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Tiny Tots is a part-day, pre-kindergarten readiness program.
Tiny Tots prepares children, ages 4-5, for kindergarten by developing small motor skills, math and reading abilities, and social interactions. The program is held 4 days per week--Monday through Thursday--two hours per day, 10 am to noon. The monthly fee is $100.
Show & Tell (from Parenting.Com)
An Open Letter to Angelina: Welcome to the Sisterhood
14 May 2013, 11:44 am
Dear Angelina,
Welcome to the sisterhood. The exclusive club of one in eight women who will get breast cancer in their lifetime, according to the National Cancer Institute. Only now you probably won’t, and I can tell you a little of what you’re missing out on.
I’ve been a card carrying member since 2008, complete with a Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center ID tucked in my wallet. Just last week I graduated from six-month visits with my breast surgeon to the MSKCC “survivorship” program, my annual MRIs downgraded to ultrasounds. Tomorrow I see my oncologist, who with any luck will reduce her demands on my time as well. It’s a weird feeling. Liberating to see the non-stop medical tests and appointments winding down, but it’s also like being forced out of a cozy nest of support: Is this really it? Am I ready? What if we miss something?
I too have children, three of them to be exact, including a teenage daughter who will have to deal with this legacy in the not too distant future. I had my genetic testing after the fact. Unlike you I did not carry the BRCA gene or have any close family history of breast cancer. Just the bad luck to become a statistic in my 40s, a few decades ahead of the norm. I don’t carry much of a risk of recurrence, but once you have cancer, every little bump or ache is more than a bump or ache. Knowing what that’s like to live with now, I would have opted for a double mastectomy like you instead of the “single” that was encouraged at the time.
Plus: I Am Angelina Jolie
My daughter will someday face the same decision you just made, as will your Shiloh and Vivienne. According to my geneticist, my early-age diagnosis, coupled with the fact that my daughter has a paternal aunt who also had breast cancer at an even younger age than I did (in her mid-30s), and that we have a history of related prostate cancer on both sides of our families, makes her much more vulnerable than I was. I don’t know her exact odds. I was honestly just too afraid to ask at the time. But I do know that for her, the testing will begin in her mid 20s, at an age when she should be building a career, falling in love, and living a fun, fearless life instead of worrying about serious illness.
But here’s the good stuff we’ve given our daughters (and sons): Strong role models. You did the right thing, Angelina, confronting your destiny and stomping it out. I would have done the very same if I had the choice. And I will encourage my daughter to do so if her odds turn out to be equally daunting. You are also correct that we are not any less feminine with reconstructed breasts. Feminine today means strong and smart, not wimpy or passive. Women like you and I don’t wait for life to happen to us. It was a drastic step to be sure, but a beautiful gift you’ve given your family.
Of course it will be both lauded and debated. Right now the Twitterverse is exploding with quips on the cost, the controversy over whether BRCA testing is necessary, the concerns over potentially unnecessary surgery. This judging is way out of line. Cancer is damn scary. Only when confronted with our own individual vulnerability can we truly say what is the best decision for us as both women and mothers. Cancer treatment certainly takes its toll as well. In addition to the surgery you had, there is radiation and chemo and tamoxifen and early menopause. The change in our breasts is in fact but a small part of the havoc wreaked on the rest of our bodies. Yes, you went through a lot the past few months, but trust me, it could have been worse.
Plus: Meet 10 Awesome Moms With Cancer
My kids occasionally still ask about my cancer, usually when they hear about a friend whose parent has been diagnosed, or heartbreakingly, a child in our community who has it in some form or another. They’re tweens and teens now and can understand some of the medical explanation I provide in a valiant attempt to reassure them that my situation is different from whichever scary story they’re hearing. But the strongest proof of our ability to conquer cancer is me standing at the kitchen counter, me going out the door to work at the same time they go to school, me next to them on the sofa rooting for contestants on The Voice. Just being a normal mom, living a normal life. For you and me and our families, that’s powerful stuff.
I’m sorry this had to happen to you too, Angelina, but I am also grateful that you will use your voice and your resources to bring breast cancer prevention and treatment to many less fortunate. As they say, God works in mysterious ways, and this seems like a smart move on his or her part. Bravo, mama, bravo.
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I Am Angelina Jolie
14 May 2013, 11:04 am
What if you needed to cut off a piece of your body to save your life? Tough choice. What if you were a gorgeous movie star whose career hinged on your beauty—and the body part in question was your breasts? Tougher still. And yet, if you're as brave as Angelina Jolie, you do it.
The A-lister recently found out she has BRCA-1, a gene that gave her an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and also 50-50 odds of ovarian cancer. Experts say the odds vary from woman to woman with the gene. Tough as it may be, Angelina did the right thing. A double mastectomy is a damn tough operation, but you can get over it and feel like a woman again. I know, because, sadly, this surgery is about the only thing I have in common with Angie.
In 2009 a routine mammogram revealed cancer in my left breast. For safety's sake, I opted for a double mastectomy. Breast cancer unfortunately runs in my family—my mom is a survivor, and my younger sister, Emily, was at the time struggling with it too.
Plus: An Open Letter To Angelina
I remember, in the days leading up to my surgery, sitting beside healthy co-workers and silently praying to God to let us swap bodies. On the drive to the hospital, I fought a wild urge to leap out of the moving car and run away. If I'd known exactly what would be waiting at the hospital for me, I probably would have. Shortly before the operation, a technologist made me sign a form acknowledging I was about to become radioactive. Then he took a long needle and injected nuclear-tinged fluid into my nipples. My knees buckled from my fright and the sting. I should've stood my ground, because there was a lot more awfulness to come.
The weeks following the operation were a blur of fatigue and pain. I shuffled around my house in a bathrobe, nodding off as suddenly as a narcoleptic, peeing in my bed while unconscious from painkillers, unable to raise my throbbing arms more than a few inches. Plastic tubes had been tucked into slits in my armpits—bloody yellow fluid would collect in bulbs at the end; I'd drain the oozy muck daily with my husband's help.
Doesn't sound Angelina-like, does it? Yet she must have done this stuff too. I don't think you get off any easier for being famous.
Physical therapy visits entailed trying to lift single-pound weights; I was the editor-writer who suddenly couldn't grasp a pen or hold a book. I lost 15 pounds, and at least a pound of it was tears of discomfort and frustration.
Once my breasts were reconstructed (a whole separate uncomfortable surgery) I could no longer feel them—true still, 4 years later. I had re-learn my physical geography. For weeks I'd slam my new, numb chest against tables and into doors. I no longer knew where I started and ended.
Angelina has said she had her double mastectomy so her kids wouldn't lose their mother. That's another thing she and I have in common. Once, when my then-5-year-old daughter was in the bath, she asked me to toss her a cup she wanted to play with. I still hadn't fully learned how my new body worked, so I threw it too hard and hit her on the head. Angry and frustrated, I was the one who collapsed into to tears, but at least I was still there. I was still her mommy.
Plus: Meet 10 Awesome Moms With Cancer
And then, in the midst of this, my younger sister, Emily, died. In late March of 2009, she went into convulsions from metastatic tumors that had ravaged her Phi-Beta-Kappa-award-winning brain. She was unconscious for 9 days, then passed at midnight in a hospital room, age 37. We'd all been around her bedside that afternoon, and she'd briefly opened her eyes as we'd said our daily goodbye. But no one was there when she drew that final tortured breath, a fact that haunts us still.
Yet somehow, in watching her pass away, I remembered to be so grateful for my own life again. Sure, I had scars, but my cancer had been caught early, before it spread. That summer, I felt I lived for us both. The flowers bloomed brighter; the sky was bluer; every bird seemed like it was singing just for me. My husband still loved me, my daughters were growing by the day. Everything seemed so much more vivid.
I still live like that - extra-appreciative for every day. Most days I don't even remember my double mastectomy unless someone asks. I never think about how I can't feel my chest.
I've figured out I didn't end. I figured out how to start again.
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From Go-Getter to Glamour Girl: Merida Makeover Sparks Controversy
14 May 2013, 10:42 amBrave heroine Merida’s transformation from spunky tomboy to sleek, sexy vixen has sparked outrage among fans, who are demanding that Disney change her back.
The original Merida had round, flushed cheeks, slightly frizzy hair and a spot-on aim with her bow and arrow. Before being crowed as Disney’s 11th official princess, the revamped Merida stepped out of her plain, comfy dress and into a sparkly blue and gold gown. She was also given polished waves, chiseled features, and a pinched, itty-bitty waist.
Brenda Chapman, Brave’s writer and co-director, had said in an earlier interview with Pixar Portal that her aim was to offer “a stronger princess that both mothers and daughters could relate to, so mothers wouldn't be pulling their hair out when their little girls were trying to dress or act like this princess.”
Plus: What it Means to be a Princess
She told her local newspaper the Marin Independent Journal that she finds the transformation of her heroine “atrocious.”
“When little girls say they like it because it's more sparkly, that's all fine and good but, subconsciously, they are soaking in the sexy 'come hither' look and the skinny aspect of the new version,” she says. “It's horrible! Merida was created to break that mold — to give young girls a better, stronger role model, a more attainable role model, something of substance, not just a pretty face that waits around for romance."
She’s not the only one who thinks so. The girl empowerment website A Mighty Girl launched a petition imploring Walt Disney’s chairman and chief executive Robert A. Iger to keep Merida as a “strong, confident, self-rescuing princess ready to set off on her next adventure with her bow at the ready.” The petition has reached over 100,000 signers.
Plus: My Daughter Wants to be a Boy!
In their official statement to Yahoo! Shine, Disney didn’t speak to the reasons behind the makeover: “Merida exemplifies what it means to be a Disney Princess through being brave, passionate, and confident and she remains the same strong and determined Merida from the movie whose inner qualities have inspired moms and daughters around the world.”
Do you think that Disney should bring back the original Merida, or do you prefer the made-over version? Leave a comment and let us know.
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