Love in Darkness

Sometimes, I wish I lived in my five-year-old’s universe. It’s a magical land of unbridled optimism. Just the other night, she proudly announced that the moon loves her. “How do you know?” I asked. “Because it’s always following me,” she said. Pointing to the sky, she hopped up and down with excitement: “Look, it’s doing […]

My Toddler’s On Fleek Playground Ensembles

I let my kids dress themselves, within reason. When it really counts, I resort to the faux-democracy of preselected acceptable choices (“Would you like to wear this, or this?”) because any semblance of a choice, however manufactured, tends to appease deep toddler yearnings for some control while under their current dictatorship. But usually, I just let them pick. I […]

Bridget The Viking Wages a War on Pants

As I’ve mentioned before, my two-year-old daughter Bridget is a baby Viking: a freakishly-strong blonde who lives to dance, eat, and occasionally conquer all rules of civilized Christian society by violently head-butting them with her berserker rage. And tonight, she waged a war on the meaning of pants. Everything had been going so well. Earlier, she’d finally asked […]

My Daughter’s Mutinous, Stabby Pants

So, I caught my daughter smacking her own butt this morning while yelling, “BAD! You’re WRONG! You need to STOP IT!” It was a perplexing situation, one I hoped to better understand. So instead of telling her to cut it out, I tried to uncover what strange manner of 4-year-old psychology had driven her to […]

Pillow Feathers and Turds and Dogs With Rebellious Ears

Have you ever done something that you thought was a SUPER WONDERFUL IDEA only to later see that same SUPER WONDERFUL IDEA as proof there’s something wrong with your brain? See, we’ve been going through an extremely stressful few months around here trying to sell our house and buy one at the same time. Trying to bid […]

Wonder Woman Goes Rogue In a World Of Evil Monkeys

It’s been one of those weeks with kids where, despite all our good intentions, we ended up eating way too many tacos and frozen pizzas. You know how it is…. I kept meaning to make beef slow-cooker stew, but kept forgetting to pull steak out of our freezer because our two-year-old daughter, Bridget, has been waking up around 3:45 […]

Where I Sick My Toddler on Our Obnoxious Dog

So we’ve had Douglas the chihuahua/terrier/something for about a week now and I have to tell you, he’s driving me nuts. Don’t get me wrong. He IS sweet and adorable and will cuddle up to you at night and really, really means well, but I’m having a rough time with his berserker dog energies. I’m beyond certain this […]

The Great Chocolate Caper

The dining room chair shoved in front of the stove should’ve been my first clue. I kept staring at this inconsistency while sipping my coffee, but nothing else was amiss. My kids had used this maneuver to pilfer the cabinets before, but they were always sloppy about it. Cabinets were left hanging open and food scattered everywhere, like raccoons […]

When Cat People Bring a Dog Home

So you may have caught on from earlier posts that I’m generally a cat person. Cats just make sense to me: they’re calm, dignified and will cuddle you while you’re reading a book or watching a movie. Dogs, on the other hand, can stress me out. They have all this jumpy energy and need constant validation. But a crazy thing […]

My Daughter Falls for Her First Obnoxious Punk

I don’t know if people without children believe parents think all kids are adorable, but deep down, we really don’t. Like this weekend when we took our kids to Fairytale Town in Sacramento. It’s a cute toddler theme park based on fairytales, with a King Arthur castle in the middle and several tiny bridges around its make-believe moat. […]