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It’s Just Me
“Mom, where is my purple headband?” Claire yelled at me. “I asked you to put it in my drawer last night and it’s not here!” “Claire,” I answered, “I don’t know. I can’t deal with that right now.” It was 7:30 in the morning and I had three kids to get up and dressed and out of the house. I’m pretty sure I don’t need to describe the scene that lay before me, but it was filled with dirty dishes on the counter and pull-ups that needed changing and papers strewn everywhere. “Mom!” Claire continued to whine, “this is important!” “Claire,” I said sternly, “it’s not important that I find…
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So Proud
The end of the school year is really a crazy time for parents. In the last week and a half of school, Claire and Austin have a combined seven school events. All of them, of course, are during the middle of the day, which makes things really difficult for working parents. Particularly single working parents. On the way to school on Friday, Claire asked me whether I was coming to the end-of-year party. “No,” I told her, “But I’m coming on the all-day zoo field trip the day before, so don’t worry!” “But everyone else’s parents are coming to the party!” she whined. Let’s be clear here – everyone else’s parents are…
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Do You Know What Makes Me Nervous?
How the hell am I going to do this? No really, how the hell am I going to raise three young kids without Shawn? There’s literally a decade left before I send the first one to college, and I really don’t know what I’m doing right now, much less how I’m going to figure it out in the future. Some days, it just feels damn near impossible to know how to parent alone. Take tonight. I took the kids out with friends for a fun kid-themed dinner at a Japanese steakhouse. There was entertainment and the kids were all so excited. But I couldn’t even get through the appetizer before…
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Full Time
For the past four years, I have walked my kids to school every day. When Tommy was born, I went to part-time and the flexibility allowed me to take my kids to school and pick them up most days. Shawn walked them some mornings, especially as the kids got older and there were different preschool and elementary school drop offs that we needed to share. In fact, the last morning he had with them before he entered the hospital, we walked the kids to school together. We had to drive part of the way, but he soldiered on and we made sure to drop each of them with their respective…
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Pooping on the Potty
Yesterday afternoon I heard the ding of a new text message as I was sitting in our school library, attempting to grade an essay. “Good news,” my dad wrote, “Tommy pooped on the potty at preschool today. He is very proud of himself.” “That’s incredible!” I texted back. Seconds later, I had the immediate thought that I should text Shawn. It’s a reflex that’s still there months after it should have ended. I don’t ever actually start texting him, but the moment where I think, “I cannot wait to tell Shawn about this,” always occurs when something like this happens with our kids. I didn’t text him. But I did…
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Riding Bikes
It’s been a long winter. I mean, we had a damn snow day just a few days before spring break this year. My kids have been trapped inside, driving each other crazy and having way too much screen time. My usual get-up-and-go persona has not been so excited this year to take them somewhere that’s winter-friendly, like the ice-skating rink, or Chuck E. Cheese. So now that the weather has finally turned these past few weeks, my kids have been living outside. Last week, after school one day, I got a text from a neighborhood mom asking if Claire could come on a bike ride with her daughter. I said…
There’s No Handbook for How to Do This
