(Especially When You're Crazy Busy) The end of the school year is just nuts. Band concerts, graduations, open houses, baseball playoffs, soccer tournaments, award ceremonies, end-of-year banquets, …
Wasting Time
Moms tend to be preoccupied with time. Or more precisely, with time management. The moms in the MOPS group I coordinate ask for a time management speaker every semester, worried by the way the days …
When Mom Is Sick…
It should have been a mother's dream. As I lay in my bed with a book, I could hear my husband starting dinner preparations and marshaling the kids into peeling shrimp, chopping vegetables, and setting …
In Defense of Gift-Giving
Last week my 7-year-old daughter made a sign, "Don't come in, Luke and Ben!" (Luke and Ben are her brothers), hung it on my door, and disappeared inside my bedroom to wrap Christmas presents, emerging …
You Don’t Have to Do It All. Nor Should You.
The night before the first day of school I was lying in the bathtub, indulging in a minor panic attack about all the things I needed to do before everyone headed out in the morning. Someone knocked …
How Not to Be a Crazy Sports Parent
It's been an intense spring with all three kids playing on various baseball teams. Many a Saturday afternoon has seen me scurrying around local fields with one team baseball cap on my head and two …
How to Do Nothing
All three of my kids are now in school (!) and so sometimes I really look forward to Monday mornings, when I can finally GET THINGS DONE. Anyone else relate? Recently, I had a week planned where I was …
It’s Fine: Keeping Christmas Meaningful and Manageable
All of a sudden it's November, that runaway train season of the year where time hurtles uncontrollably toward Christmas. Every year it's the same for me. I feel slightly confused by the Christmas …
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First Days and New Beginnings
It was a big first day of school for my three kids this year--kindergarten, sixth grade, and ninth grade. Three different schools, three different start times. I thought I'd gotten up early enough, …
My Trick to Banish Anxiety
At times in the past year it seemed like we would all be here in this house, occasionally seeing other people in the yard, forever, and that didn't seem like an entirely bad thing. Life had a peculiar …
Where You Find Yourself
In December 2019, I was talking with my spiritual director about the following fall. For the first time in almost 14 years, I would have no children at home. I thought I was excited about all the time …
Organizing Your Paperwork
It’s a new year and I’m celebrating with a new look to my website! The people over at Stormhill Media and I have been working on this for months and I’m so excited by the results. Can’t wait to hear …
Making the Most of Your Family Time
It’s official: online-only school in the fall for all three of my children. So we’ll be spending even more time together. Yay? We’ve had an awful lot of togetherness since this pandemic …
God is in Charge
Over the past few weeks of sheltering in place, I've... Caught my four-year-old daughter using roughly 40 sheets of toilet paper and LOST MY MIND... Found a forgotten half-full package of flour on …
What You Do After Cancer
I drive to the medical center trying my best to distract myself with a podcast I’d saved just for the occasion, but once I check in and sit down it’s no longer possible to forget that it’s time for my …
Back to School, Back to Work
Embracing the Rhythm of the School Year As much as I anticipate and love summer, by the time we get to about mid-August I am looking forward to the start of the school year. I don't exactly throw …
Easy and Effective Ways to Encourage Your Young Athlete
Spring and summer are all about baseball in my house. Then just when baseball is winding down, soccer starts up in earnest. Between my two sons, it sometimes seems as though most of my time is spent …
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Find Your Flow
When I speak to groups of moms with young children, I ask them to close their eyes and think of the last time they felt themselves relax into the moment so much that they lost all sense of …
Mom, I Don’t Pray
“I don’t pray,” my ten-year-old son said the other day at the dinner table, and my heart just about stopped. “What?” I said. “What do you mean? Why not? What happened?” My head filled with even more …
When You Feel Like You’re Not a Good Enough Mom
I studied all the wrong things in school. Based on my daily life, I would have been much better off had I studied nursing, nutrition, defensive carpool driving, physical therapy, and child psychology. …
