Ali has a sharing problem. Her problem is unlike her brother’s sharing problem, which prompted him to sit atop four Hot Wheels like an overprotective mother bird on a nest of eggs for an hour because the little girl across the street was visiting and there was a slight possibility of her having interest in […]
Bubblegum Lies.
Saturday night, we met my Mom and brother at Rusty’s BBQ. It’s the only place we ever meet them, because it’s halfway between our houses and is exactly what you want in a good, off-the-path Southern BBQ place: without pretense, containing random kitsch (I especially like their license plate map of the United States), booths […]
On Making Something so Easy so Hard.
So I tried to potty-train my son. Remember that? I quit the day I blogged about it, because he was clearly determined to never acquiesce in this matter. Ever. He was overjoyed to be allowed to crap in his pants in peace again, and I was a much better person for not trying to make […]
Taking Issue With the Compliance Department.
Dear Noah, We took a break from our potty-training failures so that I could take you to the dentist last week. It was only your second trip ever, and your first time to get x-rays. And you were an angel. I need you to know that I am not okay with this. First of all, […]
Bad Answers to Good Questions: Christmas Edition.
Sometimes my kid asks me a question for which I have no answer. I vaguely speak a bunch of hogwash and then change the subject, hoping she’ll move on. But my mind cannot. It is a continuity issue that must be addressed. And so it spins in the background, using up my RAM memory and […]
How The Disney Stole Christmas.
“Pick something from Disney,” Chris said. “It’ll be a safe choice.” I was desperately thumbing through NetFlix, looking for something, anything to entertain our children for the last hour before bedtime on the worst parenting day of our lives. Chris and I had both woken up with the stomach virus Saturday morning. We were incapacitated, […]
The Bed-Making Conundrum.
A couple of weeks ago, I was at a gathering of mothers. The discussion of child-training was among us, and one of the examples used was the age at which a child had the ability to make their own bed. There was much nodding and murmuring of agreements as one Mom shared her own experiences […]
The Résumé of Motherhood.
Job History: January 2007 – Acquired first subject, female, a screamer. Survived eight months of aural infliction, finding my groove somewhere in late 2007. December 2010 – Added a secondary subject, male, a epidural killer. Birthing him hacked five years off the end of my life, but I chose perseverance. Education: None. Or at […]
To the Young Parents of the World.
Dear Parents that have yet to reach tooth-pulling age, I owe you an apology. And a grave warning. In December of 2012, after only three weeks of Ali having her first loose tooth, I penned the following paragraph: “Shocked at her sudden burst of bravery, I quickly grabbed the napkin, reached in, and popped it […]
The Lullabies of Our Life.
So I’ve mentioned once or twice that we prefer a more eclectic selection of pre-bed singing to Noah. (And formerly to Ali, but she’s way too mature for such a thing now.) Because you can only sing their requests of “Dora Dora Dora the Explorer” so many days in a row before you start to […]