I’m a writer. I’m a mother. Recently, I attended a reading by a woman whose bestselling book I really enjoyed, and I admired (still admire!) her greatly. The heart-eyes emoji? That’s me. But I misheard her when she was giving her talk, and thought she mentioned having a young child. My jaw almost dropped. How could this incredible author have

The funny thing about parenthood is how much people will tell you before you become a parent (a lot) and how much you’ll actually listen to (not a lot, if you’re me).  It’s not that I didn’t know that having a child would drastically change our lives as a small family, but the ways it changed weren’t quite what I

“I like these ones best,” I said to my husband, turning my laptop screen so he could see the hampers I’d carefully saved to my Etsy favorites list. “Hmm,” he said in response. “You can fill it with LUSH bath bombs or flowers or something,” I added ever-so-helpfully, more of a joke, but also, you know, if he wanted to,

  My daughter has a mop of red wavy hair.  It’s an adorable delight.  But there have been some surprises along the way with being the mama to a ginger.  If you’ve got a brand new baby ginger human, I’ve got some stuff to share with you from my almost-three-years of experience (I’m clearly an expert now, where’s my certificate?):

Low: My daughter was not quite two and was just finding her freedom at the playground when it happened.  Even as I saw it happening, I couldn’t quite make it to her in time to stop what happened next.  The swing she was blissfully unaware of was hurtling back towards her, bigger kid on it, hard plastic whizzing forwards until

  I’m not quite sure what I did with all the time I had pre-baby. There were weekends, but what did I do with them? There were long stretches of free time in the evenings after work, but where did that time go? Time was so unmanaged, unscripted, free for the taking. Now I have a 2-soon-to-be-3-year old and time

Maybe I’m parenting wrong because I bribe my kid. Maybe I’m parenting wrong because I potty trained too early. Maybe I’m parenting wrong because an article Great Aunt Edna* shared is insisting that if I don’t curb my daughter’s enjoyment of Peppa Pig now, her whole life will be squandered in front of screens. Maybe I’m parenting wrong because I

  Have family friends over for dinner. Enjoy a wonderful, rosy, innocent time watching your kids all play together.  Suspect nothing. Awaken with a start at 2 in the morning to your child crying and running hot with a fever. Administer fever-reducing treatment, snuggle, and then go back to bed while groggily hoping that by the morning, this will all

For the longest time, I looked forward to the time when my little girl could do some extracurricular activities.  But as my daughter gets closer and closer to turning three, I find myself caring less.  Before, I kept thinking of three as the gamechanger age; the age where my daughter could finally start taking a fun toddler class somewhere.  Would

Cue the dirge music over the montage of this motherhood documentary.  Imagine a narrator providing a voiceover of my daily motherhood log. The camera sweeps over images of an empty backyard covered in frost, wind whipping through the bare branches of trees, an empty swing rocking in the breeze.  It’s mid-March.  We have run out of fingerpaints.  We have run