recent posts
- 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
- Winter Parenting Wins That Deserve a Trophy
- January According to My Almost Teenagers
- For the Five of Us, as the Year Begins
- What This Year Taught Me About Motherhood
Category: Love
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There comes a moment in every parent’s life—usually sometime between your child rolling their eyes so dramatically you fear injury and them insisting you “just don’t get it”—when you realize you have no earthly idea what a tween wants for Christmas. Or a birthday.Or a random Tuesday.Or ever. Welcome to the land of the Almost…
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Gratitude looks a little different when you’re raising tweens. Once upon a time, Thanksgiving was all construction paper turkeys with handprint feathers, little lists scrawled in crayon: “I’m thankful for Mommy, Daddy, my dog, candy, and Legos.” Easy. Sweet. Straightforward. Now, with twelve-year-olds under my roof, “gratitude” is no longer a tidy worksheet activity or…
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October arrives with its golden leaves, pumpkin-spiced everything, and one very pressing parental debate: when your kids hit the tween years, do you let them trick-or-treat on their own, or do you tag along like they’re still toddling in a Pluto costume? The answer, like most things in parenting, is less about candy and more…
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For me, October has always had the perfect vibe. The crunch of leaves underfoot, the cozy sweaters, the pumpkin spice everything—it’s a month steeped in drama. But once you’ve entered the magical purgatory known as parenting tweens, you start to notice something unsettling: October is tweendom, in seasonal form. It’s moody. It’s unpredictable. It’s dramatic.…
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When you imagine a co-parent, you probably think of another adult—someone who splits the carpool duty, reminds the kids to brush their teeth, and occasionally sneaks them ice cream before dinner. What I didn’t expect was that my co-parent would arrive in the form of a glitter-clad, guitar-strumming, stadium-filling woman named Taylor Swift. Now, let…
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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…
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Every fall, tucked in between practices and math homework, comes a day mothers everywhere simultaneously dread and secretly cherish: School Picture Day. The reminder slips into backpacks, and just like that, it’s not just about standing in front of a camera—it’s a full-on theatrical event starring tweens, complete with drama, costume changes, sibling rivalries, and…
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There are wars raging in my house every morning before school. Not the “Did you brush your teeth?” battles (though those are alive and well). Not the “Please eat something other than Takis for breakfast” skirmishes. No, the daily wars are fought over tween fashion choices—the hills my children are inexplicably prepared to die on,…
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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.…
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One minute they want to snuggle, the next they’re slamming the door. There should be a warning label on parenting tweens: May cause whiplash, emotional whiplash. Side effects include crying in the pantry, involuntary eye twitching, and spontaneous laughter at completely inappropriate times. Raising tweens is a bit like being on a rollercoaster built by…
Fry, Party of Five 