I write letters to my kids on their birthdays (and sometimes on their half-birthdays too).
I was going to wait until I wrote the PERFECT post to publish this photo. It's my favorite from our recent family photo shoot. Our girls were standing on a sloped hill of dried winter leaves. I was a little worried that our youngest might fall. But then our 4-year-old said, "If she falls, I […]
Tim took this picture of me before a run - no make-up, hair in a ponytail. I put one leg up against the wall. My 4-year-old said, "I can do that too." So she did. She often tells me that when she grows up to be a "b-dult" ("UH-dult," I enunciate) she is going to […]
After Tim & I go out most anywhere, we usually turn to each other in the car and ask THE question. We've asked it for over ten years now so we both anticipate it. "What can I do differently?" The intent of the question is to encourage both of us to think critically about how […]
We took our 4-year-old to the dentist on Friday. She was scared of going the whole week prior. When we got there, she watched me get my teeth cleaned - intently. Then, she crawled up on that big seat and sat as still as wood. She opened her mouth and listened to instructions. The hygienist […]
Yesterday, I was thinking about our neighborhood - the community here, the culture that has developed, the things we've appreciated, the things we desire, and the things we would have done differently. We know a lot of our neighbors. We're not the garage-up, garage-down kind of people. We spend a lot of time in our […]
A few days ago, my 4-year-old folded all of the laundry. She came up with the idea all on her own. Then, she said, "I fold laundry even better than you." [I didn't argue]. She put it all away too. And she did a REALLY GOOD job. Not just for a 4-year-old. For anybody. Almost […]
Our dining room table is gone now. Tim sold it to a couple off Craigslist. When I came home from lunch with the girls, the house looked so empty. "Did you take a picture of it, by chance?" I asked him, wistfully. I haven't written much about the process of selling our things because I […]
Yesterday, I took our girls on a "nature walk" in our neighborhood to collect smooth rocks, colored flowers, and interesting sticks. As we walked, we passed homes festively decorated for Halloween. Our 4-year-old suddenly pointed at an adjacent house and whispered in my direction, "Are they celebrating bad things?" I thought about how to answer. […]