From the category archives:

gnmparents

Election Day

November 4, 2008

I was 25 years old when I covered my first election day.
I worked for a small chain of weekly suburban newspapers, and my beat was the largest in the group—and the most Republican. The citizens of this small town voted regularly and predictably, with very little dissent.
Not at that time a very political animal, I [...]

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My Baby’s Got Me Wrapped Up In Chains

June 17, 2008

In August it will be two years that we’ve lived in East Central Illinois.
We left behind the water and the trees and everything familiar to begin our beginning in the middle – four years into our marriage, with one child in tow, my husband went back to graduate school as a full-time doctoral candidate and [...]

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A Stitch In Time

May 6, 2008

My mother made me a skirt to wear on my twelfth birthday.
My parents took me out – alone, without my sister and brother – to a very fancy grown-up dinner at a restaurant with white cloth napkins and tablecloths. I ordered baked ziti (still my favorite to this day) and afterward, we went to a [...]

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The Apologist

April 8, 2008

Of all the things I could have passed down to my daughter – brown eyes, a love for reading, bad teeth – I never thought she would get my knee-jerk need to apologize.
I’ve been apologizing for as long as I can remember. When my parents argued, I thought it was my fault; I apologized. My [...]

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The Tender Spots

February 26, 2008

One person or another in our household has been laid up since Thanksgiving.I’m beginning to think that we’ve offended the universe in some very serious way, bringing upon us plague after plague. My plague, of course, is of a different sort, with morning sickness that lasts all the livelong day.
We’re a barrel of laughs, I [...]

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Dreaming Of Spring

February 13, 2008

Winter is the worst time to be a parent who stays at home.
Typically, I would also be working, writing a weekly column for a travel site that is preparing to launch. But the preparations are keeping my editor busy right now, and with 13 columns stored up in her files, I am not needed at [...]

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Playing Hooky

January 29, 2008

The Poo wound up in my bed again last night, and we slept the night through wrapped around one another. I finally rolled over this morning and groggily opened my eyes, taking in dark sky and gloom of the bedroom.
Looking at the clock, I expected to see a number like six or seven.
Instead, I jerked [...]

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Hell Night

November 20, 2007

I have a whole new appreciation for my mother these days.
I can never remember a time when our house wasn’t clean. She always had a batch of fresh cookies in the jar, and she sewed countless outfits for special occasions: Halloween costumes, orchestra concert ensembles, a skirt for my 12th birthday celebration. Dinner was always [...]

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Getting A Taste

November 6, 2007

If ever there was a day in which an extra hour was not needed, it was Sunday.The Poo was downright ornery from the minute she woke up an hour early (thank you, DST) to the minute we laid her down in her crib at 6 p.m., justifying the premature bedtime with the thought that somewhere [...]

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Crafting 911

October 30, 2007

Not too long ago, my sister called and asked me to measure The Poo’s waist. My girl is lucky enough to have a

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