On day seven of an 11-day stay at our house, Mary Virginia asked my mom, “Grammy, do you enjoy coming to visit your grandchildren?” I held my breath as I waited to hear her answer. My mom stayed with us for nearly five weeks after my tendon repair surgery. Even after changing all the diapers (diaper tabs
Oh, Mary Virginia, where do I begin? I’ll begin by saying this: before I hit publish on this post, I’m going to read it and re-read it and then send it to my friend Candace to check for errors, because Mary Virginia, at age four, already corrects my grammar. “Mommy. You don’t NEED to go
Last year after the chaos of moving into our new house, we immediately shifted gears and started the chaos of selling our old house. The house didn’t need any major renovations, but we painted, cleaned, and replaced the roof. As usual, I let Tom take the reins for all the time-consuming, labor-intensive stuff while I focused on
Thomas turned two last week, and we celebrated with the most low-key kids’ birthday celebration our family has ever seen. When David turned two I had an almost-three-month old and I still managed to mail out paper invitations. When Mary Virginia turned two, Thomas wasn’t even a month old, and I still made a cake
Mary Virginia: Mommy, do you want to hear the song I made to help Thomas stop fussing? Me: SURE! Mary Virginia: Quack, quack, quack goes the little feather duck! [Thomas continues fussing] David: Um, Mary Virginia. I think you need to make the song longer. Mary Virginia: QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK QUACK goes
Last week we celebrated the kids’ last day of school and David’s preschool graduation. Look at those excited faces! Those faces say WE CAN’T WAIT FOR SUMMER! We can’t wait to explore and go to the park and swim all day! And I’m like, AHA! JK KIDS! Mom only has one working arm so we
If you happen to follow me on Instagram, or have been within earshot of me within the past few weeks or so, you know that I hurt my hand recently. Here’s the short version of what happened. I’ll tell the whole story soon. It involves a kidney stone and has a surprise twist. But for
It’s Mother’s Day, and I’m going to talk about appreciation. Now that I’m a mom I’ve learned that appreciation something I really crave. My kids are small and we’re still working the word “thank you” into their vocabularies, so it’s an ongoing struggle. But kids have their own way of saying it, right? The way the
There’s a saying you hear occasionally if you have multiple children — if you have more than one child, having just one is like having none. I sort of agree with it. If I’m with just one of my three children, the chaos does diminish dramatically. Sometimes there are even moments of silence, moments between requests for snacks
I grew up with a pool, and you could say my childhood summers were basically just one pool party after another. I learned a lot watching my mom and dad host pool parties. I learned from my dad that pool chemistry is important. I learned from my mom that my bathing suit game should be