“Ask any woman how she makes it through the day, and she may mention her calendar, her to-do lists, her babysitter. But if you push her on how she really makes it through her day, she will mention her girlfriends.” — Anna Quindlen, Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake I’m a fan of men; after…
The darker days of November have set in and settled hard in our house. We are deep into our school year, just past science fair projects and dioramas, with book reports and state-mandated testing still in front of us. Holidays and parties and birthdays and the tasks and busyness of ordinary life are taking up…
Last summer, there was an article about women’s fertility that appeared in the Atlantic called “How Long Can You Wait to Have a Baby?” It kind of left me breathless. Though her conclusions are up for debate, Professor Jean Twenge asserted that fertility issues might not be as much tied to age and declining fertility as we have been…
The day after Halloween is never an easy day for anyone associated with children. I have never understood why schools don’t just give up the (Halloween) ghost and make the day after Halloween a teacher work day. Should we really subject teachers to classrooms full of exhausted children with sugar coursing through their veins, makeup…
Truth: Three is my least favorite age. Everyone always talks about the “Terrible Twos,” but I have never taken issue with 2-year-olds. Two-year-olds need to fire their publicists. Sure, they can be irrational, impulsive, or indignant, but, really? They’re just babies stretched out into slightly longer bodies. I could forgive their tantrums because they didn’t…
I turned 39 this summer. Thirty. Nine. It’s kind of a big deal, this whole aging thing, huh? Stuff’s gettin’ real here now. It’s now markedly harder to lose weight, my knees creak, and I’m a big old sissy about needing my sleep. Depressing. Luckily, I’m not yet experiencing many of the symptoms of aging…
Dear Little People I Love, When I was your age, I came home one day from school and told my dad about the funniest thing that happened that day — something that involved a group of kids playing a prank on an unpopular girl in my class. Granddad was not amused. In fact, he…
It was a year ago this week that I was sitting at a restaurant booth with my husband, sneaking in a lunch together, when my phone pinged and I saw that the Huffington Post had published a piece I wrote called “The Mom Stays in the Picture.” The week that followed stands as one of…
I write a lot about how fast time is passing, how my children grow figuratively and literally before my very eyes, and how I know now to really try to savor the moments when they are little. I mean every word of it, because it’s true — and having both an 11 year old and…
People criticize moms who write about their kids. We overshare, they say. We exploit, they cry. We’re narcissistic navel-gazers, spewing treacly, precious cliches all over the interwebz. Perhaps. Sometimes. Maybe. But I write about my experiences, parenting and otherwise, in an effort to connect. There were so many days early in my motherhood when I…
