When I was a little girl, I was terrified of fireworks. While there is a part of me that wants to defend my position because fireworks were notoriously unsafe in the 1980’s, but somewhere in my head, I know that I was just scared. I would spend the 4th of July with my head buried in my mom’s shoulder just praying for it to be over. I would squeeze my eyes shut tightly and just breathe my way through. I was terrified of the noises. I hated being caught off guard, and shak
Last night I did something that I have been preparing for for almost two decades. Two decades of hard, daily preparation full of mental agility, real life preparatory experiences, and praying that God’s grace would cover the holes. Last night, I helped my oldest daughter move out. I packed things into a truck, drove down to a new house and helped her unload pieces of her old world into the presence of her new world. Last night I saw my baby girl become an adult. I know th
I was a stay at home mom for many years. The exact number I cannot recall because every day seemed to blur by with the same Sesame Street songs and me wearing the same sweatshirt. I was a great mom. I auditioned for the role of “mom” throughout many years of babysitting, and when I finally got the part, I put aside any career aspirations, and dove head first into being supermom. With my cape fully in place, I was wholly engaged and on the job. There were routines, and e
I remember sitting across from my ex mother-in-law listening to her tell me that I had manipulated her son into getting me pregnant and that, although this completely trashed my life, all she was angry about was that I had ruined his life and his chances of any success. On that day, at the age of 19, feeling like a complete and utter failure, I made a commitment. I would be a great mom. I’m not proud of every parenting decision I have made since then, like the time I made m
I sent the girls to the Apple Store and they came home with a working phone luckily avoiding crisis command to set up camp in the front yard. All was well. Except one small issue. In a moment of confusion at the apple store, Shannon used my log on to back her phone up and so when she reinstalled her contacts, she not only downloaded all her contacts, she downloaded mine as well, and as my phone began to sync, I downloaded her contacts. In a moment of pure genius, I told Sh
I’m preparing for a weekend away with the girls. Not a weekend away with my girlfriends, but a weekend away with my teenage daughters. I wish at some point in my life someone would have pulled me aside and talked to me about what it would be like to have girls. I know that people know what it’s like. All I have to do is tell people that I have two teenage girls and they look at me with equal amounts of shock and horror, and sometimes they even put their hand on my arm and
Being a parent is hard. When you first become a parent they hand you this little tiny fragile body, and you think about not hurting them, about feeding them properly and sleeping schedules, about monitoring diaper changes, about talking to the pediatrician about all of your questions while not appearing to be as clueless as you really are and occasionally you check to make sure they haven’t stopped breathing in the middle of the night. It’s hard. You find yourself saying t
Some of you may argue that the award for “Phenomenal Cell Phone Mom” is like winning Celebrity Apprentice. At the end of the day, you’re still sub par. That very well could be true. Five years ago I was the kind of mom that made Claire Huxtable jealous. I was packing lunches, volunteering in classrooms, settling disagreements with my girls like a UN Negotiator, properly brainwashing them with my morals, running the PTA, doing laundry, cleaning the house, leaping buildings