I buy a fire blanket and a window ladder to reassure both of us. I start saying we’re so lucky like a mantra and a talisman.

“Hi mom!” peep the shining faces as they pop around the screen then duck away giggling. Try writing. Just try it. With half your sleepy brain on right-fit words and half on “Can I has more more gam cackah?”

I have a bad habit of thinking two-day-old rituals are about to change my life.

 In birth order lore, middles are peacemakers. But what happens when middlehood splits? Do the middle children go through some sort of quantum shift in which their strengths become their darkness? Do they go from Peacemaker to The Equalizer?

If a single drop mellowed her even a little bit, God, I’d dunk her in that baptismal font so fast.

So what you’re telling me, my deeply beloved little boy, is that you are already displacing the cognitive load of knowing how to twine three pieces of hair together to your future wife.

I keep living through metaphors for motherhood, and running the wrong way through a crowd of people as they crossed a finish line was a salient one.

Such a cool kid.

From a Well-Rested and Emotionally Stable Mom

We worry so much about babies talking. Then we spend the rest of their childhoods wishing they would hush.

These past six years have been a slow, painful peel of two things once joined.

I always make a big, biiiiig list of things I hope and dream for the fresh new year.

Imagine a room full of the richest and most powerful men in the world. Hate these men or love them, they’re shaping your future.

We all deserve to see heroes that look like us and – for whatever reason – Santa is his hero.

Our younger two children will always and forever have a road not taken. And that’s confusing.