly appreciate it.

One other favor: If you like my blog, please click on the “Join Me! Top Mom Blogs” button on the top, right-hand side of the page. My blog is close to being on the top 100 list, which will give it much more visibility, and clicking that button gets me one step closer! (I’m at 124 out of 600+ blogs now.)

Thanks for reading and sharing. I love hearing from you guys!

Ahhh . . . Remember the good old days? The days when families would gather around the TV and watch the evening sitcoms without fear of profanity, nudity or other sights inappropriate for children; when a movie that was rated PG-13 was actually okay for thirteen year olds? Forget about TV shows on public stations with nudity like “NYPD Blue;” they were unheard of. And the PG-13 movies we have today? They would have been rated R when I was a kid. Wait a minute, was this really so long ago?

The fact that I am only thirty, yet have seen such a rapid decline in the morality of our society and the media throughout my relatively short lifetime, tells a really sad story. It’s not like I’m some old codger, reminiscing about the “innocent” days gone by, or even that I’m ultra-conservative, but I find myself becoming increasingly offended with the images and attitudes portrayed in the media. It is said that art (in this case, the media) reflects reality, but these days it’s more that the media hugely influences our reality.

Gone are the days of the family sitcom, the ones my family used to watch, like “The Cosby Show,” “Perfect Strangers,” or “Home Improvement.” I can’t say for certain right now, since I haven’t actually watched a sitcom in over a year, but last time I checked on the public networks (besides PBS), there was not one show that I would let my kids see. And this is supposed to be primetime, “family” time. Yeah, Urkel was cheesy, but at least our parents didn’t have to worry about what we were watching, or have to explain any adult situations to us.

The TV rarely even comes on in our house anymore, unless it’s PBS or a DVD. Since we don’t have cable, our options are limited – no Nickelodeon or Disney Channel for us. Frankly, I like it that way. There’s less chance of the kids seeing something they shouldn’t. Right now they are addicted to “Little House on the Prairie” on DVD; it’s family-oriented, entertaining, clean, and teaches great values, which is a lot more than most TV shows these days.

I used to scoff at my parents’ and grandparents’ complaints about the “bad” attitudes and the increase of violence and sex in the media. They were just old fuddy-duddies who needed to get with the times and lighten up. Then I had my own children, implicit media consumers, and my entire view changed. Suddenly, the “garbage in, garbage out” line my parents were always saying started to, gulp, actually make sense.

The older my kids get, the more incensed I am with the shallow attitudes and situations the media portrays regarding sex, beauty and violence. Beauty is often depicted as the most important virtue one can have and sex is shown as purely casual, rarely with consequences.

Is it any wonder that teenage pregnancy is so rampant, kids bring guns to school, Internet porn is so (scarily) accessible, and increasingly younger and younger girls have eating disorders? These are impressionable, malleable, innocent minds that should only have to be thinking about childish things like school and the upcoming football game, not worrying about matters we adults encounter. They have plenty of time for that later, when they actually ARE adults. Why are we making our kids grow up so fast?

Sometimes I wish I could take my kids and move to a deserted island (are there any left?) where the tentacles of the media couldn’t reach them. They could just be kids, playing, learning, and laughing. All the joys of childhood in its purest form could still be theirs instead of the dark realities of the world beginning to seep in at a far too young age, ruining their innocence and stealing the short time that they already have as children.

There’s a reason why half of marriages end up in divorce, why kids are having sex earlier and earlier, why there are so many STDs, affairs, drugs and lives devastated. In a world that is increasingly becoming a proponent of self-absorption, it’s no surprise that immorality is epidemic.

Uh oh, I’m starting to sound like my mother.