One of the only unfortunate side effects to taking voice lessons over a period of time is that your yelling gets really loud. Have you ever been in a dream where you wanted to scream above the surface of the water or above the mountain you’re trapped on or above the head of your attacker,…   read more

On Saturday Gordon and I went to a parenting conference. This made us feel so very Docker-worthy, though perhaps not minivan-tastic. It had been a couple of years since our last parenting conference, where a woman with perfect teeth and a perfect body taught us how to perform a perfect timeout on our 2-year-old. We…   read more

I think it’s hilarious how toddlers think they control their dominion. Or think that they should. I mean, talk about DRAMA when Thing Two can’t quite get the tip of the bottle inserted into Baby’s mouth — we’re talking epic. Or when she’s having trouble finding the precise corner of her deteriorating blanket to suck…   read more

Thing Two really started power walking/runway strutting on Sunday. If you can get past my motherly blatherations in this video and concentrate on Thing Two, you’ll be richly rewarded. Oh, and wait for the end. It’s the best 47 seconds you’ll spend all day:

In his book The Talent Code, author Daniel Coyle reiterates an idea I’ve heard before in discussions of skill development: that any expert in a particular field has repeated their skill, “practiced,” at least 10,000 times. 10,000. It’s the magic number, provided you are practicing well. My voice teacher introduced me to this concept. He…   read more

(Chatter letter from the editor, May 2010) I would like to talk about grace for a moment. Not cosmic-eternal-salvation grace; but the specific, detailed little (or huge) graces we experience in space and time despite an awful attitude. This kind of grace feels warmest because we receive it in the dirty moments of tracked-in mud,…   read more

I wish I had some profound thoughts on motherhood this week. Really I do. Really. Because if there’s anyone in need of a profound thought, it’s me. Mostly my thoughts have involved simple binary instructions like, “Breathe” and “Eat carbon-based solids to live” and “Don’t jump from the second story.” The problem is simple: Sleep….   read more

This all begins on Saturday, which, I’ll just admit to you now, was a low point. Gordon and I were watching TV on the couch with Drew and I was feeling about as sorry for myself as is permitted by Texas law. Gordon was too, to a (much) lesser extent. “I’m tired,” Gordon said. I…   read more

When was the last time you got out of the house? Really? My goodness, what supplies did you take? Are people still driving in cars or is Scottie now beaming them from place to place? If there was a nuclear war and everyone was forced to live underground with Pez dispensers and dehydrated hot dogs,…   read more

This weekend I had a case of mistaken identity. It was most certainly due to being childless. My in-laws kept Drew for two evenings this Fourth of July Weekend, leaving Gordon and I with two bona-fide, hot-n-heavy date nights in a row. The first evening we spent at a friend’s pool party, drinking margaritas and…   read more