Over at 3 Things for Mom, founder and editor Lauren has created a website devoted to offering readers a daily Truth, Tip, and Find courtesy of a collection of blogging moms. In her words, “It’s like having your favorite bloggers over for coffee in your PJs every morning.” I’m honored to be over at 3 [...]
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As many of you know by now, Lindsey Mead was one of my first blog loves. I found her site, A Design So Vast, months before I launched Motherese and was inspired then – and continue to be inspired now – by the clarity of her reflections and the poetry of her voice. I can’t [...]
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When you think of Erma Bombeck, the word “feminist” probably doesn’t leap to mind. Instead, you might think of your mother’s well-worn copy of one of Bombeck’s ten bestsellers or a yellowed clipping of one of her syndicated newspaper columns stuck to your childhood fridge with a magnet. And, perhaps, that’s just as Bombeck would [...]
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Denise Ullem’s is one of my favorite voices in the blogosphere. Sensitive, smart, and funny, she never fails to captivate me with her words and her ideas. In this week’s entry in our This Is Childhood series, Denise brings us a look at nine. Abby is Nine. Her experiences contain threads of both the universal as [...]
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Earlier this year, the world lost a mother and writer whom millions had come to think of as a friend. Pauline Phillips, better known as “Dear Abby,” died of natural causes on January 16, 2013 at the age of 94 after years of battling Alzheimer’s. In addition to being the author of the most widely-syndicated [...]
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I’ve been in love with eight ever since I taught third grade right out of college. In this week’s This Is Childhood essay, Amanda Magee perfectly captures the simultaneous innocence and maturity of eight: These years are motion and fire. They are amorphous and finite at once, molten lava coursing through time, inexplicably and [...]
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Reading Tracy’s thoughts about seven makes me feel a little less sad about how quickly these early years with my kids seem to be slipping away: Esther runs down the sidewalk towards me. Her ‘just off the bus’ look includes braids that are quite disheveled, a bit of peanut butter dried on the side of [...]
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We worked on potty training this weekend with our 2-year-old. He was showing all of the signs you read about in parenting magazines: staying dry for long periods of time, showing great (some might even say disconcerting…) interest in other people using the bathroom, excusing himself to take care of his own business. So my [...]
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In this week’s “This is Childhood” post, Bethany Meyer has me looking forward to six – for its silliness, its earnest, its heart. Hello, Age 6. You and I have met on several occasions. Twice you’ve blazed through my house. Upon your arrival, you’ve brought beaming faces to your 6-year-old owners, proud to hold up not one, but two [...]
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Today I’m happy to present the second installment in my Mother/Writer series: a profile of Louise Erdrich, award-winning novelist, poet, children’s book author, independent bookstore owner, and mother of seven (!). Once best known as a leading voice in the second wave of the Native American Renaissance, Louise Erdrich is now hailed as one of the [...]
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Dear Mom and Dad, Happy Valentine’s Day. I don’t tell you often enough how much I love you and how grateful I am to have you as my parents. It’s easy for me to say “I love you” when we talk on the phone, to send you a quick e-mail when I read a new [...]
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Five and I are very good friends. My eldest turned five in September and we’ve spent the last few months butting heads less, talking – real conversations! – more, and easing into our relationship. Five is the first time I’ve felt like I might be a pretty good mom after all. Maybe because of my [...]
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Three days after I became a Midwesterner — according to my driver’s license, at least — my husband and I joined his colleague and her family at our new town’s annual Memorial Day parade. As I lowered my pregnant belly onto the alley of grass between the sidewalk and the town’s main avenue, an advertisement [...]
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I’ve been looking forward to four, to the months when the “yeses” start rolling off his tongue – and off of mine – giving all of the “NOs” and the “NEVERs” some time off. In this week’s stop on our This is Childhood journey, my dear friend Galit reminds me of all of the wonders [...]
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Three is an age I know well. My younger son is smack dab in the middle of it now. In today’s installment of This is Childhood, Nina Badzin tackles this spirited, sensitive age in a lovely, resonant post that reflects not just on her daughter Elissa, but on her own three trips through three and [...]
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One of my New Year’s resolutions is to show more gratitude for the life that I have – even on the days when piggyback ear infections, grocery store meltdowns, and broken washing machines threaten to derail me. In the wake of Sandy Hook, I have tried to be more mindful of the blessings of my [...]
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A little over two years ago, I lay in a hospital bed, a fetal monitor strapped to my belly, ultrasound gel oozing out from underneath, cold and blue as a bruise. Your heartbeat accelerated and decelerated, sending the needle of the monitor dancing in a frenzied staccato – up, then down, then up again. The [...]
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I admit: I’ve been having some trouble getting back into the bloggy swing of things after our week of visitors and ten days on the road. This fall I developed a formula: for every day of visitors or vacation, it takes me half as many days to get back on track. All told, we had [...]
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It is with great pleasure that I present the first installment of my new Mother/Writer series: a look at Barbara Kingsolver, one of my favorite authors and, it seems, one of yours as well. Born and raised in rural Kentucky and trained as a biologist, Barbara Kingsolver now occupies a coveted place in American letters. Oprah-endorsed and [...]
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On Sunday I sat on the floor in the living room, kids napping behind closed doors, my husband watching football, and went through piles of outgrown baby clothes. Like an intake nurse in the emergency room, I busied myself with triage: the impossibly small polka dot sleeper my eldest wore home from the hospital saved in a [...]
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If the only prayer you ever said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice. – Meister Eckhart Thank you for calling for me at 2:48 a.m. Thank you for reaching up to me from your crib, the left shoulder of your fleece cupcake pajamas damp from your tears. Thank you for letting [...]
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One of the most relaxing days I’ve had recently started with a man I barely know poking me in the eye with a metal stick. Allow me to explain. Ever since my eye surgeries this summer, I’ve had check-ups with my retina surgeon every couple of months. The exam starts with one of his techs [...]
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It’s an image that many of us know well: a young woman, her hair tied back with a red and white bandanna with just a hint of feminine curl sneaking out, her powerful forearm and steely gaze competing for your attention. You may have seen her on a poster in a college dorm room or [...]
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If you know me at all, you know that I love books. Luckily, my three kids all share my love of reading. My favorite moment of the day often happens at bedtime when we gather together on Big Brother’s bed to read, three footie pajama-clad cherubs smelling of soap and toothpaste, wide-eyed and ready for [...]
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I read with great interest Julie Myerson’s review of Andrew Solomon’s new book, Far From the Tree, in Sunday’s New York Times Book Review. In his book, Solomon explores the nature of parenthood through the stories of exceptional children and their families. His subjects are “children with ‘horizontal identities,’ a term he uses to encompass all the [...]
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In her classic essay, “Why I Write,” Joan Didion talks about “images that shimmer around the edges” and the way that the shimmer indicates to her, as a writer, that she’s stumbled upon something she’s going to write about. She explains, “…certain images do shimmer for me. Look hard enough, and you can’t miss the shimmer. It’s [...]
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There are some parents who love to help their kids create forts out of couch cushions and then defend those forts against invading armies of Zoolaberks from Mars. Who throw their kids whoop-whoop-whooping up in the air and then tickle-wrestle with them once they land. Who chase them squealing through the house, an afghan over [...]
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When I was little, I loved looking through the tall books that lived on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in our wood-paneled family room. My favorite of all was a slim, heavy volume celebrating the 50th anniversary of Life magazine. Among affecting photos of the Normandy landing, newly liberated Holocaust Survivors, and snow monkeys [...]
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As the campaign season (finally!) comes to a close, I’ve been thinking a lot about parenting and politics. I’ve long been interested in politics. In high school, I volunteered for a Senate candidate, registered voters at lunch, and wrote op-eds in my school newspaper. It was with great pride that I cast my first vote [...]
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Some thoughts today, the third anniversary of the day I started blogging: All my life, I knew I wanted to be a mother. As an older sister, a babysitter, and a teacher, I trained for years for the day I would have kids of my own. For the first year after my oldest son was [...]
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