This is Cheaty (Cheety?) and Snow Leopard. Every morning they come to the bus stop with us. Stuffed animals aren’t allowed in school, so when Anna gets on the bus she shoves them into my hands and hugs me goodbye all in one sweet, frantic THE-BUS-IS-HERE! motion. As the bus pulls away, I hold Snow
Anna and I were talking about the week and my upcoming birthday, and she asked “Mom, what do you want for your birthday?” I responded with my most honest, genuine birthday request, “All I want for my birthday is for you kids to not fight for one day. That’s all I want.” Anna cut dubious
Anna got the “Outstanding Attitude Award” as her year-end award in her kindergarten class. When she got home from school she was so excited to tell me about it and to show me the friendship bracelet she got from her teacher. She loves school so much. There is not even a hint of the very
We were driving in the van one afternoon and “In Da Club” came on the radio. As always, I started singing along. “Go, go, go shawty It’s your birthday We gon’ party like it’s your birthday … You can find me in the club, bottles full of bub…” Mary interrupted my 2003 performance and asked,
The older my kids get, the more I find I really appreciate annual events. These annual markers — holidays, special events — are always the moments when I really see time passing. Otherwise it’s easy for the days to just run together, into a mush of homework, sandwich crusts, and the odd pajama day here
About two weeks ago Anna turned six, but we were all too exhausted to even sing a proper rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Tom was busy running a 2:55 marathon, and I was exhausted because I had to wake up at 5:30 a.m. to get him to the start line. TWO HOURS AND FIFTY-FIVE MINUTES! You
Anna’s preschool ended in May, just a few weeks before the big kids got out of school. In that in-between time, Anna and I spent a lot of quality time together. We are used to spending a lot of time together, but a few hours of preschool three days a week gave us the exact break we
Just as school is winding down, swim season is ramping up. The swim team is exhausting and all-consuming, but I honestly love it. Three years ago I submitted to the rigorous swim team schedule, and after one season we were a bonafide swim family. I love the social aspect for the kids AND for me,
For the past year or so Anna has slowly been eliminating foods in hopes of settling into an all-pasta diet. Don’t get worried though! She works in plenty of variety. Sometimes she eats spaghetti noodles, sometimes penne, sometimes wheels, occasionally cellentani, but almost never elbows. Our girl has standards. This is the same child who,
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