Very little about Christmas was what we’d hoped or expected. It was a lesson in my sister Kira’s new mantra: embrace more, control less, but I have to say that for days I’ve been waiting for the universe to drop a wisdom bomb on me that brings come clarity but said wisdom has yet to materialize. Continue reading
Jonah turns six
Jonah was born the Saturday after Thanksgiving, exactly a week past his due date. So this year, the year that he turns six, was the first year since that his birthday has fallen on a Saturday. For some reason that felt meaningful to me this year, though I can’t say why exactly. Every year I feel completely unprepared for our children to suddenly become a year older than they were. I know; it isn’t sudden, it’s a one-day-at-a-time sort of thing. But it always feels abrupt. Continue reading
Mudroom / Craft Room Renovation
First, can I just say that I really love our house? When I think back to the agony of our long-distance house-hunt, I vaguely remember thinking that it would be amazing to have a mudroom, even just a tiny hallway that could serve as one, but I don’t think that I ever believed that it was likely enough to make it to our formal “wish list.” We were incredibly lucky to find this place, and one of the rooms that has held a lot of promise but mostly felt like a disappointment for the last two years is what the previous owners called the breezeway (despite the fact that it’s a fully indoor, four-seasons room). It’s a remarkably large breezeway, at 10′ x 18′, and I believe the previous owners used it as an office. It connects the garage to the rest of the house, with doors to both the great room and the kitchen.
Halloween 2019: Space Men & a Mermaid
Halloween was yesterday and today I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on some of the quirky and challenging things that make me me. In particular the things that come out in high-stakes situations that I value deeply. It’s no secret that I love Halloween. It’s second only to Christmas (and when I was a child it might have actually been first). My mom poured love into every homemade costume, my dad took us trick-or-treating from block to block until late into the night (it always felt like 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. but maybe times have changed? Or maybe 8:00 feels a lot like 10:00 at the end of October when you’re a kid). Continue reading
Finding our sweet spot
I feel like I’m getting the hang of this solo-parenting weekends thing. We’ve had so many lovely people checking in on us, offering play-dates, asking if we need anything from the grocery store, but to my surprise we never seem to have much aimless down time – those moments in which the minutes seem to crawl by and you’re wondering what on earth to do with the kids now. Somehow our Saturdays and Sundays have felt rather full, in a good way. Continue reading
Hitting the creativity wall
For the last week or so I’ve felt like I was ahead of Halloween in a way that felt good. We baked cookies, I bought a few decorations (because for some reason we’ve never had any, and that suddenly felt like a problem I needed to address), I started playing the kids’ Halloween playlist on the way to school on Friday, and I was making what felt like great progress on Vivi’s costume and had a solid plan for the boys. Then tonight I realized that I needed to rip out a seam and move some things, and when I stitched the skirt together one side seemed totally off and I couldn’t figure out how to put in the elastic, so I decided to put it aside and start on Jonah’s costume, only to discover that I bought the wrong color duct tape. Suddenly I was overcome by a wave of panic and felt my confidence slipping away. Continue reading
The first weekend of solo-parenting
Have I mentioned before that Kristin is doing a yoga teacher training program in Chicago this fall, and that she’ll be gone for nine weekends? I’ve been incredibly anxious about it, and it kicked off this weekend. To be honest it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I had plans Friday night and getting ready for the sitter and getting out of the house was much harder on my own, but the days went by fairly easily for the most part, and the weather has been so cool and beautifully fall-like that I was happy to skip the usual weekend field trips and stay home a bit more. Continue reading
The start of kindergarten and the shift to fall
Jonah started kindergarten last Wednesday. It’s a milestone I’ve been actively dreading for months now, and subconsciously dreading ever since his first weeks on earth. I have to admit that, to no one’s surprise but mine, it’s been a beautifully positive experience so far. Continue reading
Northern Michigan Vacation: 2018
We just wrapped up our final vacation of the summer and I pretty much hit rock bottom this afternoon. I’m never at my best post-vacation, but somehow today there was a perfect storm: the last-hurrah sadness, Kristin having left this morning for a wedding in North Dakota, feeling a little let down by friends, the start of kindergarten just two-weeks away, wishing that our kids were a little more grateful (despite the fact that I know it’s developmentally appropriate for them not to be), and a giant toy mess in the basement that has been setting me off for weeks each time I go down there to do laundry. I woke up with a to-do list in mind, determined to show this solo-parenting weekend who was boss, and ended up threatening to throw all of the toys away and basically sobbing in the basement while I cleaned after telling the kids that they should probably just find new families because I was done parenting. Given the circumstances, they did a remarkable job of caring for themselves for hours. At one point I came upstairs and found them all painting with watercolor at the art table (I have no idea who got a glass down from the cabinet for paint water), and they played with one another basically without incident all day long. When I’m at my worst as a mom, the thing that I’m most thankful for is that they really do love one another. I’d rather be the bad guy and have them band together than the other way around. Continue reading
Charleston, SC summer road trip
We just returned last night from the road trip that we almost didn’t take, and I’m so very glad that we made the journey. As I mentioned before, I had all kinds of worries about the drive, the heat, what we would do while we were there, but none of those things posed a problem. The kids were absolute troopers on the drive. Sure, they watched a million movies, but they really were pretty amazing about the whole thing. Continue reading
