Parenting

Friends, it's time to talk about the dark underbelly of the parenting universe. There are so many aspects of parenting that are terrifying, disgusting, and push you to the edge, but few have earned such a reputation that even the cute, naive, clueless parents-to-be have heard of their legend and already started negotiations with their partner to see who will be responsible for the fallout. I am referring, of course, to the infamous, the dreaded, the inevitable: diaper blowouts. Let's…

Hey there everybody. I've been lying low, and I think you probably all know why. At least I'm pretty sure you do, considering how much stuff you've all been posting about May. I don't need to tell you about May. May is the devil's month. May is the longest blur of activities and programs and made up holidays. We have three kids in elementary now with another in preschool and I gave up trying to figure out what day they…

Dear Children, Let me start by saying I love you to pieces. I have loved you since I carried you in my body for nine months and suffered great pain pushing you out and spent the first years of your life in a sleepless haze giving you my every moment. But we've reached an impasse. I have failed you. There are certain skills in life your parents are expected to teach you. "Didn't your mother ever teach you not to…

We had a particularly successful dining out experience with our children tonight. The way that I know it was successful is that I had to chase my toddler into the men's room, I ended up with Sprite all over my shirt, and the people around us spent a lot of time looking at us, which are all clear signals you are winning at appropriate social behaviors. It made me once again question why we ever attempt to take our children…

Once upon a time, when I took my last college class, I had a dream that my days of doing homework were gone forever. Sure, a decade later I still have nightmares about forgetting to go to class for an entire semester or procrastinating a huge paper until the last minute, but I get to wake up and remember that I have no deadlines and no looming report cards. Sort of. Because if you are a parent you probably already…

Once a year the school district deems it advisable to set my kids loose for a week to enjoy the "spring weather" or some such thing that doesn't happen in Utah. I actually don't think this is a terrible idea, if only because it makes summer vacation a week shorter. That is, I think it's a good idea until my children are actually at home, with me, and no one else, for an entire week, expecting many many tons of…

If you have kids, you might worry about germs. I never worry about germs, because I know germs are nasty little suckers that can take care of themselves. And I don't worry about my kids getting germs because they are experts at it. We used to try to keep the germs away. I bought lots of hand sanitizer and we sang Row, Row, Row your boat while we washed our hands and we talked about coughing into our elbow and…

Hey sports fans. If you've never met me personally, you may not know that I'm a huge March Madness fan. We get the whole family in on the fun. We hire newborn photographers to take tender artsy black and white photos of Baby's First Bracket. My two year old has a medal for out-performing his entire extended family. It's serious business. If you aren't having your kids fill out March Madness brackets, you absolutely should be. Many, many studies that…

People like to congratulate us on our cleverness in having a perfectly split family: three girls, three boys. We planned it, naturally, and we like to sit around at night judging people who have gender disparity at their house. They really should have thought it through before they had three or four of the same kind of human in a row, you know? It's only responsible. Sometimes I like to stop them on the street and point it out to…