Gathered seashells.

It was billed as a sunset wildlife tour, but was in fact a booze cruise, one onto which I boarded my family alongside honeymooners and bachelorette parties. While this meant a wild ride (wildlife tour= shots if you see a dolphin), it also meant that we alone disembarked on the sandbar. We walked through the waves, showing the kids how they could locate bubbles beneath the water and dig for sand dollars. We unearthed treasures while the sun set around us, transforming the surf into a liquid rainbow.

This was the year of seashells. We scoured the coast of Maine for them, marveling at the tiny crabs that emerged. We poked at them on the beaches of the Chesapeake and lined them up along sandcastles in St. Augustine. We pulled them from freezing rivers on hikes and picked them out of mud. We bleached them in the sun and carted them in pockets and purses, in backpacks and to show and tell.

Most dot the yard now, slowly grinding to powder and settling into the foundations of our home. The more pristine ones sit on bookshelves or serve as dishes in the playhouse, little pieces of concluded adventures, the treasured artifacts of 2023.

Objectively, we will look back on this year as one of the hard ones. The year where we were too burnt out to continue traditions like our beloved annual donut party. Where I cried too often in anger, in frustration, in despair over another rejected meal or solo bedtime or sleepless night.  The year of James being gone too much and both of us stretched too thin. The year of anxiety over difficult decisions for our family.

Our kids are not blind to this.

But I dare to hope that they will look back and see more.

May they remember sunsets on the beach and dancing in the kitchen, movie nights and our collective obsession with the Ramona Quimby series. Milestones reach and celebrated. May they reach their hands into the waters of this year and wrap their fingers around treasures initially obscured. May they pull them up, tuck them away, and remember this as the year we spent searching for seashells.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series “365 Words”.

September is my liminal space.

I remember hearing the phrase in grad school, a liminal space, a place of transition, a place wholly in between. I loved it, having a name for the inevitable messy middle where you are trying to sort things out. To be honest, I have a fondness for liminal spaces too, for airports and train stations and almost beginnings or not quite endings. Maybe it’s because I hate letting go of things, but liminal spaces feel like the past is maybe still possible and the future is still fresh.

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September is the liminal space of my year.

It’s that almost-fall-but-yet-still-summer of the Mid-Atlantic. We have had days that soar into the 90s, yet mornings where I step outside for my walk and the air is almost chilly. The days are still long and bright but every morning it is a little darker when I wake up. The pools closed, but the other night we grabbed takeout at the park with friends and the splash pad was still on. It’s almost fall, but still summer.

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They still like the playground for the moment. Maddie still begs to go on the swings and Etta wants to hit the slides, but Henry often brings his own agenda. It feels like the end of something that I didn’t even know was a thing, this era where I just announced a playground and everyone went happily. I had swimsuits in my bag and the girls just stripped on the spot to change into them and they are definitely getting too old to do that. All three of them are in the same school this fall, three lunch boxes lined up and three backpacks by the door. Maddie is the first of our kids to do preschool, but those thirdborns will not be left behind, so they trek out the door together, little kids with big backpacks. Old enough to learn and grow and be away but still young enough to not hesitate to shuck off clothes by a fountain and change into a swimsuit. They are almost aware, but still innocent.

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We took the crib apart around Labor Day and this means that this September for the first time since summer 2016, everyone goes to bed in a bed. The girls are in bunks and their room is a constant mess of dolls and plastic food, Henry’s across the hall strewn with Legos. I’ve never had to pack up the crib before. It’s always just trundled to a different room, a different baby, different sleepless nights and slow mornings. Now it’s disassembled against the wall in the study, obsolete. But I can’t bring myself to get rid of all the baby things yet. It’s almost time, but still I wonder.

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Sometimes it surprises me when I try to pick them up. They are heavy and solid and big. They still all want me to cuddle at night, and I make the rounds from bed to bed, really wanting to finally be off the clock and also acutely aware that this is finite. I am still their person. But every year, more people become some of their people too. I took the first day of school photos after Labor Day and they look ginormous- these confident, happy kids. But I’ll take another picture in June and I know that their September selves will look so small. They are almost their own people, but still every bit mine.

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I think it’s supposed to turn cooler this weekend, gusts of wind blowing us ever slowly out of the liminal space of September. It’s almost over, but not quite.

Where the wedding gifts went.

The glasses were the first to go. That first apartment didn’t have a dishwasher and barely had enough space on the counter for one drying rack onto which we precariously stacked entire dinner parties worth of dishes. Dinner parties incongruous with our tiny space, lack of central air, and an overzealous smoke detector that left guests frequently waving dishtowels at the ceiling while I finished dinner. Dinner parties thrown in the haze of newlywed life with glassware that was pristine and new and doomed to shatter when it tumbled from the pyramid of drying dishes.

The plates and bowls likewise experienced a winnowing. There was the year we hosted Thanksgiving in our microscopic apartment only for the sink to back up and James to spend two solid days washing dishes by hand after it stopped shooting black sludge upward. Plates break in the melée of life, and one year for Christmas my mother convinced one of my friends to sell me the remnants of her identical set to replace my own losses, the style long since discontinued.

The silverware has since followed suit, though its disappearance is more of a mystery. We have three spoons left- three. Are the children digging an escape route in the back yard? Are they hoarding them like a strange Victorian currency? Or most probably, has my zeal for chore mastery and requirement that even young children bus their dishes after meals carried the casualty of spoons heading out with the trash? I don’t know the answer, but I do know that the forks are next for extinction and I panic when I see Maddie flee to the backyard with her fists full of cutlery.

There are, of course, the dictates of style to consider. When you walk the aisles of Bed, Bath, and Beyond as a fresh faced 24-yr old engaged couple, you have utter certainty in how you want your life to look and thus, what curtains and pillows and sheets will please you forever. You are wrong, but it wouldn’t help to know it then. You need that certainty, that giddy optimism that yes, you will always love the orange ikat curtains, in order to face the many unknowns that will come. But slowly, as you grow and age and change together, you look around and realize that some things don’t fit anymore. The towels fade and the pillows loose their fluff, and you are ready for them to move out and make way for the next stage of what you want your life to look like together.

The pristine wedding gifts were like the early habits too. The Listerine strips on the bedside table to give the illusion of sweet morning breath. The years – yes, YEARS – of our marriage where I was a well rested wife capable of sleeping till 9 every morning because of my graduate school schedule, and the subsequent effects on my person that come with 9+ hours of sleep a night. The meticulous cleaning schedule we followed every Saturday and the movie marathons we could have any night of the week. The months of eating only Paleo gourmet meals and the spontaneous travel. The way my hair was coiffed more days than not and we were able to maintain pretenses of people that, perhaps we were, but could not remain.

Some things moved in, rather than out. We finally had space for James’ beloved toaster oven once we moved to our second apartment and he had visions of endless bagel pizzas that were quickly supplanted with reality. I make cinnamon toast in that toaster oven now, toast that is stripped of it’s crust to satisfy the whims of the tiny people who would turn up their noses at bagel pizzas (“too hot” “too cheesy” “not pizza”) in what can only be described as a deep failure of our parenting. When had our first Thanksgiving in our house (a HOUSE! With a driveway! Admittedly too narrow to be used after we scraped up our vehicle and learned our lesson but STILL.), my parents rolled into town with all our wedding china. It had sat dormant for years, a tower of boxes in my parents’ attic reminding us that we had not yet arrived. And now it was here, stunning plates on which to feed my family and welcome them to a space that was truly ours.

It’s been 11 years this weekend. 11 years of slowly replacing the things we brought into marriage. Not everything, as some things endure, age well, prove timeless. But many things have slowly broken down, the product not of poor quality, but of daily use. The result of a life that has been so fully lived for more than a decade.

You never think about all this when you are scanning things at Macy’s, planning out kitchens and bathrooms. It seems impossible that the wedding gifts will break, will tarnish, that the towels will fade and rip. It seems unfathomable that your shiny presents will one day resemble faded belongings of your parents. But they do. They are, after all, just things, albeit things around which a life was built.

11 years of shattered glasses, faded towels, and broken plates. Of curtains that moved out and china that moved in. Of plans changing, our family evolving, all of us learning. Of losing little bits of the life we thought we were building for one that is so much better– even if it only has three spoons.

PS: 1st Anniversary post (why most of you started reading tbh)/ 2nd Anniversary / 3rd Anniversary / 4th Anniversary… and then we had kids and blogging slowly dwindled.

For those three months.

From late August until late May, I am unequivocably an insanely productive person. I homeschool part time, teach at a university, act as the advisor and events coordinator for my department, manage our home, and take part in a number of book clubs/ girls nights/ mom groups that is deeply troubling (according to my children). I do not say this to boast, but rather to emphasize the rigid nature of the schedule that these commitments require. We are not miserable those 9 months of the year, but we are certainly not footloose and fancy free.

But Memorial Day to Labor Day? I, my friends, am a certified Fun Mom. Sure, we can have adventures. Yes, you can swim in the creek. Of course, we can do bubbles, even though you are just going to dump them out and be sticky. Why not get messy- let’s just take a bath in the middle of the day.

I live for the summer months. For the break from structure and hounding productivity. For the pause and the chance to be utterly delighted in the little people my children are. For evenings where James and I finish the day on our back porch. For mornings, every morning, that start with us strolling to analyze and discuss any new growth in our garden. (We have a garden that I haven’t killed yet! Miracle of miracles! And wow that’s an olddddd blog throw back. ) For as many meals on the grill as possible and neighbors who wander over and linger .

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The summer solstice was last week, and even though I know that it doesn’t totally align with the halfway point of our summer, it starts me panicking. In the back of my mind I am always aware that every day is getting shorter, dark creeping slowly back in.

But for now, summer is still here and I’m holding on to every bit of light with every last bit of my Fun Mom energy.

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Why I cut the leotard-legs out of a plus-sized pink ballerina ensemble that I had rush shipped.

Because the measurements I painstakingly took looked like they would work but theAmazon description didn’t say that the waist wasn’t elastic. Because the tutu couldn’t go up over the hips that have carried three children. Because it was going to have to go over my head and the bottom part was in the way. Because I could just cover my underwear with the pink ballet tights I had my mother dig out of my closet from my hometown bedroom, the ones that I got when I took ballet lessons as an adult to have a creative outlet when I took my first real job back near my parents. Because ballet still feels like the thing that was never right for me or my body, but always right for my heart. Because my daughters are there now, under the spell of tulle and ribbons and buns pinned up while arms spin out. Because they think that “Halo” by Beyoncé is a “ballet song” and they twirl through the house and ask me to dance and think I’m good at it.

Because they won’t always want me to dance, won’t always be under the illusion that I am good at it. Because we do a mother-daughter tea party for their friends each fall and this year it had to have a ballerina theme. Because I thought of their faces when I came out in that pink tutu, and I knew their eyes would grow wide and the baby (she will always be the baby) would say “Mama so boot-ful!” and so I would be. Because they don’t know words yet like muffin top or unflattering or flabby or plus-size and they only know that ballerinas are those who dance and they are all beautiful. Because I want to be a woman who unlearns those words too. Because they are learning from me how to navigate the world and I want them to know that they can do it in a tutu. 

Because I ordered the outfit in the middle of a stressful day, an uncertain month, a complicated stage of our lives. Because there are so many things that I can’t fix or change or even plan appropriately. Because I could buy something that would turn me into the ballerina my girls wanted me to be. Because I could have it rush shipped and it could show up in a bundle of bubble gum pink magic just in time. Because the day it actually showed up was a Very Hard Day and it felt like a lifeline. Because when I tried to pull it on and it wouldn’t budge over my hips, I didn’t even think twice before grabbing the scissors. Because I knew that if I could just get it on, even if only for one magical ballerina tea part, I could make something perfect. Because that was enough. 

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series “A Question”.

Working Titles For My Parenting Book

The honest book, the one of crucial intel that they absolutely did not tell us at that 4 hour class we did before giving birth, the one where the sweet nurse instructing us had to pause the whole course because James looked like he was going to faint. I mean the real books of parenting. The ones, not of ideals, but of survival truths from the trenches. Here they are, the titles that you won’t find at your local book purveyor, but will find on the hearts and mind of every parent. And so, from the author who brought you baby dissertations, working titles for my parenting book:

Tell Them It’s Naptime: How to Guarantee Independent Play at Inopportune Times

You Should Have Eaten Your Eggs at Breakfast: Explanations For Any Harm that Befalls Your Toddler

Floor Food and Better Naked: How Modern Parents Can Find Freedom By Lowering Their Standards

“Drowsy but Awake” and Other Lies We Tell New Parents

She’ll Do It When She’s Ready, Or When We Suddenly Decide It Should Have Already Happened And Freak Out: A developmental guide to the first four years

How To Get Things Out Of Places They Never Should Have Gone: A Manuel For Retrieval

Eat Your Pizza Or No Ice Cream: Alternative Nutrition Practices Of Tired Parents

Landmines: Detailed Map of Target Providing Routes To All Essentials That Avoid The Toy Aisle

“Flopping Gets Dropping,” and Other Maxims That Don’t Make the Letterboard Cut

100 One-handed Dinners You Can Make While Holding a Fussy Newborn.

If they die, they die: Coping With the Psychological Warfare of a Hunger Striking Toddler

Vaccines, Cry it Out, and Other Triggers to Avoid in Preliminary Playdates

Floppy Feet: Why buying shoes 3 sizes too big so they have “room to grow” will most certainly end with a child needing stitches but still seem like it was a good idea

I love you endlessly and forever but please leave me alone to pee: How living the life you want can still be exhausting.

Because even if I had read all the books and their endless warnings – I still would have chosen to do this.

Coffee date.

Hi, hello, it’s been awhile.

The Internet is about short missives these days, fancy memes, witty infographics, stories and tweets and clickbait and I kind of miss the long form blog. It felt a little like sitting down for coffee and talking things over.

If we were grabbing coffee, there is so much I would want to tell you about this summer, this moment, in our lives. I would start with the obvious, a lamentation that summer is ending too quickly, as it always does. Perhaps it is because Henry is in school now so the summer has a definite end date, or perhaps it is because I will be technically full time in the fall for the first time ever so it feels like these lazy days are precious, or perhaps it is because the very nature of parenting is to crave and simultaneously grieve the passing of time.

If we were grabbing coffee, I’d ask what you all have done this summer. It has been a Summer of Swim for us, with a first noble attempt to benefit from the shockingly cheap DC parks and rec swim lessons… all of which were canceled, so we caved and enrolled the kids in private lessons. We have plunged into every body of water available. Pools and creeks and splash pads and the buckets of water we haul to keep our new hydrangeas alive.

If we were grabbing coffee, I would tell you about chore charts, about how I decided that this summer would be the time that the older two kids became Contributing Members Of The Family… with limited success. Sometimes it is them, dragging their feet about the daily tasks they are assigned. But sometimes it is me, not wanting to interrupt their free summer play to commit to the tiny moment of learning I included in each day or the chores that are important, but also maybe not as important as whatever mud play is happening in the back yard. I would ask you how you are forming the minds and wills of the tiny people in your lives, and are you failing at it all too often and constantly wondering if you are doing it right?

If we were grabbing coffee, I would tell you about my favorite moment of the summer. I would tell you how the kids and I have spent all summer trying to catch every summer storm, to race outside as the sky darkens and the wind whips the branches of the trees and we stand our ground as the thunder rumbles and the big fat drops start to fall. I would tell you of that one day, where a storm rolled in as cookies finished in the oven and we carried the tray to the front porch, watching the clouds roll over us as we ate hot and gooey chocolate bars with burning fingers. I would ask you what it’s been for you, the moment you have loved best, the moment where you thought this, this is what I dream about all winter.

If we were grabbing coffee, I would probably unburden myself like the over-sharer I am. I would tell you of the couple brushes with danger we have had this summer, moments that make me question if it is wise to raise kids in this city. I would tell you of Maddie Lo’s slowly disappearing babyhood that makes me question daily -are we done? Should we do that again? Is our family complete? But then I would think of how easy so many things feel without the tiniest neediest members and the adventures that we can have now. I would share my professional heart and the way my career has surprised me and the ways I am daunted to take on more work this fall, as I stay committed to being present at home. I would ask you how you are weighing all the things that you are carrying and how you know which ones to drop.

If we were grabbing coffee, I would tell you of my newfound love for tennis skirts with roomy pockets and of this dinner that everyone ate without complaint and of this book that has motivated me to actually do what is needed to get 8 hours of sleep a night and how I started taking my coffee black. I would gush about this cake that I just made from the blackberries we picked in our annual pilgrimage and I would share how much less angry the world seems since I deleted Instagram from my phone, but how I also miss seeing everyone living their small lives in the big world. I would talk your ear off about this show that James and I are obsessed with and I would share that one of the happiest parts of my life right now is how James and I end so many evenings sitting on our back porch sipping the artisanal cocktails that James has mastered. I would ask you what it is for you, the myriad recommendations and passions and finds that are filling your life.

Here’s to grabbing coffee.

From The Summit

Oh hey there 2022!

There is nothing so intoxicating as a new year, a fresh slate full pf promise and crisp planner sheets that have yet to be destroyed by a child with a red crayon and Artistic Aspirations. On Friday we drove home from our annual trek around Indiana and Kentucky visiting family for the holidays and James and I conducted one of our favorite rituals. While we would love to end our year in a getaway and a chance to process what is behind and plan for what is ahead in blissful calm – that is not a reality in our current stage of life. Instead, a couple years ago we started taking the 9+ hour drive to do a summit meeting of sorts. We toss the kids tablets and snacks and they enjoy the hyper rare screen-time binge with headphones while we enjoy a structured year-end session of reviewing, dreaming, and planning. It’s honestly one of the highlights of our year, our favorite date conducted in the front row of a minivan packed to the brim with Christmas-sugar hungover children and partially decomposed squeezy pouches.

I mentioned this ritual on Instagram and immediately got flooded with DMs about what these structured categories are, so I wanted to type up some notes, interspersed with my own reflections of 2021 and of course, photos ad nauseum. So here it us

How To Have A Tired Parent Executive Summit Meeting And Goal Planning Session While Your Kids Enjoy Too Much Screen Time

A year in review: The first thing we do is spend a couple hours (yes! hours! The power of the road trip! You could also break each segment of this into three evenings of post-bedtime drinks and chats) reviewing the past year. This discussion covers the following topics.

• Highlights from the past year, revealed as we talk through the year month by month. Because sometimes when you are in the trenches of parenting… you forget basically everything that isn’t in the past 48 hours. Forcing a slow walk through the year is so fruitful and also, shockingly difficult.
• Review of how we did on last year’s resolutions, which I keep in a notes app on my phone
• Review of what we ADDED to life in the past year and what we want to REJECT in the year to come.

Establish a Guiding Concept: Ok, so technically this might actually happen at the end of your summit after you realize what has popped up multiple times. But at some point in the Summit, try to stop and verbalize what overarching goal/ word/ quote / verse concept you want to hold close to your heart in the upcoming year. I cannot say enough how powerful this is, how life giving it is in structuring how you think about the year. In the weeks leading up to The Summit, I had some thoughts and clarity about what I wanted in 2022 and talking through them with James helped to make us both excited about our big picture vision for the upcoming year. At one point in The Summit, we read aloud two essays about the New Year. One was this one, that had us screech laughing, and another one included a perfect quote about this element of The Summit:

“Last year’s words belong to last year’s language, and next year’s words await another voice.”-T.S. Eliot

Take some time to find the words, the voice to a new year.

Dream for the year to come: Behold- the resolution setting part. While this might be the “meat” of the discussion, it doesn’t happen in a void, but rather is the fruit of the first two parts of the discussion. We are ready to dream and plan because we know where we stand and we have a vision of where we want to go in the coming year. We then make three lists of goals: Goals shared by both of us/ family goals, goals for James, goals for me. These include Big Goals, and things like “buy new bath mats for the primary bedroom.” Last year’s list legit included “go to the dentist,” and “find someone to deep clean once a month.” For each of these lists, we tackle the following categories:

• Financial goals (savings, spendings, budget, etc.)
• Health goals (fitness goals, healthy habits, etc. I like to have a sub-set of goals for January specifically because I love the power of a strong fitness start)
• Family goals (like, we want to try to have a hike a month as a family in 2022, etc.)
• Professional goals (concrete things that need to be done at specific times for our professions)
• Personal goals (book quotas we want to meet, hobbies we want to nurture, screen time limits we want to establish, etc.)
• Domestic goals (house projects or housekeeping related)
• Relationship goals (date night quotas, etc.)

Plan follow-ups. This is new for us this year. We have always chatted throughout the year about how we are doing, but this year we actually planned monthly benchmark meetings and wrote out some notes on a special year-planning page in my planner. For instance I took the list of domestic house-related goals and assigned something to purchase/ research/ get quotes on/ enact each month. “Finish decorating” is overwhelming, but “change lightbulb in stairwell that has been burnt out for 4 months” is more doable.

And now… some of our Summit! A lot is obviously personal, but here are a few snippets because I love using this space to help me remember.

2021 was a really good year for our family. There were mistakes, low moments, way too much money spent on home repairs that we would have rather avoided, and a complete failure to accomplish our goal of getting up at 6 am for calm times of scripture reading and reflection. As in- it never happened. But other key things did happen. When we discussed what we wanted to claim and applaud from 2022, so many of the things were family rituals. 2022 canonized Friday Night Family Movie Night and I perfected the accompanying homemade pizza. We cemented Coffee Time as the greatest part of Saturday mornings, and established Family Cleanup and corresponding Family Reward on Sundays so well that it rarely is met with (much) complaining anymore. James and I embraced regular Sunday night planning sessions to map our Henry’s homeschool work and our complicated matrix of my work and childcare. So basically… we spent 2022 perfecting our weekends as a family. And I feel pretty good about that.

James and I also made 2021 the second year where we really prioritized our health, which when you have little kids, means prioritizing the other person’s health. Daily barre workouts and early morning walks for me, routine long runs for him. We made them happen, choosing to force the other out the door when we both wanted to just skip We chose each other’s health and happiness and that was life-giving in so many ways.

2021 had so many family dance parties after dinner, to the point where Maddie gets up from the table and immediately races to stand under Alexa and yell until one of us has it start playing dance party music. While our ability to do frequent date nights has taken a hit (see above “when you have little kids”) we mastered evenings of craft cocktails and managed to swing a getaway to Jamaica. We invested in our community, our neighborhood, our family, our home. I realized my goal of not just having furniture sitting in rooms by decorating our primary bedroom entirely using Facebook Marketplace and finished (I think) our living room decor. We also painted our half bath in a late night decision of dubious wisdom resulting in one of the larger fights in our marriage and the firm realization that we do not have careers as painters.

2022 feels exciting, mostly because a lot of goof habits and rituals became routine in 2021 and I am eager to build on them. Will this be the year we actually start getting up early? Perhaps. Time, and by that I mean tomorrow morning, shall tell. It will hopefully be a year where we use our phones less, as we both started the year by deleting apps and setting up time limits on those that remain to shave pointless scrolling and subsequent frustration and waste from our lives. We made lists and plans and shared dreams for this brand new year and it feels really good to walk into it. We took the time to find words for this new year and to start learning the voice that it will speak. Can’t wait to listen.

Happy New Year.

This and that, but mostly them.

I’m writing this from the kitchen sink.

Actually, that’s not true. I just really love this book, and that is the opening line, and I think of it often.

But I am writing it in view of the kitchen sink, perched on the counter with goldfish crunching underfoot and laundry running downstairs and the baby has no pants on. Which is to say- it’s almost dinner time, so things are chaotic, but everyone is happily playing a few feet from me for the moment so I decided to make a noble effort to write something. I started playing the Nutcracker music today, breaking my Thanksgiving start time for Christmas music, and it just seemed appalling to jump from a summer post to Christmas.

With the fall, and more job shifts for me (not a new job, just doing it in person for the first time ever since I took the job during COVID), and Henry starting a university model school for kindergarten which also means homeschool two days a week- this fall has flown by. So in lieu of a cohesive catchup, here are the things we have been loving lately.

This tea. I have loved it a long time, but every fall I rediscover it and it feels freshly wonderful. We had a massive and excessively/ pointlessly fancy tea party for the girls and some mother-daughter friends this fall and I’ve been pulling china cups back out and making a pot of it ever since.

These jeans. They are the perfect mom-jean-but-not-too-hideaous-stretchy-but-structured blend.

This app. I am trying not to be dramatic but this app has changed my life. Feeding our family, planning the meals, making them, keeping track of recipes I try – it has slowly been sapping my soul. Now, I have EVERYTHING in this app. All the recipes stripped of the obnoxious adds and stories and videos and scrolling. Sorted based on logical categories to me like “Veggies Etta will Eat” or “No one complained about this.”

Some of the recipes I now have readily accessible without having to wade through extra junk? These biscuits, these tacos, these hidden veggie enchiladas, this gnocchi sheet bake, this King Ranch chicken.

This upholstery cleaner. Watching completely brown water come out of my supposedly cleanish couch was mesmerizing and disturbing all at once.

Facebook Marketplace. Since last we spoke I redid our whole bedroom spending almost no money thanks to the fine people of the DC area wanting to offload amazing stuff.

This show and this show and this show. Because cozy evenings and a good show while I grade or plan lessons is one of my favorite things. But also… now we really need a new show. Any good recs?

This overnight cream and this redness correction cream that I use in place of makeup.

And then of course, the more important things, the things that I can’t link or offer or sell you on or capture but I love them so much that it alternates between crushing and freeing me.

The way Henry draws people right now, all angular and sticky and always in family units like us.

The way that Etta has discovered princesses and fancies herself one, only wanting dresses and costume-like ones at that.

The way that Maddie smiles and scrunches her nose up when she attack hugs all of us every morning.

The way that Etta discusses bedtime snuggles, sometimes announcing when I try to get up that we have only done the “stem of the snuggle.”

Maddie’s belly. Her pudgy legs and delicious cheeks and still dimpled fists.

The family dance parties. The movie nights. The lazy Saturday mornings.

How it felt watching James coach Henry’s tee-ball team.

The way that the kids run laps around our main floor to the William Tell Overture every night, and how Maddie joins in now and sometimes James and I hop in and they squeal so excitedly.

Photosynthesis and Monet’s waterlilies and ant farms and the things Henry teaches me as he learns, new to him and new again to me in his joy.

That he wants to be an engineer and she wants to be a princess and she wants to just be held, and they are so full of dreams but every single one includes us being together because separation, diverged lives, absence is intolerable to them, unimaginable and repugnant.

The independence they all want right now, the way it shows in so many ways. And the need they still have, the fact that I am still the safest place.

This, this is what is best.

Summer of the Cicadas

The first time I noticed the sound I thought a car alarm was going off somewhere in the distance. It was a dull screeching in the background as we played outside all day and in the evening James mentioned that he had heard it too. We shrugged it off but the next day it was back, and louder and we realized- it was Brood X, the cicadas that had been waiting 17 years to hatch and fill our lives with noisy bugs.

I had known of course that they were coming, as it had become a touchstone in casual conversations for anyone living in the cicada swath. I saw them crawling everywhere and covering trees when I went for my morning walk, and noticed the kids were fascinated with the way they left their translucent shells on everything. They were also terrified every time the noisy bugs flew at them, buzzing in their hair or sticking to their ankles. I pried one out of Maddie’s mouth and gagged at the thought of eating one of the bugs, though I know many people did.

The noise was the backdrop for the early months of summer, this summer where we all emerged- not unlike the bugs – from a pandemic year, blinking and calling to each other and figuring out how things work now. Henry started t-ball, partially because he (and James) love baseball and partially because I want to get to know more of the families in our neighborhood after a year of social distance and masked smiles. All three of the kids had birthdays, and our pandemic pod – and other friends! Hooray for big parties again!- showed up for almost identical parties a few weeks apart to commemorate the 5, 3, and 1 year old keeping us on our toes. Maddie’s birthday hits especially hard because so much of her first year was hidden. She’s my barnacle baby, my first to have stranger danger and scream when I leave a room. She is the impossibly precious gift that still feels surprising.

We are living in water this summer, hitting the splash pad or pool almost daily. But in perhaps the greatest result of a year of cancelled plans and limited social circles – most of our days are spent in play, meaning, Henry and Etta playing while I take a break from parenting. They imagine and build and fight and make-up all day everyday, inevitably culminating in Etta refusing to climb out of Henry’s bunkbed at night. Sometimes he complains loud enough that I remove her, but most nights he just resigns himself, rolls over and passes out, while she merrily plays and reads and takes up his space for hours. Henry finally dropped his nap last winter and while it has substantially impacted my ability to stay caught up on bad reality TV, it has allowed me a unique look at my oldest. I watch him sit silently as he listens to an audiobook, or watch him at work building structures or making plans. On the weekends we try to slip out together and exercise, sometimes going for a run (me)/ scooter ride (him) along the river or sometimes practicing swimming at the pool. As much as I hate the idea of Maddie leaving babyhood, I love the joy of older kids and the fun they bring.

What were you doing when they last came, Henry asked me one day and I laughed and told him, I was a child. I was about to go into my senior year of high school and I had so many plans and so many questions and knew everything and nothing all at once. And what will I be doing, when they come back, he wanted to know. And my head exploded, heart choked. You could be out of college, could be thinking about getting married or having kids, could have a job- will you still want to be an engineer-baseball player-lifegaurd?- you will be gone.

Because there is a lot I don’t know about what the state of the world, of my family, will be in 17 years when the insect infestation returns but this I know:

James won’t be coaching Henry’s t-ball team, won’t be reminding a troupe of 5 year olds that they need to watch the ball instead of finding cicadas on the field and sticking them to their jerseys. I won’t wake up in the middle of the night to Etta yelling that she needs a snuggle, only as soon as I scoot into that bottom bunk, it becomes a moment where she proceeds to tell me a long story instead, and I am so tired, but also those moments are the greatest moments. Madeleine, my Maddie Lo, my sweet chunky baby girl will be about to go off on her own and I’ll be trying to hold on tight as she pushes me back and I know it will break me a little even as I’m proud. We won’t be together, always together, always straining under the suffocating weight of little people with big needs who beat on the door when I lock it to take a shower and beg me not to go for my morning walk or coffee with friends or anything that has me away from them. I just want to be with you all of the time, Henry told me recently through tears when I explained that I just wanted to do something by myself and that, that will be different next time I open the door to the deafening roar of Brood X.

There is a chance that this consuming, refining, exhilarating , exhausting time of a house full of children could be almost over.

The other day we were loading the car when one of the kids commented on how quiet it was and I realized- they were gone. The cacaphonous din in the trees had gone silent. There were still some shells about but on the whole, it was like they had been erased, nature preparing to keep the secret for another 17 years. It came and was loud and consumed everything and then it was gone so fast.

And so it goes.