It feels like it’s been three years worth of thirteen; Like it has always been, and will always be this way, with her rolling her eyes, holed up in her room. There has been a lot of push and pull; Nights when I’ve stayed up alone crying, Thinking...
There has been a lot of talk about dads this last week, so this feels like a good time to highlight the dad in need of the most support: The dad of teenage girls who are beginning to date. We are in the thick of this phase right now. The girls are...
I think every mom knows it: The way you can say something over and over and no one listens; The way they shirk your advice until that one day when the exact thing you warned them about happens, and then all you can do is stifle your “I told you...
“It won’t always be this way.” That has been something I’ve told myself during so many mothering days, as I picked up the same old discarded toys, or washed the same dishes, or a child appeared In the middle of the night, headed for my bed, carrying...
Sometimes I don’t know if I’ll survive the four of them. How I ended up with all these daughters feels like a manifestation of my own mother’s “someday you’ll understand” to me. I can’t be all too certain she wasn’t secretly mixing up some kind of...
She had a terrible week. High school is hard enough without the addition of intimidation and bullying; Especially from supposed friends that said they loved you and are in all of your pictures. I’ve sat up with her multiple nights in the recent days...
I got rid of my last baby hanger today. It was one of the creamy satin ones with the little pink ribbon that always made what was hanging on them feel extra fancy, and unique. I’d been given a pack of six of them at my baby shower for my now 15 year...
After avoiding it for two years completely, a week and a half ago, Covid hit our house. I felt positive it would run through all of us as I gazed at the two pink lines of my daughter’s at-home test. I couldn’t imagine a way around that in our...
It’s been two full years of homeschooling her now; A thing I said I could never do. I imagined it would be chalk-full of things like floor-length jean skirts, FLDS hairstyles, and a long, knotted rope or two, with a trigger finger on a label making...
Per my youngest daughter, Paige’s request, we went fishing this last week. It’s not a thing we usually do. We’ve gone once in 10 years, I think. It was spring break, and her mind was racing with possibilities of all the things she could do with my...