Tag: guilt
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This Is Just to Say: A Halloween Poem
This Is Just to Say I have eaten the Halloween candy that was in your bag and which you are probably old enough to remember exists now Forgive me it was delicious so sweet and so chocolatey I composed this high-quality poem last year after Halloween, in the style of William Carlos Williams. It first…
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The Many Faces of Meltdown, Part II
Practically as soon as I posted my last collection of tantrum photos, I received a number of lovely new pieces. I hope you enjoy these and they help you feel more normal if you or your children sometimes look and feel like this. Aren’t walks supposed to calm babies? Sometimes they don’t. …
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Nobody Has It All
I hear a lot about these alleged “mommy wars” in the media. Working mothers and stay-at-home mothers* are pitted against one another, and are made to seem like enemies decrying one another’s life choices.** We all know this is crap, right? I mean, sure, we all encounter individual people full of opinions about what we…
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I’m Not Cut Out for This
I’m not cut out for this. I turn around in my seat, having just finished hollering something ineffective and useless like, “I mean it!” And the children don’t care, and they aren’t listening, and I am filled with rage. I’m not cut out for this parenting thing. We are on our way back from Lake…
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When the Rubber Hits the Road
Yesterday, I was thinking bananas. No, I was not going bananas. Well, in all truth, I probably was. But I was thinking about actual, physical bananas too. Let me explain. I am a person of many ideals. I care about keeping our world beautiful, about doing the right thing and being honest, about raising children…
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So, You Would Like to Have Three Children…
I regularly speak with people who have zero children, or one child, or two children. And they tell me they might consider or would like to have three children. My first impulse, I will own, is to bark, “No, you don’t want three kids.” But that is not helpful, I know this. So here’s what…
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Stuff That Happens When I Am Not Looking
Once you are a parent–or really, once you have even just conceived–the advice starts rolling in. “Don’t leave the baby on the changing table unattended.” “Use ‘natural consequences’ to discipline your children.” “Don’t tell your child that he will go blind if he touches himself.” Well, I could probably write a blog post about any…
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Party Foul
When I was in graduate school studying publishing, we discussed a certain author and her series in my book marketing class. A well-known author, she was held up as having her act together on the marketing front. So when I met someone who said she was his grandmother, I was in awe. My new friend…
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Penis Envy
Our first child was a girl. Partly because of this, I think of her as kind of a “starter child.” I know it must be because I’m a woman, but having a child with a penis just felt entirely outside of my skill set. When we potty trained Selah, it seemed straightforward. The differences between…
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Signs of Subpar Parenting
I’m not saying that all this stuff happened. This is just a random list of red flags, I swear, just signs that would indicate subpar parenting. Telling his father that we should have named Asher Ashhole instead Going to Mother’s Day tea and hearing the sentence “My Mommy spends all her time______” finished with the word…