COVID19 is making me feel like a bad mom.

(What I have done for the last 2 months: yoga every day. What I have not done for the last 2 months: felt, in any way, relaxed, calm, peaceful, or zen.) *** try (verb):  make an attempt or effort to do something; an attempt to achieve or attain.  trying (adjective): difficult or annoying; hard to endure. Has any other homonym been more applicable during ...

Two hands

Two hands. Sometimes, having two hands feels sufficient. With two hands I can tickle my son until he squeals. With two hands I can give my daughter a relaxing face massage. I can open most jars, clean up most messes, do most TikTok dances. Often, two hands feel like they cannot do enough. They feel futile; laughable; ...

My Top Five Tips For Parenting During This Scary Time

I was just straightening the pile of towels that the kids and I had folded this morning when it hit me: my kids folded towels, this morning. They are not folded in the perfect squares that make the control freak in me feel most comfortable, but nothing about our lives today, quite frankly, makes the ...

My children have a different accent than I do

"Now, everyone, take out your R and J," said Mr. Segal, as he paced, slowly but excitedly, at the front of the classroom. It was 2000. Mr. Segal was my high school English teacher, and he emanated passion an inspiration as only supremely gifted high school English teachers do. I was lucky enough to have him for both ...

Baby Ever After

"I know words, and I love words, but I simply do not have the words to express my gratitude for this book and for all of the people who made it possible." When I wrote this in the acknowledgments of Baby Ever After, it was my way of trying to convey the deep and profound appreciation I feel in ...

Sometimes, the story just writes itself.

“Mom?” Belle asked, licking the last bit of chocolate icing from the back of her hand. “Mommy? Do you still blog?” We were sitting in the hard, plastic bucket seats in the single terminal at the Cyril E. King Airport in St. Thomas, and she’d just eaten an individual Sarah Lee chocolate cake square, after I veered her ...

Dear Kenny

Dear Kenny, As I leave the hospital, the place where both of our babies were born, and handed to us, and first fed by me, and diapered by you, I hit a sea of blue scrubs, all in different shades and tones. When I first pulled up this morning, for an early test, I thought that it would be like living out ...

Dear babies

Dear babies, First off, I know that you are not babies.  But, I also know that when I feel one of you reach for me in the middle of the night, or smile as you greet me with sleepy, almond-eyes first thing in the morning, or kiss your eyelids as you slumber, it's just like you are my little babies all over again. It ...

Babysitting

originally published on this here site, over four years ago, and I still feel the very same way! Photo circa April, 2014 -- Beau's former signature move. Today, he is still just as crafty, he is just a lot taller.  Or, as I like to call it, “Why everyone who wants to be a parent someday should babysit ...

Being a parent is hard.

"Did you feel the house sway?" I asked, trepidatiously. The people around me all nodded, as we peered outside the sunroom windows, staring at a blowing blanket of white snow. "I know that we all felt the house move when that cyclone passed over us, but our house is over 100 years old, so it must be ...