January 14, 2023 I went hunting for ways to use up bananas that didn’t involve bread, and naturally found my way down a rabbit hole of puddings. I’m not southern, but I’ve lived around enough of them in DC to understand the value of a good banana pudding, and to know I wasn’t willing to work that hard. No buying Nilla wafers, no baking my own. I wanted something less than...
October 1, 2022 I’m the only soccer mom this morning. It’s windy and cold, fields wet with the leftovers of the early stages of Hurricane Ian and threatening more rain at any moment. “Yeah, the dads drew the short end of the stick today!” one of the other parents calls out cheerfully, as I join the handful of dads who have accompanied their six year olds to this morning’s game. “And not a lot of...
August 26, 2022 In advance of vacation, we can look forward to the time away as a kind of salvation from the normal life that has grown to feel wearisome, like a burden. We’ll leave our boring normal life, and experience a taste of real life, something beautiful and thrilling. We’ll rest, we’ll adventure, we’ll get good instagram photos. But when vacation ends, real life is waiting, collecting a...
July 2022 This is a sweet season with my five year old son, or as he explains it when introducing himself to church friends coming over for a potluck tonight, “I’ll just say I’m six, because I’m almost six.” He learned to read this year, practically overnight. We were on vacation for the school’s mid-winter break, a spontaneous trip where we packed almost no toys, and a handful of books. One day...
April 23, 2022 It’s Saturday, and I’m ready to tend my garden. We’ve been back since Tuesday evening from the third of four spring trips (accidentally running nearly back to back from March to early May, when I’ve been planning to take a very long nap). Trip three was a much planned and eagerly awaited vacation visiting friends overseas. But a few days in, fun and games came to an abrupt end due...
June 2, 2022 There’s beautiful silence for a little while. The kids are off somewhere playing contentedly, and in the space this creates, I become absorbed with something of my own. This feels like a down payment on the promise of future free time as we evolve out of this all-consuming stage of three kids so young and dependent. So tantalizing. For a moment I feel like I got this–no tablets, no...
February 14, 2022 Our baby is 18 months today. She’s our last, and my intention from the moment we decided to try for a third has been to be present. It is so tempting to jump ahead to a future stage that promises fewer demands on my time, a little more freedom, a little less work. It may be true–though nothing’s guaranteed–that it will be easier when she’s sleep-trained, cup-and-silverware...
February 6, 2022 It would have been my dad’s birthday. His nickname was “Burr,” and my family celebrates “Burr Day” every year with something he loved: sweet treats. When he was sick, but could still enjoy them, we would gather the best pastries from three or four specialty bakeries in driving distance and assemble a massive platter of flakey, gooey goodness. It is our family’s way to...
1/28/22 Our daily routine doesn’t leave a lot of free time: get the kids ready, school/daycare drop-off, work til a few minutes before pick-up ends, rush to pick-up, playground detour, make dinner, eat dinner, bedtime…and only once all that is done, a few precious obligation-free moments. Often by the time they’re all down, it’s late enough that all I want to do is passively take in something on...
For the last year, our oldest child has been begging for a toy kitchen. Our former neighbors had the ubiquitous IKEA kitchen. Before they moved, our son would plead to go play at their house, even though their kids are younger, so he could access his favorite toy. Now that vaccines have made playdates possible again, I frequently hear about the magical lives of other kids in other families who...