I spent an hour that afternoon carefully mending our 8-year-old neighbor’s lovies, four identical rabbits that were loved so hard their heads fell off.

I’m not over here trying to drink a lemontini and read context-free Emily Dickinson lines to pretend at feeling fulfilled. I want advice from fellow moms who came out of the holidays feeling tired, tired, tired with more dark snowy months ahead.

Naughty? Nice? The Christmas Witch is on it!

An open letter to some of our most…ardent…readers.

I can miss my babies so much – truly, genuinely – and simultaneously rage at the fact of having one. I can feel sorrow for the end of our baby era – truly, genuinely – and never want to do it again.

That feeling when: You have the chance to really see your children with the gorgeous perspective of distance.

Parenthood in a nutshell, in the span of two hours on a random Saturday.

It has come to my attention that some of us feel a little cranky about the laundry. This is my effort to balance the scales.

A quick run-through of some things that have been on my mind lately, to the women who always get it.

Others try to help: my husband, my mother. I don’t stop them. I’m not an insane person. But they will never know you like I do.

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.