By Kelly I chalk it up to hubris. I had such an extraordinarily productive morning– cleaning the house, picking up toys, vacuuming the half-gallon of pine needles from under our Christmas tree – I thought I would bake cut-out cookies with all three children, right before dinner, all by myself. Idiot. I say that fondly,…
Category Archives: Kelly
Crazy Love
By Kelly The holidays make people crazy. Case in point: Me. I’m thinking about getting a dog for Christmas. It’s not an impulsive decision. My husband and I have been thinking about this for years. We haven’t had a pet since our oldest was born. But during our double-income-no-kids years, we owned six dogs and…
Santa Killer
By Kelly “Santa isn’t real, you know.” So said my seven-year-old daughter to her six-year-old friend as I drove them home from school last week. It’s funny; I never knew I could drive with my brain splattered on the inside of the windshield. Trying desperately to stay on the road – I figured the double…
Irony
By Kelly This post was originally published on my personal blog, Love Well, last May. In keeping with the theme, I’m running this encore essay because my kids are sick again, leaving me little energy — mental or physical — to write something you’d actually want to read. (I assume most of you don’t want…
What I’m Thankful For This Thanksgiving (A Partial List)
By Kelly I’m thankful for the toys scattered around my living room, because it means I have little ones at play. I am thankful for the headache that’s keeping me quiet today, because in the stillness, I am more conscious of the holy beauty of life. I’m thankful for my tiny house, because it has…
Baby Food
By Kelly Growing up, I was never the domestic type. My dream was multiple careers, not multiple kids. I brushed off attempts by my Mom to teach me how to cook and clean and iron. I showed no interest in decorating or design. Heck, I barely knew how to do laundry. In college, I changed…
Heffalump
By Kelly I sat on my kitchen floor last night and played “let’s fall all over Mom” with Teyla. She’s ten months old now, which is both an indisputable fact and an incomprehensible mystery. She’s starting to purposefully interact with us; she offers me bites of her food, for example, and she loves to shriek…
Election Night Urgency
By Kelly The electricity of election night is palpable. During my years as a newspaper reporter and editor and then a TV news producer, I spent many election nights in cold, windowless newsrooms, which, on election night, fairly buzzed with adrenaline, bad coffee and jokes that remain, to this day, unprintable. (Why, yes, I was…
Tales from the Crib
By Kelly I was reading the October 2008 issue of Parenting magazine over the weekend, and once again, the last page made me laugh out loud. Unfortunately, I was in bed at the time. And my husband was sleeping next to me. What happened next is up to debate — no one can prove that…
A Good Mom
By Kelly I was a good mom today. I say that with no small amount of satisfaction, because many days, I’m not. I don’t listen well. I don’t play often. I’m not amazed enough. Simply put, I’m not wholly present. I’m always splintered. I eat lunch with Connor AND check my e-mail. I play Legos…