Category: Parenting and Family
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“I Love Lucy” – I Met My BFF in Morocco
In the summer of 1989, I lived in Morocco as an exchange student. I was an AFS student and truly believed that my life would be changed by immersing myself in another culture. And it was. Living in Casablanca with my host family — three brothers and eight sisters ranging in age from 33 to 6 —…
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Motherhood Olympics: Is Parenting the New International Competition?
As we wind down from the rush of the 2012 summer Olympics, we can now get back to that other arena of international competition, motherhood. Is it just me, or did the release of Amy Chua’s 2011 book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, take the already competitive field of motherhood to a whole new,…
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Picky Eaters Made Not Born
Last night babygirl ate pesto pizza and broccoli for dinner. The night before that she ate a Spanish stew of chickpeas garbanzo beans, spinach and chorizo. Why did I give her such bizarre meals? Because that’s what we were eating and babygirl doesn’t do baby food. She turns her one-year-old nose up at pureed food…
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Speaking in Tongues:The Best Way to Raise Bilingual Children
Hello Meltingpot Community, Imagine this scene, dear readers. Some friends of ours recently came to visit. A family of four, the parents are both ethnically Chinese. The wife was born in Hong Kong and came to the United States with her family as a young girl. We met in New York City when we worked…
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“The Other Mothers of Manhattan”
Boy, did the cover image on this issue of the New York Times magazine take my breath away. The cover line reads, “The Other Mothers of Manhattan.” It is a photo essay of Manhattan’s nannies. It is the real-life version of my novel, Substitute Me. The accompanying essay by Mona Simpson is hauntingly familiar with all of…
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“The Tooth Fairy Left Me a Euro:” The Benefits of Bicultural Family Life
Hello Meltingpot Readers, I have a confession to make. The Tooth Fairy in our Kinky Gazpacho household is a bit absentminded. Sometimes she forgets to come. There have been occasions when it has taken the Tooth Fairy four nights before she showed up to pick up a precious tooth. Lucky for el esposo and I, our children…
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Colorful Baby Names, from the Pages of a Book
Hi Meltingpot Readers, Recently I saw an article on Parents.com that said the latest trend in baby naming was to name your kid after a fictional literary and/or cinematic character. Apparently it’s all the rage these days. Considering I named my own babygirl after a fictional nubian princess, I could only agree, although I felt a little…
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Black Hair Rule #1
Hi Meltingpot Readers, Now you know you’ve never seen a photo of my kids here on this blog, and you never will. Some things — not a lot, but some — remain sacred. But I can’t do justice to this post without sharing a shot of Babygirl. That’s her up above in the photo.…
