The weather makes today perfect for cups of fragrant tea and naps.
Shaggy is napping, and I have a big cup of coffee in my hand, but our location leaves something to be desired. The boy is in his hospital crib, deep in slumber. In fact, he sleeps better here than he has ever, anywhere. Last [...]

The hospital becomes familiar quickly.
After five years of navigating the medical system while my father lived with and then ultimately died from cancer, I got to know how hospitals work.
You have to finesse the nurses; doctors swoop in and out. It’s the nurses who deliver meds on time and fetch extra pillows and bedding.
The cafeterias [...]

There are some phrases you don’t want to hear in the pediatrician’s office.
Phrases, like, oh, say, “breathing issue” and “St. Louis Children’s Hospital.”
Shaggy has this funny kind of gaspy, gulpy breathing thing he does, intermittently and most often when he is eating. It sounds like a scary squeak, one I knew wasn’t quite right. I [...]

Yesterday was awful.
Even with the perspective that some rest and a new morning bring, yesterday will go down in the annals as perhaps one of my worst mothering days.
This whole week, in fact, can suck it. I lost my temper more times than I care to admit, culminating with a terrible performance where I screamed [...]

There is something about Sundays that always make me sad.
Ever since I was a little girl, the late-afternoon sun at the end of a weekend makes me maudlin. I want to turn back the clock to Saturday morning when 24 hours were laid out in front of me like a banquet.
This Sunday I was like [...]

It is a lovely day here on the prairie, sunny and hot. The kind of day that begs for a morning at the pool or time spent wandering the farmer’s market in search of the perfect, sweet peach.
Alas, I am home, in my nightgown, on the sofa.
I am at T-minus 10 days and counting until [...]

My husband is finally home, but things are still out of whack.
My MIL remains with us, her plane ticket back to Washington, D.C. discarded. She was due to leave six hours before Mr. Chicken walked in the back door, and she felt sure I would go into labor the minute she left the house.
So today, [...]

The Poo and I baked cookies this morning, and decided it would be nice to drop some off for daddy and his friends, who were holed up in their office studying for Monday’s intensive doctoral qualifying exams.
We spent a few minutes chatting, and then we went to the grocery store for necessities like white grape [...]

I am a total bore.
*holds up hands*
No, really, I am.
I want to write something stirring, or lovely, or melancholy about the upcoming shift in my family, but I just can’t.
I’m all out of words, at least the good ones. I wrote three columns, an essay and two sidebars for publication yesterday and the well is, [...]