The Pile I’m Standing In

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I feel overwhelmed this week. Weighty things are on my heart, and a busy schedule intensifies the emotional stress. In addition, several friends are in the midst of weighty circumstances as well. My first reaction is to want to do something – about their circumstances and my own – but there is often nothing I [...]

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Me in New York, July 2000 This morning the kids and I watched videos of the planes hitting the two towers, and videos of the towers coming down. We talked about what happened on this day ten years ago, why it was so confusing and scary, and what Bryan and I were doing when we [...]

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Doe Bay Fest 2010 from Decade ii on Vimeo. I’ve had a helluvatime explaining to my kids where we’re going this weekend. Every year for the last seven or eight years, we’ve attended a small music festival on Orcas Island. This year that music festival was canceled, but we’re going to another music festival. On [...]

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Every Thursday we host a small group of friends in our home. We eat dinner together and hash out the challenges of living a meaningful life. Our friend Bob usually brings dessert because he shows up a little late, after he gets off work. Bob is now Bob the Dessert Guy in the eyes of [...]

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I’m not really sure what I was thinking, signing up for this @postaday thing. While I like writing and feel compelled to do it, I don’t want it taking precedence over things like…I don’t know…sleep. I also don’t want to fill my blog with a bunch of content that’s not really even blogworthy. I often [...]

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This is Thomas. I believe I had asked him to put the laundry basket back into his room, and he spent about 20 minutes crying about how that was so hard. Or something. After awhile I start tuning out his drama, but I guarantee you it was less about it being hard than it was [...]

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I honestly don’t know how I manage to parent these children sometimes. Between Thomas’ obsessive hoarding and Ruthie’s creative body art, there’s 101 different ways these kids could end up institutionalized. I’ve quit trying to prevent the madness. It’s more fun to embrace it and laugh.

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At LAX for our return flight to Seattle we were herded into a queue that took us to an escalator that led to the security screening on the second floor. As Thomas boarded the escalator, he didn’t make the turn wide enough for his wheely bag to clear the end, and it got stuck. As [...]

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The picture to the left is Thomas’ vision. He was very concerned that Bryan could pull it off, given that it turned out a bit small in relation to the size of his pumpkin, and he was very adamant that the pumpkin have a pucker. Bryan, of course, pulled it off with his eyes closed. [...]

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We probably shouldn’t have watched School of Rock right before bed. And maybe the marshmallows were a bad idea. But Ruthie’s fits of giggles over Jack Black’s silliness was worth every minute of delayed bedtime. And this encore presentation? Awesome. I recommend you turn the volume down or your speakers might blow. Also, stick with [...]

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I worried a little how Thomas would fare as one in a classroom of many. He is full of questions about how things work, how they’re put together, how they came to be, and when he’s on a mission to discover the answers he will not let go until he has them. With Thomas there [...]

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I have to admit, I’ll miss my little guy. I love to follow the trail of his questions back to what he’s thinking about. He’s always thinking, surmising, turning it around in his head, trying to make sense of it… and expressing hypotheses. “Wook at that!” “How does…?” “What if…?” “Would anyone like a…?” “COME [...]

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Thomas treats any camera like it’s wielded by the paparazzi – any time you get one out he’s covering the lens, his face, or running for cover. The boy is so against being photographed, we’ve taken to calling him Sean Penn. But yesterday he was so proud of himself for spelling his name in sticks [...]

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