Sometimes I just don’t notice. I don’t notice all the good, all the simple joys, all the smiles. Some days, the complaints roll more quickly off my tongue than the praise. The day’s outtakes play back, instead of the day’s highlight reel. All that isn’t is easier for me to…
Vacation travel with young children is a wild and beautiful creature, unique in its blend of predictability and impulsiveness, simplistic and extraordinary, and our family’s recent trip to Virginia Beach was no exception. Our children are young enough that, as parents, we can still remember when vacation meant sleeping past…
I sat on the couch, my niece on the floor in front of me. “Hold still, honey,” I said, as she started to fidget. I grabbed one section of hair and twisted it around another section. Over, under, over, under until her hair was twisted around itself into a spiraling,…
This time of year there are lots of words said about moms. There are flowery and funny and touching cards to moms. There are blogs about what it means to be a mom, essays about why we love being a mom, and passive-aggressive rants about how hard it is to…
Before I had children, I never really worried about whether I would love one child more than the other. I always knew that there would be enough love to go around. What I had not expected, however, was the extent to which I would love my children so differently. I…
“Tell us your impressions about motherhood,” the cheerful instructor asked the group of new moms sitting cross-legged on the floor with newborns in our laps. A newbie to this mommy-and-me infant class, I greeted the discussion time each week with equal parts eagerness and apprehension. I desperately wanted to get…