Saturday morning, chore day. There is a to-do list as long as my arm, and I am trying to decide where to begin. The girls had a sleepover the night before, and the boys are attending a Men’s Breakfast. I relish a few precious minutes to sit, think and read before the rush. An hour …
They urgently run in the door looking for cousins. No formal greetings made, there are games waiting to be played and stories to share. Some gather in the T.V. room and get sidetracked with a show while others rush outside to the swings. Two wait impatiently for a game of Risk, two go upstairs to …
Rushing, always rushing. I grab a bag of snacks and wait impatiently the three minutes it takes the corn to pop. My oldest daughter opens the side door of our house and hollers that one child is pulling another’s hair inside the van. It will be an all-out brawl if I don’t get out there. …
She is finally asleep, that little ball of energy, my spitfire. A half-dozen times, I have lost count now, my baby girl calls for me to do one thing or the other, always stalling for time. It is a battle, sleep does not come easy for her. I hear nothing for a glorious stretch of …
I am standing at the back of Coles book shop, my head buried in an interesting new read I have found tucked in between a few other books on discipline. The book happens to be Bringing Up Bebe, by Pamela Druckerman, her controversial book on how the French parent differently than their American counterparts. I …
A while back, I had a chat with a mother friend of mine who is a bit older and wiser than I am. She shared with me that when her kids were growing up, she always had felt she was a bad mother. She had a daughter that she would constantly butt heads with and …
While eating lunch with a friend the other day, the topic of spring cleaning and yard work came up in conversation. I listened as she told me all the chores she had accomplished outside over the weekend, silently creating for myself a to-do list that might start to scratch the surface of jobs badly needing …
My mother and I were talking on the phone last night, and I moved from room to room doing my “end-of-the-evening” tidy up. As it was time for my son’s bedtime, I went in to his room to say goodnight and tuck him in, all while I had the phone neatly perched in between my …
I am sitting on the blue rug in my classroom with three little boys. Guilty, they wait for the final verdict from me and if they are lucky, a pardon. I look at one, and ask the question, “Why did you push Little Girl on the playground?” Pause. I can see the wheels turning in …
I have been thinking about things today. Deep things. I feel a little blue, so forgive me for the shadow this might cast on this essay. But permit me to say that I sometimes feel caught up in extenuating circumstances, over which I have no control, and these self-same circumstances can sometimes be enough to …
This past week, I read a note from a friend in which she stated she would not be allowing two former classmates from university access to her group of friends on Facebook due to the grief these girls had caused her in university. She actually posted this note as her Facebook status, thus publicly denying …
I use to live for a night out. I say live for, but if that were really true, I’d be dead by now. I don’t get out much. I can faintly remember a time in my life where Friday night was associated with socializing and getting out of the house. I won’t say what other …