My son Sam hates homework.
He’s in fourth grade and this is not unexpected. Sam is aflame with tense dread as he pulls papers and books from his backpack. Sometimes, getting him started on problems 1 -28, page 135 is like lighting a fire with a feather doused in chocolate pudding.
Practically impossible.
I am supposed to witness [...]

I can think of several things my 8-month-old son finds more fascinating than nursing:
The dog walking through the room, signaled by jangling tags. A referee’s whistle on TV. The doorbell, kids yelling “Go Fish!”, flies buzzing, spiders batting their eyelashes, the whir of satellites miles above us.
He starts to nurse, then moments later he pops [...]

The fastest way a woman can age herself is to share what she made per hour as a teenaged babysitter.
$2.
What a bargain!
For a mere $2 an hour, neighborhood parents secured the health and safety of their children for a childless Friday night on the town. The $6 to $8 they shelled out [...]

Seventh grade was the worst year of my life.
It started well enough, I believe. On the first day of school, I wore my 501s and a Hunt Club shirt from JCPenney’s. My mom wouldn’t buy real polo shirts, so I had to settle for a close knock-off. I still felt good about myself. My [...]

No, I don’t do daycare.
I can’t give you a lift to the airport or the ski resort, either. The tinted windows aren’t hiding well-behaved felons on their way to pick up roadside litter, nor am I a private investigator with cameras mounted to catch indiscretions and fraud.
I am simply a mom who drives [...]

My daughter’s face was buried in a pillow she grabbed off the couch. It was Sunday night. We had just finished watching a news segment about the kids’ school.
A reporter stood in front of the building looking properly furrowed as she gave the grim news: The H1N1 flu had arrived in our community, infecting [...]

My three-month-old son, Archie, sleeps well for a guy his age. He usually wakes once to eat, then easily falls back to sleep. There have been a few nights lately when he’s sailed through the night, no waking. His dreams must have been sweet and his tummy well-settled.
You might picture me falling back to [...]

My oldest daughter is almost 12. She just began keeping a journal.
I had a journal from ages 14-24. It was a three-ring binder filled with hundreds of pages of notebook paper, each covered in blue or black ink scrawl and doodle-littered margins.
Ten years of angst, rants, theories, dreadful poetry, and dreams crumbled into [...]

When I nurse in public, I am nervous.
Is someone going to glare at me? Will they abruptly steer their children in the opposite direction once it’s clear the baby hidden under the green blanket isn’t simply asleep? What if a security guard, store manager, or Citizen Busybody leaps into action, operating under the authority [...]

There is a fifth season in Colorado.
It is tightly wedged between winter and spring, overlapping both slightly. You won’t find the kids of our state screaming down ski slopes or romping in glorious sunshine with fat and happy robins, though.
Instead, they are curled over desks in silent classrooms. This fifth season features days [...]