A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2019. David / This weekend we celebrated David’s half birthday with cupcakes and a round of “happy half-birthday to you.” Mary / A few weeks ago Tom’s mom gave us the desk she used when she was a little girl. We took
What’s a little girl’s favorite part of a father-daughter dance? Gloating to her brothers that she’s going to a dance and they aren’t Fighting with Mommy about what makeup is appropriate for a 5-year old (Answer: no makeup. Be glad that you’re getting lip gloss. ) Having a special night with your daddy. We’ll never
All of my toddlers have gone through this phase — the “outside” phase. It’s the phase when they want to be outside more than they want to be anywhere else, when they bang on the door to go outside regardless of the weather or time of day. And when it’s time to go inside for
We were leaving the grocery store and Thomas didn’t have a coat on because, didn’t you know? Kids shouldn’t wear coats in their carseats. It’s true, and because it is nearly impossible to put a coat on a three-year old in any circumstance, imagine how hard it is to do in a grocery store parking
A photo of my children, once a week, every week in 2019. The older two / David is reading Amelia Bedelia aloud to Mary and I didn’t even ask him to. The younger two / “BE CAREFUL WITH ANNA!” is all I say, all day, every day. Thomas can’t wait until Anna is bigger. Anna
Last year, right around this time of year, David sat down at the table with construction paper, scissors, and glue, and independently handcrafted a valentine for his best friend. I was really, really impressed. I hadn’t given much thought to the valentines he was going to give out to his class, but right then and
A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2019. David / He was too engrossed in his book to take off his backpack or look up at his afternoon snack. He just finished the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Tom tried to read along so they could about them, but Tom
Our Christmas tree is laying in our front yard. It sort of died after it fell down in mid-December and it started dropping a lot of needles, so getting it out of the house was a priority. We meant to deal with it immediately, but then I got mastitis and Tom got a bad cold, and we
The 52 Project: A photo of my children, once a week, every week, in 2019 David / He doesn’t want pointers and he doesn’t want to play one-on-one. He does want me to take pictures until I get one of the ball going in the hoop. Mary / We had a snow day at the beginning of
On Sunday we had a little snow and ice storm. It didn’t really amount to much, but the roads were covered enough that it wasn’t safe for the buses in the morning. Do you remember how you found out about school closings as a kid? The radio? The news? These days, the school superintendent texts,
The 52 Project: A photo of my children, once a week, every week, in 2019. David / We got David a book light for Christmas so he can read in bed, and now he falls asleep reading every night. So my new bedtime routine is going into his room to turn off his light, slide
On January 1, I completed my annual tradition of Googling the correct way to write “New Year’s resolutions.” Capital N, capital Y, apostrophe s, lowercase r. Did you know you can do that? You can Google punctuation and grammar rules. I’ve worked alongside a lot of copy editors and I promise you that most of
I’m not the type to make New Year’s resolutions. I’m also not the type to set goals or make to do lists or schedule things in advance. What enneagram does that make me? It’s most certainly the one that has a tendency to roll their eyes at personality tests. Anyway. I’m not really setting resolutions
I was grumpy all day Christmas Eve. The kids were acting like children, how dare they. They were overly excited and a little tired and do you know what excited, tired children do? They take the cushions off the couch even though their mother told them not to. They ping pong between being silly and
What to get the girl who has everything? No, literally. She has everything. She has blocks and dolls and markers — and a LOT of things she shouldn’t have. Anna is surrounded by hundreds of knick knacks and tchotchkes that are all age inappropriate. She likes her siblings’ toys but they don’t really engage her the
“Mommy?” Mary asked me one afternoon. “Does this mean ‘I love you’?” I looked up and Mary was standing in front of me, holding up her middle finger. I was startled, but I decided to play it cool and figure out what terrible influence in her life taught her this inappropriate gesture. “Why are you
I always knew this would happen one day. In fact, this is why I keep blogging. Because I want my kids to have a treasury of stories from their childhood. Last week, David read my blog. We were watching this video and he noticed a tag in the sidebar, “Why does that say David Monthly? What’s that?”
Recently Mary has become obsessed with letters and writing. I credit this newfound hobby to kindergarten and her phenomenally creative and motivating teacher. I also credit it to Mary deciding she wants to know letters, because Mary does not learn things that she does not want to learn. Not for her phenomenally creative and motivating
There’s a reeeeeeal bear problem in Richmond these days. I wriggle this bear outfit onto Anna on our coldest bus stop mornings. She bearly fits. (I cannot and will not stop with the bear puns, I’m sorry.) But this happens to be another one of the few things that all four of my babies have
Last Saturday I cut Thomas’s hair. The night after The Haircut, we were all sharing our rose and thorn at the dinner table, Thomas’s thorn* was his hair cut. And the next day, he put his hand on his hair and said, “Mommy my hair is still cut, right?” And on Thanksgiving day, when everyone
We had four full days of Thanksgiving travel and festivities. We had a great time, and at the top of my “Thankful” list is all my relatives who bent over backwards to accommodate my rambunctious crew and their various eating and sleeping requirements. Despite everyone being amazing, the kids were out of their normal routines.
If David had any social media account, this should be his profile picture. It so well captures him at this age — always bent over a book. Actually, either this picture or one of him sulking Charlie Brown-style because I just asked him to put his book down because it’s time for dinner, or bedtime,
This summer Anna blew through baby clothes sizes so fast I could barely keep up. 6-9 months, 9-12 months, 12-18 months. “Hmmm, this can’t be right,” I thought when shimmying a pair of 2T leggings on my 11-month old baby. I kept a very weather-inappropriate fleece sleeper in Anna’s drawer all summer because I wanted
Now that I’m an adult, I often think back to events from my childhood and I realize I never had any sort of appreciation for the work my parents did to make them happen. Pumpkin carving fits squarely in that category. Looking back to my own childhood, I do not remember my parents finding time
Thomas had a field trip to the pumpkin patch last week. It was a cold day, so I packed two jacket options for each child, hats, and a blanket just in case. A few days earlier my phone’s camera broke, so as I packed I made a mental note to ask one of the adults to take
At time of publication, I’ve spent five and a half years of my life nursing a baby. Of course, that’s not five and a half years of non-stop nursing. But, yeah, actually. In a way, it is. Five and a half years! That’s longer than I was in college, longer than I’ve lived in any home
This summer, in the strip of yard where we grew pumpkins last year, we planted watermelons. We decided on a watermelon because when I left to go pick up a few seedlings, Thomas shouted, “I want watermelon!” Certain that what he meant wasn’t “I want watermelon NOW,” but instead, “I want to plant a watermelon
Oh, hey there, month 11, where’d you come from? I spent this month reminiscing about this time last year when I was very, vey pregnant. I was so huge and exhausted. Making lunch and folding laundry, and just getting out of bed felt like walking up a mountain through three feet of water. I was
I was a chaperone for Mary’s class trip to the pumpkin patch this year. It was my first time chaperoning an elementary school field trip — in my kids’ school you have to express interest in chaperoning, and the teacher picks volunteers out of a hat. I was not selected to go to the zoo,
The calendar says it’s fall but it was 90 degrees outside today and my kids swam in the pool. It’s hot, humid, the leaves are all on the trees, but it does feel like fall in one very key way: we’ve been sick for the past five weeks. This is Thomas doing jumping jacks to
This post is sponsored by MobilityWare but the content and opinions expressed here are my own. I have four young kids, so to say I’m busy is an understatement. I have almost no free time, and if you don’t believe me, I’d like to call to the witness stand: my laundry pile, my junk drawer,
Thomas tripped, and when he put his hand out to catch himself his palm hit a rock. He walked to me, holding out his hand, crying, and I did what all moms do. I said, “Thomas, come here. Let Mommy kiss it.” I took his hand in mine and as I drew it to my
One side effect of having two kids in school is that we look forward to the weekend more than ever. “Is today the weekend?” Mary asked me one Tuesday morning. By Friday we are all tired and ready for a break from the bus stop, packed lunches, and wrestling all that hair into a school-appropriate
Almost every year I write a blog post about my birthday. I didn’t do it this year because I had a really, really bad birthday. In the week before my birthday, I went to the grocery store and bought a few things to celebrate. Cinnamon rolls, bacon, and a watermelon. “I’d like to have some
Thomas’s first day of preschool was last week. His second day was cancelled because of Hurricane Florence. I have to admit, I was sort of glad. Because after just one day of hustling six people in five different directions, WHEW! I was ready for a break. (Big kids – bus stop, Thomas – preschool, Anna
As I type this, everyone in Richmond is traveling from grocery store to grocery store, looking for bottled water and batteries in preparation for Hurricane Florence. And me? I’m prioritizing my girl’s 10-month update, because my neighbor told me that the last time a storm this big came through, our neighborhood lost power for TWELVE
For so long kindergarten seems like a far-off, abstract thing that other peoples’ kids do. But then it comes so fast, the school bus drives around the corner and the doors open and there’s no time. They start walking away and I panic. What do I tell them? What do I say? What do they
This summer will go down in history as the summer that Mary looked her fear in the eye, balled it up, and stomped on it. She became confident on her bike, is a completely independent swimmer, and went to summer camp all by herself. These are huge accomplishments for a little girl. Mary and I
I’ve been blogging a ton this week — way more than I normally do. It’s because I feel a deadline looming to post everything from vacation, if I don’t do it this week, I never will. This is the last week of summer. In just a few days my two big kids will get on
After writing two kind of complain-y posts about our trip to a beautiful lake in a phenomenal house, I would be remiss if I didn’t say: our vacation was awesome. I love finding humor in mishaps and sleep deprivation, but those moments were honestly the exceptions. There was a lot of work, sure. We were
One afternoon I was sitting on the dock while David played in the sandy area on the bank of the lake. Thomas was draping himself over my legs, doing that three-year old thing where he readjusts every two seconds or so, trying to get just a little closer to mama. David and Caleb were both
You know you’re on vacation with a bunch of kids when getting through the day feels like you’re in the middle of some reality-TV endurance challenge. In fact, traveling with small kids SHOULD be a reality TV endurance challenge. Or better, part of the regular date line-up on The Bachelor. Going on a trip to
Yesterday we threw a surprise birthday party for David, and I’m telling you right now that it was the greatest scheme I’ve ever been a part of. This was such a fun party to plan, and if you think your kid would like being surprised, I HIGHLY recommend it. I’ve thrown a lot of birthday
When David was a toddler, he was so difficult that Tom and I thought we’d done something wrong, we’d ruined him in a mere two years. In five years he’s changed so completely from the tantrum-prone, stubborn, volatile toddler, that Tom and I make note of it nearly every day. The toddler to big kid
This post is sponsored by The Libman Company but the content and opinions expressed here are my own. [CLICK HERE] to learn more about The Libman Company and get a $3-off coupon when you sign up for their newsletter. As proof that literally everything can be divisive among moms, here’s an example of a seemingly
My kids pulled out our bathroom scale this morning and weighed themselves. That’s how we found out that they weigh 55, 44, 33, and 22 pounds. If you’re thinking, “What a coincidence!” you’re completely wrong. I’ve lowered and completely eliminated standards on my kids’ haircuts, wardrobe, and bath frequency, but doing whatever it takes to
We’ve had this thing for three summers and no baby has ever really used it. Every now and then someone comes over and their baby tolerates it for a bit, but it never lasts too long. Usually they put the baby in, it’s happy for a few minutes, then it realizes it’s been tricked! It’s parents are
This past week Mary started summer camp — her first time ever doing something like this. (The first time any of my kids have done any sort of camp.) A few weeks before it started, she asked me, “Mommy, how long is camp?” I answered, “It’s just for a few weeks.” Mary looked down at her hands
One morning after I put Anna down for a nap, the middle two were distracted so I stole a few moments with David. He’s doing big kid stuff — working a 300-piece puzzle, drinking seltzer water, wiggling his two loose front teeth with his tongue. Moments earlier, I’d just peered into Anna’s mouth, checking to
Thomas was standing on the pool stairs, bending his head backwards into the water. When he stood straight, his hair was all slicked back. His curls, when wet, reach his shoulders, and his hair is so blonde on top it almost looked like he was bald with a mullet. “You guys, look how funny Thomas’s