Blog Roll

Epic Camping: The Origins

So I went camping last weekend. This camping trip, as you will come to understand, deserves a three-part series. Part one, the origin – how it came to be that I tent camped for the first time with children. Oh and did I mention – without my husband. In part two, I will share with […]

Come See Me at ArtWalk This Weekend!

Local people! I would love to see you this weekend – so come say hey! For those of you who don’t know, I have another web site – Picture Birmingham. It is where I sell my photos of Birmingham, sunsets, and the places I travel so that I can give all the profits to The […]

The Great Questioning.

Ninety-three percent of the relationship between a mother and her children is comprised of answering questions. The same questions. Over and over and over. They never tell you that in the parenting books. Or at the hospital. “This is how you change a diaper…and here’s how you get them to latch on…and you need to […]

On Neighborliness: A Cautionary Tale.

It’s been three weeks since I may or may not have killed my new neighbor’s chicken, so maybe it’s okay to blog about now. Time heals all wounds and all. (Except for fatal ones. On poultry.) Chris and I are very dedicated to neighborliness. In our last neighborhood, we had a lot of those super […]

Little Ditty about Charles and Kathleen.

Meet Charles and Kathleen. They live in bowl wrapped in a Kid’s Menu. Luxurious by snail standards. Charles was the second new member of our household (pictured on the stick-like object). He joined our family in the early summer, when he was found washed up on the sidewalk after a recent downpour. The adoption of […]

The Fabric of America.

Ali asked me to play with her the other day. I agreed, as I was feeling a moment of Mommy Guilt over the fact that I am not the best playing-Mommy that ever was (actually I’m terrible at just sitting down and playing with my kids – I much prefer cuddling or reading or hiking […]

It’s All In My Head.

I started using the LoseIt app again last week. This seems completely unfair to me, that I need to count my calories, because I run nearly every day. I should get to eat whatever I want!! Anytime I want!! But alas. That is the kind of logic that makes one need to get back to […]

Lessons Out of Appleton.

Guest post by my Dad. To see all of his previous guest posts, click here. I was angry.  But then, I had a right to be! As I arrived at the airport and turned in my rental car, I received a text message that my 10:15 flight was delayed until 2:30. Why couldn’t they have […]

The Convenient Truth.

I have a major problem with all hotels. They think we’re stupid. Like, super stupid. Like, don’t-understand-that-when-a-Mom-says you need to take a nap because you’re sleepy actually-means I need you to take a nap because I’m temporarily tired of you stupid. My main beef with hotels is this ever-present piece of literature – a variation […]

Arranged Marriage By Stealth.

We’re not monsters – we aren’t picking our kid’s spouses for them. We actually have several potential options for each child. (But we want them to stay within those possibilities we’ve picked out for them. Which is completely reasonable.) In fact, so reasonable that Ali has agreed with us on the Number One pick we’ve […]