Tag: children

  • Budding Scientist

    Budding Scientist

    Warning: This is gross. My daughter is a scientist. I think I first began to realize this when she was about five, and her younger brother broke his head open. I was trying to shield her from the medical procedures and all the blood, but I gradually noticed that she wasn’t scared, and was, in…

  • As We Prepare for Our Trip

    As We Prepare for Our Trip

    Dear Children, As we prepare for our upcoming trip, I would like to explain some things to you. This is a vacation. It is our first vacation in quite a while that doesn’t involve relatives, sleeping bags, or our imaginations. Mommy spent all of our money on this vacation, and some we don’t have. I am…

  • Bad Little Girls Get Stung by Bees

    Bad Little Girls Get Stung by Bees

    I have already written about my daughter’s room. Basically it’s a mess. It’s a real mess. It’s kind of embarrassing how messy it is, and yet I have no idea how to clean it, so I don’t really know how to tell her to clean it. But periodically I issue various threats and edicts, and…

  • Practically Five

    Practically Five

    At the zoo, I quickly realized that my family was not going to fit into one car of the train. (File this under “big-family problems.”) After some scrambling, we sorted ourselves into two: Asher and my significant other and I sat in the front car, and Selah took Noah to the second car, where there…

  • Dear Children

    Dear children, It is evidently still a mystery to you how the world works, so I’m going to let you in on a secret: We do the same thing every day. It’s the way the world works. It’s the human condition. People have been bemoaning this since the dawn of time. That’s why the movie…

  • Three! Three? Three!

    Three! Three? Three!

    At the most recent Writers Who Wine gathering, one woman said, “Oh, I just LOVE three year olds! That’s the best age!” Wrinkling her nose, another woman asserted, “No. It’s the worst age. Three year olds are just awful!” Before I had kids, I would have agreed with woman one. After I’d had one and…

  • Great Expectations

    Great Expectations

    I think of myself as a reasonably good parent in general. I certainly have good intentions, though I hear the road to hell is paved with those or something. But every now and then I bump up against something that I still need to grow in, and parenting my “spirited” child forces me to recognize…

  • The Wrongest Mommy

    The Wrongest Mommy

    I recently had the pleasure of seeing my story, “The Wrongest Mommy,” published on Mamalode.com. Here it is!   The Wrongest Mommy  Eight-year-old Selah loves it when I retell stories of ridiculous things she did—or when I retell stories of ridiculous things I did. Perhaps her second-favorite story is about the day that I stormed…

  • No-No

    No-No

    I call my youngest son No-no. His name is Noah, so it’s short for Noah. But at this age, not quite three, it’s also no coincidence, really. No-no (also goes by No-ee) is really a very sweet baby. I say this about him at an age in which I would already have been calling my…

  • This Is My Circus; These Are My Monkeys

    This Is My Circus; These Are My Monkeys

    This morning I brought my kids to  church with me. Whew. Somehow I have always found getting my children to church very difficult and tiring. I’m not exactly sure why, since we don’t have to leave as early as we do for school, and there is no need for lunches or anything–but it’s possible that…