Editor's Note: We asked mom, humorist and Barry Manilow fanatic Wendi Aarons for her advice on celebrating Mother's Day this year. Enjoy. Mother’s Day is a wonderful opportunity to show your wife, mother or the special woman in your life how important she is to you. It is also a wonderful opportunity to screw up big-time. I say that as someone who once spent Mother’s Day at a dilapidated horse track in San Antonio, Texas, dressed in the purple sequined “jazz hat” she was given as a gift by her family. Thank goodness I hit that trifecta or the day would have been a total … [Read more...]
10 Things Moms Don’t Do as Well as Dads
Many Mother's Days ago, when people still believed blogging had career potential and advertisers only catered to XX chromosomes, a parenting site hot for clicks published an article by a dad called "Top 10 Things Mothers Do Better Than Fathers." It's caused a lot of consternation among the online dad community probably because the writer illustrates in great detail about how few parenting abilities a father (the writer himself) has when compared with a mother (his wife). That whole "mom vs. dad" thing still chaps my ass. In the spirit of community, generosity, support and solidarity with … [Read more...]
What Our Wives Taught Us Dads About Parenting
To celebrate the approaching Mother's Day holiday, we asked members of our City Dads Groups around the nation to share with us a lesson on parenting they learned from their wives. Here they are and -- sorry, guys -- this still doesn't get you out of giving her a proper gift on Sunday. Smile Living with a couple of 2-year-olds who have a voracious appetite for knowledge means most of the lessons in our home go from parents to kids. The other day I realized that my sons aren’t the only ones learning. My wife has taught me something every parent should learn. Smile. Kids throwing … [Read more...]
The Many Special Moms in My Life
I was in the fifth grade and it was a Wednesday. I know it was a Wednesday because my school only served hot lunch on two days – Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesdays brought Campbell’s vegetable soup and McDonald’s hamburgers and cheeseburgers. Soup was a quarter and burgers were fifty cents each. That particular day I forgot my money and my lunch. I called home, but my mom wasn’t home, so I called my grandmother and asked if my mom was there. I asked if she could pass the message on to my mother. She did one better. I sulked most of the morning because I couldn't get a hold of my … [Read more...]
Mom’s Love: Simple as 1-4-3
Editor's Note: In honor of Mother's Day this coming Sunday, we are featuring posts about moms by our City Dads Group contributors. My mom was a junior high school art teacher for more than 25 years. Her specialty was not the art her students created, but the creativity she taught them. Many of her students would get down on themselves and their artwork. It wasn't going the way they wanted, they couldn't draw perspective, they couldn't draw their self-portrait, whatever. My mom had a rare gift as a teacher -- she was able to look at their work and show them how what they thought was a … [Read more...]