School is out (for the kids, not for me — law school is eternal), the sun is shining, and summer is here. With the arrival of the Devil’s armpit to North Carolina comes the seemingly endless invites to barbecues, park play dates, pool parties, and birthday bashes. And I have declined almost all of them. I … More Why I Can’t “Just Bring the Twins!”
Several months ago, I had an idea: What if my husband and I took all five kids and the dog camping? My husband and I took just our puppy camping last summer. I had found out that I was pregnant only one day beforehand, and we spent the whole weekend excitedly planning and daydreaming our … More Our First Campout with Five Kids
By all accounts, today marks the end of our last week of the summer. Although my daughter’s first day of school was on Monday, we pulled her out of school on Friday and snuck away for a quick family adventure. But that was our final hoorah of the season, and the rest of our kids … More Sunday #28: “I Keep Losing Jesus!”
When I was pregnant, there were a lot of baby milestones I was looking forward to, and even some I wasn’t. I daydreamed about what baby’s first smiles would look like, what I would have to do to get her to laugh, and prayed that she would be sleeping through the night by four months. … More 4 Baby Milestones That Made Me Cry
For several years now, I have wished that I was thirty years old. I found out I was pregnant when I was only nineteen. I had been married for approximately four months, to someone I had only started dating two months before that. I’m sure it’s a shocker to absolutely no one that teenagers don’t … More How Motherhood Has Aged Me
My marriage is forever changed now that my husband and I have twins. Before we found out we were expecting last June, we only had kids every other week as a result of our custody arrangement with our previous spouses. We really struggled with missing our kids on the off weeks, but filled the space … More Love in the Aftermath
This was Kevin and I’s first week with just the twins in nearly a month, and… wow. Let me just start off by saying that we love our three older kids immensely, and we miss them the second we get home from dropping them off with their other parents. The invisible weight of only seeing … More Sunday #27
The first time I found out I was pregnant was just a few weeks shy of my twentieth birthday, and a few weeks after that, I’m pretty sure I met an angel. My then-husband and I had only been married for a little over four months, and we certainly hadn’t been expecting me to become … More The Angel in the Bathroom
When I was pregnant, everyone warned me that once the babies were born, I would hate my dog. I heard story after story of burnt-out, exhausted mothers who couldn’t stand the smell of their dog, the sound of their dog licking his paws, the way the dog always seemed to be standing right where she … More A Postpartum Love Letter to My Dog
It was eight o’clock in the morning, and I was on my hands and knees on the floor of my kids’ bathroom, scrubbing the bathtub. I had come into the bathroom simply to put away some of my daughters’ bows, and I had found those bows while cleaning my office downstairs, and I was cleaning … More The Days Are Long, But the Years Are Short
Step by Step Parenting 