I remember before I became a parent, I asked a close friend with twins to tell me more about what his experience was really like. He paused and thought for a moment and summed it up in one word:

"Relentless."

Wow, I thought. Really?? / What does that even mean/ And is it that bad?

And while my...

I cried over an egg the other day. 

Well, there was a bit more to it actually.

In fact, there was so much to it I sat down and wrote a poem after it happened. 

 Read my poem right here and see if you can relate.

Luckily while I felt a bit alone in my kitchen at that moment, in my...

Is it okay to be happy in the middle of a pandemic?

And what if you're not? 

These are the questions that swirl in my mind on some days as I look at my children and wonder how all of this 2020 life will affect them (and us) for years to come. 

So far, our little family has been able to...

So about a month ago I received an email about a bunch of teenagers who were doing the next Climate Reality Training with Al Gore...

I had three almost simultaneous thoughts:

 1 Wow, those kids are awesome. 

 2 I am decidedly less awesome in...

They say hindsight is 20/20. How incredibly ironic and prophetic it is then, that this year of tumult we are in right now is the year "2020."

...as in the year we should have seen coming, in hindsight. 

Living through all that is happening right now sometimes...

WARNING: Honest, messy thoughts here. I am not going to say here what I am "supposed to say." I am going to speak from my heart. From my personal reality, showing up in total and complete honesty. I am learning. Here in front of you. With you. 

Dear Parents,

I,...

Now parenting thrills me. That’s why I keep doing it.

Oh right. That and the fact that I’ve got kids, so hey no choice. But I do it willingly and with love because I have now hacked the code. And hacking it fills me with the joy I imagine Edison may have felt...

For those of you who know me, this email may come as a bit of a shock. It is not what I usually recommend. 

For those who don't know me well, then you should know I do NOT recommend rewards and punishments as a general "go-to" for parenting. I think they are a poor substitute for...

Sometimes our kids are just... well... awful. 

It's ok. We parents can be too. 

The good news? Sometimes that big giant steaming pile of yuck can bloom some pretty nice flowers if you know how to till the soil. 

Let me explain:

It's a Saturday....

Trauma.

Ugh. The mere word can cause us to tense up. Many of us have strong associations with that word, and for some of us it even has personal reverberations. Perhaps we experienced it first-hand and long desperately to put it behind us, and yet we feel unsure of how to move through it. Is it...

It is late summer, and the days of doing nothing all day will soon be replaced with schedules and stricter bedtimes. But for now, we milk the last few drops of utter lazy freedom. 

It is in this spirit, that my boys somehow woke up today determined to build themselves some paper...

Let's face it. Some of us feel like we don't have time to play. 

But not our kids. No. It's like they are made for it. 

Well, actually, they are. Play is one of the ways they learn. And they LOVE IT. If KidLand were a country, play would be their currency. And their language. And...