This poem, Do the Next Thing, is a long-time favorite of mine. During holidays and stressful moments, I refer to it even more often. My hope for you is that this simple printable image– hung on your refrigerator, taped above your busy kitchen counter, or framed on a shelf– can make your coming Christmas season “doings” a […]

Wanna know five ways to ruin Mother’s Day for yourself? #1- EXPECT YOUR DAY TO GO WELL IN EVERY WAY. Expect the kids– no matter how young– to be dressed to perfection, on their own, or by someone else, without your help. Expect that you will be waited on, hand and foot. Though more may […]

When you consider what you’d like in a young man, be honest… what ranks up there? Good looks? Nice eyes? Enjoyable sense of humor? Taller than you? Fun to talk to? Heck, I remember looking for those things (and getting them 🙂 I love my husband’s blue eyes…)… so I’m not knocking these “lesser” desires… but […]

1. THEY ARE PRECIOUS AS BABIES. PRECIOUS!!! We built a pen out of the cardboard box from a deck box. We taped it to the floor in a trapezoidal shape so they wouldn’t have any 90-degree corners to run into (and get suffocated by the others, which apparently can sometimes be a problem with small […]

Five-month-old Luke is crawling now… or at least scooting very purposefully. And with every scoot, we get inches closer to a collision with two-year-old Theo’s self-orientation. Theo, our funny, introverted, snuggly, more-than-a-little-bit-opinionated boy has had two and a half years’ “reign” on the throne. By that I mean, more often than not, things go his way. Or he […]

This is the mismatched shoe bin at our house right now. WHAT????! (As I told my husband… “SOCKS are explainable. They get wedged behind dressers and slip under beds. But SHOES?????!”) WHY do I have this many mismatched blue flip-flops and mismatched black dress shoes???! The struggle is real. CLICK TO SEE A 30-second VIDEO of my […]

Last week, after an afternoon where I took 30 minutes out to play and be silly with my kiddos on the trampoline, my 8 year old daughter said: “Mama! I’m so glad you’re back…”  I smiled, thinking I knew what she meant, but asked to be sure. She answered, “it’s just… you’ve been nursing, and taking care […]

Have you been in this place? In between sizes In between hormone swings In between “normals” in your daily routine In between feelings of competence & incompetence In between very little sleep and normal amounts of sleep In between a variety of very STRONG feelings My precious little man is 8 weeks old today, and I’m there. The […]

How you answer this question affects everything. It’s a game-changer. It’ll make or break the way your day goes. But perhaps even more importantly, it’ll affect the way you THINK AND FEEL about how your day goes. ESSENTIALISM, FOR MOMS I’ve been listening to the book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown. […]

It’s all about intake and outflow. To become a better writer, one must become a better READER. Consider Frederick Douglass– without formal education, he devotedly read and analyzed speeches by successful public speakers of his day. Then, he practiced. A LOT. He is still consistently listed as one of the greatest thinkers and speakers that America […]

Can we just say it: After you become a parent, the first few months are brutal, yes? Well, they were for me, with Ethan (our first son, in 2002): NICU for a week I had mastitis for a solid, bloody-cracked-painful month Trying to figure out every single thing, and feeling like it mattered so very […]

As I’m typing this my daughter is practicing sixteenth-note scales on her violin. 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a,3-e-&-a, 4-e-&-a, and on and on it goes. Though her violin is in tune, and though she’s playing just as she should, it doesn’t yet sound proficient. Her sixteenth notes are uneven, and her finger placement lacks the precision required to […]

Every kids gets to this place. Or at least every kid in our home has reached it. I remember reaching it in school… heck, I’m feeling it right now (as I write this) in regard to camping. I feel like I can’t. I know, in my head, that other people do it. But it feels […]

I just took another Myers-Briggs assessment. Every time I do it, I feel fear that my letters will change, but no… They haven’t changed since college. 🙂 The numbers strongly confirmed: by this measure, I’m still an ENTP. E= Extroverted (“extraverted” to the MBTI purist) N= Intuition T= Thinking P= Perceiving Here’s one description: Prophet: You are agile, […]