As of about two o’clock this morning, I am officially the mother of a ten year old.
Ten.
One Zero.
It now takes two whole digits to accurately describe him.  Or rather, his age.  It obviously takes more than mere numerals to describe the rest of him.
As we drove to Walt Disney World yesterday to celebrate his birthday [...]

Do you know why there are so many mommy blogs?
Because it’s easy.
If you have kids, you can throw up pictures from pretty much any day of your life and be like “LOOK!  I POSTED!  SPECIAL MOMENTS WITH MY KIDS!”  and someone, somewhere, will be all “awwww, you have babies and they eat turkey.  So cute.”

And [...]

On Sunday we – meaning me, Jared, Devin and Emma – set out for a day of fall festivities at a local pumpkin patch.  The temperatures  here in Florida were actually fall like, and it was the first family outing we would all be on together since before Hell Month.  I grabbed two camers to [...]

“I watched them, thinking that little girls who make their mothers live grow up to be such powerful women.”  -Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love
I read those words and stopped for a second, wondering if an editor in some glass New York City office building had missed a typo.
“…little girls who make their mothers live [...]

I was laying in bed desperately trying to ignore the fact that I wasn’t sleeping, even though my alarm clock wouldn’t go off for another 15 minutes.
My annoyance at being awake before 6:00 am was softened by the squishy comfort of finding myself in the middle of  a kid burrito.
Emma was curled snugly into the [...]

Dear Devin,
You told me over dinner that Grandma has taken you to Chuck E. Cheese like a million times.
You lamented the fact that I have never taken you to Chuck E. Cheese’s since we’ve lived in Florida.
“Yes, well, Grandma is clearly a better parent than me,” I told you.
“Can I move in with Grandma then?” [...]

The first night we got home, I forgot to feed my kids dinner.
I haven’t cooked a meal in over a month.  Jared and I ate out or ate string cheese and beer or, in most cases, just didn’t eat at all.  I’m always amazed by single people who go through the effort of cooking entire [...]

I get my kids back tomorrow.
I’m heading towards them today.
Yes, I won’t see them until Saturday and I’ll be spending Friday night in Atlanta and not in Nashville – the drop off point that is halfway between here and there.
But at least, finally, I’m heading towards them.
Knowing that makes the ache left by their absence [...]

“Is being a mom hard?” she asked.
“Yes.”
I answered without hesitation.  Fear and a desire to understand better washed over her face almost imperceptibly.  She mentioned something about working and the things we do.
“It’s not taking care of them that’s hard.  I mean, you figure that out pretty quickly, just like with anything else.”
“Right,” I saw [...]

“Alright, Mom.  I have to go.”
Our morning conversation was beginning to bleed into my working hours and I could no longer ignore the screams from my inbox.
“OK, baby.  I love you.”
“I love you, too.  Thanks for listening to me be a raging whore all morning.”
“Mmm… I’d say raging bitch.”
“Oh.  Right.”
“Technically I don’t think I can [...]

My kid is smarter than your kid.
I mean, probably.
But to be fair, he’s smarter than most kids.  This is not news to us.  (Nor is it the same as saying he is better than your kid.  I mean, clearly, I think so.  But I understand if we would have to agree to disagree [...]

The condensed version of this post is, basically:
I had a good weekend.
The long version is:
Wednesday night I took my last Cymbalta.  My primary care doctor recommended I switch my anti-depressants in order to fix everything that was wrong with me.  My endocrinologist explained that yeah, actually, Lexapro is probably a better drug for someone like [...]

I don’t know if other mothers do this, but I’m constantly thinking about how my children will remember their childhoods.
We’ll be in the middle of our lives, and suddenly I see it all as a snapshot.  I look at the people and the surroundings, the faces and the details of what we’re wearing, and I [...]

The other day on twitter I informed the Internets that I was finally working through all of the pictures from my Dad’s visit to Florida a couple weeks ago.
Because that is the kind of interesting information I like to share with the world with modern technology.
And while you are mocking me for my mastery of [...]

.!.
It was early Saturday morning and no one in the house had really started moving yet.  I was in my pajamas, enjoying my morning coffee and making shopping plans on the phone with Hilly and Faiqa.
Emma came bursting out of the sliding glass door onto the back patio.  She was wearing nothing but her underwear [...]