Our sweet little sunshine baby is nine today.  We have had NINE years of loving this most precious gift of a human. Usually, the week leading up to Tessa’s birthday has me on an emotional rollercoaster. This year? No different. I like to blame it on the joyful chaos of the holiday season coupled with the ample opportunities that December provides to reflect on memories of the past. Probably a lot of it is just stress. A few weeks ago, we were sitting in a restaurant and I was telling John about a friend of a friend who just had a baby with Down syndrome. To our surprise, Tessa chimed ..read more

Every morning, sometime before sunrise, Tessa comes quietly into my room and rests her head on my stomach. “Mom?” she asks, “are we gonna stay home today?” If the answer is yes, she’s excited. She asks for donuts, then curls up in a little ball in the space between me and the edge of the bed. She tells me a joke, usually about a chicken crossing the road, and then drifts back to sleep. If the answer is no, it’s also received with excitement. She runs through the family list… “Are you gonna go to school? Is Daddy goin’ to school? Is Wauren? An’ Ewwie too?” and when she is satisfied that we’re a ..read more

Most nights when I come up to bed, I know I’ll find her there, nestled under the covers of my bed, fast asleep. Sometimes her Barbies are scattered on either side of her, and other days it is Lauren who has found her way to Tessa’s side. We go through the same routine each time. I chuckle and sigh, often snap a picture, and go collect John so that he can move her back to her bed. She is now too heavy for me to carry from room to room. Some nights I go up early to study, just after they have been put to bed. While I work, I hear them giggle in their room down the hall. Usually at least once or ..read more

The thing about Nine is that it feels like “childhood” is fading into the dark, like the last little rays of sunshine are dipping low into the water at sunset, soon to be gone. That’s a rather melancholy analogy. Enough of that nonsense. (It does feel like that though.) Our Ellie Bean is now nine and a force to be reckoned with, there’s no doubt about that. She’s brilliant. She’s mercurial. She loves big, feels big, dreams bigs, plans big. I think I maybe wrote that same sentence when she was four, five, six, seven, and eight. We have learned so much about this sweet girl as she has grown in ..read more

When the grandkids are being particularly energetic (read: unruly), my mom sends them outside to run laps around the house. She’s been doing this since I was a kid (I definitely ran a few laps in my day ), as a way to tire the children and probably to give herself a mental break. Lauren has been desperately awaiting her birthday for one reason: when she’s three, she finally gets the chance to run with the kids. Her first words this morning after bursting out of her room at 5:23 AM were, “I’m fwee, and now I getta run!!!” Something tells me that this is a foreshadowing of the adventures to come ..read more

I haven’t written in ages, yes I know. Let’s get that out of the way first. Hi, I’m here. I’m here because Facebook reminded me that six years ago, this little girl got very very sick. My memory of that day is vivid, far more so than the day she was born, or any other day for that matter. It’s funny how the mind works like that – like how some really big scary days get blocked out, and some others are hazy, but some are clear as day. Sitting on the couch with her, watching her gray little face trying to gather any energy to take a bottle. The nurse insisting that the pulse ox machine probably ..read more

It’s time to start a year fresh. Last year, I documented almost nothing in written word. It was just that kind of year – the word I focused on last year was “go,” and boy, did we ever! We committed to experiences, not things, and as I created our family photo album for 2019, I am calling it a win. We did all the things. It was great. I wrote none of it down, but yes, it was great. This year, we build. That’s the word I chose – build. I have a few things in mind – some actual physical structures, others not. One very specific piece of building that I want to do is right here in this sp ..read more

Let me tell you a little something about this sweet face: behind those precious features is the mind of a very determined little girl. Every morning when I leave for work, she stands in my way until I have hugged and kissed each member of our family goodbye (generally twice). Her favorite part is when I kiss Daddy, so that she can exclaim, “ewww, that’s disgusting.” And every afternoon when I see her after school, she has prepared a mental list of which movies we will watch that night. Now, we generally don’t watch TV during the week, but I’m telling you, this child is persistent. Occasionall ..read more

On the eve of her 6th birthday, I’m stuck thinking about the night Before. It was sort of a shit show (much like tonight was). Just before Christmas, on the eve of final exams, I rushed out of school, picked up Ellie from Miss Julie, and made the long trek to drop her off with my mom so that John and I could go to my 37 week appointment together. There was a lot of traffic, and I distinctly remember being frustrated at how the world seemed to be at a standstill while I was very much in a rush to get where I needed to be. Ellie sat buckled in her little car seat, paging through the book A C ..read more