recent posts
- Tiny March Moment | That One Warm Day Everyone Needed
- The Month My Kids Outgrew Something…Again
- Raising Kids in the Group Chat Era
- When They Were Little and March Meant Puddles
- A Detailed Review of the Floor in Every Room My Teenagers Have Dramatically Entered
- Tiny February Moment | Late-Night Kitchen Check-Ins
- 10 Days Before Thirteen
- What My Tweens Think Love Is (Right Now)
- Teaching Love to Tweens Who Pretend They Don’t Need It
- Snow Days Then vs. Snow Days Now
Category: Love
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It happened quietly. No announcement. No clear line between before and after. Just one of those small, ordinary moments that doesn’t feel like much—until you realize later it was something. March has a way of doing that. It doesn’t arrive boldly. It doesn’t settle fully into anything. It just shifts, slowly and subtly, and suddenly…
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There was a time when friendship lived in plain sight. It happened on front porches and school playgrounds. It echoed through sleepovers and rode home in the backseat after practice. You could hear it, see it, interrupt it if you needed to. Now, much of it lives behind a screen. It buzzes quietly in their…
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March used to mean puddles. Not metaphorical ones. Real, muddy, sun-warmed puddles that gathered at the edge of the driveway and along the sidewalk where winter finally loosened its grip. Back then, March arrived in the form of rain boots lined up by the door, jackets half-zipped, and three small voices asking, “Can we go…
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There are many things no one tells you about raising teenagers. They will eat the last granola bar and leave the box. They will sigh like Victorian poets denied true love. And they will dramatically enter rooms as if auditioning for a very intense coming-of-age film. Today, however, we are not discussing the sighs. We…
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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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Ten days from now, our house will quietly (and not so quietly) cross a threshold. Ten days from now, Jase, Henley, and Sadie will turn thirteen. Thirteen feels different. Not louder, exactly. Just heavier. Like a door swinging shut behind us while another creaks open ahead. We’re not slamming the door on childhood—we’re just setting…
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Love, according to my tweens, is confusing, dramatic, deeply inconvenient, and—most importantly—not something they want to talk about with their mother for more than 14 seconds at a time. Which is ironic, because once upon a time, they were toddlers who announced they were going to marry me, the dog, or whoever gave them a…
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Here’s the thing no one really prepares you for when your kids hit the tween years: love stops being loud. It used to be sticky and constant. It lived in lap-sitting, hand-holding, and dramatic declarations of “I LOVE YOU THIS MUCH,” arms stretched wide like they were trying to hug the entire universe. Love was…
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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…
Fry, Party of Five 