Who does your Mom sing?
“Who does your Mom sing?” An honest question asked by my 7 year old to a friend at school. The boy looked at him strange and replied, “nobody.” Ryan came home completely amazed. “And…Mom! He doesn’t know who Steven Tyler is. Ozzy Osborne, Dimebag or even Kurt Cobain!” He couldn’t believe it. I laughed and […]
A fast and furious second home birth
July 18th, 2009 – the day I had guessed my baby would make her grand entrance, and by 5pm I was showing no signs of labor whatsoever and feeling pretty discouraged. I was only six days overdue, as I had fully expected, but my parents had to travel back to Wisconsin the next morning, and […]
Underwater at 8 months pregnant
“While trying to stay in shape (yeah, right!), keep working, and let out some creative energy while pregnant with baby #4, I decided it was time to move my work into the ocean.”
Kids are portable
One of the promises that my husband and I made to ourselves when we talked about having children, was that we’d continue to satisfy our desire to travel. We looked forward to carting our future children around the country and around the world. Our 16 month old daughter has taken three trips in her life, […]
Our secular baby-welcoming ceremony
When our baby Gene was born, my partner Martin and I had already decided during our pregnancy that there was going to be no christening/baptism or anything along those lines as we simply didn’t go to church or follow a religion.
But we DID want to have some sort of ceremony. Here’s what we came up with…
Family of six hikes 93-mile Wonderland Trail
This summer, Ben and Kami Crawford decided to go for a little family hike … “little” meaning 93 miles around Mount Rainier’s Wonderland Trail in Washington. They made the trek with their four kids — ages 2, 4, 6 and 8 — in a total of 12 days, going up and down 22,000 feet of […]
Awesome post on constructive communication with family
Dale Mcgowan wrote a great post recently about dealing with disagreements with extended family, and about how it’s not about “win/lose” conversations or proving to anyone that your beliefs are right, but rather working toward common goals: In most cases, the problem isn’t that Grandma is actively preventing you from parenting the way you want—it’s […]
When I fell in love with my daughter
I thought it would be like falling in love with a man, where you got a rush and butterflies in your stomach; I thought I would moon over her and love would sweep me off my feet. It never happened that way.