Melted snow penguins on the back porch. Red pepper relish with dinner. A balmy 56 degree day in the middle of January and we didn’t even think to open the windows.
Family + Kids
Letters to Mothers
The baby will wake, often, up and down, eyes popping wide and fading shut, and it will be a running joke in your family that you, the mother, will be physically unable to lull him to sleep. The baby will have figured you out, he will have found the loophole. When he cries out and
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Family + Kids
Tech + Kids: Our Rules
Well yes, I am a bit of a Luddite. I know. There are all manners of contradiction in this statement – a blogger opposed to technology? – yet I can’t help but feel as if, often, we’re squandering our time on lesser things in the name of false connectivity. Our attention spans are shorter. Our
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Family + Kids
Why I Don’t Post Photos of My Kids’ Faces
It’s a question I’m asked often. Why don’t you share the kids’ faces? Their real names? Why aren’t you showing day-to-day stuff on Instagram Stories? Why such extreme boundaries from someone who writes online for a living? I get it. Swapping stories and “Me, too”s is an important salve in this life, one that has
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Family + Kids
Modern Parenting: To Chore or Not to Chore?
To chore, I say. — Early this spring, Bee began campaigning for a fish. Actually, nine, she says, for swimming together. My hesitations were many. More responsibility for our kids often means more management for us, and with two kids, two dogs, two jobs, we were fresh out of any available management margin. She’d be
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Family + Kids
Small Step No. 12
There are two ends of myself, continually in the midst of battle with one another. There is, on one end, the desire for posterity. For being the memory keepers for my children, for being the memory keeper for myself. There is a desire to document these sticky beginnings of each other – all throughout the
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Family + Kids
Stretch Marks
The way I see it, a baby grows in your belly, or perhaps your heart, and stretches each to the max. A nudge here, a push there. Stretching, expanding, breathlessly requesting more room from you – inside, outside – until you think you cannot possibly give another inch, another minute, another day. (You do, of
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Family + Kids
Corralling the Crafts
Bee is both collector and crafter, wildly imaginative and unsurprisingly resourceful (sounds not at all familiar). Her desk lives in Ken’s office, and often, the pair can be found whiling away the afternoon in tandem, fully immersed in their own respective projects. In Bee’s world, Q-tips become fishing rods. Pom-poms become hedgehogs. To say nothing