My Jenn-eration

It is day 2 of camp mommy and I am exhausted. Somehow I had completely underestimated what the pace of the day would feel like having all 3 of them home together all the time. When the slip n slide that was supposed to be the morning’s activity broke, I almost cried. It was 9:07 and everyone was ready to tear each other from limb to limb. I quickly flashed back to something I read on The Fortuitous Housewife’s blog about having children color in printable mandalas as an activity that creates balance and focus (you can find that interesting piece HERE ). Shockingly, this worked. For nearly 45 minutes the children blissfully colored together in peace. At one point Ruby looked up to compare her work to big brother’s page. Her page had more scribbles, more coloring outside of the lines. This didn’t bother me or him, but her reaction was, “Dylan, yours is the best.” Immediately, I pulled out a lie that I deemed useful enough to overshadow the downside of lying to them because I was going...

Yesterday there was another school shooting. That makes 74 since Sandy Hook. There have also been a myriad of stabbings and other insanely violent encounters that just a few years ago, I don’t think would have entered our wildest nightmares as even a faint possibility of things that could happen in real life. Truth? I’m pretty sick of the guns, but regretfully I don’t actually think that is the most common thread here. For me, it is violence. Violence inflicted on and by children. Our children are literally killing each other. Stop and take a moment. Just think about it. That baby that you are tucking in tonight, or rocking to sleep, that gentle toddler carefully stacking his blocks. Will it be him in 10 years squeezing the life out of another child? Or will he be the victim instead? It seems incomprehensible but this is real and happening to someone, many someone’s babies out there. And I want to tell you that all of this is about the guns. In fact I even wrote a whole p...

I am the youngest of three. He is the youngest of four. It's our thing together: we are the babies of our families. My father loves to remind me, as his mother often did for him, that no matter how old I get I'll still be his baby. And indeed it's true. In my heart I am still 5 years old and laughing wildly as he reads my favorite story to me for the millionth time. Now a grandfather to my children, I watch as he reads the same silly story to the next generation. It reminds me of a lifetime of moments just like these, of the father he was and is, and of the lessons he's shared to help me raise my own babies up right. He taught me to work and love hard, and feel grateful for the hardness because it makes all the sweeter parts of life that much more so. In other words, he taught me how to parent. Here are five particular lessons I keep in mind: 1. Find your beach. Life is hard. Being a parent is really hard. And when the noise and the chaos and the pace of it all b...

Tonight I’m thinking about other writers and bloggers. Women that made me laugh, inspired, motivated, and downright humbled me. Maybe you’ve read all of this before because these women and their words are awesome and have been widely disseminated. But actually I don’t care because they are all so phenomenal that you should read them again anyway. And just in case you haven’t and even though you never asked, here are my top 5 favorite blog posts that if you’ve never read you better pull up some Ben & Jerry’s and do right now. Don’t Carpe Diem http://momastery.com/blog/2012/01/04/2011-lesson-2-dont-carpe-diem/ This was the very first blog post I ever read. I did not know what a blog was (I’m truly a late adapter and have only recently given up my walkman). I’d never heard of Glennon Melton or Momastery. And then I read this. It blew me away. This is the part I read over and over again: “ I used to worry that not only was I failing to do a good enough job at parenting, but th...