Here’s another list of instances when I have been struck by how independent and mature (well, most of the time) my children are. You know your children are grown when . . . 1. You see them for the first time after your parent dies and you burst into tears and […]
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Family Ritual: Reading Aloud at Bedtime
March is National Reading Awareness Month. I’ve written before about how important reading has been in our family, but my earlier post (here) focused on how my mother read to me when I was a child. My husband and I also read to our kids when they were small. We read […]
Continue readingShoe Shines and Parenting
My husband is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. More than forty years after he graduated, it is still the most formative experience of his life. Among the many things my husband learned at the Naval Academy was how to shine shoes. A spit-polished pair of shoes is the […]
Continue readingThe Cousins and Rudolph
I wrote on Monday about my children and their cousins. The picture above is my favorite picture of the four of them, primarily because I know the story behind it. They were singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” to the adults that were present. The youngest, my daughter, was nineteen months […]
Continue readingHalloween Costumes: Making Good and Making Do
My husband and I have been invited to a Halloween party requiring costumes, and we are panicked. What will we wear? I’ve seldom put a lot of effort into Halloween. As I’ve written before, I am the pumpkin carver in the family, and we usually have a jack o’lantern for […]
Continue readingOn Baking Cakes: Generations of Life Lessons
My mother’s death brought to mind many memories for all her family members. My son sent my father a letter describing one of his memories–a time when my mother instructed him in how to bake a cake. He was a Cub Scout at the time, and the pack was holding […]
Continue readingOh, Say, Can You See . . . ?
Last year on the Fourth of July, my son was traveling in the Netherlands. He walked past the U.S. Embassy in The Hague. Overcome with patriotism, he took this picture of the American flag waving proudly above the outpost of U.S. diplomacy. He wanted another picture, one with the Stars […]
Continue readingMemorial Day and a Tantrum To Remember
I described my son’s tantrum in my last post, so it’s only fair that in this post I describe one of his sister’s—her first tantrum, in fact. It occurred on Memorial Day, when she was just two weeks old. My husband and I took our family to see his parents […]
Continue readingNeeding a Boppy (Don’t We All?)
My son and I were reminiscing about his childhood recently, and we got on the topic of tantrums. “You didn’t have many tantrums,” I told him. “Not like your sister.” And he didn’t. But I do remember one phase of tantrums he had. My son was almost always a good […]
Continue readingIcing on My Cake for Mother’s Day
My daughter was born the day before Mother’s Day. Some years her birthday has been on Mother’s Day—including her first birthday. Obviously, a small child’s birthday takes precedence over Mother’s Day. Even a grown daughter’s birthday takes precedence in our family. But I’ve never minded sharing “my” day with my […]
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