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...

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...

dear bean, when your daddy and i found out we were going to have another baby, we were pretty scared. we didn't know how to be parents to three chaos monkeys and didn't know what our family would look like with a new babe. it turns out we didn't have a thing to worry about, little one. from the moment you arrived you've been the happiest baby i've ever met. just like your brothers, you charm the people around you and endear yourself to everyone. when we came home from the birth center that night, john and charlie fell in love and immediately wanted to hold you and love you. you fit perfectly into a bean-shaped gap we didn't even know our family had. you've brought smiles and laughs to every member of your family every one of these past 365 days. even when you feel icky, like today on your birthday, your dear spirit shines through and you bring such light into the world. your daddy and i  are really grateful that god knew we needed you. your oldest...

goodnight selfie dear john, i just finished putting you to bed for the last time as a six year old. you thought it was great to give me the last ever "face shake" (our secret goodnight kisses) as a six year old boy. i thought it was pretty great, too. you have grown SO MUCH this year. not just gotten taller - though you have, you're huge - but gotten better and awesomer and amazinger. you are in control of your body and your actions in a way that is so very impressive. you work so hard to do things well, and take such pride in making people happy. you are generous, and compassionate, and you amaze me with your capacity to give to your little brothers to help them be happy. you are silly and fun and have a wicked sense of humor - even if i'm sometimes too old to get some of your jokes. you're a fierce hugger and a brave tooth-loser. one thing that makes me so proud is that you want so badly for things to be fair and right. they aren't always, ...

boys in collared shirts. i've missed this blog. and this blog has missed me, too - it's missed a lot of change in our family, a lot of distance covered and a lot of growth, and oh yeah the addition of a third son. it's missed outings and discoveries and pictures and trials and tribulations. but mostly, it's missed pieces of the development of three really cool kids. and the evolution of their mommy as she tries to adapt to having three really cool kids and a really cool job and oh by the way a really cool husband and a pain in the ass but also cool dog. and i, have missed writing. so i shall try again. john (+charlie + ben)'s mom works. and writes. and loves. and welcomes you back to our adventure.

these boys in their "boats." i'm not going to lie: there are days when i go to bed defeated and exhausted. there are days when i feel like there is no way i am possibly up to being the mom of these two boys, and also a wife and a professional and a friend and whatever else i am. those days are rough. today, though - today is NOT one of those days. these boys rocked my world today, and i couldn't be more grateful. daddy's at a football game tonight, so i've been "single parenting" (in big ol' fat quotes because i can't pretend to know even a piece of what that's really like). this is not a coherently themed blog post. it's just a collection of stories of ways my children amazed me today. #1: light is beautiful. after charlie and i dropped john off at school this morning, we were cruising the additional mile or two up the road to charlie's school. we were talking about his friends, and the stuffed dog he was hol...

this guy right here ... i tell a lot of stories on this blog, sharing ups and downs of these two beautiful blond boys we’re lucky enough to share our lives with. and there are lots of stories to share, because they are active and awesome kids who make us laugh and cry, make us rue our weaknesses and be so proud of our strengths. no stories today, though. today i want to talk about transparency. there’s a strangeness to the era of social media. we share the most intimate details of some parts of our lives, yet edit heavily to portray the “best” of our selves. but the best of our selves is truly that we are human, and multifaceted, and dimensional – that we do not fit into happy smiley boxes of vacation pictures and beautifully decorated walls and immaculate homes and elaborately cooked meals. (tho there is nothing wrong with any of those things – but we are more.) shew, that’s an elaborate preface for a little blog entry. (another little preface here: i'm ...

bonus points if you recognize this as a bulldozer. i have a long vacation post that will come later this week, but a shorter note of great import today: last week, my first baby turned four. we had a week-long birthday celebration, starting with a birthday party at the grand canyon  with my dad's side of the family on monday june 16 ... then a wednesday june 18 (john's actual birthday) bulldozer birthday party with our dear friends in phoenix and their children - one of whom is almost precisely three months older than john so they're a great match ... wrapped up with yesterday's present-opening-extravaganza featuring all of the presents that were mailed to our house in our absence. we are so blessed to have so much family - of both the birth-given and the life-chosen variety - to celebrate with our kiddo. we are also so blessed to have this amazing four-year-old in our lives. he is the most challenging thing we have ever done, and one of the two most b...

both boys went back to sleep after i woke them up the first time today. how are kids so cute even in their sleep? mornings are not usually a strong suit at our house.  we're up early - i usually wake john around 5:30 and charlie around 5:45 - and out the door early, getting in the car by 6:30 at the latest. and we're not what you'd call morning people. but. BUT. today was an awesome morning. everyone was cheerful, the morning went smoothly.  while i was getting charlie dressed, john came charging excitedly into his baby brother's room yelling, "mommy! i found my pelican!" some backstory: once upon a time, john caught a stuffed pelican at a mardi gras parade. it was a sad silly pelican that was poorly stuffed and cheaply made. it was fluorescent green and orange. but for some reason he loved it. he fell out of love with it over time, as kids do, and i was pretty sure we had given it to my cousin to throw at another mardi gras parad...

this was going to be a jaunty little blog about my trip to chicago - more adventures of the world-wandering dairy cow, some waxing philosophical about missing my family, the story of an awesome hotel upgrade, some pride in my husband for taking such awesome care of the boys. i'll save my traveling tale for another day. instead, i find myself in a somber mood. this morning, one of my favorite people on the face of this planet took her leave from it. my beautiful, sassy, spunky, brilliant grandmother passed away. like all of the family, i knew this day would come, and probably sooner than later. she was 91 years old, and while she was doing mighty darn well for 91, that age comes with an expectation that time is limited. she spent a good part of this past weekend with her family, much of whom was in town for mardi gras. i understand that she was in good spirits and good form right up until the end. and she went quickly, which is as much of a blessing as anyone could ask. also...

left: diligently removing pjs one foot at a time.  right: dirt is a boy's best friend. today in dfw, a beautiful week-old baby girl is being laid to rest by her aching family. and today in dfw, the grey sky and chilling rain seem a perfect reflection of the sympathetic ache felt by anyone who hears this family's story. may they be uplifted by prayers and love from far and wide that somehow, somewhere, they might find some peace. *  *  * sometimes god and his universe conspire to give you exactly what you need. today it is the weather that gives expression to my emotions. sometimes you need that mourning. last week, it was a relatively simple message from a facebook friend who posted this thought: our children need our love the most when they deserve it least. i won't try to attribute that one -- many very wise folks have said similar things and i'm probably misquoting anyway. but it rang in my head as i reflected on john's behavior...

brothers telling secrets friday on the way to work, the moon hung low in the sky, huge and orange. john was ecstatic to see it, and kept exclaiming, "mommy, look at the big man in the moon!" i kept listening to his glee, and we talked about the moon for several minutes. eventually he got sort of quiet and pensive. and he said, "mommy, why is the moon at the bottom of the sky?" of course i explained that the moon rises and goes up high, blah blah blah, but it stuck with me: the bottom of the sky. there's a certain poetry to the way children see the world, i think, a simplicity and beauty that i love to relive through john's eyes. and his words never cease to amaze me. he has a way with them, i think. and he charms me all the time, but i'm his mom -- i think i am constitutionally required to be charmed. but it's not just me. this morning when my husband picked john up from sunday school, his teacher told him that they were reading ...

i scored front row seats to this particular show. the other day it was pandora, playing my husband's "lightning crashes" station. (we met at a concert of the band 'live' a million years ago, in case you didn't know.)recently, one of john's very favorite activities is to have dance parties in our living room. sometimes we put on disney music, sometimes it's a cd, sometimes just the radio. a few good ol' rock songs from the late 90s played, all with some serious guitar licks, and john insisted that he wanted to find "his" guitar. he actually has two - an elmo one that lights up and plays sesame street songs, and an old "guitar hero" one that doesn't connect to anything but still rocks out - at least in john's head. so he gave the guitar hero one to daddy, and he grabbed the elmo one as his own, and charlie and i were treated to some fine guitar solos in the living room. until john kicked daddy off his st...

my beautiful bitty. this was going to be a post about my wonderful day on martin luther king day, and how charlie and i spent our day as a "nursing holiday" and had such a great time. instead, i would like to tell you the story of the scariest night in my life as a mom. most importantly, everyone is ok, uninjured, and totally fine. know that right up front. yesterday a little after 5:30pm, i was walking through the living room carrying charlie when i tripped. and i dropped charlie. he hit the ground with the most horrible thud i have ever heard in my life. and he instantly started screaming, which i know is actually a good sign. so i scooped him him up to comfort him and calm him. he was breathing VERY fast, so i tried to nurse him, thinking that would help calm him down. he wanted none of it ... and then he just went limp and stopped. no crying. no wiggling. completely nonresponsive. i immediately called 911. they dispatched an ambulance and whil...

the letter "h"! sleepy buddha last night, john proved to me again what an awesome kid he is. he wanted to have a dance party in the living room and asked daddy to put on the radio. daddy did, to a pop/top 40 type station. i can't remember what song it was, but john said, "no, daddy, a rock and ROLL dance." so daddy changed. next station was a country song. "no, daddy. rock and ROLL!" finally, daddy landed on an alt rock station. "that's it daddy! rock and roll, rock and roll ..." (insert cute hip/butt wiggle here). what song had my kiddo rockin' and rollin'?  "under the bridge," by red hot chili peppers. that, friends, THAT, is my child. meantime charlie was sitting in his seat just smiling and laughing at big brother's antics. *  *  * and i needed that. i needed to be reminded how amazing my children are, because it was a rough afternoon before that. it started with a...

from now on, this is how we do ALL our gingerbread houses. i have been guilting myself for not blogging for weeks now. how was christmas? (charlie's first!) how was new years? how was thanksgiving, for that matter, and the visit with the family? how have i not managed to document all of these precious moments in our family's life? well, here's how: the mama in this house works. and if this blog is and always has been about the balancing act - the utter tightrope walk! - of being both a marketing professional and the best mom i can be, then my silence reflects the focus the past several weeks have required. but now ... knock on wood? ... it appears that we might be sliding into a routine. and now, maybe now, i can begin again to write down the struggles and joys we face. and when i am in doubt, i just look at this little face:  don't worry, mother, i am wise in ways you cannot comprehend.  and then i realize, it's all ok. a few months of bl...

brothers. ain't it great? i will write this blog or some variation probably a thousand times in the next few years -- or 18 years, or 50 years, or maybe however many years i live to watch my children grow. this afternoon, my husband put john down for his nap while i was in the other room. i came back to the living room and he was already in bed, presumably asleep. and this is awesome, right? he's learning to do that without his mommy having to be there, he's not fussing when daddy is the only parent there to help, and he's listening and doing what he is told. he's going down for a nap peacefully and without stalling and arguing, and he's doing it without me there . that is a parenting win for us for sure. but ... but. it made me cry. john didn't even come to say goodnight to me. he didn't want to hug me before his rest, or tell me sweet dreams and he loves me. he didn't need  me. i cried. i told my husband how bittersweet this was for...