Urine Trouble, Mister

      Share Email I’ve been trying to pinpoint why I have been in such a bad mood all week. Granted, there’s the matter of the Womanly Shadow that has been cast, and the fact that Drew has been sick, and the fact that one of my best friends is going through something terrible, and life has just…gotten under my skin. Then I realized. The reason is obvious. My entire house smells like urine. I walked into the bathroom ye...

Review: Casa's "Charlotte's Web"

      Share Ema It’s terrific! It’s radiant! It’s Some Show. For anyone who didn’t grow up watching the classic movie or reading the classic E.B. White novel, here’s the runt-down (pun intended): A little piglet is born onto the Arable farm is saved from the chopping block by eight-year-old Fern who lovingly names him Wilbur. Wilbur begins to make friends in his new home while he learns about t...

Where to Take Your Swagger Wagon

      Share Emai On Saturday Gordon and I went to a parenting conference. This made us feel so very Docker-worthy, though perhaps not minivan-tastic. It had been a couple of years since our last parenting conference, where a woman with perfect teeth and a perfect body taught us how to perform a perfect timeout on our 2-year-old. We felt very smug and awesome for about 20 minutes afterwards, and then started researching more conferenc...

Where to Take Your Swagger Wagon

3 Books for Your 4-Year-Old

BORING, right? Right. Who cares what your preschooler reads? Not me. Nope. I’ve got enough problems of my own, like how to not look so unattractive every Wednesday. Why are the stars so out of alignment regarding my hair and apparel choices on that day? Why must hump day always equal frump day? These are questions for the ages. Last week I wrote about Drew’s obsession with his Christmas book Drummer Boy , and how reflective and slightly creeped out the story makes me. Then ...

A Drum Beatdown

      Share Email   Drew’s new favorite book is Drummer Boy , a retelling of the Little Drummer Boy Christmas story. A little late for Christmas, I admit, but Drew tends to circle his books like big game stalking its prey — for weeks and weeks — before he comes in for the kill. Then it’s a lights-out marathon of nothing-but-the-new-book. We gorge ourselves on Drummer Boy every day, at naptime and at bedtime, ...

Potty Lock: Lessons From a Brief Imprisonment

      Share Email On Saturday, I had the privilege of seeing life from the confines of a 4 x 7 foot cell. Not as a result of petty theft or even because of solidarity with my imprisoned Christian brethren, but because I closed the door to the bathroom. And it was broken. And I’m an idiot. You have to understand: I am still over the moon that Drew poops in the potty. Just today he looked up at me from the toilet with those moony bro...

Crack Questions

      Share Email Drew has become obsessed with the cracks in the floor at Esperanza’s. Esperanza’s is our family’s favorite Mexican food dive, and I’ve considered sending Drew there to work in exchange for enchiladas, much like the boy Samuel who served in the Temple. Last week he noticed a corner where the tile seems to have been shattered by a heavy object. “What are dose cwacks, Mommy?” He asks me t...

2 Videos: Thing One Performs The Classics

Have you ever looked at your child and thought, YES. YES. He is meant to do this or that. I can see it plain as day. A budding artist, blooming singer, emerging actress. I think I will start preparing now for the life of ease that is coming my way when he buys me my second house off his third world tour record from his fourth platinum album. Perhaps I will embed a small diamond into my left incisor. I will definitely change my name to Mother To Rhodes Children so there is no confusion....

Late-Bloomer Grinch

  A furry green index finger and furry green thumb pluck a morsel from the ground, a crumb too small for a mouse, leaving behind utter desolation. A quiet wind blows. It might be after Christmas, but a Grinch-like muse has taken us captive for severe organization. Not to steal away the fire trucks, dolls, trains and pony paraphernalia, but simply this: to corral and tame the beast of unmatched parts. Parts. There are so many. Puzzle pieces, Legos — large and small and ...

Should I Be Ho-Ho-Honest?

      Shar I was minding my business one night when I heard someone talking to himself upstairs. It was Drew. I shut the music off on my computer and closed my eyes to listen. “Santa is a good guy. He not have to hug you. He goes away.” My son, without any professional instruction, had discovered the power of talk therapy. Needless to say, I’m concerned, though thrilled I didn’t have to pay a psychologist. Drew is just sor...

Knock on Porcelain: He's Trained!

      Share Email Well, folks, it looks like I have a potty-trained child. Aren’t you thrilled? If you read this blog regularly, you are, because this means you will now get to enjoy a vast array of new topics related to world affairs, recipe mishaps, and celebrity speculation, instead of all things poop and poopy pants and pedestrian angst. Until Thing Two, of course. Three cheers for 2013! I can’t tell you what happened really. It ...

Review: Casa's Santa Claus: The Musical

      Share Email You might not have had time yet to deck the halls or go wassailing or perform some other vague Christmasism, but surely you’ve noticed that Thanksgiving, our culture’s speed bump on the road to Santa, seems tiny in the rearview. So pack up the sleigh with a sugarplum or two, and prance on down to Casa Mañana for some great family fun. What Parents Will Like: Feeling like a kid again. Once you’ve...

The Why of Wicks

      Share Email I read a slogan on the bottom of a candle that said, “Remember the moments that matter.” As if this candle, by lighting it, would help me mark the important times with intentionality — the flame would stamp and sear the sacred. But I light candles to holy-fy moments that really don’t matter at all, the groggy moments. Don’t you? The early morning, my eyes weighed with sandbags, but I have t...

Spoon-ing Is No Fun

      Share Email I think it’s hilarious how toddlers think they control their dominion. Or think that they should . I mean, talk about DRAMA when Thing Two can’t quite get the tip of the bottle inserted into Baby’s mouth — we’re talking epic. Or when she’s having trouble finding the precise corner of her deteriorating blanket to suck on, or struggling to turn a page of Elmo Loves You . Or using a spoo...

Are Kids Your Ultimate or Fall-Back Dream? (Why Both Are Wrong)

      Share Email This is mere speculation, but I think many moms hide so far within their own motherhood that they can’t see which way is up. They can’t feel the mossy floor of the cave, or the dripping ceiling — they hang suspended in an identity so thick and sticky they don’t even remember things like grass and sunlight. Maybe this is why I’ve been taking voice lessons? At the end of a 10-year meanderatio...

A Real Baby's Baby

Sometimes I think Thing Two believes I am incompetent. She already has the most beautiful little face with the most beautiful arched eyebrows, and boy howdy, do they arch . She gives me these looks that say, “Are you sure that’s the best way to crack an egg? Is there a reason for that particular headband? I wonder if you’ve considered all the possibilities here.” She will be a great mom someday. She will also be a great mom because she is already showing signs o...

Franken-Thing Two and Other Bad Costumes

Once, and I’m not particularly proud of this, Gordon and I went as Adam and Eve to a corporate Halloween party in downtown Fort Worth. Our costume looked something like this: I don’t know whose idea this costume was, and my most distinct memory is how far below his actual nipples Gordon’s painted-on-polyester nipples were. They languished somewhere below his rib cage. But if there’s anything more unflattering than dressing up as Adam with his strangely plac...

Speech Therapy Strangeness

      Share Email I once knew a girl in college who thought everything was Amazing. That Thai food restaurant is Amazing; the way the sunlight filters through the trees is unbelievably Amazing; the 90s fad of wearing braided belts over a knit top and broomstick skirt — A-to-the-mazing. The enduring image I have of “Jane” is when she used to come into my room at the sorority house wearing nothing but a bra and blue jeans ...

Unlucky Strike: The Aftermath of Bowling and Frivolity

Sometime today, maybe it was when I was wiping Drew’s poopy man-bottom or folding my eighth tiny pair of tights, that I had a horrible fantasy of being cancer-ridden. I think it’s probably the blackest and most demonic thing in the world to fantasize about. On the surface it’s not as insidious as daydreaming about Daniel Craig’s abdomen or the delicious way my nextdoor neighbor’s head would explode if I ran over her dog. It’s sort of melodramatic and ...