In preparation for having children, I devoured books about how to take care of diaper rash. How to check for signs of dehydration. How to administer CPR on an infant. Once the children arrived and I felt like I’d mastered infancy, I sought out the books that discussed things like “how to raise confident girls” [...]

The hardest day of my life: I hadn’t been separated from Antonia and Jonah’s father for even a month when a horrible accident happened. Jonah, my three-year-old, had spilled his glass of milk all over my dining room floor about a half hour before it was time to take them to the police station, [...]

I grabbed a coworker of mine by the arm last week and pulled her into the bathroom with me. There was something I wanted her to see, and lifting my shirt up at her desk just seemed like a rude thing to do to everyone who surrounded us.
It was my bellybutton. It has slowly gone [...]

It’s a long running joke in my family that I wrote a book because I somehow convinced myself that it would save my child’s life. When I had to return back to work, the sound of my daughter’s ear piercing cries would still ring in my ears hours and hours later. I would remember how [...]

Why do you REALLY want to know what color mascara I wore in high school?
My employer has finally gotten with the times and decided that, in order to secure the very important and confidential information on our intranet, I need to answer five personal, random questions lest I forget my coveted password. There are several [...]

My daughter Antonia likes to tell friends, family and perfect strangers how she ended up with her name. About how when I was in college I was constantly told by my mother to pray to St. Anthony because he was the saint that watched over losers. Well… people who LOSE things, anyway. I was most [...]

I have four kids — three girls and one lonely little boy. Coincidentally, I grew up in a house with three sisters and one lonely little brother. What these two things basically mean is that I have a very limited knowledge and understanding of little boys. As an older sister, I basically let my brother [...]

Kyra, my youngest child, has to go through a day care evaluation every single day. This evaluation is good and necessary because it helps us in making future decisions. For example, we might decide that ice cream for after-dinner dessert is a bad idea. Or we might tolerate grouchiness a little more readily, depending on [...]

I don’t like labels. Never have. Even as a kid, I hated being known as The Shy Girl. At one point I tried hard to change it and in fourth or fifth grade I was given the principal’s award for “Outstanding Citizenship.” I really had no idea what it meant at the time except that, [...]

I had always thought of myself as a fairly conscientious human being before meeting my husband. I balanced my checkbook regularly. I carried a flashlight in my glove box and stayed away from people knowingly infested with flu germs. I voted. I payed taxes. I used my turn signals, visited my dentist biannually, and applied [...]