Cat Skinner Club

Cat Skinner February 24, 2014

The Thing About Lassie

My sixteen-month-old son has an obsession. We don’t watch a lot of television in our house, so I’m not sure how this even came about. The little man is completely and totally in love with Lassie. I don’t mean the old black and white TV series, I mean a very specific made-for-tv movie based on the original novel. This film was made in 2005 and features a star-studded cast, including Samantha Morton, Peter O’Toole and Peter Dinklage. Lassie scores 93% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, and I’ve seen it about twenty times now, so I can agree that it’s a…

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Cat Skinner January 30, 2014

Teaching Tortoise and Hare

There are so many moments, like the one I’m having right now, where I sit at my desk in our cozy little classroom and I can’t believe my life. If you had told a twenty-two year-old me that I would be a stay-at-home mom who was homeschooling three kids in the middle of the country, I would have laughed. Sure, we have dreams that we’re working towards, but this really is some kind of Utopia I’m living in. Homeschooling has proven to be an incredible challenge. There are days where I, and my pupils, have all cried in frustration. There…

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Cat Skinner January 28, 2014

How Do I Get My Baby to Sleep?

Dear Cat, I’m a dad with a toddler who won’t sleep by himself because we made the decision to co-sleep. I’m nearly positive that his mother and I might actually have more passion in our lives if we could get him to sleep through the night on his own. What are your own experience with babies and sleep? How do I get my baby to sleep? Will my wife and I ever have sex again? Sincerely, Jake

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Cat Skinner January 28, 2014

To Sleep, Perchance to Scream

Ah, hindsight you wicked bitch. You always arch your cunning brow at me, just before you drop the bomb that makes cringe and facepalm a la Homer Simpson. Here at the homestead, we’re reading Pamela Drukerman’s delightfully written book “Bringing Up Bebe”. Do you know it? It’s a comparative analysis of French (from France) children versus North American kids, based on the author’s experience of French kids being much better behaved. It’s a great read, but there are so many ideas in this book that I wish I had known about when my fifteen-month-old son was in utero. The biggest…

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Cat Skinner January 10, 2014

Unplugged

I’ve changed since we moved from the city to the country in July. Like many of you, I was completely glued to my iPhone, compulsively checking it to see what was happening on Facebook, and if any new email messages had come in. Now I actually hate checking my email. I find it overwhelming and annoying, and I just can’t be bothered with weeding through the sea of spam, newsletters, and forwarded content. I usually park my phone somewhere for the day, and the ringer is nearly always off. I try to be prompt about returning calls and answering emails,…

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