midnight mommies

Feelings of giddiness and anxiousness competed in my stomach as I found myself back at the gym. A short while after vowing to wait to start working out again until my 2-year-old daughter was in preschool, I was back.

An email had popped into my Inbox the day before with a simple subject line of, “Workout Plan.” The sender? My husband. Where I lacked in fortitude to take Avery to the gym’s babysitting room, Bob stood strong. He had a flawless plan, he said, and we were going to the gym after work.

What if we had a day of no plans at all? What if I just followed the kids from room to room and we spent the day lazing about the house in our jammies? Forget the zoo! Maybe we’d go out later to somewhere simple like the bookstore if we felt like it, but maybe we wouldn’t. For once, we wouldn’t run out the door to make a lesson or an appointment. We wouldn’t try to get dressed and packed and buckled in before it was time for Avery’s nap. We wouldn’t meet friends at the park or run up to the grocery store. We’d just sit in our PJ’s for as long as we felt like it, and do whatever activity struck our fancy.

It’s time that someone finally said it: coupons suck. I know, I know, there is an incredible thrill that you experience at the store register when you watch the cashier lop some chunky amount off your bill and turn your purchase into a great deal. Believe me, I LOVE that feeling. Unfortunately, with the total [...]

Every once and a while it happens–you have a moment of absolute clarity that will stick with you for a lifetime, or so you hope anyway because you really do deserve to have your memory serve you well when it comes to a moment of mommy uplift.

I had one of these moments the other day as I was loading my car, in the Target parking lot, full of goodies for my son’s birthday. As I situated the bags of blue-and-yellow construction truck wrapping paper, precurled ribbon to match, and the sunglass-wearing, singing-pig birthday card into the back of my little SUV, I found myself falling into a familiar thought pattern. “How lame I am! Do I have to start every (self-employed) work day late?!” Guilt, disappointment, and feelings of failure bounced around in that crowded head of mine.

by Sandra York There are no gold stars in parenting. There are no Grammys, no Emmys, and no certificates of achievement, appreciation, or even completion. This fact becomes clearer each day as my eldest nears adolescence.  Parenting begins to feel like an exam. Let’s say a physics exam. One where they sit you down at [...]