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: Raise Your Glass to an Unproductive 2015
There are many metaphors for the phenomenon I’m experiencing: hamster on the wheel, attempting to climb the slippery slope, two steps forward/three steps back, etc., etc. When it comes right down to it, I’m feeling a little under-appreciated by my family, and A LOT like I might never be a productive member of society again. This has […]
Carrie On Parenting: Sippy Cups in My Wine Fridge
“MILK!!!” Sawyer, my youngest who is 19 months old, is learning to talk. He has a few favorite words: mama, no, Good Girl (his name for our dog Lexi), and milk. He yells “Milk!” approximately 88 times per day, and that is where my story begins. I have a cabinet full of sippy cups…they have multiplied, […]
A Story I Hope to Never Tell My Daughter (and Apologies to Andrew)
When I was in the 10th grade, I found a note in my locker. Kids, we used to have these things called pencils and pens. If we wanted to communicate with our friends, we would write a note. On a piece of notebook paper. With a pen or pencil. It was not instantaneous, and sometimes […]
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 […]
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 […]