Chronicling life is really hard. Because from a writing perspective, I feel like these weekly chronicles ought to be witty, themed, lively — but sometimes–most times–life doesn’t happen in themed weekly installments peppered with side-splittingly funny mishaps and poignant take-home lessons, it just sort of evolves uneventfully. Sort of like how our heavily anticipated metamorphosis-in-a-jar ended with a pitifully small cocoon that yielded a frenetic grey moth. Not at all what we hoped for or imagined at the outset, but fascinating and good nonetheless.

This week was just sort of an uneventful evolution of days. We fed the ducks (twice). (Insatiate little creatures, aren’t they? Impatiently HONKing for more all the while.) We played at the park every day. (more…)

I have a weekly habit on my personal blog, of writing a “Happy Post,” where I focus only on the lovely things in my life. I guess you could say it’s an exercise in gratitude and optimism. This week the “Grateful Path” was strewn with obstacles that I think are too familiar in the parenting universe to keep to myself. Here’s a wiff of this week’s installment:

I’m going to pretend that I didn’t change four poopy diapers today. I am seriously thinking about axing fiber and putting Henry on a strict diet of cheese and bubble gum to see if we can’t slow things down in the GI region.
I’m also going to pretend that I didn’t change his outfit five times today and that he doesn’t eat like Shrek at every meal.
I’m going to pretend that I didn’t spike a sippie cup on the floor after the second spilled glass of water soaked the rug in front of the dishwasher. That might jeopardize the “Holy Mother” esteem in which you all hold me and I couldn’t bear such a fall from your grace.
I’m going to pretend that Henry didn’t spill the entire bottle of hand sanitizer all over the passenger seat of the car. This one I’ll take partial responsibility for; I did leave him in the car, (doors open,) while I brought the Costco loot into the kitchen. (more…)

Dear Henry,

I have to let some of this adoration that I feel for you out of my system. I fear that if I don’t I will burst open tomorrow, or maybe even tonight, in my sleep. I wish I could pause time to preserve this phase of innocent wonder that you are running through on squishy, square feet. When I watch you dunk your chubby fists in your yogurt cup to get those last, hard-to reach bites, or dump your bowl of fried rice over your head, or christen your toothbrush in the toilet, or pick your “boogies nose,” or come out of the closet with my underwear on your head, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to teach you all the things you need to learn to function as a “normal” member of society. And then I look around, and I realize that I don’t want you to blend too seemlessly in with the “norm.” I realize that what I should be concerned about is whether or not I am learning all of the sterling little lessons that you have to teach me in this utterly guileless phase of your existence. (more…)

Coming home from a trip is bittersweet. For me, for most trips, it’s mostly bitter. It’s bitter because I love family and they are usually the reason for our trips, or the company with whom we travel. Saying goodbye to them and not knowing when I’m going to see them again is very disconcerting for a homebody like myself.

This trip’s end was bitter for all of those reasons AND because we dragged and hauled and hoisted all of our bulging luggage through the DFW airport, (which is probably only slightly, if at all, smaller than Rhode Island,) only to find that our car was NOT where we parked it. You can imagine the choice words that escaped our lips as we three weary travelers discovered that the spot where we intended to leave our car parked for seven days was in fact a “One Hour Parking Towing Enforced” zone. This series of seriously unfortunate events led us back to the terminal to place a call to the Parking Enforcement Coalition in an effort to begin the vehicle reclamation process. (more…)

There are many, many great things about having my sisters in town, not the least of which is having four extra hands to help with Henry. However, sometimes knowing that there are other mature, responsible, supervising helpers in my life, I get a little laxed about things like diaper changes and my knowledge of Henry’s whereabouts, trusting that he’s probably safe and squared away with either Kate or Halley. The manifestations of my heedless mothering are pitiable. Like a few evenings ago, we were all ready to leave on our evening walk and it suddenly occured to me that I hadn’t changed Henry’s diaper all day. I was pretty sure that someone else had, but just to be sure, I asked everyone as we were strolling away from the house, and was mortified to discover that we were all making the same errant assumption that someone else had done it, when in fact, no one had! Poor soggy, stinky, totally saturated little Henry had been sitting in the same soggy, stinky, totally saturated little diaper all. day. long. And the most heart warming/wrenching part of it all was that as I was changing him, he kept apologizing, “I’m sow-wy,” in a barely audible little moan. No! No! No, Mr. Soggy Britches, there’ll be none of that; I am sorry! (more…)

Every Friday morning, (except for the precious few when a household emergency and excessive amounts of standing water prevent us from going,) Henry and I meet a group of other moms and tots at the park for play group. We laugh, frolic, soak up the sun for an hour…and the kids seem to like it too. Fortunately, we’re usually not the only cluster of adults at the park; the other, more responsible parents notify us when our children are stuck in precarious positions on the monkey bars, pushing each other down, or stealing their childrens’ belongings. We’re too busy talking about the “weightier matters” to adequately supervise our children. Our topics of conversation run the gamut of feminine issues from home repair projects gone awry to slightly funny, but mostly stomach-turning, stories about children eating their own feces (or worse, that of animals in public parks.)

But birth is the trump card of maternal conversation; once it’s brought up, nothing else stands a chance. I’m not a “betting man,” but if I were inclined to wager, I’d put my husband’s 401K on the fact that when one of a group of women so much as alludes to childbirth, a lengthy exchange of delivery stories is sure to ensue. It’s been the most popular topic of conversation at three of the last four playgroups I’ve attended, and this Friday was no exception. It started with a discussion of the VBAC controversy, which led to a mighty slew of horrifying tales from the obstetric operating room. Stories that were, for someone facing the very likely possibility that all of her births will be C-sections, more frightening than the most sinister ghost story ever told. Tales of epidurals that wandered to places they had no business being (i.e. armpits), of intense claustrophobia setting in on the operating table, of spinal taps that impaired mobility for an entire calendar year after delivery. (more…)

For the first few years of our marriage, I felt like Diane Sawyer every time I met someone who seemed to be living frugally. I wanted to pry deeply into their financial psyche and ask a million questions about the fiscal details of their life. I am every bit as anxious now as I was then to learn from people who seem to know a thing or two about living well, while living well beneath their means. I’m certainly not an expert when it comes to financial matters, but here are a few ideas I’ve picked up in my quest for frugal living. (more…)