-
Watch!
Watch! It’s the constant cry echoing against the walls of our house. Crashing against the trees by the playground. Reverberating off the asphalt on our driveway. Look! And I do. Usually. And I try to remember what that’s like. Someone watching your performance. Watching and grinning and even sometimes clapping. Someone whose eyes are steady on you only. Whose focus…
-
just what I needed to hear.
And sometimes they just say what you need to hear when you need to hear it . . . My sensitive son Bergen Hawkeye came over to me and said, “I like the way God made you.”
-
why the bread was burned
I placed the bread in the oven. As I reached for the timer, I heard a sloshy noise and looked toward the hall. I saw my two-year-old son, soaking wet, standing in the hall making noises and pointing back towards the bathroom. I cautiously approached the scene. The sink’s stopper was pulled. The water was flowing over the edge. Otto…
-
Found!
We’ve spent hours reading through the rental sections on craigslist and in our local newspaper. We’ve driven down back roads and side roads searching for those little red “for rent” signs. We’ve followed leads and suggestions and compared rental rates and considered mountain homes that were an hour’s drive because the rent was reasonable. Since we began looking for our…
-
mockingbird
If you call my phone (extra points if you remember his name) then you will hear my handy-dandy ring back tone. (Although now Verizon has gone all self-promoting and says something silly like “Please enjoy this Verizon ring back tone.” Makes me want to drop the tone so no one has to hear that commercial.) And that ring back tone…
-
even at the week’s start . . .
I just feel so busy lately. So pressed for time. Stumbling to the bed every night, too tired to wash my face or to finish a chapter of my current novel. Neglecting e-mails and phone calls and forgetting friends’ birthdays and kids’ extra assignments. Not always seeing these little men for the wonders they actually are. Exhausted, yet endlessly feeling…
-
oh, the vanity.
How old do you have to be to stop learning the same lessons? I am thirty-eight years old, people, thirty-eight years old. I had severe acne as a teenager. Severe. Honestly, even the word acne makes me cringe. I do not care for it. But the other words associated with acne are even worse. And I am still struggling with…
-
when you don’t see the point.
On the road that leads to the field where Mosely plays soccer every week there stands a solitary stop sign. It is not located where a stop sign should be located. There is no apparent rhyme nor reason for this stop sign. No traffic could possibly come from any other direction and it is simply placed in the curve of…
-
In Praise of the Wilde One
Otto Fox Wilder is definitely the baby of a family of six children. He has about three mothers and each of those moms has a distinctly different parenting style. But this little man is endlessly entertaining lately. He’s still loud, but he’s funny. He sings along with music we play. Right now his favorite tunes apparently are “Pirate’s Gospel” and…
-
all around the campfire.
This weekend we went camping. In a tent, eat food you cook over the fire, camping. No showers all weekend, sleeping outside in a plastic covering with seven other people, camping. We loaded up the supplies, drove to Kentucky, met up with Beth and her girls and even had a drop in visit from Gretchen and her family. And the…
-
Book Review: The Help
So I’m late to the party. I just finished reading Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help. I know, I know already. It’s a movie. It’s in the theatre right now. Oh well, I’ve never been a bandwagon girl. Everyone knows that – right? So maybe I put off reading the book until now. (Actually, I never heard of the book until…
-
I gave in. It was a glorious defeat.
A couple of months ago someone somewhere told me about this little website called Pinterest. And I said, “Goodness, no. Who has more time to waste on the internets?”” (That’s not a typo. It’s just what I call the internet. Informally, of course. Because me and the internets are chums like that.) Anyway. Despite the fact that these people were…
-
I concur.
The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest. -Thomas Moore
