Yesterday we went to my parents’ house for the annual Easter egg hunt. Every year my dad hides plastic eggs for the kids out in their back yard — 24 little eggs, and 1 big egg per kid. The little eggs have candy in them, and the big egg has money in it. The eggs
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Me Week
This kids are going to see Ingrid tomorrow for spring break and I am kid-free for the next eight days. EIGHT DAYS!!! Pre-divorce I didn’t think I could handle being away from the kids for this long. I was wrong. I can handle it. In fact, I look forward to it. For the next eight
I Won’t Miss This
Just about every time I share any parenting-related frustration online, I receive some form of this comment: You’ll miss this stage one day. There may be some validity to this statement. In those cases, only time will tell. But most of the time, I disagree. My kids are 13, 14, 15, 18, and 19. I
A Boundary-Setting Failure (and what I learned from it)
Two Saturdays ago we were at Yale watching Kasen swim his last high school meet. It was the tail end of an exhausting 5-week stretch of championship meets, and I was thinking about one thing: getting home, taking my bra off, and parking my butt on the couch and doing absolutely nothing for the rest
Boundaries, Part II: Are you setting yourself on fire?
One of my favorite quotes is, “You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.” I think most women, and mothers in particular, grew up with this setting-yourself-on-fire mentality. You place not only the needs, but also the wants of other people ahead of you at all times. You do
Setting Boundaries, Part 1
It wasn’t until a couple months ago I realized I had almost no boundaries with the kids. We aren’t talking Lord-of-the-Flies-lack-of-boundaries or anything – they have expectations and responsibilities and the majority of people who know them would tell you they are hardworking, respectful, polite, decent (not perfect) human beings. But hardworking, polite, decent kids