What I really want for my birthday this year

to sleep in past 6:03 a.m. cake for breakfast to finish my iced coffee before the ice melts a day free of ads for wrinkle serums and smoothers common sense gun legislation new jeans that fit without having to try them on first for someone else to potty train my toddler to lip sync battle with Paul Rudd dinner I didn’t cook a summer without … Continue reading What I really want for my birthday this year

Top Ten Reasons to Travel with Kids

10. You don’t mind dirty looks from strangers when your lap child poops during the plane’s ascent and you can’t change him until you’ve reached cruising altitude. 9. Carrying your toddler around for a week will be the perfect exercise routine after the airline destroys or loses your stroller in transit. 8. The picky eater in your family is ready to branch out (i.e., be … Continue reading Top Ten Reasons to Travel with Kids

MEGOT Status

Now, If you have an award here for someone who can carry a trunkful of grocery bags into the house without breaking a single egg, I’m your girl. A prize for knowing how many bowel movements each child has had on a given day and what their favorite flavor toothpaste is? Bam. Award for forgetting to brush a child’s teeth or going way too long between haircuts and nail trims? Yep. But Mother of the Year? Even the statuette I’m holding looks exhausted and fragile. Wait, is this supposed to look like me? Did you guys model this after the picture of me picking sand out of my eyes at the beach last summer? Is this just another plastic action figure for me to trip on? Continue reading MEGOT Status

[The Beauty of] M[otherhood]

Motherhood is messy. It’s mounds of mac ‘n’ cheese and macrame art. Motherhood magnifies mere mortals, makes Marian martyrs out of mall rats. Motherhood is a masquerade, a mission, a mirror. It’s the ministry of missing mittens. It mutates and metabolizes, muddles minds and mesmerizes. It’s the merging of meek and mighty. It’s malodorous and melodious. It’s midwinter mud pies and midweek mayhem. Motherhood is … Continue reading [The Beauty of] M[otherhood]

Midnight Scream

We learned lyrics to the fight songsang them in a sea of strangers on Saturday morningsthen, fueled by victory or losswe looped arms around each other’s shoulders and swayed to the softness of the alma mater.They told us if we walked into a crowded bar inBrazil and yelled, “Go Green!” someone would respond, “Go White!”because that’s what it means to be a Spartan.And we believed … Continue reading Midnight Scream

A Body I Can’t Trust

My hair has fallen out two more times since I had my daughter. I have peed my pants on multiple occasions, sometimes in public, often while running but also from sneezing (always because I didn’t do enough kegels). Almost nine years into motherhood, my body is still capricious. Fickle. Unforgiving. But this body has also nursed three babies. She has cared for feverish kiddos while wiping her own drippy nose and made broccoli cheese soup from scratch with a toddler strapped to her back. This is the body that kisses foreheads goodnight and dances in the living room after dinner. My body has been on a journey, but she’s returning as someone I recognize, someone I can rely on. Continue reading A Body I Can’t Trust