I’ve always been a bit obsessed with birds. When I was growing up, I loved teaching our pet cockatiels to say, “Pretty bird! Want a kiss?” As a newlywed living in Boston, I convinced my husband we should keep two zebra finches in our small condo. They were messy...
Do you ever feel like a taxi? I do. I’m now at the stage of parenting that’s 99% driving and 1% everything else. Between soccer, ballet, piano, sleepovers, doctor’s appointments, and trips to Walgreen’s to buy gum, candy, and various other essentials, my car has gotten a lot of...
My 12-year-old daughter has been reading the Shadowhunters Novels, which are fantasy stories about special humans who wrangle demons and other supernatural creatures. When she couldn’t find the next book in the series at school, we decided to try the library. As we had so many times before, we...
Yesterday, I was driving my 12-year-old daughter home from her second soccer game in roughly 24 hours so she could take a quick rest before heading back for game #3 later that day. She sighed. “Soccer tournaments are taking over my weekends!” “Not just your weekends,” I said. My...
Last week, on the same day that several kids at my older daughter’s Wisconsin soccer camp were ill from heat exhaustion, I had a phone call with my stepmother in California, where the Dixie fire had been spreading. Though it wasn’t yet close to where she and my father...
