The people you can’t choose
On Bullying a Bully
They say there’s no such thing as a bad child, only bad behavior. Recently I’ve had the misfortune of experiencing up close and extremely personally this so-called bad behavior. When I enrolled my two-year-old son in a program named (wishfully, ironically) Terrific Twos, I was excited. The aim of the class is just to give [...]
What A Marriage Needs
Lately it’s become clear to me how often men and women willfully misunderstand each other. A discussion about love, marriage and dividing household responsibilities devolved into an argument about whether socks on the floor constitute a deal-breaker. I was shocked at the speed with which rational thought turned into “men are from Mars, women are [...]
Tripped Up
At an Orlando hospital emergency room, I watch my three-year old daughter sleep, hard. A thin tube snakes up from her hand to a bag of fluids above her head. She lies on her side, curled into a ball, looking even smaller than she is. There are some moments, as a parent, that you never [...]
Putting the mass back in Christmas
“It’s snowing outside!” My two-year-old son announces as we trudge through the white stuff. “It’s snowing outside!” He says a few feet later. Then again just a few feet after that. Normally the repetition would grate on my nerves. But not today. The innocent marvel in his little voice is catching and I’m grinning ear to ear [...]
Facing Fears and Fluffy Bunnies
My husband and I struck a bargain when I was pregnant with our first child. He might argue that I extracted his promise like juice from an orange, but still, a deal was struck. He agreed to stop spitting in public. I could rest easy knowing that our kids would never walk down Main Street [...]
5 Things to Play on a Cold Wet Day
Whether your kids have a cold or it is cold, heart-pounding playtime — the good kind — isn’t always possible outdoors during inclement weather. In the winter months, moms like me can have a tough time keeping their busy kids from getting bored, especially when said kids are used to living it up covered in [...]
An Ode to Single Parents
It takes a village to raise a child. Or at the very least: one superhuman parent. Every now and then I don my cape and play that wonder woman. Like many moms out there, when my husband goes away on business, I unofficially become a ‘single parent’. And, also like most moms out there, it’s not [...]
The Art of Being a Goofball
At dinner last night, our four-year-old daughter looked up from her bowl of noodles and announced, “I am a goofball.” Fair enough. No one was willing to argue the point. After all, we have seen her take a toy kitchen sink, center it on her derrière and say, “Look at my sink-butt. Take a picture.” [...]