Lisa Zahn

If you haven't seen the blog Free Range Kids , today's post on a mom letting her son walk 1/3 mile to soccer and having the police pick him up is truly enlightening. As Free Range Kids blogger Lenore Skenazy puts it, it's like we're living in the Salem witch trials in which we hallucinate horrific danger in our towns instead of hallucinating witchcraft like they did back then. And we're all doing it! Compared to my mom and other moms of my childhood, I'm overprotective. But I can still see the folly of never letting our kids have any freedom to walk around the neighborhood, or go to the library alone, or buy some candy at the corner store. And it has always made me so sad for my kids, and for this entire generation. When is it going to change? When will we see kids out running around without a parent supervising? When can I feel like my kids can walk the three blocks to the park without an adult harrassing them about being without a parent? (And honestl...

Rose had time over break to put on some puppet shows for us. Last week was spring break for George and Rose (does that make it "spring work" for me?). We had fun. We hardly did any of the spring cleaning that was our goal, but George did get some garden seeds started and I at least began to go through the piles of photos, art supplies, and other junk that has been stashed in the basement for a few years. We went to Arrowwood Resort in Alexandria, Minnesota for one night. It's just over an hour north of us, and the hotel and waterpark were considerably cheaper there than in the Twin Cities. Above the kids are watching the TV and George is reading the newspaper. We don't go away to get away, we go away to watch cable TV, as you can see! I got in a little Food Network porn (don't ya just love Giada's kitchenware?--porn for women). The kids got to watch some cartoons, and George and Elijah watched "Warriors" on the History Channel. And oh, the hot tub an...