Celebrating Differences (and Teaching Our Kids to Do the Same)
“Dear ______, Stop _______.” – the formula for titling your next culturally relevant blog post These “open letters” are all. over. Facebook. All the time. Have you seen them? Something like: Dear White People, Stop Saying “All Lives Matter”. Dear Black People, Stop Protesting on Highways. Dear Police Officers, Stop the Excessive Force. Dear Everyone, Stop Assuming all Muslims are Terrorists. Dear Republicans/Democrats/Liberals, Stop ….. Everyone wants to be treated equally (rightly so, obviously) yet we create all these rules and stipulations for how we relate to someone who is different than us. We have an army of writers and Facebloggers writing extensive bullet point lists of things each type of human can and can’t say, can and can’t do…
Survival of the Summertime
I see you, mom bloggers with 5 kids and enough time to not only create homemade sensory bins but to post a how-to that same afternoon. I see you. And I’m wondering where the heck your kids are while you’re blogging, because they certainly aren’t in the room with you. The hungriest my kids ever get is when I sit down at my computer and start typing. Or when I pick up the phone to actually talk to another reasonable human. It’s like instant starvation when my attention is diverted from their angel faces. Either that or all-out war with each other. They’re kind of the worst. (Especially the toddler. Did you see…
Wildly Toddlerpropriate
“Teach them appropriate names for body parts,” they said. “They’ll be more empowered,” they said. You know what they didn’t say? That a two year old yelling about his penis in a crowded public area is incredibly awkward. Even more awkward is when you’re trying on clothes in a dressing room with running commentary in the background. 1st Favorite Son: “You look beautiful, my lady.” (?!?) 3rd Favorite Son: “MOMMY I SEE YOUR PENIS.” …yep. Have I mentioned that my two year old suffers from Megaphone Voice? (He comes by it honestly, but still.) Couple things. I do not have a penis. Nor did he see any body part remotely resembling one.…
On the Road to {Vacation} Recovery
I see your summer vacation photos. Your trips to Maui and Cabo San Lucas. Your moonlit walks on the beach and leisurely bike rides through sleepy, romantic towns. I see these and I raise you the scenery along my 98 degree run the other night: Yes, a steaming pile of poop that spells “hi”. It’s kind of the perfect picture of our summer so far. Not really. But really, we are still recovering from our vacation from hell. Last I left it, we were about to board our flight to come home. Home sweet home. Home, the place I was afraid we wouldn’t get to when Taylor lit up like a…
Dear Vacation, You’re the Worst.
[alternate title: Our Life, the Sitcom.] Oh, hey there. Just bloggin away from the comfort of our cozy little beach condo in Florida. It’s the last full day of our first vacation without kids in 7 1/2 years. You’d think I’d be on the beach instead of blogging, but I have a wicked heat rash and my husband is curled up in a feverish ball on the couch. True story. ‘Tis only the beginning, my friends. Only. the. beginning. Here’s how our week has gone: Saturday: Say goodbye to our boys, whistle the Hunger Games tune and salute my mom who is holding down the fort at home, board a flight, arrive in Florida,…
The Evolution of Infants
At Mom Rush Hour at Chick-fil-A a few weeks ago, my toddlertastic son broke out of my grip and sprinted full speed into the crowded parking lot. I took off after him with his baby brother on my hip. (I would say the baby was “hanging on for dear life” but the truth is he is THE WORST holder-onner I’ve ever met. There’s no 50/50, Floppy McFlopperson let’s you do allll the work and then some.) As I maneuvered between parked cars trying to grab the toddler, I failed to notice where the baby’s head was in relation to a vehicle’s side mirrors…which is how I ended up ramming his face directly into one. Hard. Like, head-snapped-back hard. He cried. I apologized, never…
Missing: One Toddlertastic Human
My camera roll is currently full of Hutton being an awesome 2 year old. Eating a bowl of M&Ms for breakfast, coloring on his infant brother, polishing off a bag of popcorn in the pantry, painting the floor with acrylic paint…he’s, like, so good at being a toddler. (The best part of this picture is the sharpie-d on facial tiger stripes that I had yet to wipe off from hours earlier, long before the hair gel bath. SO toddlertastic.) He’s my dicey child. He’s either sitting in your lap being an innocent snugglebug OR he’s in the shower getting both himself and my iPhone clean. There’s really no in between. // One fun thing about having…
The Great Physical Digital Divide
*blows dust off keyboard* …is this thing still on? One of the most frequent questions I hear from parents of teenagers regarding social media is how to monitor their child’s online activity. How do I know what apps they use? How much involvement is too much? Isn’t “monitoring” an invasion of their privacy? Great questions. Tricky subject. Oh, and also? I really have no idea. I don’t know how much monitoring is too much. I don’t know what age your child is ready for what apps. I don’t know what site your child spends most of his or her time on. I think it’s a case-by-case, kid-by-kid conversation. Age plays a big role in these decisions,…
I’m Positive, Honey.
I would’ve paid good money to watch a video of myself walking through the Target parking lot yesterday – one arm holding a poosploded baby under the armpits, trying not to make the mess bigger than it already was, the other arm struggling to push the tractor-trailer they market as a tri-seater shopping cart, stopping every few seconds to either pull up the preschoolers too-big shorts that kept pantsing themselves or to bend down and retrieve the toddler’s marker tops that kept falling off his fingers and rolling under vehicles. (Tops, by the way, not markers. Just the tops. Perfect “finger hats” for a 2 year old.) I also would’ve paid good money to have…
Even Still, We are Bold
After the Paris terrorist attacks in November, Bob Goff tweeted, “We’re incredibly sad, but we’re not afraid.” I had been scrolling through tweet after tweet of fear-inciting information before I came across his wisdom. Picture after picture of incredible brokenness and uncertainty. I realized that I was afraid. And I still am, truthfully. You can catch some anxiety, too, if you’d like. All you have to do is turn on the news. Belgium. School shootings. Syria. The tornado that had us hunkered down in the closet last night. Each story plants a seed of fear and doubt. Each story has us wringing our hands, wondering how we keep living life in such a…
