I have a child
who is so bad
He makes me yell.
He makes me mad.

I hear him running on the stairs,
But when I look, there's no one there.
He scatters toys across the lawn.
He sets alarms to ring at dawn

He skips and bounces down the hall.
He knocks the pictures off the wall.
He takes the cushions off the couch.
He spits chewed food out of his mouth.

Read More

1. Please stop sending me dress-up clothes

Well-intentioned friends and relatives have been sending us dress-up clothes. A bevy of princess dresses can trash a bedroom in less than five minutes. The cleanup time is substantially greater, and accompanied by a soundtrack of whining and negotiation:

"Honey, you clean up these dresses and I'll help you zip it."

"But I caaaaaan't. I'm too tiiiiired."

"You pick up these pink ones, honey, and daddy will help with the rest."

"But daddy, it's too hard."

"If you weren't tired enough to make this mess, you aren't tired enough to clean it up."

"But I caaaaan't. Waaaaaaaaaaaahh."

Please. No. More. Dress up clothes.

Read More

Toxic toys?

I would like to preface this post with the emphatic announcement that I am NOT PREGNANT! Not even a bit. Laylee may think otherwise. Laylee may tell people otherwise. My abdominal region may hint otherwise but the truth is, I am not currently with child.

Read More

10) "Please don't pick your nose with the Pretty Pretty Princess spinner hand."

9) "If you're going to mash your bread into a gigantic ball, please make sure you eat it." Read More

Jack's first birthday is Saturday. And do you know what that means? The first birthday party. Gah. Kill me now.

For someone who loves throwing parties, this lack of excitement is new territory for me. Usually I've got my calendar out weeks in advance, plotting when to buy the food, make the favors, put up the decorations and bake the treats. I always end up inviting a ton of people and spend the days leading up to the party oscillating between aaauuuuggghhhh what if nobody comes?! and auuuuuuggghhhh what if we don't have enough room?! I make my husband absolutely insane with my Deranged Clean Freak persona (which only makes her entrance right before a party, unfortunately) and my insistence that the entire living room needs rearranging. But then the guests begin arriving and I start filling wine glasses and oh, I love having parties at my house.

Read More

I recently read an article from The Washington Post entitled "Feeling Her Pain," all about men being present in the delivery room. When my parents were born, expectant fathers could be found pacing in the waiting room. By the time my sisters and I were born (70's), many hospitals were beginning to give dads the option of attending the actual birth. Today, it's almost expected that we be in "the room." I attended the births of both of my kids, and I was extremely anxious both times (especially the first time around).

Read More

It's May and it's freezing and my kids decided they should have a picnic today. So we bundled up in jackets, hats and mittens and headed outside. The mittens weren't totally necessary but I just didn't feel like being cold today. Neither did Magoo.

Read More

I've had a string of friends have their first babies in the last couple months and visiting these tired new moms and their wrinkly little bundles has got me daydreaming about this time last year, getting ready to have my own first baby.

I did most of my daydreaming over the weekend, while in bed waiting to die from the 24-hour stomach bug. (If any of my new mom friends are interested in a quick post-partum weight loss plan, I highly recommend the 24-hour stomach bug. Seven pounds in one day! That's impressive, folks!) It was a particularly sunny weekend for the Pacific Northwest and I was stuck listening to lawn mowers and neighbors' barbecues through my open bedroom window. I remembered how I didn't really experience the outdoors last spring either, cooped up as I was with my brand new infant and our Boppy pillow.

Read More

The heartbreaking intimacy of naked John Lennon curled around Yoko Ono the morning of the day he died; Whoopi Goldberg impish in a tub of milk; pregnant Demi Moore, nude -- an advertisement for raw, sexual, unapologetic Woman. Annie Leibovitz's art worships life, defies banality, mocks self-importance.

But today I am so annoyed at her I just want to take away her gummy bears.

Annie Leibovitz is the woman behind the Vanity Fair photograph of fifteen year-old Miley Cyrus topless, wrapped in a bed sheet, clinging to herself.

It's not that 15 year-old girls are -- or should be -- asexual. Adolescents are hypersexual because they do not yet have the maturity, wisdom, experience to control or protect themselves. Until they reach the age of consent, that responsibility falls on the adults in their communities. It is wrong for adults to engage children as sexual beings -- no matter what those children claim to want.

Read More

My 10 year old son began working on a list of things he wants to do this summer.  He said that he always thinks he will have plenty of time to do all the things he wants, but then suddenly summer is over and he never gets around to it.

I don't have the heart to tell him that it is called life.

Instead, I embraced his list making, and we have been making a family list of things to do this summer.  A list that is ambitiously titled "101 Things To Do This Summer", even though we haven't listed that many yet.

Read More