“Where has the time gone?” my fellow third grade moms trill as end of school looms. “This year has just gone by so fast!”

Not for me. For me, my middle child’s third grade year has dragged by in excruciating increments until I was telling people I was just hoping to hang on and ride it out–like labor.

My son was miserable in third grade. And he generously decided to pass that misery onto me.

It all started when none of his friends from previous years were placed in his particular class. I agreed with him: tough break. But, he could still see them at recess and after school and, well, life is full of tough breaks, so how about we suck it up and soldier on? Read more →

Ever wonder how other parents handle (or try to handle) the day-to-day grind of raising young kids? We were, which is why we started this series to shed light on how real women do it–from wake-up to bedtime and everything in between.

So how does Adina Kay-Gross, mother of twin 2-year-old girls, writer, contributing editor at Kveller.com, and adjunct faculty at Stern College and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion do it? Here’s a day in her life:

6 a.m.: Maya bursts into song from her crib. It’s generally a rousing rendition of Happy Birthday, though some mornings she mixes it up and goes with Twinkle Twinkle or the ABCs, which, as we know, is the same song. Avi, her twin sister, yells some form of Stop it Maya or Maya noooooo. 

6:15 a.m.: Maya stops singing. Everything goes quiet. I try not breathe, praying they’ve gone back to sleep. Read more →

Tova decided to share her story about choosing to have a medical termination on Kveller, and now, she offers advice for what–and what not to–say to anyone who’s experienced a loss of pregnancy.

Despite the fact that pregnancy loss is so common, there still incredibly remains a veil of secrecy and stigma over speaking about it publicly, so people just don’t know how the heck to respond.

And so, after personal experience and informal research, I’d like to offer a guide on what and what not to to say to your friend, sister, wife, aunt, mother, neighbor, or colleague who just told you she lost a pregnancy. Read more →

The courage of the anonymous writer who recently told her story about medical termination on Kveller, and the positive feedback she received from grateful readers, emboldened me to now share my own story, which few people know about beyond my family and close friends.

My second pregnancy seemed fairly uneventful; in hindsight, my lack of nausea was a clue I completely missed and for which, after serious morning sickness during my first pregnancy, I felt immensely thankful for.

At the 12-week mark, it was time for the sonogram. Read more →

I remember how the cost of taking pictures used to add up quickly, and how tedious it was to keep track of your film. On my teen tour in Israel in 1993, for example, I was always judicious as my finger hovered over the shutter. I would never have considered snapping a picture of every person on my trip standing in front of the same stack of rocks on Masada. Who had the time, energy, money, and interest in developing all of those pictures? Did I want to load a new roll of film in the middle of a hike?

The advent of the digital camera feels like a curse. Taking pictures is such a regular part of our lives that my 6-year-old asks to see shots immediately and requests I take new ones if she doesn’t like something about the picture. And since I have four kids, it should come as no surprise that I am drowning in digital photos. I expected to have the classic situation of endless pictures of my oldest child and next to nothing for my youngest. Instead, I have an obscene amount of pictures of everyone, and I don’t know how to manage them all.  Read more →

If your Facebook was anything like ours, it seems the new Father’s Day tradition is to post as many cute pictures of dads and kids as you can. We asked you send in your favorite photos over the weekend, and you definitely delivered in the cute department! Check out the slideshow below to see amazing photos of dads with kids–from then and now. If you’d like to add your own picture to the slideshow, it’s not too late to send them to info@kveller.com. Enjoy!

I have a habit of always wanting to help people out, and it’s a habit I want to pass on to my children. But, how do I explain that doing good doesn’t always pay off like you think it will? Like the time I tried to help a guy who ran off the road nearby by our house…

I saw it all happen from my porch and I’m all, “Let’s go help him!” while shoving my feet into whatever shoes I find laying in the foyer. My husband usually thinks a tad bit more rationally but he knows there is no sense arguing because I’m going out there, with or without him.

“Hey, do you need some help there buddy?” my husband asks. Read more →

All the parenting news you probably didn’t have time to read this week.

- In toy news, a “robot expert” from New Zealand has been studying the faces of Lego figures and has found that the toy giant has been adding more “angry” faces to the mix while decreasing the number of happy faces. (NPR)

- Jewish dad (and former Kveller Book Club author) Joshua Henkin writes for the New York Times about taking up piano lessons at the age of 48, and learning how to play right alongside his daughter. (NYT)

- Is fighting among siblings a harmless rite of passage or the cause of deeper psychological wounds, akin to being bullied? A new study finds that those who were attacked, threatened or intimidated by a sibling had increased levels of depression, anger and anxiety. (NYT)

- The particular struggles of rural women–where education does not often go beyond high school and unemployment rates run high–results in many marrying and having children young while still dealing with the stress of poverty. (Atlantic)

First they leave your body, then they leave your breast, then your bed.

The next thing you know they’re on a bus to sleep-away camp.

Adina Soclof’s recent piece about sending her child off to camp resonated with me.

Only I will be sending my grandsons off to camp. Well, actually, their parents will be.

I just can’t believe it. I vividly remember standing at the bus stop sending their mom, my oldest child, off to camp. I didn’t feel teary but I felt disoriented, almost confused. Why weren’t I and my husband going off to camp? It really seemed like we should have been getting on that bus. We, who met at sleep-away camp when I was 16-years-old, he 17. Read more →

If Father’s Day and Mother’s Day threw down in a commercialized holiday ultimate fighting championship, Mother’s Day would serve up a knock out win, hands down. Using the greeting card aisle as the litmus test, mothers are honored for selflessness and beauty while fathers are honored for farting and grilling. Mothers are pampered and fathers are mocked in a time where Y chromosomes are stepping up and into the parenting arena like never before. What used to be touted as novel, hands-on fathering is now just considered: being a dad.

Here we are in the middle of viral posts and best-selling theories about how to have it all, do more with less, and bend over backwards transcending physics to prove we can truly be in two (or five) places at once without anyone suffering. But one of the major accomplishments of our generation is the blurring of gender roles in child rearing. How can we celebrate what women are doing in the workplace without honoring what men are doing at home? Al Bundy didn’t cook a meal or clear a plate and now if Daddy isn’t changing diapers you better believe he’s getting the stare down. Fatherhood.gov (in addition to producing the most adorable PSA on the planet) reports that almost 90% of today’s dads spend more time with their children than their own fathers did with them. Being a dad, more importantly being an involved dad is, dare I say it–trending. Read more →