Category: Home & Family
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Status Update: Perfect
It is the middle of the night—around 2 AM by my best estimation—when I roll over in my sleep onto a tiny hand, an indistinguishable amount of stuffed animals, and a small, hard object that feels suspiciously like a phone. In spite of my sleepy state, I know the hand belongs to my seven-year-old daughter, […]
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Rest for the Extroverted, Weary Mama
“I’m a homebody,” my son declared with confidence and surety. I blinked. First of all, where did he (then four) hear that expression? And second, how did I not know this? Through a series of hard events, I became a single mama when Emmett was two and a half. I was determined to provide him […]
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The Essence of Home
As I go through the day-to-day routines of motherhood, it can be easy to take so much of life completely for granted. My son and I were settling in at bedtime the other night. Lately, I’ve been purposing to stay next to him and not hurry his lingering questions at the close of our days. […]
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When Does a House Become a Home?
February 2015 I sat on the hotel bed in Grand Rapids, my head resting back on the headboard, while my husband sat at the desk across the room and typed away at the final draft of his dissertation. Open on my laptop was a document divided into four columns: two different houses, pros and cons […]
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Happy to be Home
It’s a typical Monday, and I’m standing in my apartment elevator, scrolling through a handful of late afternoon work emails on my phone as a small brown and white Dachshund stares up at me. The other end of the pup’s limp leash finds another disconnected human staring into his own glowing screen. So here the […]
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Putting Myself Aside
With winter’s chill rolling off him as he and his siblings came in from the wintry night air, my son asked, “Can we have our friends over to play boot hockey?” Flanking him, his sisters echoed the question silently with their eyes. We live in Iowa, and of the ten years we’ve lived in a […]
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Kids Live Here
I’d like to invite you into my home for a minute. Come on in! Oh! Those are just milk and orange juice stains on the couch, but if you’d rather sit in one of the chairs, you can move those Legos! (That couch has also been with us through two newborns and two potty-trainings, but […]
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Come Sit Next To Me
My daughter, Zoey, and I stand inside the small entryway of our beloved neighborhood restaurant, Sylvie’s, waiting for the hostess to show up and seat us. Zoey, in true six-year-old fashion, fidgets besides me, her tiny bones full of endless childhood energy. Yet in spite of my daughter’s movement, her hand stays nestled in mine, […]
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When Feeding is Frustrating
He’s there with us at the table, so we’ll count that as a win I guess. His three-year-old form takes an occasional sip of milk before he stands on his chair and turns in a circle and I must remind him once again to stay seated. He’s politely declined (we insist on always using good […]
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The Perfect Sized Table
“We will need the extra table,” I remark to my husband, Kevin, as I write down a menu for an upcoming family dinner. Carne asada. Tortillas. Salsa. “I think we’ll have street tacos,” I add cheese to the list. And avocados. “Won’t the table in the kitchen be enough?” Kevin asks. I count the guests […]