Posts tagged “parenting

There You Are

Posted on April 2, 2019

Here comes a kind of post that I don’t usually do. I’m not big on birthdays and anniversaries and even less focused on lavish, public, I-love-my-spouse posts. Today is different. Sean is 43 today, nothing very remarkable about the birthday. Except that at our age, it now is remarkable to have a birthday. People get sick, men have heart attacks, breast cancer strikes moms. I woke this morning on day three of a nasty bug, he continued picking up the things I do, things I thought only I could do. Nope. He’s got them, the girls too. Life goes on, even when we fall out of our routine. I apologized for being sick, and he asked incredulously, “Why would you apologize?” I didn’t have…

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Ariana Grande and Growing Up

Posted on May 24, 2017

Sean is the playlist guy around here, followed quickly by Briar and then Ave. I enjoy the detail that I wouldn’t manage on my own, except it has started to hit me that music makes things more enjoyable. When I start the coffee pot I say to Alexa, “Alexa, play music for us,” more often than not she responds with, “Here’s a station you might like: Ariana Grande.” The first time she did it I laughed out loud. The girls weren’t with me and it seemed preposterous that she would be my music of choice, except the thing is I enjoy it. When the girls came down they start snaking between the counter and me to grab things, dancing along the way. They sing…

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One Day More

Posted on March 19, 2017

  Our arrival to the next phase has been an exercise in time bending. My friend Lindsey Mead often says, “Years are minutes,” which to me is breathtaking in its truth. I can still feel the sensation of nursing the girls, whether for sustenance or to ease an injury. Their tiny heads nestled in my arm, impossibly soft fingers patting my side or stroking my chin. I remember the chill of the hard lift chair at Pico beneath me as I watched the three of them ride the lift alone together for the first time. Just like that, it was over, they ride together now. It was the perfect metaphor for how the success of parenting is in shepherding the kids to be able to…

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Here We Are & There We Were

Posted on December 19, 2016

The last ten years have been growing up all over again, from learning how to be a partner in a marriage, to learning how to be a parent and a business partner. Talk about all-elbows and knees, and if I’m honest, stubborn chin and chips on shoulders. I never imagined how closely raising myself and raising my kids would overlap. I suppose I thought time would give me the courtesy of allowing me to figure myself out before it became time for me to stand at the edge of precipice after precipice with blue eyes on me asking, “Do you know what to do next?” The saving grace has been that for the first time in my life I’ve trusted myself. As a mom, while…

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Superpowers We Don’t Acknowledge

Posted on October 31, 2016

I can hear myself saying, “I’m not crafty” and “I am a disorganized mess,” but the truth is that I’m crafty and organized in my own way. It sounds like a way to justify a mess and never throwing anything away, and maybe it is, but the messiness is what helps me pull together forts, spice up last-minute gifts, and change a boring Saturday into something more. I think it’s easy to feel less-than in the era of Pinterest, DIY celebrities, and #OOTD amazingness. I am clinically slow to recognize talent or accomplishment in myself, when I do manage to muster a bit of, “Damn right, I did that” I tend to fall apart in some other area. Case in point today I made…

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