Dear Husband, I’m Sorry for What I Said When I Was Parenting

Family

To my husband,

This stage of life is hard and we both make mistakes. But, the truth is – parenting sometimes doesn’t bring out the best in either of us. So, I’m I’m sorry for what I said when I was parenting.

I’m sorry I said the kids were great until right before you got home.

The last ten minutes before you pull in the driveway sets loose THE CRAZY. Someone throws a sucker punch, swipes a toy, or empties the miscellaneous basket with the loose Barbie accessories, holiday Happy Meal toys, missing puzzle pieces and a few stray Fruit Loops all over the living room floor. And someone is always screaming.

I’m sorry when that someone is me.

You Should Be In the Picture Too, Mom

mom and daughter

My aunt just posted one of the only photos she has of just her and her mom, my grandma, to Facebook. The picture was from the summer of 1976. My aunt is 10, my grandma is 50. They are standing in front of a rocky shoreline at sunset, my grandma’s arm wrapped tightly around her shoulder, my aunt’s head snuggled into her embrace. It’s one of the only pictures of her and her mom because she was the eighth in a family of nine kids. The photo has the aged, yellow glow of an Instagram filter, warmly reminding my aunt of that hug from her mom forty-some years ago.

But it is not 1976. Kids like mine will have countless photos from their childhood. How will they curate their own photos when so much has been documented of their little lives?

Read the full story on Her View From Home.

Grandma and Aunt

Kindling the Curiosity of an “Interesting” Kid

Kindling the Curiosity of the Interesting Kid

Cheerios, jellied cranberries and vanilla ice cream: the three food groups my little brother ate growing up. He was the third of four kids and I’m sure my mom just thought, well at least he’s eating something. This same brother of mine just got married and, as my parents described to the guests at his wedding, he was the “most interesting” of their four children.

I think “interesting” encapsulated both the worry and the reward of raising a kid who saw and chose to experience the world differently. In addition to his very particular palette, he did flying leaps from the couch onto our baby brother, blamed every bad thing he did on a ghost, and carried the Guinness Book of World Records everywhere he went. In third grade, a police officer did a career day presentation to his class and at the conclusion, the officer asked if there were any questions. My brother’s hand shot up and he asked, “Can you spell the longest word in the English language?”

He followed his interests from sports to space camp to a summer job working at a senior center, soaking up stories from the retirees. After college, he moved overseas to live in the middle of the desert on an oil rig, with time off spent traveling the world.

I recently asked him what he remembers from childhood that helped kindle his own curiosity. I was looking for lessons I could apply to my own parenting and here are a few nuggets I’m going to try, too.