I don't write very much about raising teenagers, even though by this fall I will have five of them under my jurisdiction. Yeah, I know. Five is a lot. The reason for this writing hole? My lack of p…
I slipped into the quiet room filled with rocking chairs and slung my thirty gallon diaper bag off of my shoulder. The bag will shrink with each child until it resembles a lone diaper tossed under t…
Who has time to read? This busy parent does. Yes, it is wedged between after school activities and homework. It is interrupted countless times. It is done next to looming piles of I-should-be-clean…
“You have the million-dollar family,” he drawled, “one girl, one boy.” His well-intentioned assessment of our family of four felt like a small stone in my shoe. Each step brought a blistering chafe th…
They walked into the restaurant alone, with no kids to corral or scrape off the floor. Jeff and Angie have agreed to meet me for lunch. I was expecting their youngest son to join us, as today was a…
The first time I looked at him, he was grayish and wasn't doing his one job very well. Our first baby needed extra oxygen and a short stay in the NICU before coming home to live with us, his under-pr…
It is the best of times to be female and it is a lousy time to be female. But mostly the best, with only a trace of lousy. As everyone attempts to define women, decide their rankings and judge t…
He turned his melty brown eyes to look at me as he confessed the saddest moment of his day. A kid in his class had done the unthinkable. They had called him a baby. I tried to pull off a …
I'm tempted to think it is because I am an unemotional, cold-hearted jerk. Maybe you are tempted to think it is because I never carried him in my belly and my attachment is not as strong.…
Whether our kids are in favor or not, most of us are waving goodby to a carefree summer. Schedule and routine are about to become the norm again. (This is me high-fiving you for surviving another summ…