Dear Second Child, Yes, the first child has so many photos. So many intricate descriptions in the baby book. So many mementos. So many journal and blog posts oohing and awwing over them. As the second, you might feel a little neglected. Where are my eight million photos categorized by month? Where’s my blog post about the first coo or the first “Mama!” or the first taste of a … Continue reading Don’t Worry, Second Child. I Love You, Too.
The other day I lost it. My daughter refused to walk down the stairs, to sit on the toilet, to wear pants, to put on her shoes. She complained about not being allowed to eat a donut for lunch, about having to wash her hands after using the toilet, and about having wet hair (after her long tresses dipped into the toilet water as she … Continue reading Here’s Why You Need to Apologize to Your Kids
We all know how once we become parents, it’s hard to connect with our old circles. Oh, we don’t think it’s going to happen. We’re going to get a babysitter once a week, we say to ourselves. But, reality sets in and we quickly grasp that trying to find time to hang out with our non-parent friends is about as easy as trying to spear a … Continue reading A Sad Reality: Trying to Schedule Time to See Your Mom-Friends
Parenting. It’s so hard to describe. It is witnessing the most beautiful sights in the world. It is seeing nothing else but your children, no matter what else surrounds you. It is a million gray hairs that appear instantly, overnight, the second you start trying to conceive. It is giving up glamour and adopting Hello Kitty Couture. It is really, really, gross. It is perpetual cleaning, … Continue reading This is Parenting (A Picture Speaks A Thousand Words)
Full of a stroller handle in one and a small palm in the other when I walk into a store. Full of an infant that I balance on one knee as I squat in the stall, and toddler arms wrapped around me to keep from falling into the toilet that she needs to use five minutes after we walk in. Full of dishes that I put … Continue reading My Hands Are Full
So you decide to go camping this weekend with the kids. It’ll be fun, you think. It’ll be relaxing, you dare to dream. Nevermind that you and the toddler have been suffering debilitating allergies. You just started your second steroid of the month, which hasn’t fully kicked in yet and, so your head has been pounding for eight days straight so hard that you feel the … Continue reading The Adventure That is Camping With Young Children
She started walking two days after, running within a week. Each day she ran those miles faster! Physically, she would quickly peak. She ran to combat it, her becoming a disaster. She was afraid to bring it up, she was scared they would ask her. But even more afraid of that, she feared that they wouldn’t. They had to bring it up, she knew that she couldn’t. It … Continue reading The Six Week Check-Up
Have you seen the movie 127 Hours? It’s based on the real life situation in which Aron Ralston went hiking by himself through some canyons in the desert and managed to get his arm trapped underneath a boulder too heavy for him to lift. He was stranded without hope for rescue and got to the point where me made the decision to cut his own arm off in order … Continue reading In Which Parenting is Like Cutting Off a Limb
I’m beat. The lack of sleep and the germs from daycare and all of the running around is catching up with me. The seasons are changing and, unlike most of the population, when the Sun starts shining and the birds start chirping I don’t skip along joyfully smiling and sniffing the peonies. I sweat and sneeze and whine and wheeze. I do not feel rejuvenated … Continue reading Maybe This is How it Begins
I dropped my girls off at daycare the other day and watched two-year-old Toddler Grouch take of her boots and put them in the basket at the bottom of the closet. She unzipped her coat and laid it on the floor before grabbing a hanger off of the bar purposely positioned at half the usual height. She folded her coat’s arms around the ends of … Continue reading Moms Aren’t The Only Ones Out There Mothering
A Morning Grouch 