This year Valentine’s Day looked just like any other day, except that the kids went to school with bags full of weeks worth of handmade greetings. Oh! And Thomas wore a festive red polo shirt! I love the sweetness of kids on Valentine’s Day. I love the tradition of class parties and exchanging cheap plastic
Early one morning, Thomas started his day by pestering all of us to tell him a scary story. He tried me, Tom, and eventually landed on David as the most likely to come up with something good. They were sitting together eating waffles for breakfast and even though Thomas had been told no several times
On January 15, 2023, the Krieger family held our first ever art show! Me, (Mary) and my cousin Berkley had been planning for two weeks and were ready to go at 3:20 p.m. on Sunday. The art show was held at our house on a Sunday, since our families spend every Sunday afternoon together. We
David’s study habits in fourth grade: he didn’t study. Mary’s study habits in fourth grade: creates a classroom in the dining room and forces her younger siblings to listen to her lecture. Here she is teaching Thomas and Anna about Stinky James. Want to know more about Stinky James? Sign up today! Class enrollment is
Anna started speech therapy recently. So far it’s been really cool to learn about speech and sounds along with her. We’re all learning lots about things like fronting, gliding, stopping, replacing, deleting, and lots of other phonological processes. Anna’s therapist is awesome, and teaches Anna to show us how to correctly say things. Basically, she
I don’t know if all kids go through this phase, but all of MY kids go through a phase where they write random letters in a line and ask me what it says. It hits right at the moment where they realize that the letters and letter sounds they’ve been learning have magical powers. These
It took me 16 weeks to come realize this, but marathon training is going well. For 16 full weeks, whenever anyone asked me about the marathon, I’d exhale deeply, dramatically say, “I don’t know!” and then mumble something about being tired. It’s hard to say that something is going well when you’re tired all the
A week or so ago the humidity broke in Richmond. The change is massive. And I’m not just talking about how the air feels, but everyone is acting differently. We’re all just happier. It’s still hot, but the sharp edge of summer has retreated. It’s like the music is still loud but someone finally turned the subwoofer
Every summer when we go to Deer Valley, people ask us what it is. Short answer: it’s a family camp! Or, as I like to say, “it’s like summer camp but your mom and dad are there.” Perhaps a better description is that it’s like the camp in Marvelous Mrs. Maisel except instead of a
Right around the end of August, the laziness of summer starts to feel gluttonous instead of luxurious, and mom decides it’s time to whip our ship into shape. Mostly, this means taking the controls around screentime from Bluey. This doesn’t mean our family is never on screens, it just means Anna and I are working
Back to school! Fifth grade, fourth grade, and first grade. School started for my kids exactly two days after we got back from our week in Deer Valley. On their first day of school they still had mosquito bites and camp songs stuck in their heads. They went directly from their sleeping bags and bunk
I’m writing this very important, breaking-news blog post from my couch where I have my feet propped up, and I’m from a mixing bowl full of salty carbohydrates. I’m on week 10 of training for a marathon, so this is sort of my m. o. these days. That’s right, Mom’s training for a marathon. Before
This summer has been a super busy one in which we have had almost zero free time, but we’ve barely left our neighborhood. Three of our kids have been on swim team, which absorbed nearly all of our time and energy. We have had no time to do any of the normal summer things I
Eight awesome cousins, together for the first time since 2019. 2019!! We haven’t seen these guys in THREE years. For anyone that’s a long time, but for a kid it’s a loooooong time. It is, without exaggeration, 3/4 of Anna’s entire life. A looooooong time. When your cousins live in a different country, you do
At the end of June my two big kids went to their very first sleepaway camp. Emphasis on very first because, unless I’m forgetting something, I don’t think my kids have ever done any sort of significant camp…not even the day-kind. Mary went to kindergarten camp and, for David? Does swim team count? We are SO LAME.
A few weeks ago a few of Mary’s friends from her class came over for a pool party to celebrate her ninth birthday. Every time I think about whipping up a quick blog post about the party, the headline I write in my head is for her sixth birthday party. Six fits more neatly in my motherhood
The last day of school! CELEBRATION EMOJIS ALL AROUND!!!! Summer, we are ready for you even more than we’ve ever been before. Mary – third grade; Thomas – Kindergarten; David – fourth grade; Anna – bus stop side kick. On the last day of school, I arrived in the pickup line earlier than I have
As long as I’ve been a runner, I’ve always said that I don’t understand the concept of a runner’s high. I’ve never entered that sacred space where running is effortless and wonderful and I could just continue forever. And what are these endorphins people talk about? When I’m running, I’m working. Regardless of the pace
This week the kids had a day off school in the middle of the week, and I decided to throw them all in the van and haul them to a playground like I used to when they were little. There’s a nearby private school that just revamped their equipment, and I wanted to let the
MOD Pizza, Starbucks, Richmond Lager, Surge Adventure Park. Know what they all have in common? They all have Anna’s letter — the letter A. I know this because Anna shouts enthusiastically whenever she sees her letter. “MOM! GUESS WHAT I SEE!” she shouts from the back seat, straining against her straps to make her point.
We just finished up a spectacularly glorious week of spring break in which we did absolutely nothing. When the kids went back to school on Monday I realized, to my horror, that I must have even skipped a day or two of laundry. Laundry math is like kid sleep math; it doesn’t make any sense
For a few weeks Mary has been getting Anna amped for the annual Father-Daughter Dance. I could see a sort of glazed-over look in Anna’s eyes whenever Mary talked about it. Fancy dresses? Cupcakes? And dad will be there? Dancing? What? The problem was that, in her excitement, Mary would start her explanation in the
Are there things your family routinely does that sometimes make you wonder, “How did we get here?” Maybe it’s a sleeping situation, a treat when you go through the drive-thru, going through the drive-thru — things that, once upon a time, you couldn’t even fathom doing. But now they are part of your daily life. There was
Last night Mary and I had a mommy-daughter dinner date. I often hear about the value of one-on-one time with kids, especially for kids in large families, but our family almost never does that sort of thing. Honestly? Between me and you? WHO HAS TIME? (Especially in large families!) But, as expected, dinner was really
Around this time of year, it seems from my end of things, kindergarten really picks up. The phonetic spelling kicks into high gear, and these little learn to read books show up in their book bags. The books are simple, repetitive, and short. It’s straightforward enough — sight words are repetition. They’ve got all the
My oldest kid is 10, and recently I’ve found myself in a phase of constantly looking for things that will inspire him to play. He can get a bit bored at playgrounds these days, and I can’t remember the last time he dumped all the bins in our playroom, looking for just the right plastic
Christmas was exactly two weeks ago. Doesn’t it seem so much longer? New Years Eve comes at the exact right time because it marks the psychological distance between December 25 and January 1. It’s like six days but MAN oh MAN does it feel like a year. A lot of our decorations are still up,
Anna has been in school for a little over a month, and even though I don’t hear a ton about what she does in class, I can tell she likes it. She’s always excited to go, happy when she gets home, and every now and then she says or does something that makes me smile
Let this go down in history as the first year I’ve ever rallied everyone for a family costume. I’ve always loved family costumes, but I never fully respected them until I had kids. So many opinions to manage! Mercurial! Unpredictable! Plus, I was just so, so tired for so, so many years. Now I’m still
Anna started preschool on Friday. After watching her siblings go to school every day for a month, and THEN after a COVID exposure pushed the school’s first day back a week, it’s safe to say she was R-E-A-D-Y to start school. As in, about to burst with excitement. She was so excited that I was tempted
Thomas started kindergarten, and can we just let that sink in for a second? No one believes me when I tell them that Thomas, the same kid who spent his early years scaling tall objects, flooding the bathroom, and otherwise giving his mother a heart attack, is joining the ranks of the educated. They especially
If you’d like to go on a roller coaster of a conversation, you should ask me how I feel about the first week of school. I’m excited. Like, so excited. I have an (almost!) empty house! And that makes me so sad. I’m SO GLAD they’re in person. And I’m terrified of the Delta variant.
We just got back from family vacation, and I honest-to-goodness barely have time to mine through the piles of laundry we brought home before school starts tomorrow. The vacation-to-school boomerang is a lot to take in. I can’t figure out if it’s better for me to be busy — that way I have less time
Hello from my living room, the Krieger Olympic Training Center! That’s what it is for the next two weeks, anyway. The cushions are off our couch, blocking the only path from the living room to the kitchen for the sake of leaps and somersaults. Sure, I can’t walk through my house, BUT! Sacrifices must be
Thomas and his bed head started kindergarten camp this week. During this photo he spotted a lightning bug, caught it, and then handed it to me, “You can take care of it while I’m at school, Mom.” Its like he’s TRYING to make me cry! Mary went to this camp a few years ago, and
Here’s a thing you may or may not know about our family. When it comes to our kids’ bedtime, we do not mess around. We are lenient about almost everything, but not bedtime. Our kids go to bed at 7:30 p.m. every night. Even the almost-10-year-old. It’s a hard line that we hold because, if
We did it. We crossed the strangest finish line of the strangest race ever. Whether you did virtual, hybrid, in-person/masked, homeschool, or some combination of everything — WE DID IT! Good riddance to this school year and also I’M SO THANKFUL for what this school year was. There are a lot of complicated emotions that
On the morning of Thomas’s sixth birthday, he came downstairs and found four lightsabers on the mantle. Bursting with excitement, he handed one to each of his siblings. He didn’t for one second think all four lightsabers were his, or care that his siblings were getting presents on HIS birthday. He wasn’t thinking about equity
After spending an entire year with absolutely zero things on our calendar, our family is jumping into the figurative AND literal deep-end. We signed our kids up for swim team. I know that a lot of people’s kids do swim team, but this is our first time. And I sort of feel like we’re the
I can’t tell if it’s happening more, or if I’m just noticing it more, but recently Thomas has been crawling into my lap a lot. He turns six tomorrow. More than I do with my other kids, I spend the week before Thomas’s birthday remembering the final days of my pregnancy. I remember each day
Last weekend, the kids and I drove west to my hometown in the mountains. We visited my parents for a few days, then we met my best friendJenny and her family at the farm where she grew up. It was a quick, inhale-exhale sort of trip with old friends to visit old places that we
Thomas is almost six, which means he’s at the apex of the picky-eater curve that all of my kids have traveled. They start out as adventurous eaters that’ll try literally everything and then consume almost everything they try. Then they realize, around 18 months, that they have a choice in the matter, and why would
One of the beneficial side-effects of our new work-from-home lifestyle is that between Zoom meetings and phone calls, Tom carves out some time to put Anna down for her nap every afternoon. This is different than all of our other kids, who Tom almost never put down for naps because he has always been at
This morning I registered Thomas for kindergarten. Through my mask I told the school administrator that we registered last year, then decided to wait a year. You know, because surely by September 2021 this pandemic would be a terrible, distant memory. We both had a hearty perfunctory laugh. Hardy har har…Har. Har. Har. I wrote
The Internet is full of awesome ideas for how to dye Easter eggs with little ones. Put the egg in a whisk! Paint the eggs! Rice shake the eggs! Or my personal favorite tip, do it outside, and have a glass of wine. But now that most of my toddlers have grown into big kids,
At a recent doctor’s appointment, our pediatrician was rolling through some general healthy habits for five-year old kids. She was talking through recommendations about stuff like exercise, screen time, eating vegetables, drinking a glass of water with every meal and snack, and, hmmm, hey doctor? Any thoughts on the benefits of wearing a pair of
David reads all the time, but he almost never wants to talk about what he’s read. Not even when he and Tom read Jurassic Park together just so they could discuss it. He doesn’t like when we ask him about characters or the plot, or why he likes or dislikes a book. He usually responds by
Sure, one winter storm was fun, but then we had another, and an hour before I sat down to write this I got a text from my county alerting me that another ice storm is on its way. The text said to have EMERGENCY SUPPLIES READY! What are the odds that that was a prank
Back in September, around the time school was starting, I had a lot of conversations about kindergarten. When I told people that I wasn’t sending Thomas, they would inevitably say, “What are you doing?” “Nothing,” I’d respond. Preschool? No. Home school? Nope. And then there would be this awkward silence where they’d try to compute what I
Behold! The virtual learner in its natural habitat… Careful to not disturb her. (Or at least not before making sure her camera isn’t on. No one needs to see Mom walk by in her PJs at 1 p.m.) We’re halfway through the year, and I had been planning on writing about how virtual school is