In our backyard, we have what is tantamount to a crop circle. It is an 18-foot circle where the grass hasn’t yet grown back after the Wal-Mart above-ground pool fiasco of 2014 (a story for another day). I look out at that void and think two things: 1. I am SO, SO glad that the […]
Carrie On Parenting: Revenge of the Wolf-Criers
I truly love the story of “the boy who cried ‘Wolf.’” It sank in to me when I was little and throwing a big fit about nothing at all, and my wise mother ingrained in me the idea of only making a fuss over things that really deserve it…because, in our family, we don’t sweat the small […]
Carrie On Parenting: Last Night, I Put Baby in the Corner
With apologies to Dirty Dancing fans for this (terrible) borrowing of phrase for reasons completely unrelated to Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Gray, and with apologies to the patrons of Buffalo Wild Wings in our Arkansas town last night from about 5:05-5:20pm…I humbly submit this post. So last night, we were “those” parents, and Sawyer was […]
An “Incredible” Halloween
I actually LOVE Disney/Pixar films…they contain just enough sass, snark, and sophisticated humor that, while I would rather be in the theater watching Gone Girl, I can easily laugh at the cleverly-placed humor for adults who have forked over $50 to take their families to the movies.) I appreciate all the Disney/Pixar greats, but last […]
The 5 Stages of Supermarket Cart Grief
A few months ago, I had a really, really tough day in the grocery store. While I was pushing my cart through the five stages of hell (oh, I meant the canned goods aisle), I considered the stages of my grocery store cart development while parenting. The Baby-Carrier-on-Top-of-the-Cart-Handle Stage:This stage is meant to lure unsuspecting parents into thinking, […]
Carrie On Parenting: Lowering the Crib
Yesterday morning, my almost-18-month-old Sawyer attempted a full gainer dive out of his crib. Lucky for me, I had just gone in his room to wake him up. I was hanging clothes in his little closet a few feet away and was thus able to go horizontal in a move that could only be duplicated on […]
Learning to Climb Onto My Soapbox
Friends, I am nothing if not a good girl. A little wild at times, yes. Fun at parties? Absolutely. Did my parents, friends’ parents, or teachers ever chastise me for this tastefully well-kept secret that probably everyone in our small town knew? No. Why? They never commented because, for all my fun, party-girl ways, I […]
A Jack-O-Lantern Changed My Life
October 21, 2005. Nashville, TN. When the principal of the inner-city high school where I taught asked my teacher friends and me to run senior night and honor the students who were football players, cheerleaders, and band members, we agreed. These students accepted the rigors of after-school commitments in this extra-tough environment. We would honor […]