My daughter has picked out the baby she would like us to adopt. She wants this one: Unfortunately for her, this is the baby on the Care.com commercial that she saw last week. But she is adamant that this is the one she wants. “Can we get that one, mommy? The one with the pink bow.” Her older 6-year-old sister rolled her eyes and said, “We can just … Continue reading
I sat down today to make my summer list – you know, the master list of all the wonderful memories we’re going to make, places we’re going to visit and activities we are going to do that will undoubtedly make my child love me and crown me Mother of the Year by the end of August. It’s foolproof! Foolproof, I say! Well, until I made my critical mistake. … Continue reading
I made my peace with Disney princesses. Or so I thought. I fought against the princess takeover in our house for quite some time, spewing feminist ideologies and buying trucks and blocks and androgynous-looking baby dolls for my first daughter. Fast forward a few years and it’s difficult to find a non-princess item in the toy room. But we also talk a lot about why we like princesses. … Continue reading
I love that Angelina Jolie had a double mastectomy. And I love even more that she shared with the world via a New York Times op-ed piece earlier this month. An actress and director, Jolie wrote of how she has the BRCA1 gene defect, which raises her risk of breast cancer to 87 percent and ovarian cancer to 50 percent. So, she decided to remove both of her … Continue reading
I’m staring at a box of maternity clothes tonight, wishing it would release me. It’s just pants and shirts made of polyester and cotton, but somehow their grip on me is tighter than iron. I don’t even like these clothes. By the end of both of my pregnancies, I hated them. That huge red T-shirt that was the only thing that would fit around my belly by the … Continue reading
Like most of you, I watched in horror as the story about three kidnapped teens in Cleveland unfolded on television. Every piece of new information that comes out about what those girls went through locked in that house for 10 years makes me sick allover again. As a mother, I can’t imagine finding out the depraved things that have happened to your precious child while you searched for … Continue reading
I had a doctor tell me recently that I was becoming quite the “Doctor Mom.” Although he said this to be funny, I knew at that moment I had landed squarely in the camp of moms who think they know everything because they have access to Google. I admit it. I am that mom. My husband loves to browse through my search history, which usually goes something like … Continue reading
First Lady Michelle Obama’s referred to herself as a “busy single mother” during an interview last week. She quickly corrected herself, saying she only feels like a single mom sometimes, but her slip of the tongue sparked a bit of an outcry from actual single moms who don’t have a husband — let alone an entire staff of White House helpers — to ease their burden. I agree … Continue reading
Well, it’s happening. The beginning of the end. The end of the beginning. Whichever way I look at it, a new era is slowly creeping in—the era of humiliating my children. I realized things were changing last week when I walked my daughter to her school after spring break. As usual, I was making up a silly song about her life. This particular rendition was something along the … Continue reading
I am not a yeller. Oh, I have it in me to be one, but thanks to my soft-spoken husband, I have avoided becoming a yelling mom. I have never heard my husband yell. Ever. His impeccable control over his emotions has taught me a lot about self-mastery and about how truly silly yelling is—especially when it comes to raising children. That doesn’t mean I haven’t snapped a … Continue reading