My dearest friend, who I’ve known since ninth grade, is coming to visit this weekend. She’s bringing her Chihuahua, Sabrina, which will make her a very welcome guest indeed to Pumpkin.

I know we’ll enjoy just relaxing and talking, but, somehow, I feel like I should plan an activity, too. The question is: What’s likely to be fun for a very young toddler and a single woman without kids? (And who therefore might be a little less inclined to spend the day on the floor playing with toys.)

I don’t want to give the impression that my friend doesn’t like children. She is a wonderful aunt to her niece and nephew. She has also been terrific with Pumpkin the three times they’ve been together before. (This photo was taken just a month after Pumpkin’s due date.)

But it’s going to be a very cold weekend and we’ll be indoors, so I thought maybe a project would be fun. But I’m not sure what would work for everyone. If Pumpkin were older, there would be options like beading or baking, but as it is, we pretty much are still at the blocks stage.

What about you other moms and dads? What kinds of activities do you plan when you hang out with friends and your kids?

Last weekend, we had a birthday party for my son, who is now a (gasp!) teenager. My husband and I hosted took a group of his friends bowling.

It was different from the bowling parties that we’ve had in the past – this one took place from 7 to 9 p.m. on Saturday, making it an official NIGHTTIME party, which apparently makes a heap of difference when you’re turning 13.

So there we were, Britney Spears on the video screen, colored lights dancing around, soda flowing and kids laughing and bowling.

And then we saw them.

One girl (12) sitting on the lap of one boy (13). We, the chaperones (my husband, my girlfriend and I) all froze and stared. Their backs were to us, so they didn’t notice our faces of horror.

“What should we do? Tell them to get up?” I asked, not being well versed in this kind of behavior. Now of COURSE I did this kind of thing when I was a teenager (sorry, Dad), but I never did it in front of my friends’ parents! So the three of us hesitated, hemmed and hawed, until finally, my husband spoke.

“Break it up!”

The couple looked a little shocked, but the girl quickly hopped off the guy’s lap. “You may do that kind of thing with your parents, but it’s not happening on my watch,” my husband said. (I think I heard someone mutter, “Mr. Williams is mean” after that, but I can’t be positive…)

Anyway, that seemed to put a stop to it. For the evening at least. I’m not sure what happens when they’re at school or at other parties, but I do know that I’m simply not ready to deal with teenage hormones yet. I guess I’d better get ready for the ride.

Did we handle this correctly? What would you have done?

Hope everyone who celebrates it had a great Christmas morning. I wonder how some of you other single parents and divorced parents are juggling the kid duties.

As for me, I put the presents out after my son was asleep as usual. This morning, he woke me up at 7:30 a.m. with the expected—and very welcome—anticipation of a child on Christmas.

Then the single parent issues take effect. My son called his mom, and we waited for her to arrive before he started opening presents. This is what we do every year. As I’ve said before, she’s Jewish, so it’s a holiday I always have with him.

Anyway, we opened the presents and even played a quick game of Clue before she left. Now he’s playing with his presents, particular an X-Box game he really wanted. Next, we’ll get dressed and head to his mom’s for a bit. He has some presents there as well.

(I should add that we had dinner at my cousin’s house last night with my family and some lifelong friends. Being Cuban, our big feast was always Christmas Eve, or Noche Buena, as we call it. It’s important to have that link to my side of the family and I’ve been fortunate to do that every year. Last year I made the meal myself and had my ex, her fiance, his son and some friends with their kids come over. This year, it was at my cousin’s house, as it has been in prior years. As a bonus, we were able to catch “It’s a Wonderful Life” after we got him and before bed last night, which my son had not seen before, believe it or not.

Well, back to today’s schedule: After visiting my ex, it’s off to my girlfriend’s house, as we have presents for her son and her parents, and no doubt there is more for my son there as well. The maybe dinner there with her family, then back here to play with his presents, then bed (eventually).

A bit dizzying, huh? Well, that’s the way it works with these situations. The thing is it appears entirely normal to me by now, and I’ve come to enjoy the growing multitude of required visits, particularly as there are now presents stashed all over the Lower Hudson Valley for my son.

I suppose my point is that it’s an adjustment, but it can become a welcome routine, even if it’s not the traditional series of events that we grew up familiar with. You can sort of make your own tradition, and work in the standard ones where you can. The only rule is make it about the kids.

Once again, Merry Christmas to everyone out there, and my fellow bloggers as well. I hope you’ll all keep reading and chime in at will. Would love feedback. Enjoy the day.

I love to fuss over birthdays. My family’s, in particular.

On Saturday, we had a really wonderful party to celebrate my younger son’s 8th birthday. The kids – all 16 of them – had the chance to play soccer, basketball and air hockey and were honestly well-behaved. The pizza arrived on time. The cake was to my son’s liking. And since the party took place in a health club that’s located in a mall, parents could actually leave their kids and shop, work out or visit a downtown festival that was going on at the same time.

And best yet: The dreaded goody bags didn’t cost a fortune.

Let me just say it outright: There is no reason on Earth to give goody bags to pint-sized guests at a child’s party. Sure, the birthday boy/girl is thankful that their friends have come to celebrate their birthday. That’s why we tell our son to thank each guest for coming to the party. It’s also why we stay on him to write thank-you notes for his gifts shortly after. So is there really a need to send every child off with a bag of useless plastic toys and candy?

But woe to the parent who gives goody bags the brush-off.

Every year, I am on a mission to create goody bags that cost less than the year before. Whether or not the kids even like the candy we include doesn’t even matter much. In fact, I make sure that we include some kind of chocolate, since that’s what my husband and I are looking for when we raid goody bags from other parties. Those goody bags usuallly get left in our cars anyway, since our sons’ interest in them wanes after about 5 minutes.

Here’s what was in the goody bags at our son’s party: a small, bouncy soccer ball, a soccer pencil, pad shaped like a soccer ball, (can you tell the kid likes soccer?) a small deck of playing cards and several mini Three Musketeers, Milky Ways and Twix bars. I estimate that each bag cost me about $3.00, and I have to say that I’m pretty proud of myself. There have been years when, like a lot of parents I know, I have gone WAY overboard, stuffing bags full of plastic junk that will break if you look at too hard and candy that I have no interest in eating. Some parents have taken to giving out gift certificates to McDonald’s, ice cream stores or video arcades. I gave out Blockbuster gift cards one year and I’m still muttering about how much that cost me.

To be honest, my kids barely know what goes into the goody bags and they probably don’t care. They just want to have something to give to their departing friends at the end of the party.

When does this madness end? For us, it ends at age 10. That’s when we pulled the plug on goody bags at our older son’s celebrations. Two more years to go.

Oh goody.

The strange case of a lawsuit erupting over a missing iPod shared between two 14-year-olds has taken another twist.

I blogged last week about the lawsuit, which was filed by the mom of the girl who shared her iPod with a classmate. The friend returned the music player while the owner was away from her desk, and it was missing when she returned.

Now the Naperville Sun is reporting that an anonymous donor has given the girl a brand-new iPod Nano, complete with pink case and a $50 iTunes gift card.

The teen’s mom is refusing the gift because she believes the child who borrowed the music player is responsible for replacing it.

The father of the girl who borrowed the iPod told the newspaper he is “very disappointed” and called the gift a “great solution.” You might recall that the dad refused to pay the full replacement cost because his child didn’t actually steal the iPod, but was careless about returning it.

Oh, and in addition, the dad is unhappy because the borrower’s mom also nixed the idea of the girls appearing on a court TV show to tell their stories.

So, what do you think? Is the mom right to stand on principle, or should she let her child accept the gift and let it go?

Via Romenesko’s Obscure Store & Reading Room.

My sister-in-law, also the parent of two young sons, lives too far away from us in Charlotte, N.C. A lot of our telephone conversations often turn to asking each other, “Would you ever consider moving here, near us?�

The other day, when I asked her that question – again – she said,  “I can’t imagine moving away from my network.â€? And neither can I.

B.C. (Before Children), my husband and I had plenty of friends – folks we grew up with, people we met at college and at work and other friends we gathered along the way. But after the children were born, we gained a whole new set of friends: our Parenting Network.

The network began with our child’s primary caretakers and grew to include their friends’ parents, former preschool teachers and after-school counselors, neighbors we didn’t know B.C., parents of Sunday School classmates, along with parents and other relatives of our sons’ basketball and baseball teammates.

I turn to these people for advice, guidance and wisdom. We share stories and learn from each other constantly. We’re there for each other in times of crisis and in joyful moments. Of course, we’re not organized in a formal way and many of the people in our network don’t even know each other. But I do know that they have my back, and I have theirs.

Need someone to pick up your child from school because you’re running late? I can do it. But can you pick up my sons tomorrow, so I can make a dentist appointment? No problem. We support each other easily and consistently. In fact, quite a few folks in my network are readers of this blog. I hope that my network continues to grow for a long, long time. I’ll see to it.

Who’s in your Parenting Network? And what do you do to keep them there?