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
Playing Santa is, without a doubt, one of the most fun gigs I’ve ever had. Shopping, wrapping, imagining the joy when they open the gift. It is all so very wonderful. Sometime in November, Tom’s mom, Peggy, called me from Costco. She was shopping, and there was one MaryEllen American Girl doll left. Should she
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