Dog hair.  Dog hair everywhere. Stacks of junk mail.  It’s not that I don’t ever throw the stuff away — it’s that my daughter thinks junk mail is the best thing on earth.  And who am I to argue?  It’s free, it brings her an incredible amount of glee, and it’s easily recyclable when she gets bored with the current

Before my daughter arrived, I swore I would never… Say no to reading a book. I’m a librarian and a mama to a toddler; I took whole classes on children’s literature and picture books!  So you’d think of all the things for me to unequivocally say yes to, it’d be reading more books.  But even librarians have their limits —

Dear Restaurant That Usually Has Crayons But Then Didn’t That One Time, Hey.  Hi.  Howdy. Can we chat?  I have a bone to pick with you. Look, I know it’s technically a parent’s job to come fully prepared for the next apocalypse.  Our diaper bags and purses and satchels are expected to be stuffed to their brims with the following:

It took several years of trying to have my daughter, and the whole time, people brightly told me to sleep while I could.  When I became pregnant, people continued this urgent advice-giving, the words tumbling from their lips at a madcap pace.  Of course as luck or fate (whichever is cruelest) would have it, I had terrible insomnia throughout my

We’re halfway through two in our house and I just have to say, if you’re in the thick of new-baby fog: it gets loads better.  There are so many little delights that come with a two-year-old, so many marvels that never make it into the milestone books. The fact that my daughter thinks a cup of sour cream is just

It’s been in the single digits outside and we’ve been snowed in and going a little crazy, and now I have some things I need to get off my chest from our extended time inside.  What better way to share them than here with you? My child is so cute when she wants to help cook dinner, and cooking with

I used to spend so much time on the Internet looking at the ways my future house could be — would be, I promised myself.  The perfect wallpaper, the perfect grey walls, the perfect nursery decor, the perfect big farm table for the dining room.  I had the concept of the cozy kind of home I wanted to inhabit, I

I’ve been teaching my daughter to say please and thank you for things diligently.  “What do you say?” I’ve been prompting forever.  “Pees!”  “And?”  “Tank You!”  It’s an ongoing process, but she’s finally to the point where she’ll say the words unprompted every so often. And yet, despite my consistent efforts to raise a polite, thankful child, I find myself

As a mama and a librarian, this is one of my favorite times of year: the time for planning how I’m going to read in the coming year.  In the past I’ve done things like create a goal for how many books I want to read, I’ve participated in year-long activities like Book Riot’s Read Harder challenges, and I’ve winged

  Militant. Stringent. Uncompromising. These are all words you could use to describe our adherence to our bedtime ritual with our toddler.  And you’d better believe it when I say I do not care how bad they make us sound, because it works! (Yes, yes, as soon as I type “it works!” it’s all going to go to heck, but