So, a month or so ago, you read my lovely initial birds and bees conversation with my six-year-old. (Yes, SIX.)
Apparently Elizabeth has babies on the brain, as yesterday when we were stuck on Mopac, she suddenly asked, “How do you make a baby?”
Thankfully, traffic was at a dead stop, or I might have swerved off [...]

My six-year-old flopped on the bed with no indication whatsoever she was about to drop a bombshell.
“So, Mama, can I have a baby before I’m married?”
I had to think for a minute. These questions are never what they seem, like the time the big horrid bad word she heard at school, that started with “s,” [...]

8:30 a.m. I wake to a breath against my cheek. I open my eyes to filtered sunlight on a round face, still faintly babyish, soft and a bit silly. Elizabeth.
She speaks. “Mama, you’re up!”
She rolls on top of me, putting her small hands on either side of my jaw. “I’m hungry!”
Her smile reveals the gap in [...]

Over on Verla Kay’s Children’s Literature boards, we had an intriguing discussion about the use of swear words in young adult books. Published writers and author hopefuls all weighed in on when, if, and how much it was appropriate to curse in books targeted for teens.
As a former teacher of both middle and high school, I [...]

I didn’t really want to take Emily to the optometrist.
Maybe I was in denial, but she seemed fine to me. Her dad insisted she wasn’t seeing well, though, and so I took her last week.
She wasn’t happy about it, and neither was I.
She breezed through the glaucoma air-puffs much better than I do — it [...]

About this time three years ago, a three-year-old Elizabeth pushed a chair over to the craft counter, tugged her sister’s safety scissors out of the box, and lopped off the ponytail on top of her head, sheering off a serious section of hair to the scalp.
We called her “Spike.”
Since then, she’s mostly grown her hair out, and [...]

And happy greetings not just to our high school and college grads, but all our Pre-schoolers and Kinders who get to don the gown and take a step up to the next part of their little lives.
Elizabeth’s graduation song is now on YouTube.

So, when we last visited the front line of the veggie wars, Mom was losing, big time. We’d discovered Elizabeth was hiding her veggies under a side table (and not thinking to go back and throw them out later.)
I didn’t blog about the veggie wars for a while because I was, well, despondent. Failing.
But I [...]

Spring is a busy time, and certainly no less so with the parties of both my daughters with birthdays in April and May.
Elizabeth’s Libby Lu fete was quite the bash. My little diva took the fact they were out of “Rock Star” make overs in stride and went the princess route. It took over an [...]

My quest to get Elizabeth to eat vegetables could not have gone any worse than today.
We sat around the table, arranging a board game for our Friday game night. As we’re doling out the cards for Hands Down, I notice something in the corner under a low table. Flower petals? Strips of paper?
I go over to investigate, [...]