My Jenn-eration

We are fresh back from a few days away together as a family. I often think that if you could perfectly summarize what it is like to build and grow and love and live within a family, vacation is in and of itself the perfect encapsulation of all the things. There are so many special moments together. There are SO MANY MOMENTS TOGETHER. We were fortunate to travel to an extremely lovely spot and I can’t underscore that enough. But it was so lovely that for the first time ever my husband and I experienced the very odd sensation of feeling that so many of our fellow travelers were nearly all the time Instagramming all the things. In fact my children and I stumbled upon an actual photo shoot as we wandered into the pool early one morning. The woman was wearing a bikini that was not particularly G rated and arching her back in the waterfall next to the tank where my kids were gawking at sea turtles and sharks. I felt like I was imposing on her photo shoot. I genuinely needed to re...

For reasons still unclear to me, I stayed up way too late last night waxing overly philosophical about 1994. Inspired by that Gen X piece in the New York Times, I hope you'll give it a read.  Click here for time travel. 

This morning I was gifted with a rock, some seeds, and chocolate. Also this card which, both its words and the image completely leveled me. A circle, a wave.  My god look at what all of you have done. Isn’t it simply amazing?  The way you work, or the way you stay home with them, the way you rock them all night or sit by the phone waiting for them to call, the way you do it all on your own or are humble enough to ask for help, the way you cook them all that nutritious food an d the way you lovingly work to pay for the takeout pizza, the way you bottle feed and breast feed them, the way you plan for every IEP meeting, and every college application, the way you hold their hands and hearts every damn day and promise them it will all work out when you are never really sure. The way you love them when it’s good and bad and everything in between. Just the way you love them.  I was super weepy this morning as I looked around the table at my family. I’m not even sur...