Jasper, my beamish boy, you just turned 5. Before you came along, I had not birthed anyone even remotely male. (It’s true.) Since then, I’ve been a big ol’ vocal opponent of gendered anything, insisting that boys and girls are exactly the same, and fighting any “all boys do xyz” myths. And since then, I’ve come around to realize that sometimes the things people say about boys are the undeniable truth. Such as… Boys are all about bodily functions There’s {Read More}
Today. (A story of love & sunshine, not in that order.)
April 12, 2018 By Leave a Comment
Today. Today I was going to do work. Real work. A lot of real work. (The kind that pays real money.) I was also going to clean. A lot. For absolutely no money whatsoever. But then. The sun came out. And the temps leapfrogged into the low 70s. (For the first time in eight hundred million years.) And Jasper asked me to go to the park. (And he’ll only be four years old for about seventeen more seconds.) It’ll snow {Read More}
Jasper’s book review of “The Giving Tree” (is everything you need)
March 22, 2018 By Leave a Comment
Book time with Jasper The following is an unedited transcript of my four year-old son’s take on Shel Silverstein’s book ‘The Giving Tree.’ Total weep-fest, right? HA. Not if your third kid is a honey badger/chaos monkey. That’s a joke. All third kids are. That said, I will never, ever dissuade my kids from reading, talking about reading, and generally immersing themselves in a love of reading. (Even if they don’t always get the story arc one hundred percent correct.) {Read More}
Today. (Is Hard.)
January 25, 2018 By 1 Comment
Today. Today is a day where I want to keep the blankets firmly (and warmly) over my head. Today also happens to be a day where that most likely will not happen. Today is a day where I had intended to write a sweetly sentimental piece about toddlerhood, and how hard it is- because, ohmygoodness, it is SO HARD- and for every moment that folks implore you to not blink n’ miss it, you have another moment where you’d sell {Read More}
Being present (and ditching the phone again)
January 18, 2018 By Leave a Comment
Sometimes the universe helps me to be more present with my children. Sometimes it manifests in the form of things I’ve already signed on to do. Like, volunteering in my youngest’s preschool. Now, we go to a co-op for many reasons; it’s a wonderful family environment, my closest friends are in that community, it’s ridic cheap… But part n’ parcel with that lower cost comes the expectation that families will volunteer at least once a month. For the whole class. {Read More}
Jasper. (Almost) Four. (Definitely) Wonderful.
December 14, 2017 By Leave a Comment
In mere days, my youngest guy- my youngest anyone– will turn four years old. He is my baby. The smallest in the family, sure, but also the one I let things…slide for. I admit it. I never understood it until I had a decided LAST in the family, but once we agreed that our family was complete, he firmly became our “baby.” (When P.J. and I started dated we spoke about having “at least five” hahahahahaha. That lasted until I was {Read More}
Summer wins & fails- so far
July 20, 2017 By 1 Comment
Chicago Public School kids are officially done with their first month of summer vacation- and it was a looong time in the making. (Looking at you, everyone else who was frolicking in sprinklers by, like, May 12th.) I’m usually pretty hard on myself in terms of idealizing summer and then smacking that right up against Actual, Humans With Children Summer. But once we got the kitchen up and running again and all three children firmly home, it seemed…easier, somehow, to {Read More}
The day my Dad sent trains to my son.
April 27, 2017 By Leave a Comment
I promise this is a true story. I don’t really talk about otherworldly moments a heck of a lot, because spiritual presences are a) intensely personal, b) intensely open to mockery, and c) intensely likely to cause a ton of introspective, overly maudlin writing about WHAT does it ALL MEAN. It doesn’t make for stellar blogging. That said, I believe the spirits of our loved ones are always around us (especially riiiight after we have a moment or two where {Read More}
