As my kids get older, I realize these small things I noticed when they were just babies have turned into dominant personality traits. Henry's fascination with how things work. Danny's silly faces and movements intended for a laugh. These quirks define them and set them apart...
“Where is my HAT!? I can't go without my pink hat!” I shouted, stringing rainbow yarn through my sign. “And if I can't find my PINK hat, I can't just wear a DIFFERENT-colored hat!” I tore the mitten bench apart, then the closet, then the mitten bench...
“How do other people do this?” my husband Cory asked the ceiling, with his palms in his eyes. It's the morning after. We were up late. If you were to peek in our window at 9:45 p.m. any given night, you'd see a wild-haired naked three-year-old jumping...
“Part of me is so excited for the holidays,” said a client of mine a few weeks back. “And part of me just wants to open my eyes on January first and have it be over.” I cocked my head at that. Wish away the most...
In a LiveJournal entry dated August 21, 2001, I made a list titled “What I Want.” (LiveJournal was the premier blogging website, back before blogging had a name.) I was living in Rutland, Vermont, at the time. Among bullet points like “Making art,” “A cell phone...
To helicopter or not to helicopter? That is the question. Broken arms, concussions, drownings, car crashes. You name it; I’ve imagined it and possibly prevented it from happening to my three kids. I wave my arms around, spotting them as they climb the ladder up to the...
I can close my eyes and know I'm almost home by the angle of my body in the car and the degree of the turn. That motion, that particular sequence winding downhill to the house my father built and my mother designed, is so deeply...