The other day we went to Target and left with ANOTHER new toy car for David, and ANOTHER doll for Mary Virginia. If you know anything about gender stereotyping and how toys perpetuate gender roles, then my shopping trip is grooming David to be an engineer at Ford Motor Company and Mary Virginia to flunk third grade math. If
Every night before I go to bed, I make sure my slippers, robe, and fleece pants are right by my bed. Last week I realized, this is the milestone I can’t wait for. I’m can’t wait for the night I go to sleep without first preparing to spend a significant part of the night awake. When Mary Virginia wakes up
For a very long time, if I was in another room and I heard Mary Virginia start crying, I’d run in, prop my hand on my hip, raise my eyebrows, and say, “David? Why is Mary Virginia crying?” And then, because he is only three years old and needs a bit of time to come up with
Last week, on the morning of New Year’s Eve, I had my 20-week ultrasound, except I was actually 21 weeks. Here’s a funny story, when I went to the OB for my first appointment, I thought I was only eight weeks pregnant. Before I left for the appointment I warned Tom, “There’s a chance I
In thinking about making goals for the coming year, and deciding I didn’t want to make goals, it didn’t occur to me even once to look back on my goals for 2014 until I sat down to write this. So I did. I re-read what I wrote at the beginning of 2014 and then I
Our family had a grand total of three Christmas celebrations this year. This was our first year spending Christmas morning at our house with just our family. We spent the next day with Tom’s family, and then visited my family. Each celebration was full of wonder, wide eyes, shredded wrapping paper, and inevitably ended with David whining, “Mommy, where’s
We didn’t send out a Christmas card this year, but if we had it probably would have looked something like this. And it would say: Merry Christmas from the Kriegers. And then, perhaps on the back, we’d add a blurb telling our family and friends that Tom and I are so excited to announce that we are expecting
I love beautifully-wrapped gifts. I really enjoy taking time to wrap gifts well and make generous bows. The presentation, I think, is part of the gift. I love neutral wrapping paper and prominent bows. That’s what I do for baby showers and birthday gifts and especially Christmas. Never in my life have I ever used
When we play with Play-Doh, David usually doesn’t ever really form the dough “things”, he just smashes and drops it on the ground and asks me to flatten long pieces into roads for his cars. Meanwhile, his sister constantly tries to sneak tastes the Play-Doh even though, after every time she manages a bit in
The only thing we had on the agenda of our family lame-cation was a trip to the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center. We figured we’d need at least one actual activity because toddlers operate in a time warp. That’s where that saying, “the days are long but the years are short” comes from — toddlers mess with the