These are a few of my favorite things: A) Children, mine and others’. They are weird and funny, sweet and opinionated small people. I like that I get to watch them grow and help shepherd them along the path to adulthood. I like seeing my toddler pick up my phone and say to me, “No sir. I call China.” I…
Month: November 2013
Snippets
This afternoon was memorable with my eldest son’s priesthood ordination, and then a celebratory lunch afterward. Here are a few snippets of the day prior to and during the events: 1. Jack threw my large glass vase filled with water and the flowers I bought for the big day across the vestibule. Ten million shards of glass covered a surprisingly…
The Boy Who Is So Much Fun
Twelve years ago tomorrow, I felt like someone had attached a vice to my lower back and was crushing my will to live. Apparently, they call this “back labor.” My firstborn was prepping to make his debut. Jeff took the day off work. He listened to me moan and groan. He rented me seven videos from Blockbuster (ha!), none of…
Open Letter to a New Mom of a Special-Needs Newborn
Dear New Mom of a Newborn with a Syndrome, I don’t know you personally, but because your sister is a friend of my sister, I saw on social media that you gave birth to a special little baby this week. Congratulations, momma. Your son is beautiful. He is perfect. He is strong and valiant. I’m writing this not because I…
Back in the Kirkland Signature Saddle
A few months ago, I packed up my two little boys and went to Costco for milk, etc. As we walked through the parking lot, Charlie was like a pinball slamming this way and that at high speeds. He asked, shouting, if we could buy chocolate raisins. I assured him that if he could be a) quiet, and b) good…
It’s Curtains for Us: A Little Household Purgatory
Some people have described hell as a state of being acutely disappointed in oneself. Aron Ralston described hell as being trapped for days in the bottom of a cold dark canyon, alone. But I discovered today that hell is actually ironing a bunch of enormous curtains. If I do not live well, when I die, I believe I will be…
Holiday Planning Notebook
I’m dying to put up my Christmas tree. I can’t do it yet because it’s a fresh tree and it has yet to be cut and tied to the top of our car for special delivery at home. But I did fire up the Pandora holiday hits and had a little dance party in the kitchen to Mariah Carey’s “All…
Let’s Visit the Shrink
This morning I climbed out of my warm bed before my children woke, to the chirping of a smoke detector in need of a new battery. It was too early to get up, but there would be no buses coming to collect my boys for school today. The behavioral health clinic and my boys’ psychiatrist were waiting. The look of…
Give Me Five
I wrote an essay in graduate school about how my four sisters and I resembled the five fingers on a hand. We came from the same place—the same family, but we were stretching into different directions and different lives. We were connected, yet we were going our own way. The tone of the essay reflected the need the five of…
Baby Turns Two
Tonight at the family dinner, we remembered why winter is the unpopular step-sibling of the other, more gregarious seasons. Winter family dinners move us from the spacious kid-friendly backyard into the not-as-spacious house where suddenly everybody is shouting to be heard over the din of everybody else shouting to be heard. All twenty-five of us. We love each other, but…