Category: Laughter

  • Thanksgiving Break Survival Guide for Parents of Tweens

    Thanksgiving break: the magical time when school screeches to a halt, turkey takes center stage, and your tweens remind you why teachers deserve hazard pay. While Pinterest shows us candlelit tablescapes with acorn garlands, what we actually get is five full days of “I’m bored,” sticky pumpkin pie residue on the counter, and the eternal…

  • 10 Reasons My Tweens Are Thankful for Wi-Fi

    Thanksgiving is the season of gratitude. A time when families gather around the table to reflect on life’s blessings: health, home, loved ones, and pie. Lots of pie. But if you ask my three tweens what they’re thankful for, you won’t hear “my sweet, selfless mother who birthed me and makes sure I have clean…

  • Fall Parent-Teacher Conferences | A Survival Guide for the Emotionally Fragile

    Fall parent-teacher conferences are here. And I, for one, am not emotionally prepared. If you’re like me—living on caffeine, running late, trying to remember which kid likes ranch and which one is boycotting sandwiches this week—then you know that nothing sends your fragile heart spiraling quite like those 15-minute meetings of doom (or delight? Who…

  • Cancer, Kids, and Kitchen Booth Confessions

    So here’s the thing: telling your kids you have breast cancer is right up there with “explaining algebra” and “teaching someone how to parallel park” on the list of impossible parenting tasks. Only this time, the stakes feel way higher. Matt and I told the kids in the kitchen booth—the place where life happens in…

  • Puberty, Perimenopause, and No One’s Okay | A Survival Memoir

    Once upon a time, I thought the toddler years were the emotional peak of parenting. Silly me. That was just the warm-up act. Now, here I am, squarely in my mid-40s, experiencing the joys of perimenopause while parenting three tweens entering puberty. That’s right. One body. Three hormones. Five moods before breakfast. Welcome to the real Hunger Games.…

  • 12 Unsolicited Opinions from My Tweens That I Did Not Ask For

    Welcome to the moody middle ground of motherhood, where your once-sweet child has become a now taller than you critic with zero filter and a master’s degree in Eye Rolling. I love my tween, truly—but wow, the commentary is constant and deeply unasked for. So in the spirit of solidarity (and humor), I give you:…

  • Still a Party of Five, Just with All the Tween Drama Now

    Fry, Party of Five is back – older, moodier, and with more eye rolls than ever. But don’t worry, this isn’t a comeback tour with glittery graphics, Pinterest-perfect photo ops, or sponsored cereal reviews. Nope. This time around, it’s just me— Angela —writing straight from the trenches of tween parenting, heart first, filters off. If…