Category: Calm
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The first day of school gets a lot of attention. There are new shoes. Fresh haircuts. Backpacks that haven’t yet accumulated three granola bar wrappers, a crumpled permission slip, and something sticky no one can identify. We stand the kids on the porch and take the picture. First day of eighth grade! They hold the…
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Tomorrow, my babies start eighth grade. Eighth. Grade. I’m not entirely sure who authorized this, because I certainly don’t remember signing any paperwork allowing time to move this quickly. It feels like just yesterday I was packing three tiny backpacks, labeling absolutely everything we owned, taking first-day pictures of three little faces, and wondering how…
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There’s a certain kind of quiet that only happens in the car. Not the forced kind. Not the “everyone’s tired and someone’s mad” kind. But the soft, unspoken quiet that settles in after a long day—when no one has anything left to prove or explain. It usually happens on the way home. The After of…
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There’s always one. One random, golden, slightly suspicious day in March when winter loosens its grip just enough to let us breathe again. No warning. No grand announcement. Just a quiet shift—the kind you feel before you even check the weather app. The air softens. The sun lingers a little longer. And suddenly, the world…
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February doesn’t ask permission. It just shows up—cold, dark, blunt—dragging the leftovers of winter behind it like a tired grocery sack. By February, the house has a different rhythm. Mornings are rushed and sharp-edged. Evenings blur into homework, sports bags, dinner dishes, and the low hum of everyone needing something. The days are loud. Full.…
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(An ’80s + ’90s Kid Tries to Understand the New Rules) When Snow Days Were Rare Gems When I was a kid, snow days were a rare gem. A unicorn. A whispered rumor that maybe—just maybe—school would be canceled. Now? Now it feels like someone sneezes and the district says, “Let’s call it.” I say…
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Winter parenting is not for the faint of heart. Or the well-rested. Or anyone who thought parenting would get easier once kids could tie their own shoes. Winter parenting is parenting on hard mode. The sun sets at 4:42 PM. Everyone is overstimulated and under-vitamined. The kids are trapped inside with their hormones and opinions.…
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My Loves— We are standing at the beginning of a new year, and I want to mark this moment. Not with resolutions or promises we can’t keep, not with a highlight reel or a tidy bow—but with truth. With gratitude. With the quiet kind of love that has carried us when nothing else could. This…
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Holiday break arrives the way a snowstorm does—quietly anticipated, wildly romanticized, and then suddenly… everyone is home. All day. Every day. Asking what’s for snack five minutes after breakfast and staring at you like you personally invented boredom. Welcome to holiday break with tweens. This season lives in the messy middle. Our kids are no…
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The house goes quiet in a way it never quite does during the day. Not the noisy quiet—the kind with cartoons humming in the background or a dishwasher sloshing through its last cycle—but the deep, honest quiet. The kind that settles in your bones once everyone else is asleep. This is the hour of motherhood…
Fry, Party of Five 