On top of all the normal stuff you have to do, day in and day out, with free time you can count in minutes on some days, please add in the following: Halloween and all its associated madness including finishing the costumes, making plans to bring your children places wearing them, buying sorting hiding and donating candy; Thanksgiving and all its associated madness including finding and shopping recipes, making travel plans, setting tables, buying hilarious cocktail napkins that bemoan the gathering together of family in these political times, napping. And then the big one: decorate, host, plan, shop, wrap, organize. It’s a lot. A LOT. And in two months, it will all be over and it will turn
Conductor: Gotta keep the trains running on time. Give her a conductor hat and hang a whistle from her neck - she can alert everyone in listening range when it’s time to board, which train is going where, and what they need for their journey. She knows which family members will intersect with other family members and when, in order to change tracks and have everyone arrived unscathed at their final destination. All aboard! Clipboard sold separately. Referee: No one makes sure everyone’s playing by the rules quite like Ref Mom. She’s ready to hand out yellow cards when necessary, she can send everyone to the penalty box for 15 minutes when she needs a break, and she knows exactly when to make
We’ve got the Sunday Scaries over here. The Halloween costumes have arrived and are in their amazon packages sitting in the foyer, waiting for a little bit of homespun attention to half-ass the homemade Halloween costume concept that I was raised on and worked hard at for about 6 or 7 years. But another 7 years have gone by and here we are, applying to high schools. We know what happens next: the costumes get assembled, we turn back the clocks, and we’re off to the races of Thanksgiving and Christmas and then we wait to find out where our infant daughter in her homemade ballerina costume will attend high school. How I wish we could turn back the clocks. Three middle schoolers arrive home dai
Have kids, they said. They’re so cute. Look at all those tiny outfits and tiny socks and tiny hats. So cute. Don’t you want more? So adorable. Couldn’t you just eat them up? They’ll sleep eventually. They’ll eat it one day. Just look at how sweet they are, asleep in your arms. Here’s what they don’t tell you, and maybe you figured it out on your own but maybe you put it out of your mind for a while or a decade: those cute adorable tiny socks turn into piles of inside-out balled-up socks, sometimes found in the backseat of your car. Those tiny hats turn into three rounds on why you cannot wear a flat brim hat (you are going to church, and you are not Vanilla Ice), and those adorable outfits t
