When we brought our little, orange baby home from the hospital, we set him down next to the piano, asleep in his car seat, and looked at each other. What now? Did the professionals seriously just send us home with a baby…by ourselves? His entire life so far, I felt like we were being graded. […]
I hear a gagging noise. “Are you okay!?” I ask frantically, whipping my head around and peering into the back seat. My 4-year-old son has his neck craned forward and his tongue sticking out as he coughs. My husband jerks the steering wheel to the right and we abruptly pull to the side of the […]
On the way home from preschool, my middle daughter usually keeps up a steady stream of inane chatter. She talks about the art projects she did that morning and conversations we had yesterday. I give myself permission to listen with only one ear, rotating through several noncommittal exclamations. “Really? Hm. That sounds interesting.” But this […]
I had to slam my freezer shut and lean on it hard to keep it closed. I couldn’t stop looking up listicles about vegetables with long shelf lives. But I didn’t want anyone else to know I had turned into a closet doomsday prepper, so I cautiously kept sending my son to school. He started […]
The first time I walked into a MOPS group, I was eight months pregnant with my first child. As an icebreaker, we drew a handful of m&ms and then shared information about ourselves based on the colors in our pile. If you drew a yellow m&m, you said where you grew up. A green m&m […]
“But she likes it,” my middle daughter insists, a pleading expression on her face. I scoop the baby into my arms, rescuing her from her big sister, who is having a hard time grasping my firm no-banging-toys-on-Violet’s-head rule. I sigh. It is at least the third time we’ve had this exact conversation, and I know […]
She is jumping wildly up and down, clutching the edge of the kitchen table, screaming, “I. Need. A. HUG!” For the record, I am standing eighteen inches away from her with my arms outstretched, trying to find an opening to give her what she claims to want. It’s a trick, of course. She doesn’t want […]
This year, one of my major happiness goals is to make a big deal out of celebrating Easter. I got to thinking after a talk at my moms group last year: why is Christmas such a huge deal, but Easter is a second-rate holiday? I don’t know about you, but at least at our house, […]