As part of my ongoing Happiness Project, I am working on improving our family’s eating habits, using Michael Pollan’s writing as a guide. Last month, I endeavored to follow a piece of Pollan’s advice from the “Eat” section of his book In Defense of Food: “Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” (You [...]
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Healthy baby. Healthy mama. Oh, happy day.
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I hate surprises. I always have. And it will come as no surprise to most of you that I am a planner and a control freak through and through. To wit: a few weeks before Husband and I got married, friends of ours threw me a surprise bridal shower. The ruse to get me there? [...]
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Big Boy’s birthday came and went during my blog hiatus, with nary a fawning, demonstrative post from me. I thought I might try to remedy that today, three years, one month, and one day after Big Boy made me a mother. Big Boy entered the world much the way he now chooses to live in [...]
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I mentioned last week when introducing my Happiness Project that I had read a number of enjoyable and inspiring books this summer. One of those was Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food. I have been a fan of Michael Pollan’s straightforward, fluid writing about nature and food for awhile. I previously enjoyed several of his [...]
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I’m a big fan of Gale’s blog, Ten Dollar Thoughts. Gale is a terrific writer who regularly serves up intelligent, thoughtful, and thought-provoking essays. Last week two of her posts mingled in my mind and got me thinking about Starbucks. Starbucks, you say? Yeah, Starbucks. Stick with me for a moment and you’ll see why. [...]
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Lesson Four of Big Little Wolf’s sensational style series at Divorced Women Online introduces us to the importance of accessories in personalizing an ensemble. According to Big Little Wolf, “Accessories should enhance your appearance, make sense with your style, and tell your stories.” Emphasizing the love of the French for quality and individuality, Wolf focuses [...]
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How could I be ready for this next chapter when the previous one hadn’t yet been completed? How could I love anyone as much as I love Big Boy? How could I take care of two babies under two at the same time? A year ago today, at 12:47 p.m., I saw you, and I [...]
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I am a European mutt. The daughter of a dad who is half German, a quarter Irish, an eighth English, and an eighth Swedish and a mom who is half Czech, a quarter German, and a quarter Irish. All that makes me a quarter Irish. And I’ve got the freckles, sunburn-prone complexion, and Catholic guilt [...]
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Today is Ash Wednesday, a traditional day of repentance and the first day of Lent in the Western Christian calendar. I spent the Ash Wednesdays of my youth girding myself for 46 days of Going Without. My childhood Lenten promises, like my New Year’s resolutions, were usually those that involved a Giving Up. No chocolate. [...]
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A recent article in the New York Times captured my attention, not only for its subject matter, but also for the comments that it drew. In “How to Speak Nanny”, Hilary Stout explored the uneasy relationships that exist between many working mothers and the women they hire to care for their children. According to Stout: [...]
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In a recent post at Privilege of Parenting, Bruce offered some advice to a reader concerned about the sleep issues of her six-year-old son. In his response, he shared the advice of two of my personal parenting heroines, Jennifer Waldburger and Jill Spivack, the dynamic duo behind Sleepy Planet and the authors of the Motherese [...]
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Are you pro-choice? No, I don’t mean it like that. Do you let your kids choose – and, if so, how much? A post at Privilege of Parenting and a comment on a post of mine have me thinking about the choices our kids make and the choices we make for them. On Sunday, Bruce [...]
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To me, the most resonant of Gretchen Rubin‘s Four Splendid Truths is the third one: “The days are long, but the years are short.” Indeed, as far as this mother of two is concerned, truer words have never been spoken. For the past couple of weeks, I have really been feeling that “long” part of [...]
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Flying home on Sunday afternoon after another week away, I was actually a bit sad to see the trip come to an end. That is unusual for me: I usually prefer to stay home than to travel. I enjoy planning vacations, mapping out an itinerary, but, as often as not, I find myself counting down [...]
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Dear M and S, After your shower on Saturday, thoughts of you mixed with the forced air of the heater to warm me on my drive home. About an hour after I left you, a squall filled the air with snow; the flakes danced horizontally, then vertically, seeming to grow up from the highway. And [...]
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Because 13 nights away from home over Christmas just wasn’t enough for this vagabond family of four, we’re off again. In just a few short hours, we will be flying south, heading for the Happiest Place on Earth. No, not Denmark. (Hi, S!) Nope, not Costa Rica either. (Hi, Gwen!) That’s right, boys and girls, [...]
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I have just come up with a hypothesis so revolutionary that I wanted to share it with you right away: Youth just might be wasted on the young. My first piece of evidence: Big Boy has recently decided that he will not deign to eat dinner, regardless of what is served to him. Whether it [...]
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Two weeks of family time over the holidays got me thinking about birth order and how it affects us as kids and as adults. When I was pregnant with Tiny Baby, I spent some of my weeks of bed rest reading uniquely unhelpful books about birth order, gender, and age spacing between kids. These books [...]
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In this week’s edition of Six Quick Picks, I bring you some highlights from my own personal 2009. 1. January: Big Boy and I traveled to Orlando, Florida with my parents. It was on this trip that his language skills really began to explode. He started naming everything in sight. We started having conversations. At [...]
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Because a holiday season packed with Hanukkah, my birthday, and Christmas just wasn’t enough for Husband and me, we decided to get married, six years ago today, on New Year’s Day in the city where we met, fell in love, and lived for several years – both as students and as adults. I knew then [...]
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Image: “Christmas Gifts,” by Kelvin Kay at Wikimedia Commons via a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License. 13 nights,3 states,3 planes,3 cars,5 buses,6 beds,2 cribs,6 Pack ‘n Plays (or is it Packs ‘n Play?),2 nights of Hanukkah,1 birthday,1 Christmas Eve,1 Christmas,and 3 UPS boxes full of presents later,I am home at last, home at [...]
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Growing up, my family traveled almost exclusively by train. From our Connecticut home, we made separate cross-country train trips to Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, and Seattle, among other western locations. As a result of our train journeys, accompanying side excursions to national parks, and subsequent trips to Hawaii and Alaska, I have been to [...]
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Image: Home Sweet Home by John Fekner via Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons License. Before I went to college, I had lived in the same house all my life. And, before I moved to the Midwest in the summer of 2007, I had never lived more than two hours away from that house. In [...]
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When I was in second grade, I lobbied my teacher to be the first girl in my school’s history to be the narrator at First Communion. Being the narrator was the plum speaking part and, as I pointed out to Mrs. M., I couldn’t understand why a girl – clearly so fond of her own [...]
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Last week, the witty, wise, and altogether wonderful Big Little Wolf gave me my first holiday gift, the Sugar Doll award. This prize comes with the bloggy equivalent of a required acceptance speech. And so, as part of my Holiday Hiatus, I give you the first installment in this Very Special Ten Part Mostly Silly [...]
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Want an example of a working mom successfully compromising to make her marriage work? Then check out Jodi Kantor’s long portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama in yesterday’s New York Times magazine section. What is so refreshing about this article – or really, what’s refreshing about Michelle Obama in general – is how open it [...]
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