The older I get, the more I’m believing in fate and that things happen for a reason. Who knows. Maybe there’s no such thing as fate. Maybe things don’t happen for a reason. Maybe I’m just looking for some explanation as to why we have gone through the things we have gone through. Whether […]
Parenting
How We Handle Laundry
When you have a big family, inevitably one of the first comments people always make is about laundry. How many loads of laundry do you do every week??? We definitely have a lot of laundry. It used to be impossible for me to keep up with it, and my dining room table almost always looked like […]
Common Core isn’t the problem.
Back in 1997, when I was twenty-nine years old and an elementary school teacher in Pennsylvania, I made the decision to move back to Connecticut. Knowing that I was moving at the end of that school year, I applied for teaching jobs in a handful of school districts in Fairfield County, one of the most affluent […]
Limiting Screen Time Has Simplified (And Improved The Quality Of) Our Lives
The other day Number 3 came home from school and said to me, “Mom, Brian brought his iPad to school and we were talking, and I told him I wasn’t allowed to use electronics or watch TV during the week and he looked at me and he said, HOW DO YOU SURVIVE???” I had a […]
A Familiar — and Frustrating — Scenario
Here is the scenario: Your whole family is supposed to be at a family function at 6:00 p.m. You have to leave at 5:45. Your husband is aware of this. This is not the first family function you’ve attended. You’ve been in this situation dozens of times before. You and your husband both need to take a […]
8 Things To Know About Night Terrors
Back in August, Number 4 started having regular night terrors. Before that, she had had a couple, but they were always when she was really sick and had a fever. I always thought they were more a fever delirium than a night terror. I never expected she’d have one when she was completely healthy. But in […]
