By Kelly A Tuesday in mid-August doesn’t seem the most likely day for a dream to come true. Even when it dawns sunny and bright and filled with the sing-song of birds and toddlers, the ordinariness is louder than the potential within. That’s how my day started yesterday. A yawn, some coffee. Wipe a nose,…
Monthly Archives: August 2009
Larry the Door Man
By Veronica Every Sunday in our church nursery, an elderly man sits in a chair, watching the door. His name is Larry, and he does not hear very well, but he watches the children and sits next to the door, making sure that no toddlers take advantage of a full nursery or a distracted teacher…
A Mom’s Guide to Soothing First Day of (Pre)School Jitters
By Megan If you’re like me, you’ve been scampering around for a few weeks now, trying to pull together everything on your Back-to-School list — the registration, the shopping for supplies, clothes and shoes, the re-organizing of the calendar and re-implementation of a school-friendly daily routine — so many important to-dos boiling away on the…
Cake, Ice Cream, and an Excedrin
By DeeDee (Me, circa 1961) Today is my birthday. You can sing to me if you’d like. I won’t be embarrassed. There was a time in my life, that if you took me out to dinner, and the wait staff sauntered over to the table to sing to me, I would slide under the tablecloth….
A Dose of Humor: The Origins.
5 Minutes for Parenting’s weekly column, A Dose of Humor, is here to remind you to take your humor pill regularly as the best medicine to treat the side effects of parenting! It features a different blogger every week and is hosted by Rachel at Grasping for Objectivity in My Subjective Life. Now you can…
Childhood Kitchens
By Beck My grandma – the one who is now, my kids will tell you, in Heaven – was a magically good cook. Even now, I sometimes dream about her food, supernaturally good and the sorts of things that I wanted the most as a child: layer cakes, salads frothy with marshmallows, creamy mashed potatoes,…
Margin
By Kelly Last night, as I waited for my brain to turn off and the drowsiness to descend, I read through my journal from last year. I was sad and slightly startled to see how much depth my writing had 12 months ago. These days, my writing tends toward the surface and the amusing. Nothing…
Family Reunion
By Veronica “Why is JellyBean so pale?” asked my niece. “She is really pale. Is she sick? She looks sick.” We are visiting family in Buffalo, and the cousins are getting to know each other again. My brother’s family has grown through both adoption and natural birth, and his Korean daughter was expressing shock at the…
A Piece of Cake, Please, with a Side of Gravy
By Megan Well, we did it. Peabody and I have officially made it to the one year mark in our nursing relationship. We’ve had a busy weekend celebrating his birthday, so the realization that we’ve finally reached the goal I set for us long before he was born didn’t really hit me until last night,…
I am potty trained and so are you
By Gretchen “Don’t worry. I won’t pee on you,” my nearly 3-year-old daughter assured me as she climbed onto my lap. “Thanks. I’m glad.” Was she worried she might? Did she need to go? Did I have any clean jeans or even a skirt hanging in the closet? That <em>fit</em>? Uhhhh. Mental note: Buy diet…