Grandma had been in the house for less than twenty-four hours. I had just finished explaining to a grumpy Robin that while ordinarily she and her sisters were pretty high on my list, this week, things were going to be…

Spring in Richmond. It’s rife with daffodils and tulips, baby bunnies in the backyard, and hummingbirds helplessly trapped in the garage. Okay, maybe that’s just at our house. But we all know the season. It’s the transitional period before summer,…

When our kids get to a certain age and they seem relatively well-adjusted and we like them, and they like us back, we might look at some of the things we have done along the way and declare that these…

My husband once accused me of lying in bed and dreaming up ways to injure our children. “How about a zip line?” I suggested to Scott one morning over coffee. That very afternoon our medium-sized daughter bounded off the bus…

New research out of Toronto confirms what I’ve been telling myself and my husband – loudly and repeatedly – for many years now. Talking to yourself is not a bad thing. In fact, these brilliant Canadian scientists say that “using…

  It was a case of mistaken pedal identity. The age-old accelerator versus brake puzzle. That’s what the nice lady said as she clambered from the mid-sized SUV that had crashed through the fence moments before and was now kissing…

  “You know, none of this stuff was even on my list,” I overheard my medium-sized daughter tell her older sister after the Christmas morning dust had settled. She sounded a little miffed. I don’t remember the year (eight maybe?)…

A few years back, we were so completely consumed with life – attending back-to-school nights, planning Halloween costumes, working on a parenting magazine, managing a myriad of important fall commitments – that we just forgot about our wedding anniversary. It…

Sleeping through the night at eight weeks. Nursing like a champ every four hours. Potty training at two. “This one’s reading all the baby books,” the pediatrician joked. He meant the baby, not me. My mother maintains God gave my husband…

  The teacher all three of my women-children agree is the best they’ve ever had, admits he hated school when he was a kid. “And I was a lousy student!” he adds as a dramatic exclamation point. At first, I’m a…