Irish Daisy

My oldest kid is 11, she’s in the sixth grade, she stands about 5’ 2” and wears a women’s size eight shoe…She also passionately believes in Santa Claus. So passionately that she was engaging in verbal smack-downs with kids in her class who had the nerve to say the Jolly Old Elf isn’t real. My enthusiastic girl And, it’s not just Santa. My delightful, cheerful and whimsical oldest child is equally passionate about the existence of the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, mermaids, unicorns and dragons. She believes with every fiber of her being because she wants to live in the kind of world where these fantastic things can be true (Ironically, she also loves science – it’s her best subject in school...so there’s that). The latest kerfuffle in class made me realize we couldn’t put it off any more – we had to come clean and tell her that there was no real, live, physical person, jolly or otherwise, who poofed down our chimney on Christmas Eve to leave a pile of gifts in the middle of th...

I love the holidays, LOVE them.  Except when I don’t. It’s not really about not loving the holidays; it’s about not loving what they turn me into, and some of the crap that comes with all of the good stuff. Clearly Christmas is strange enough at our house... Shopping for example, I hate shopping. Picking out just the right thing for someone I care about brings a lot of joy and satisfaction. Having to go to the mall to do so is like a trip to the seventh circle of hell. Now there is a new thing to irritate me about the holidays and I can’t wait until the fad dies and we can all just stop. I bet you have an idea of what I’m talking about, don’t you, because most people don't like it except for the few who have turned it into another competitive parenting event. Yes, it’s that creepy, irritating elf on the shelf. First, it’s damned creepy. Like, kill-everyone-in-their-sleep creepy. If it doesn’t creep you out, good for you! I would not be able to sleep with th...

With everything going on in the world right now, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about where we are and what we have. The whole concept of Thanksgiving has never been more apt, or more poignant. With bombs and guns and dead children washing up on strange shores, and petty arguments dominating our headlines at home...and we’re going to pause for a moment to gorge ourselves on food, accompanied by shitty debates with our, um, difficult family members, followed by gorging ourselves on the ugliest orgy of retail excess you can imagine, as we gouge each other in the eye to get to the last super-discounted game system in the store. It's all fairly depressing, really. Thankful for Autumn decorations & the house to put them in I’ve been watching the news – the worrisome, tragic and trivial – and I’ve been looking around. We have so much to be thankful for. So much with which we are blessed. So many riches we forget to see or appreciate or pause to really be grateful for. ...

No, it’s not what you’re thinking. Really, it’s not. This is not the lament of a parent with a hormonal teenager, or a dirge about girls and emerging PMS, or a cautionary tale about how my once sweet daughter became an actual fire-breathing dragon because…HORMONES! No, it's not about any of that at all...it's actually a whole lot worse. Puberty Sucks Large I went through puberty, and it sucked, but wrapped up in my own hormonal shitstorm I wasn’t able to put my finger on exactly why it was so terrible and soul-sucking. 26 years later, I have a ring-side seat to Quokka’s voyage and, yes Martha, it still sucks. There has been tons of research about what happens to girls in our culture during puberty – in a nutshell, their self esteem and confidence plummet. Feisty, kick-ass little girls, shrink down into pretty paper-dolls, a two-dimensional copy of their younger self. Theories about why this happens focus on the cultural pressures that assault a girl and undermine her en...

When I started out having kids I knew I wanted to have more than one – my original plan was to have an even two and stop there. I also wanted to have those kids fairly close together. I grew up with a sister who was only 16 months older than me and we had the best time getting into all sorts of trouble together, and I wanted my kids to have the opportunity to have that close playmate and partner in crime. Bonus to having kids close together – that built- in playmate is ready to rock sooner rather than later. I didn’t feel quite up to meeting my mom’s timeline of getting pregnant when the first kid was only seven months old, but I knocked out the second kid right around when I was aiming for, and my two even kids were an even two years and two months apart. Then we got frisky, and a teeny bit nuts, and decided what we really wanted was another child. The two girls were great – really they were. We had felt for years that our family was complete and we were good. But then we just ...

2015 has been, um, challenging so far. Busy jobs, busy lives and really accident prone children… Seriously, it has been the year of one damn thing after another. Not long ago, my boss made a crack about not being able to wait for the next story of drama and mayhem on Monday…and then another kid broke her nose.  And so I’m just here to say, STAHHHHHHHP. No, really, knock it off! Actually, in the spirit of Zen Shorts (it’s a good book, go read it - no, I don't get paid for this, I just really like the book), I find myself continually grateful that the various little calamities that have eaten the first half of 2015 have been relatively minor. Many of them could have been so very much worse – what may seem like a run of bad luck has actually been the best sort because no one is permanently damaged (I am now knocking on every piece of wood I can find). I am truly grateful for the small twist of fate, the diligent guardian angel or sliver of positive Karma that has limited...

Well, it finally happened. It took 10 years and three kids, and since the youngest is four and a half, I was hoping it never would, but it did, and it broke my heart just a little. We were getting ready to start our day Monday morning. Everyone was getting dressed, brushing hair, slathering sunblock – the usual morning stuff. In a calm and cheery voice I reminded my half-naked youngest daughter, “Hey cutie, we need to put pants on so we can go have breakfast.” She could see me in the reflection of the floor-length mirrored closet door from where she lay in the middle of the bathroom. Instantly, her mouth curved into a grumpy badger frown, “no.” “Yep, we need pants for school. No nekkie kids allowed!” And then she did it – she leapt to her feet, scooped up the pants, gathered her righteous preschooler anger and stabbed me in the heart.  “I hate you, you’re stupid!” punctuated with throwing her pants at me and fleeing the room. Hating the morning I knew s...

I have decided, definitively, is that there is nothing in life that makes being a grown up feel more stupid than the winter holidays.  No. Thing. It starts with Halloween and keeps rolling right through November, with Thanksgiving, reaches the apex with Christmas and then slobbers all over you for New Years.  Then January comes, everyone has a holiday hangover and you’re a wreck because you've just spent the last two months frantically trying to make the holidays special and magical for your family to the point that you realize you’re not actually sure you even like the family you've just spent two months killing yourself for. After a highly unscientific, casual survey, I've determined this is largely a female (bonus complications for working mother) problem.  Sorry guys, but most of you seem to have been trained that making holidays special, or even making them happen at all, is not your job – I do know a few exceptions to this, but there’s a reason for the ster...