Honestly, can I please at least look like I have a little bit of my life together?  Just one thing?  A small thing would be fine.  I’m realizing that the heading of my to-do list should always be:  Assume you will get none of this done in a timely or pretty fashion! I bought this [...]

So the other day I’m dragging my kids through the grocery store purchasing lunch items and for the gazillionth time they asked for those pre-packaged lunch thingies.  As a former teacher, I have to admit I thought only lazy parents who didn’t care about the nutritional value of their children’s lunches bought Lunchables.   But I [...]

You know how you make spur of the moment decisions and then think better of it later?  Yeah, well, I let my 3-year-old tinkle in the ocean this summer.  The beach house was two blocks in one direction and the ocean was 15 feet away in the other.   I think she emptied every single drop [...]

I think all I ever do is laundry.  There are always baskets and baskets in one stage or another throughout my house.  There is the overflowing dirty-clothes basket in the bathroom, the folded-but-not-put-away baskets in the hallway, the not folded or sorted baskets outside the laundry room, and the baskets piled high with dirty laundry [...]

One of the sweetest things I hear daily is, “Mom, watch this!” Usually it’s followed by another child saying, “Mom, watch me!” and yet another child bellowing, “Look here, Mom!  Watch me!!” Before I know it, I am spinning in circles — blissfully trying to watch all my children do various wonderful things! The other night I [...]

Before I became a single parent, I had a walk-in closet — now I have a fall-in closet. I don’t mean that I fall over all the stuff in it, although that is also true. By “fall in” I mean me falling in on my knees — often in tears. Sometimes this life is just too much to bear. The [...]

On our first morning at the beach, my girls and I picked shells — gleefully filling buckets and buckets. All the shells were broken, hardly discernible as shells, but beautiful nonetheless. It made me think how very much my family is like those shells. We have been bruised, broken, and dashed against some pretty rough stuff, yet there [...]

For me as a single mom, one of the most difficult things about Father’s Day is purchasing the card. It’s agonizing standing there looking at all the “Dad! You’re the greatest!” cards, knowing that they simply don’t apply. My children don’t choose them. That makes me sad and angry. I want my children’s dad to be their hero. [...]