11 things I’ve become obsessed with during quarantine.

Friends, you know me. You know that we are still quarantined, or socially distant, or in the red zone, whatever you want to call it. You know that COVID-19 is making me feel like a bad mom. There has been a lot of womp-womp-ing over here, and so, as I sit here in my living room, my favorite room in ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

happy place

Do you have a happy place? A spot on this earth where you feel most at peace, or joyful, or zen, or brimming with glee? Where you feel most like you? At the moment, I have a few: In my kiddos' arms, With my head on Kenny's shoulder, St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and, Haverford College. For years, I would visit Haverford ...

a blogger?

Hello, my friends. How are you, on this fine day? Did you rest well? I sure hope so. Speaking of rest, I was thinking of you this morning, at 4:30, when I was roused from slumber and then could not manage to fall back to sleep. I tried all of my go-to tricks; the healthy ones, to start. ...

What I want, now.

Last year, right around this very time, I published a post called, What I Want, which was both a Holiday Wish List and a nod to The Spice Girls. Last November, I wrote, "There are so many meaningful things that I want this holiday season, and none of them can be held in my hands. I want for my family and ...