Month 10

This one’s especially good if you feel like your living room is already an obstacle course — now it can be on purpose!

Set up an obstacle course so your baby can test his mobility skills (crawling, rolling, lurching, flailing, whatever!).

Try a couple of pillows, some toys, a plastic bowl, and (to make it really delicious) some magazines. Holden always wants to eat the mail… anyway, watch your baby navigate the challenges of a new situation. Help him out if you’re so inclined.

When my husband had to be gone for six whole nights on business, I panicked and called in my smartest mom friends for advice. They said lots of reasonable stuff about lowering my expectations, keeping it simple, and making plans to keep from going stir crazy. This tip came from my friend Molly — a mom of two, and thus an expert:

Think about one thing you might do if it were just you on your own, or perhaps if you were going to play host to a dear friend who you rarely see and wanted to impress. Visit a museum with an important art show? Take a drive to a beautiful place and go for a hike to see the magnificent view? Go to a cafe and chat with the strangers at the tables nearby just to feel the buzz of the city?

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Or “get smarter”

I found this list of 100 words Every High School Graduate Should Know and I felt a little stoopid. Apparently, it is quite normal to not know all the words (despite the title of the list) but rather something to aspire to.

I’m printing out the list and trying to learn a couple here and there. My computer has a dictionary, after all, and I spend enough time here.

The editors of the American Heritage® dictionaries have compiled a list of 100 words they recommend every high school graduate should know.

“The words we suggest,” says senior editor Steven Kleinedler, “are not meant to be exhaustive but are a benchmark against which graduates and their parents can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language.”

In an effort to set your kid on the right path, RookieMoms is featuring these SATees, tiny t-shirts with sophisticated vocab words, and giving one away to a lucky subscriber on June 15.

As modeled by the lovely little Finn and as seen on Cool Mom Picks.
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