As Gordon, the kids and I were walking home last evening from a dusk family stroll, a minivan pulled up to us and stopped. When the window rolled down, the streetlamp illuminated the face of a woman I know from church. Her hair was pulled back into what might have been a ponytail or a…   read more

(Chatter Letter from the Editor, September) I have a tendency to treat my One Year Bible like a Christian horoscope. I don’t always read my One Year Bible, just so you know. Sometimes I read a devotional book, or a passage of Scripture from the lectionary, or even blindly open my Bible (secretly aiming for…   read more

Sometimes I feel so wrapped up in Drew’s psychology, moods, preferences, needs and exclamations, that it’s almost like he is my one and only child and Madeline is more of a pet schnauzer. Sure, she might wail and stomp her itsy bitsy feet or give me an eternal, transcendent look, but her general presence feels…   read more

Today was a just-get-through it kind of day, and I’m almost embarrassed about how light and momentary all my little trials really were. I could make excuses about monstrous PMS or the first time swimming this summer with Both Things, or about the rain waking One up from his nap or about monstrous PMS (did…   read more

(In case you missed it, this blog was originally posted at TreatADay.com on March 19.) As a mother of two small children, I am grateful not to be living in Prussia in the year 1777. That was when Frederic II banned coffee. Who was Frederic II and why did he ban that sweet, sweet nectar…   read more

I was dropping Drew off at preschool last Friday when his teacher, who was in the middle of unbuckling him from his car seat, asked, “Are you having another baby?” I misinterpreted her question as, “Are you pregnant?” to which I quickly said, “Oh no, no, no,” as if she was inquiring into a very…   read more

Drew’s new favorite book is Drummer Boy, a retelling of the Little Drummer Boy Christmas story. A little late for Christmas, I admit, but Drew tends to circle his books like big game stalking its prey — for weeks and weeks — before he comes in for the kill. Then it’s a lights-out marathon of…   read more

Drew has become obsessed with the cracks in the floor at Esperanza’s. Esperanza’s is our family’s favorite Mexican food dive, and I’ve considered sending Drew there to work in exchange for enchiladas, much like the boy Samuel who served in the Temple. Last week he noticed a corner where the tile seems to have been…   read more

When I was a kid, Chuck E. Cheese had a full arsenal of animatronic terrors — five or six at least, their globe-eyes blinking with their paintbrush lashes. Chuck E. Cheese also had the groundhog game, the one where you whacked the iron heads of fury until your arms unscrewed. There was also the ball…   read more

Sometime today, maybe it was when I was wiping Drew’s poopy man-bottom or folding my eighth tiny pair of tights, that I had a horrible fantasy of being cancer-ridden. I think it’s probably the blackest and most demonic thing in the world to fantasize about. On the surface it’s not as insidious as daydreaming about…   read more