This week was true epoch in my life as a parent of five children. Yes, at last, for the first time, the seemingly impossible has happened: all my children are in school.

Go ahead, ask. Ask the same question everyone asks. “What are you going to do all day now?” (Be sure to have a faintly worried look, as if my idle hands will be doing the devil’s work.) I’ll tell you. My hopes for the school year include:

1) Fall 2008: Collapse into three-month coma.
2) Winter 2008: Sleep ten hours a night.

Is this a ‘Family Dinner?’

It always sounds so good in the parenting books.

Ah, the sweet sounds of summer – the sprinkler chugging around and around the lawn, the sounds of happy children at play, the vocal-cord-shredding screams of my 6-year-old getting whacked with a lig

I am pretty fortunate in that all my kids have been reasonably good sleepers (taking after their mother, who has been known to sleep through fire engines and the shrieks of a terrified Girl Scout lead

Don’ t talk to me about sticker charts, or I might have to kill you.