how I stayed married

"The first time I fell in love with my husband I was nineteen years old.

The second time I was thirty four ..."

Did you know I was at Prodigal Magazine yesterday?  You can read the rest of "How I Stayed Married" here.

it's okay to let your kids struggle (and why i am so terrible at it)

photo by my very talented friend Jesse

Lunch time, and we are in the park.  Rather, I am attempting to leave the park, and it's not going very well.  Three mobile children, two bikes, one stroller, and one dog are all in my possession, and each has a different agenda.  The dog wants to mark every fixture, the boys are riding in two separate directions (neither of which lead back to the car), and the two-year-old, who has ventured out of the house for the first time without a diaper, refuses to walk in her soiled pants.  The parking lot seems to be stretching away from us.  It's excruciatingly slow, but we plod along.  

Then, I hear a cry behind me.  "My bike's broken!  I can't ride it!  I need help!!" 

for the days when you'd rather hide backstage

The baby is screaming, the toddler is in the almost-but-not-yet stage of potty training, and one of the big boys has a cold with the snotty attitude to prove it.  Some mornings I long for a stunt double.

A nanny, a tutor, a housekeeper ... anyone willing to step in for the impossible, disgusting, and  dangerous parts of my life, while I drink coffee backstage.  To un-goop floors, enforce the media restriction, soothe the fussy baby, wipe the runny noses.  I want someone to show up and make being a mom easier.  I'll take over again when life gets to the good part.

The problem is, I suspect this is the good part.

why i'm giving up on God's will

photo by my talented friend Jesse

I hate building with Legos.  I am truly terrible at it.  One time - and only once, though Legos are a fixture in my daily life - I agreed to help one of my sons with a project.  It took me two full hours to tease out and put together twenty three pieces.  Two hours, and the base of the torso of a Transformer was all I had to show for my work.  It was excruciating.

Kind of like searching for God's will.

what's inspiring me, vol 2.

You guys.  Have you all been reading Prodigal Magazine and holding out on me?  I discovered this little gem Friday evening, and I couldn't put it down.  I read until nearly midnight, then spent most of the next day running back to the computer for just one more article.  It's an online magazine for storytellers, which means every post is a story.  This seems like such a simple concept: of course you're telling a story, isn't everyone online telling a story?  No, not really.  

7 quick takes: homeschool freakout edition

- 1- 

Choosing a college, planning a wedding, breast versus bottle feeding, buying a house ... They've got nothing on choosing a homeschool curriculum.

The truth?  The world of homeschooling completely overwhelms me.  So I did what I always do when I get overwhelmed; I ignored it, focusing on fun projects instead, and hoped the answer would magically appear on my doorstep.  To a certain degree it did.  We moved into a community with so many more resources and options than I ever had in the South.  I signed up for a Classical co-op at the beginning of the summer, and didn't think about it again until this week. As I started to actually prepare for our school year, however, I realized this program would be perfect for one of my school-aged children ... and disastrous for the other.  

Spiderman ponders this problem.

time stamped

If you really want a glimpse into my life, stand in my stairwell.

8:35 a.m.

how {not} to measure success

It seemed like a good idea.

So much to do before school starts.  I'll write it down, work through my list.  This is what responsible people do, right?

But that stupid list sabotaged my weekend.

When my husband meandered through a guitar shop, he cut into my time to work on my list.

When someone requested another snack, they were holding me back.

When the baby just. wouldn't. sleep., he interrupted my plans.

All day I snatched and snapped.  My family was in my way.

I forgot the first rule of mothering:


Growing people is my job.