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today. (teens are wonderful wonderful too – PSA)
I know I’ve written a LOT about my feelings this year – about graduation and kids growing up and oh whatever floated across my mind. (This may not be called “My Space” but it sure as heck IS my space.) I stand by all these feelings. They are true and they are mine and I have felt them all. (And I still do and I still will. Parenting and motherhood AND LIFE are just all bubbling over with feelings. It’s what makes us HUMAN. Sitting in my living room yesterday with friends and co-workers (how lucky that they are both?) we watched our teenagers drive off in one car together…
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chipped nails and stacks of mail and practicing my mom skills all over again
Those are two things that bother me. Stacked mail.Chipped fingernail polish. The mail, staring at me and demanding that I take action, makes me feel like I’m running behind and will never catch up. As I type and I see the bits of pink and bits of gray on my fingernails because I thought – this time, this time – I will paint my own nails and keep up with their maintenance. It’s difficult to keep it all together, even in the summer when keeping it all together is less structured and requires less effort. May and June were busy little months, full of trips and drives and graduations and…
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Five Finds Friday (a whole lot of photos)
Remember these? It seems that Friday is here – and so am I. And I’ve got a bunch of cute photos so I might overstuff this post with them. You’ve been warned. funny There was a lot of funny to choose from this week. Halloween brought some clever costumes. But no costume anywhere beats the one that my friend Katie wore when she came over last Saturday night. With the help of one of my daughters, she snagged my Colorado hat and came dressed as ………….. me. fashionable I’m going to stick with the Halloween theme here. I think we’d all agree at my house that the most fashionable Halloween…
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parenting: the slipping away
Some moments in parenting are profound. Their import is tangibly recognized in the moment. First steps. First words. First day of kindergarten. Getting braces. Having those braces removed. Moving into a college dorm. But what about all the other moments? The Afters. Those parenting moments that are big deals, but only after they happen do you begin to realize their place in your parenting timeline. I dropped the girls off at a conference last Saturday morning. And, for years, Piper has bemoaned the fact that she is unable to attend all of the cool events her older siblings get to attend. She has waited and longed for the day of being…
Keep Reading . . .
sacred sabbath & rest for the weary
try this at home
The Things That We Keep Doing
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don’t stop tucking them in
“Wait,” she says, grabs my arm and pulls me toward her. “Let’s lie here and look for the lightning.” It’s bedtime and the darkness has long enveloped the house and the rain is beating down again. We watch in silence for a few minutes. Then we talk about the movies she wants to see and why Hermione should get some new friends and about unibrows and how to avoid them. Previously, at Otto and PIper’s tuck ins, the conversations were sillier and baby voices were used and giggles erupted and I broke the hard news to Otto that the next day was a bath day. When I…
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from there to here
Growing up one of my primary chores was to mow the grass. This chore was far more pleasant than bottle feeding the baby calves or cooking dinner for picky brothers. We had a riding lawn mower and I could spend my time looking like I was hard at work so no one would talk to me or bother me, but all I was actually doing was just sitting still and imagining things. (I applied the same principles to my assigned task of raking hay on the tractor too.) I have always been a daydreamer. Always spent far too much time in my head, working through ideas and dreaming up…
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Beyond Wildwood: The Reunion (the feelings part)
It was probably about two hours after we all said goodbye. Loaded into our separate rides and drove away. Somewhere on Colorado Highway 9. The mountains were being their beautiful selves. Maybe there was a song playing. I was lost in thought, not completely aware of what was happening in my brain and in my heart and in my mind. Until. I was crying. Not like sobbing, just like tears leaking out behind my sunglasses and I was sort of surprised and sort of on track. My heart was full and heavy and satisfied and restless. All the opposing things a heart can be. Especially a heart of one…
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watching the hawkeye shed his skin
I watch my children. I study them. Like it’s my job. Because, I think it is. For the past few years I’ve noticed a trait in my oldest son. Possibly it’s hereditary. Or circumstantial. Or both. I’m not sure that it matters which. I just know, I’ve seen it on my boy. I have seen it on him like you would see a heavy cloak – or a bathrobe – or if he decided to play dress up in a grown man’s oversized dress shirt. Fear. It’s dangly and uncomfortable and it doesn’t really fit his form. It’s hindering him at every single step and he is certainly…
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when I didn’t make a big deal about a rite of passage
When I was about eleven years old, I decided that I was desperate to get my ears pierced. My mom said, “Let’s ask your dad.” My dad said, “When you are sixteen.” Now, more than ever, as I journey along in my parenting adventure, I see that as he was a father of three sons and one daughter, I am completely confident that at the moment of my question my father determined the age of sixteen in a more arbitrary manner than I have planned next week’s menu. I think Dad just picked an age. Any age. As long as it was not whatever age I currently was. Sixteen? Sure,…
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the only choice
Cuddling beside my boy, his shaggy hair between my fingers. It’s late and he wants to talk. I was going to offer a quick tuck in and then do some writing, some reading, some anything else in the magical quiet hours after children fall asleep. But he pressed his back against me, shoved his ever-growing, warm, newly size 6 feet against my cold feet and so I stayed. Held him closer. We whispered into the dark night about fishing lures and Harry Potter and times when he’s been afraid. “When I can’t find a family member, I get scared,” he confided. We talked about the time he was at the…
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Dear Ten Year Old Daughter of Mine.
You do not know it is a gift – but I am telling you – it IS. My daughter, I’m giving you free thought. I’m removing a tiny bit of peer pressure. I’m not giving you a phone. And I’m not granting you access to Instagram or Facebook or whatever new social snap chat IM kik ap that exists. You aren’t even going to speak that language. Not yet. I don’t need your thanks now. I’m not asking for it. But it’s a gift nonetheless. The days of comparing body types and body images and self-loathing or self-loving are not in your immediate future. You will have time enough…
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Ten Ways To Know You Are The Parents of Big Kids
When we visited the beach a few years ago without pack and plays and booster seats, we knew we were ending an era. As I watched the last wee one morph from baby to toddler to little fella, I knew the inevitable passage had occurred. We are the parents of Big Kids. Are you in the club too? The Big Kid club? Here’s a little list of ten ways to tell you are now the parents of Big Kids. 1. You do not require the use of baby nail clippers for the trimming of tiny digits. In fact, half of the time the kids have handled all that fingernail and…
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Snow Day!
When you live in South Carolina and the sky spits and sputters several hours worth of flurries, you get unreasonably excited. My home school rule upon moving farther South and thus farther away from a guaranteed blanket of snow each winter is this: Upon sighting of the first flake, all school work is rendered inconceivable. Leave your desk. Don’t bother to put away your pencil. Just run toward the snowflakes. Maybe grab a hat. Definitely grab a bowl to position in a safe location to collect the downward spiraling miracle and later turn it into the magical treat known as Snow Cream. That’s Wildwood’s official snow policy. Luckily for me, the…
