john's mom works

this is 38. grocery store sushi and cake, 8pm, alone. and for a minute, i let it feel every bit that sad and blue. because honestly, sometimes things feel sad and blue. and one thing i am learning is that i can't deny that sad and blue. i gotta sit with it, feel it, cry a tear or three in my mediocre cake, and just be. this is 38. i am not 100% sure what i expected, but i had high hopes of a lovely birthday evening with my fellas, and instead i picked up the three crankiest angriest bullyingest boys in the universe when i went to the daycare. they were mean to each other and didn't want anything to do with anything i had to say. and instead of enjoying hanging out, we argued and fought and they went to bed unhappy and i sat down for my un-exciting birthday dinner, alone. but another thing i am learning is that routine is my friend. so i started my evening routine, finding my rhythm. a few minutes of sweeping and cleaning. a few minutes of prep for tomorrow, lunch...

annapolis rock  1988 thirty years ago, my family moved from denton, tx, to a tiny rural town in the mountains of maryland. i remember being sad as we sold our things (we were packing everything into two old cars to drive north) and actually crying over the sale of our washing machine. transition does strange things to kids' emotions. yet i remember arriving, excited, into this strange green mountainous place, and i remember even more anticipation as we found a home ("the old taylor place") and got ready for school to start at smithsburg elementary. third grade -- the same grade john starts this school year. i remember meeting my first friend on a dusty dirt road - the "alley" that ran behind the high school tennis courts and athletic fields from our home just at the town's outskirts to her home just outside downtown. (if you've never known a small town downtown, that's probably hard to envision). it was an amazing place to be a child. 199...

a little backyard chaos and shenanigans i will forever remember this summer as a time of shifting sibling dynamics. john and charlie have always alternated between playing beautifully together and beating the snot out of each other -- pretty standard fare for brothers, from what i understand. they are each others' best friend and arch nemesis, rolled up into one jack-and-jill-bathroom-sharing package. it's made for amazing times when they create and build and explore and entertain each other. it's made for challenging times when they get under each others' skin, antagonize and bully one another, and scream. man, can those kids scream. when bean first arrived, of course, not much changed. if anything, the bigs got closer. they got good at occupying each other when the baby needed "too much" attention. the flare ups didn't stop, of course, but i wouldn't have expected them to. but now at two, bean is a real person with real ideas and real ima...

this blog is not about my kids (gasp!). or, not exactly, though they are such a force that it seems everything in my universe is colored by my experiences with them. it's about how we're all so tired. more precisely, it's about how we keep talking about how we're all so tired. in the past several days i've seen a number of articles cross my feed on the topic of "why millennials are so tired," (almost ignored that one as i don't identify as a millennial) or "the fetishization of tiredness" or "the cult of exhaustion" ... i'm not linking any of them, as i haven't found the articles themselves to be particularly interesting or insightful.  but it did make me stop and think about how true this is about my life, and probably yours. someone asks how you are, and you say, "i'm good, but i'm exhausted." you hear someone with "less" on their plate than you say they're tired, and you think (and ma...

kitchen bandit 3.0 my dear sweet little bean, you are two! you are two. how have we had you for two years -- the unexpected perfect capper for our little family? i still think you are in my belly, or maybe a teensy little baby bean in my carrier on my chest. but no! you are a dude now. a HAPPY dude: i've never known a baby (ehem, toddler) who smiled so much, and laughed so much. your sparkly little eyes light up so bright and you brighten everyone's days, from your family to your friends to your teachers to strangers at stores who are taken with your little impish grin. you are fearless and very big for your little body. i think you think you are the same as your brothers, that anything they can do you can do and nothing is stopping you. you have discovered the pool this summer, and you love to swim and "play water" and splash in our kiddie pool in the backyard, too. you love koalas. you call them kolalas. it makes me smile every time you see one in a book...

crazy and kind and loving and wild dear john, eight years ago almost as i am writing this, you made me a mommy. eight years, kiddo. how is that possible? from the moment you arrived you were infectious and vibrant and larger than life. at eight, you are still all of those things, only maybe more! your energy is limitless, but so is your heart and your compassion and my goodness, love, that smile lights a room. you have grown so much this year. oh, you are taller and none of your pants fit and suddenly i can't really carry you as well anymore (tho i won't stop trying), but that's not what i mean. you know yourself so well, you know how to work so hard, and you have made such strides in your ability to choose well and wisely and be the kind and amazing dude i have always known you to be. you are a great big brother (tho please stop telling your brothers they're wrong, they won't like that much) and i love to see you leading the other fellas in creative playi...