A Promise To My Second Born

It is trite now to offer up written apologies to latter born children. To catalogue all the ways in which we have relaxed the rules the second (or third or fourth) time around. To humorously list the words they’ve learned too early, the movies they’ve seen too soon, the crappy food they’ve eaten.

In fact most of these articles aren’t apologies at all but thinly veiled parental pats on the back for being so nonchalant, so easy going.

Here’s the truth if we’re willing to admit it. The innocence of our latter born children is all too often sacrificed on the altar of their older siblings. It just is. Read more...

Continue Reading

Almost 8 and Almost 10

almost 8 almost 10 adolescence is harder than having a baby parenthood

To all of you in the throes of babyhood and toddler madness, please let me assure you that you will get through this.

And when you do, you will get down on your knees and pray to the gods of squeaky toys and late night feedings to go back.

I remember. I remember the sleep deprivation, the constant trail of unidentifiable gunk on your shirt and wondering bemusedly whether it was applesauce or poop, the endless delays because I can do it by MYSELF mommy, and the throw down tantrums in the middle of Target. Read more...

Continue Reading

Redefining Grateful

Grateful-notepad-serendip-love-thankfulness

I walked into Serendip the other day to buy some lamps (which I did by the way and they’re really fucking cool). As I was checking out, the owner slipped this into my hands and said “For the boys. I don’t really know them but from everything I can see, they’ve got their priorities right.”

Gaaaah.

That one hit me hard. Part of what has been causing me anguish over the last few weeks is a deep-seeded concern that despite all my efforts to show them what really matters, they have become ungrateful and unappreciative. That despite my best efforts to show them what loving hard looks like, their outlook was becoming harsh and negative. Read more...

Continue Reading

7 Things I Want My Kids To Know On The First Day Of School

Things I want my kids to know on the first day of school

As you lie in your beds on this – the night before the first day of school – I know you are dutifully trying to sleep despite the anxious thoughts creeping through your minds. My mind is racing too. Trying to remember what it is like to go 8 hours without seeing your faces. Trying to remember what 8 hours of silence sounds like. Trying not to mourn the end of our lazy mornings, our big adventures, and time that belongs to no one but us.

I promise when we walk through those double doors tomorrow, you will forget all the doubts and fears that are keeping you awake tonight. Read more...

Continue Reading

New LOP Article On Babble: Summer Ain’t Over Yet

Babble Summer Ain't Over Yet Screw You Back to school displaysI typically don’t write a lot in the summer because, well, I like summer just as much as my kids. I did manage to write about that for Babble so please click here to read the article!

“When I was a kid, the end of the school year was brutal. I was ready for summer vacation by mid-April. My brain, which generally fired on all four cylinders, was torturously limping toward the finish line on a flat tire and a crappy suspension. And the idea of finishing my last school project (inevitably a diorama of some kind) was more torturous than being trapped in a pit of snakes. Read more...

Continue Reading

This Is The Me They Love

 If I’m being totally honest, I was planning on deleting it when he wasn’t looking. That’s the problem with modern technology, digital photography, smartphones and filters: We can instantaneously erase anything that isn’t “perfect.” We can keep reviewing and critiquing and recreating a picture over and over again until we get what we want. Read more...

Continue Reading

This is Forty

40th birthday this is 40

Last month, I bid my thirties farewell. There wasn’t much fanfare. No dark clouds in the sky heralding the end of life as I know it. I just woke up one day and was 40.

40 is a tricky number. To some it is a dirty word. To some it is a chance to throw a big fun party that rivals your wedding. To some – judging by all the articles titled “40 things I’ve learned at 40” – it is apparently the age of total enlightenment.

But no matter how you slice it, 40 can be weighty. Read more...

Continue Reading

They Can’t Take That Away From Me

00631_n_10acylv3s50419
Lynn Brubaker

I was reminded yesterday that it was Ella Fitzgerald’s birthday. I grew up with Ella playing on scratchy LPs as I danced around the den on top of my father’s feet, listening to him sing off-key.

My father had eclectic taste in music, and he clearly felt it was one of his greatest parental obligations to introduce us to all of it.

Music, for my father, was more than a song. It was a story.

He would play the staples of his college days–The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel–and tell us the story of the anti-war movement, the drug culture, and the sexual revolution. He would play Broadway show tunes and tell us about political corruption in Chicago, the gangsters and bootleggers of the 30’s, or wartime in London. He would play Motown and tell us of growing up in the south and how music changed his generation’s views on race. He would play some new band and remind us that songwriters are the poets of modern society. Read more...

Continue Reading

A Mother’s Farewell

IMG_20160404_231121

Update: See this piece featured on Mamapedia!

A few weeks after we were married, Billy and I strolled into a coffee house in Alexandria. There on the bulletin board was a sign advertising beagle puppies born on our wedding day. If ever there was a sign, this was it. It seemed serendipitous to start our new life together with a little ball of fur to whom we were forever joined by a sunny day in January. We named him Charlottesville, in honor of the place where we met and fell in love.

Charlie shared our first home, our first months as newlyweds, our late nights and our early mornings. He took our loud voices and our moves in stride. We cut our parenting teeth on him, learning that when you become a parent, the things you give up pale in comparison to what you receive. Read more...

Continue Reading

The Weight of Time

IMG_9035

**Update: See this post featured on Scary Mommy!

Ten is the number of months that I was pregnant. Ten months of constant sickness, sleeplessness, and anxiety about whether I would be a good mother weighed on me much more than the thirty pounds I carried on my frame.

Four is the number of hours that I slept each night when my babies were new. The nights before your body becomes inured to sleep deprivation seem endless. And those four hours, cobbled together in snippets of brief respite, weighed on me during the day as I struggled to have a lucid conversation or stay awake while that tiny creature rested on my shoulder. Read more...

Continue Reading

A Love Letter to Preschool

06 10 15_0040 Yesterday my baby graduated from preschool.

I know he probably doesn’t look like a baby, with his shaggy hair and the new hole in his grin where a tooth used to be. But when I look at his face I don’t see the six year old boy that you do. I see the tiny wrinkly face of the newborn that nuzzled my shoulder in the wee hours of the night. I see the face covered in pureed carrots, the wobbly first steps he took in Palm Beach, the tear-streaked face that watched me walk out the door on his first day of preschool, the pain of skinned knees and blisters, the determination in his face before he threw his first spiral. Read more...

Continue Reading

Legacy

A month ago, I had the great pleasure of accompanying Jack’s class on a field trip to the Chrysler Museum.  As we were passing through Huber Court, Jack caught sight of my parents’ names etched in the marble wall and stopped mid-stride.  Oblivious to the boisterous chatter of his classmates fading into the glass gallery down the hall, Jack stood immobile.   And then he slowly reached out his hand.

01 16 15_0002

Silently I watched him run his fingers over the grooves in the marble, painstakingly tracing each letter in my father’s name.  I knew what he was doing.  He was willing himself to see and feel my father instead of just a name carved in the cold marble. Read more...

Continue Reading

Sometimes It’s More Than a Game: Why I Took My Kids Out of School for a Basketball Game

Someone gently reminded me the other day that I have been uncharacteristically quiet since Christmas.  And I gently reminded my friend that the Lucky Orange Pants have been busy with more important things.  Like basketball  season.

In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, you know that Virginia is one of two undefeated teams left in college basketball and ranked second in the country.

Second.  In the whole country.  For someone with a massive fear of heights, and a long memory of crashing and burning, this is a scary place to be. Read more...

Continue Reading

What’s Not in My Christmas Card This Year

Of all of my favorite Christmas activities – and good Lord there are many – doing our Christmas card is high on the list.    Normally, I love coming up with pithy holiday puns for the greeting.  I relish spending countless hours I don’t actually have looking back through pictures and choosing the ones that capture the personality of the boys, even if their hair isn’t brushed or their clothes don’t match.  The pictures that tell the story of us.

But this year I have been uninspired.  My heart just hasn’t been in it. Read more...

Continue Reading

Being thankful…even when it’s hard

11 24 11_0742

Thanksgiving has never been my favorite holiday.  Don’t get me wrong – I love sitting around a table with my family and eating.  Those are, in fact, my two favorite things in the world.

I don’t have anything against Thanksgiving. I’ve just never been inspired by it.  Maybe it’s because we are lucky enough to routinely sit around the table and eat giant meals with our families.   Maybe it’s because Thanksgiving has none of the magic and majesty of other holidays. Maybe it’s because Thanksgiving is entirely… contrived.  It isn’t about anything except being together.  Being thankful.  Which is, of course, exactly why some people love it.   I get it. Read more...

Continue Reading