We live in a heavily wooded cove which becomes a leaf-glitter snow globe every fall. The young family next door rake their leaves daily. No matter what the weather, they calmly rake their yard and part of the yard of the senior cove residents. A lawn care crew appears once a week to spend several […]
Friday night, Evan snuck a paperback book into the bathtub. The result was the reverse of a paper mache experiment. Saturday morning I cleaned out the mountain of paper scraps so that Sarah could take a 2-hour bath to get ready for prom. I had time for a 10 minute bath before taking Sarah on […]
Several times a year and in multiple environments, I have to pull out the tired, old dinosaur statistic that murder rates go up when ice cream sales go up. Eventually, everyone will recognize that statistics are not enough. The “most single parents live in poverty” statistic ignores the fact that people with severe mental or […]
Bad Wednesdays: Drive to preschool. Drive home. Drive to high school. Drive home. Drive to middle school. Drive home. Good Wednesdays: LOST Great Wednesdays: Everyone is FINALLY back on the island!
Teenage romances are practices for adult relationships. They are almost always temporary. Knowing this, how are we supposed to feel about our children’s dates? I know we can’t have the special person join along on all the family outings. Are we allowed to like the boyfriend/girlfriend of the moment? Is it truly terrible if I […]
One of the children who is old enough to know better went to bed at 8:30 tonight. Earlier than his school night bedtime, during his winter break, without prompting, he tucked himself in bed. Doug and I quizzed him to find out if anything physical or emotional was causing him pain. Eventually, his words revealed […]
In our family, the adult children (my two brothers and I) give our parents stockings every Christmas morning. Every year when we were children, my brothers and I would bounce out of bed and open our stockings to pass the time while waiting for other relatives to arrive. One year when my brother and I […]
In theory, advent calendars are an easy way for small children children to conceptualize the amount of time left until Christmas day. In reality, they are daily anxiety attacks for moms. Aside from the constant reminder that time is running out to sell a kidney and find the perfect gift for everyone, multiple children require […]
In a large family, the Equilibrium Principle states that the number of your own children going to sleep at other people’s houses is balanced by the reverse reaction of other people’s children coming to sleep at your house. The number of children in the household remains constant. Exceptions to this rule occur on birthdays and […]
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