My sweet J is a giver. She is a classic second child, going along with whatever her elder sister says. When friends argue, she plays peacemaker. But she also literally gives stuff all the time. For any holiday, she’s always coming up with gifts, either homemade or store-bought. Remember that time she bought Cute W … [Read more…]
I’m just going to lay it out there: this February break does not represent my best parenting work. Now, I’m not saying that I suck. I have my moments, like constructing a fabulous Halloween costume, having impromptu female anatomy lesson, or getting kids to eat vegetables. This week, though? There just hasn’t been the kind … [Read more…]
Recently, M shared some inaccurate information with me. Repeated this inaccurate information. Insisted on this inaccurate information. When confronted with solid evidence directly contradicting this information, there was no verbal admission of guilt. That, my friends, is not how she rolls. A few days later, M was lamenting the tragedy that was her forced relinquishment … [Read more…]
I think that if I were very, very wealthy, I would like to hire someone to take all of my last little bits of stuff. Those small slivers of soap melting on the shower shelf. The lotion at the bottom of the pump bottle that’s broken so that you can no longer pump the bottle, … [Read more…]
Right now, my children are hard at work. They’re diligently harvesting icicles for their snow fort. Each icicle requires going to one of the upstairs bedrooms, clambering onto some furniture to reach the upper portion of the windows, opening the windows from the top down, carefully breaking off the precious spear o’ ice, swaddling it … [Read more…]
Okay, I’m feeling a bit fed up with the snow. I can’t remember if I’ve told you this before, but years and years ago, my toddler nephew thought that I was in charge of precipitation. I don’t know how he got this idea, but I loved it. It made me feel like a goddess. These … [Read more…]
I woke up this morning feeling festive. Yes, I know, intellectually, that when a coming blizzard is described as “potentially historic,” I should be more worried about traffic accidents and shivering shut-ins, but, to me, it feels like an impending not-yet-officially-declared holiday. I’m thinking, do we have the makings for cocoa, and are everyone’s mittens … [Read more…]
This is a very, very old piece of writing that I could have sworn I’d already published, either here on the blog or via KidsOutAndAbout.com. But then I couldn’t find it, and I wanted to link to it via the KOA newsletter, because I’ve been nagging everyone that they Must. Go. Outside. And I know … [Read more…]
This morning M was snorting over one of our baby photo books. “And put syrup on Isis!” she cackled. For a few weeks when J was a toddler, she had discovered humor, and her idea of a joke (probably born during a pancake breakfast) was to add this phrase to anything anyone else said. As … [Read more…]
I said that we’d decided to upgrade the basement playroom as the girls’ main Christmas gift, mostly because we were interested in doing it eventually and they hadn’t given us any ideas. At one point I’d asked J what present she’d like if she could have some sort of fabulous fantasy, and she said that … [Read more…]
