7 Tips to Being a Cool Snowboarding Mom

Last week, I reaching snowboarding euphoria. Things clicked and I could "steer" safely around out-of-control four year olds, carve on my heel side AND toe side and go home without feeling like I got hit by a Mac truck. I fell on my knees but once. I fell on my rear maybe three times. That's approximately 100 times LESS than ever before. Boo ya.

We did a little night snowboarding tonight and we felt part of the culture. We were all blazingly awesome - fast, nimble, safe and psyched. On the drive home, as Deondre fell asleep within five minutes in the back seat, I was thinking about how far we've come over the past four years. It's become such a great family outing – and yet I see so few moms out there on the slopes on snowboards. Yes, it's scary and dangerous and in theory, straight crazy (both feet attached to 1/4" of plastic (or whatever they're made of) flying down an icy decline with PEOPLE everywhere?!?! - yeah - CRAZY!) But it's doable and I've proved it. And I would love to see other moms prove it to themselves too. Here's my quick list of 7 things to get you on your way.

1) Realize this is something for YOU. This feat requires your full attention and you don't need to be worrying if your kid(s) have to go to the bathroom every five seconds. You don't need your boyfriend/husband trying to break down the physics of balance and terjectory in grave detail. You need YOU time. YOU and only YOU. (Did I capitalize that enough - YOU got it?)

2) Take a group lesson first. Chances are - you'll get a fun little gum snapping teenager as an instructor and be in a class with 10 year olds, but that's half the fun. The teenagers will think it's "super sweet" that you're trying and they usually are teaching because they LOVE to be on the board. In a beginner group, they'll go over the very basic basics. Like how to get up once you fall on your ass. That's the best thing I learned in my first class.

3) Learn how to stop. This sounds super obvious, but it transcends obvious. Stopping is confidence. Stopping is safety. Stopping is power. If you spend the first day doing nothing but that, so be it. It's the first thing you will do where you'll feel the control of your edges and feel how to control the snow under you.

4) WATCH others. I have found that nobody has been able to explain HOW to snowboard well. In the end, it's a moment of it just "clicking" - but until then, watch people around you. Check out YouTube. Watch the instructors. Watch the awesome people. Watch the sucky people. I study people's technique every time I go up the chair lift – making note of their board positions, their body positioning, how fast they turn, etc. It is, in my opinion and experience, the BEST way to "get" the sport. And MY explanation of snowboarding? --- it's all about the back foot. Remember that and when it clicks, let me know if I'm right :)

5) Don't overplan and overthink. As women, ESPECIALLY as moms, we will plan every second of the day, damn it! We're scheduling, multi-tasking bad asses. Depending on how old your kid(s) are, a day of snowboarding really doesn't need a whole lot. (note - Deondre has been between the ages of 5 and 9 as we've learned) You need to a) get to the mountain b) pay for lift tickets c) find a place for your stuff d) find the easy trails on the map and e) eat at some point during the day. That's it. The rest of the day should be concentrating on your technique and having a hell of a time with your family. Stress + snowboarding = SUCK!

6) Don't rush it. This is my fourth season on the slopes and I'm just gaining semi-quasi-sort of-awesomeness NOW! The season is short and the sport is expensive, so you get as much practice in as you can. I know us ladies want to be great at everything we do right away, but allow this to take time. Trust me.

7) Make little goals and nail em'! Each time I go out, I make a little goal for the day. The first time, it was to learn how to stop and then it grew to more stupendous stuff like getting off the chair lift in one piece, learning toe side control, not falling (so damn much), linking turns on flats and today it was linking turns on steeper slopes. The mini things are the best to celebrate.

That's where I'm at with it, my mom friends. I'm still learning and I'll keep sharing so we can all become our coolest selves on the slopes. If you've even THOUGHT about trying it, you won't be sorry you did. ESPECIALLY when your kid, as mine did tonight, gives you a huge high five and says "good job, mom!" And then you toast over a hot chocolate. OH. YEAH.

Homework Without the Home

Once in a while routine gets boring and home gets hectic. Homework is sometimes a struggle, times runs out, chicken fingers out of a bag for dinner gets old. And especially for you moms like me, who work from home, sometimes ya just gotta BOUNCE.

I feel bad sometimes doing homework at home with Deondre because there's a million and one things pulling my attention away. I'm an incessant multitasker. I'm never walking one way to do only ONE thing. It's gotta be 2 or 3. And it's not fair to D to try to squeeze in a load of laundry (or ONE more email or cat litter scooping) in the midst of a word problem.

Every now and then I grab him from school and we go off on a homework adventure. It's unexpected and fun for him and a break for me. Yesterday we shot over to Barnes & Noble, got a couple overpriced snacky snacks, a chai and a tall vanilla bean frappuccino no (!) whip and headed to the kids section. (Deondre used to be SUCH a cheap date until he discovered the vanilla bean frappuccino. Seriously).

We both put our undivided attention on 2 pages of homework and were done in record time. I really got to see that he was making crazy good strides in his reading. He had one sheet that was similar to his 2nd grade homework (he's now in 3rd) and he said something to the effect of "hey, mom - remember when I used to get sheets like this in 2nd grade and I sucked at this?" Self deprication runs in our family. I convinced him he never actually sucked... he was just struggling on his way to being awesome.

Grab a #2 pencil and get out of the house, moms. Because trust me, Barnes & Noble on a cold winter's afternoon with overpriced beverages and mini tables and benches that you can barely fit in, is wicked cool.

A Good Lesson on Recycling

Deondre's never really loathed doing homework. Nor totally loved it. He's been pretty diligent, knows he does it right after school or internet games and outdoor play ain't happening. But tonight as we were sifting through 12 pages of math word problems, something came up that gave him a new kinda gross outlet on it.

First let me rewind and say he's in this special after school program called "Please Stand Up" where he learns leadership skills, how to set a good example, etc. Today they were evidently talking about recycling and overnight he turned into the "Circle of Arrows Police" in the house. The math word problems he was working on took up like 1/2 page each needlessly, while leaving the other half BLANK. The graphic designer in me rolled my eyes at the terrible typography and waste of good space and noted to Deondre that it was, in fact, a ginormous waste.

Mr. Circle of Arrows holds it up and says "Oh, don't worry mom, we can RECYCLE it in school after we check through it". Can't argue with that.

Now I got to thinking about one of my clients who is in the paper recycling and confidential document shredding business - they always told me that schools were gigantic waste paper makers. I asked a while ago what the paper they take in eventually gets reused as and a lot of it ends up in more coarse paper towels (think Thruway rest stops) and toilet paper. I thought I'd share that knowledge with Deondre. Good fact on recycling, right?

So I say, "Your homework could end up as toilet paper, you know."

And he looks at me and says "So I'd be wiping my butt with my homework????"

I gotta go with that one. Hell yeah - in a sense you totally could one day be doing that. No comeback.

But now I think that homework will look a little different to him for the rest of his school days. As long as he's up for taking the recycling and garbage out for me, I'm good with it.

Kids Jammin To Apple Bottom Jeans

This mom is cool letting her kids dance to a little rap, too! Check it out...

Rap Music Makes Parenting Cooler

My nine years of parenting has been riddled with exciting triumphs of coolness - but I realized something a couples days ago about how rap music has elavated the cool.

I let Deondre sit in the front seat of the truck (he really LOVES him some "butt warmers" and it WAS cold... I didn't see the harm in going a short distance with toasty buns). We had on "KISS FM", which is our local cool station that plays all the newest music - pop, R&B, rap. There was this Jay Sean/'Lil Wayne song on and after a minute, I noticed both Deondre and I half booty shaking our warm buns, nodding our heads and smoothly rolling out the lyrics. I drive this great black Jeep Commander with great bass and tinted windows and I realized this was a COOL moment.

I got to thinking once we got home how important rap music has been not only in my life, but in my parenting. I grew up in a very homogenous, suburban town where a lot of country and James Taylor was played, but in 8th grade discovered LL Cool J, Public Enemy and Rob Base. I learned all the lyrics. I choreographed cheerleading routines to it. I recorded them off of my ginormous boom box from the NYC station that I could juuuuust get in at my house if the attenna was just right.

Fast forward like 12 years. Infant Deondre is strapped in his car seat and the Hyundai I had at the time was crappily crankin' out Jay Z's "Izza". My one parenting claim to fame from this is that surrounding a little one with (relatively) loud rap music will make them sleep through anything for the rest of their days. Trust me on this. Maybe vaccuum cleaners work too, but rap music = gold.

Another few years go by and iTunes explodes. (So fun for a girl who used to own that ginormous boom box with ONE tape deck). I get to show Deondre how we can hear a song on the radio and own it in like 5 seconds. He learns how to click around and he learns what "explict" means. We make sure to buy only the "clean" versions of our favorite rap songs. I explain censorship and how what you hear on the radio isn't always how the song was originally recorded. I also take the opportunity to talk about Will Smith and how he vows not to swear in ANY of his songs. Good impression. Good manners. Inappropriateness. It's all gone over as we download, sing along and practice dance moves.

Let me inject here that there ARE certain words and phrases that will inevitably sneak through into the ears of children. I mean there just is. But as anyone who caught that "dirty ho" line in the Cat in the Hat movie... it happens... you suck in your breath... you slowwwwly look at your kid to see if they caught it... and then address it accordingly. I personally would MUCH rather be the first person that my son hears that word in front of so I can break it down for him. If I left it in the hands of his elementary school peers, he might feel pressured to use it all the time because everyone else is doing it. I notice now that he'll TELL kids not to use that type of language (I work from home and when it's nice out and the windows are open... I HEAR things...). I have yet to hear him swear anywhere - amazing, ANYwhere. And he talks about it with me.

Now that he's getting older and really into the songs and the singers/rappers, we'll try to study up on their bios - learn how they grew up, where they're from and I hope particularly that they overcame some sort of adversity or worked their way up to fame in some unique way. Then D can see that it's important to support friends with dreams, give people opportunity AND learn about what's behind the person before judging them. That's the goal. I'll let you know how that goes.

Until next time, if you see a black Jeep Commander rolling down the street with a mom and kid rocking out, that's probably us.

Thanks Jay-Z, Drake, 'Lil Wayne, Snoop Dogg, Akon and the rest... keep sending us the good stuff!

The Kid d'Art Project

Introducing Kid d'Art -- an ongoing project where we ask/make/bribe/beg Deondre to pose like public art that we see along our travels. This is a selection of them so far - the collection will grow - or I'll go broke trying!!!

Crab Spray!

This is a story of how $2.79 and a little apple cinnamon scent can overcome crabs.

Meaning, of course, bad crabs invading the dreams of a 3-year old Deondre. This kid could watch Snakes on a Plane and not have a problem. Alien vs. Predator (at his dad's on that one... not my house!). No nightmares. No nothing. But for some reason, this kid woke up in a frenzy one night screaming that there were crabs in the bed. He clawed at me, climbed on my head to get away from them, and screamed so bad that I swore for a groggy minute that there WAS in fact little snappy critters invading our bedroom. It was 5 am and it was some scary crap. So we ended up sleeping on the couch for the night, him completely on top of me. In the morning, he was hesitant to even put his feet on the ground because MAYBE the crabs made their way out to the living room and were just waaaaaiting for him....

I knew that the next night would be awful and that I might never have the opportunity to see my comfy old bed again if I didn't do something.

And it hit me. Again, he was only 3, and that lead to two important conclusions: 1) he would believe almost anything I told him and 2) he couldn't read yet. When I picked him up from day care that next day, I told him that I had did some research and found out that they had "crab spray" that we could get that would make them go away. I told him we'd make a special trip to the store to pick it up and spray it right away when we got home.

So supermarket-bound we were --- heading to the cleaning aisle. I told him that the crab spray had a red cap. And it sure did! Renuzit Apple Cinnamon home fragrance spray definitely has a RED cap. I told him that we'd be able to spray it and poof! No more crabs. He looked at me with a little face trickled with fright and hope all at once. Like magic was in that aerosol can. He believed me... he trusted me.

So we took it home and together we doused the bedroom with the scented goodness. He pointed where he thought they might go, and I sprayed. And he looked at me with huge relieved eyes and we high fived. He went hestitantly to bed that night, but no nightmares. In the morning, he sprung up and jumped all over the darn room and shouted halllujahs that they were GONE! Never again was there a crab incident in our house. True story.

Fast forward 6 years to a couple days ago. Deondre was helping me make the bed and out of the blue laughs and says "Hey mom - remember that crab spray - do we still have that?" I looked at him for a bit and broke down. I told him the real deal, that is was apple cinnamon Renuzit spray and it was a big fat lie concocted by his trusting mom.

There was a big pause as he stared me down... his eyes grew big... a smirk started out of one corner of his mouth and then BURST into laughter. YESSS! He wasn't mad. He didn't glare or yell or hit or loose faith in humanity. Lord I hope that breaking down Santa Claus will be as easy.

If anyone needs crab spray, please try your local grocery market, aisle 6 next to the Swiffers and the dishwashing liquid. It works like magic.