Every parent of all girls or all boys has all kinds of ideas about why their particular arrangement is preferable to the other. That’s just what we do. As the mother of three daughters, or a girl-maker as I have…

  From their second-level perch, it’s apparent that the line starts just outside the food court, winds around the snow-flocked enchanted forest, and doubles back in front of Auntie Anne’s pretzel cart. That’s convenient – the mom decides as she…

When I was a kid, Halloween was one day. It was a glorious day to be sure. But it was one day - in the life of a busy, happy family with six children and two working parents. When Halloween…

It was eighteen years ago in early autumn when my husband and I took our dog, Rosco, and our two-day-old marriage camping. Over the years, I've learned that most couples cannot begin to fathom why we would have thought a…

What is the point exactly? That's what I want to know. It's the question I ask, silently, every time I hear a mother chronicling every last detail of her agonizing labor and delivery story to a wide-eyed woman with a…

  Something happened to my kids on the way to school. At home, they had a certain propensity for sassiness. Okay, so they weren't miscreants by any means, but with us anyway, they definitely spoke their minds. And I encouraged…

    We were done. As in, we had decided on two kids, and I knew we were done. Yet, there I was, pregnant as all get-out, swollen with impending motherhood – smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer. In…

  My mother will turn eighty this summer and whenever we're together, I try to tell stories about what it was like growing up. It's good for my mom and it's important for the girls to hear that it was alternately tough…

Working from home, I’ve always appreciated peace and quiet. But there’s one squabble I never minded hearing. In fact, I actually made a point of tuning in to this argument, because I knew the day would come when it would…

Today I am a non-smoker. I will think like a non-smoker, act like a non-smoker, and breathe like a non-smoker. I will chase thoughts of smoking out of my head. I am smart, creative, and hard-working. I am stronger than…