(Especially When You’re Crazy Busy) The end of the school year is just nuts. Band concerts, graduations, open houses, baseball playoffs, soccer tournaments, award ceremonies, end-of-year banquets, teacher appreciation…all at the same time. Not to mention that you’re also expected to make food to bring to many of these events. Just looking at the week ahead is enough to make me feel dizzy. Out of desperation and necessity, my husband and I have figured out a way to deal with all of these commitments. We figure it out the day before. Not two days or a week before, but 24 hours. I mean, I put all ..read more

It should have been a mother’s dream. As I lay in my bed with a book, I could hear my husband starting dinner preparations and marshaling the kids into peeling shrimp, chopping vegetables, and setting the table. I should have been relaxing and enjoying the fact that other people were making dinner–not to mention the fact that they were going to deliver it to me when it was done, but I just couldn’t do it. I was absolutely bursting with helpful suggestions. I called my younger son on the landline to give him a little participation pep talk and direct him to go outside and pick a lemon from the ..read more

The night before the first day of school I was lying in the bathtub, indulging in a minor panic attack about all the things I needed to do before everyone headed out in the morning. Someone knocked and I yelled, “Come in,” knowing it had to be my husband because my kids just barge in and also knowing that sometimes he has been known to bring me a glass of wine. But when he poked his head around the door, it was immediately clear that this was not a wine-delivering mission. I’ve never seen that expression on his face before–somewhere between fear and wariness and dawning realization and horror ..read more

It’s been an intense spring with all three kids playing on various baseball teams. Many a Saturday afternoon has seen me scurrying around local fields with one team baseball cap on my head and two others in my bag, ready to be rotated in. It’s been frantic but fun, except when it wasn’t. One of my boys in particular has had a season with a lot of, let’s say, opportunities for character development. I’ve tried my best to encourage and keep his spirits up, but sometimes it is hard when I feel as deeply discouraged as I believe he does. I might not look or act very competitive on the outside. I a ..read more

All three of my kids are now in school (!) and so sometimes I really look forward to Monday mornings, when I can finally GET THINGS DONE. Anyone else relate? Recently, I had a week planned where I was going to be oh so productive—plan out the spring semester for the MOPS group I coordinate, work on this blog post, and prep for an important meeting with my agent—not to mention catch up on all the school and volunteer and life stuff that always seems to lurk in wait. But then two members of my family tested positive for breakthrough Covid infections, and none of that other stuff happened. In bet ..read more

All of a sudden it’s November, that runaway train season of the year where time hurtles uncontrollably toward Christmas. Every year it’s the same for me. I feel slightly confused by the Christmas trees showing up in stores while I’m still shopping for Halloween costumes and candy, and then all of a sudden I feel desperately behind, Christmas tardy if you will. As much as I like reading articles about simplifying Christmas or dropping out of Christmas or just bemoaning the commercialism of it all, the truth is I really like the Christmas stuff. I love having a decorated, lighted Christmas tree ..read more

It was a big first day of school for my three kids this year–kindergarten, sixth grade, and ninth grade. Three different schools, three different start times. I thought I’d gotten up early enough, but I definitely did not. That morning, as I’ll bet you can all relate to, was a chaotic free-for-all. I was trying to convince everyone to eat breakfast, making lunches, applying sunscreen, checking everyone had brushed their teeth, and then making sure everyone got out the door in time for their school start time. It felt a little bit miraculous that my daughter and I managed to get into the car on ..read more

At times in the past year it seemed like we would all be here in this house, occasionally seeing other people in the yard, forever, and that didn’t seem like an entirely bad thing. Life had a peculiar slowed-down quality. I worried about having enough activities to keep my kids busy. I worried about everything they were missing. But over time, I got used to the slower pace of things, to everyone being home together all the time. And then, just a couple of weeks ago, restrictions here loosened, and everything started back at once. Fall soccer league and spring baseball league are suddenly happe ..read more

It’s official: online-only school in the fall for all three of my children. So we’ll be spending even more time together. Yay? We’ve had an awful lot of togetherness since this pandemic began. The house may never be clean again because someone is always right in the middle of it, making a mess. I cannot seem to keep up with the dishes produced by five people eating every meal at home. Life-work balance has never been trickier.  I’ve been out of bandwidth for months now. Yet as much as we all struggle with very real concerns about our health, our jobs, and our kids’ education, every parent ..read more

Over the past few weeks of sheltering in place, I’ve… Caught my four-year-old daughter using roughly 40 sheets of toilet paper and LOST MY MIND… Found a forgotten half-full package of flour on the top shelf of the cabinet and celebrated like we’d just struck crude… Watched an elementary school principal trying to conduct a Zoom meeting without putting the 100 participants (many of them small children) on mute… Discovered all the Sharpie and marker art my four-year-old added to our hardwood floors and sofa cushions while the rest of us were busy trying to figure out school at home… Transformed ..read more