children
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On Being a Bad Mom
When my daughter left for the bus this morning at 6:20 it was 19 degrees Fahrenheit (-7 Celsius). She was wearing a sweatshirt. And her hair was wet. I am pretty sure that makes me a bad mother. Have any of you ever tried to convince a 14-year-old girl to wear something she does not want to wear? It is an exercise in futility and not the way I felt like starting my morning. I shrugged my shoulders and let her go. She was going to be cold but maybe, just maybe, if she was cold enough she would wear a coat the next time. (Probably not, but I live…
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“Cool Mom Vibes”
It has been freezing cold and snowy lately. My son has developed the cold of doom that I am convinced is going to take over the house right before we go on vacation and the kids go to their grandparent’s house. I have spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to get a doctor’s office to perform a simple task. Life is a bit chaotic and stressful. But I don’t care. Why is that? Because, according to my daughter, I give off “cool mom vibes.” I’ll just pause here to let that sink in. And no, if you were hoping I could tell you how to be cool too, I…
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On Dragons in the Meadow and Other Feats of the Imagination
Celia and I went for a walk the other night. It is the same walk we usually take, one I have written about before. We walk through the business at the end of our street, past a pond, skirt a development, and end up on the bike path by the river. Every foot of it is familiar. We know all the paths down to the river, all the flowers that bloom at different times of the year, and Celia knows most of the dogs that are walked on the path. It is all so very familiar but, to Celia, it is all still an adventure. The rustle in the bushes…
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The End Of Summer
My kids went back to school yesterday. One is a senior in high school and the other is in seventh grade. The alarm went off at an ungodly hour to much moaning and groaning. There were frantic searches for keys and notebooks and complaints about the boring food available for lunch. There was one pair of jeans that were declared absolutely unwearable even though they had been fine the day before. Breakfast was eaten on the way out the door and, amazingly, the bus came on time. One kid went in late (sick) and then my house descended into blessed silence for the first time all summer. It was blissful.…
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For My Daughter, Who Isn’t Sure She Wants To Grow Up
Eleven-almost-twelve is a hard age to be. You know that. You tell me all the time that you don’t want to get bigger, that you wish you could stay little. Sometimes I wish you could stay little too because little was so easy to comfort. You would climb in my lap, I would sing you a song, read you a story, tell you everything was going to be okay. And it would be. That was enough for you. But now you don’t fit on my lap, you know I can’t carry a tune, and you read your own stories. However, I am still here to tell you that everything will…
