Today I’m sharing important research I’ve compiled here in the parenting trenches that may help my fellow parents gain more insight into why we’re so annoying. While driving them back from yet another after-school lesson, one of the three kids in the car began to drum on the armrest. (Have you ever noticed how almost all boys under the age of 20 have a tendency to drum on things? Desks, tables, cars, legs, and almost any hard surface? I think they’re born with it. I call it the Ringo Starr gene.) After four miles of drumming, it got annoying so I asked him to please cut it out. But it made me wonder: What do I do as a parent […]

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No…no, no, no. What is that awful sound? Oh, I hate that sound. Why did I pick that sound for my iPhone alarm app? ’m definitely changing that sound option later today. The “crystals” alarm tone sounded so pretty when I chose it, but clearly I was deluded. Crystals are bad. I hate them. Go away, crystals. I’ll get up in five minutes. (Tap to snooze.) No…no, no, no. I need to sleep. Sleep is the best thing that God ever created. I’m in love with sleep. I love sleep so much that I would marry sleep and Tom would just have to understand. Nothing feels better than this. My body is demanding sleep and I should listen to my […]

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“Stupid, stupid, stupid.” That’s what I muttered to myself as I reached into the basket of guilt-inducing Halloween candy for the fourth time today. Last weekend while I was buying groceries, I grabbed several bags of Halloween candy because it was on sale and I wanted to save money as well as another trip to the store. But when I got home, I remembered exactly why I should never buy Halloween candy a second earlier than October 30th. The longer it’s in the house, the more of it I’ll eat. Why? Because it’s there and because my jaws aren’t wired shut. Even as I type these words, my desk is littered with fun-size wrappers, hard evidence of my pre-Halloween mistake. […]

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Superheroes are hot right now. They score big at the box office. They’re piling up on prime time TV and you’ll see plenty of little caped crusaders ringing your doorbell this Halloween (since it’s common knowledge that superheroes need Skittles and Snickers to fuel their superpowers.) Several years ago the word “supermom” became popular – a term used to describe the overly enthusiastic mom with limitless energy and a Pinterest-perfect home who can run a PTA bake sale and a Fortune 500 company and still have time left over to teach Zumba. I and many of my fellow mothers tried our best to live up to the Supermom name but soon found that it’s about as mythical as potty-training in […]

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When I was growing up, we kept our navy blue Pontiac Bonneville a long time – mostly out of necessity and partly because my mother had a hard time letting go of things, including cars, empty Cool Whip bowls and every picture I ever colored in the second grade. At one point, the car’s headliner – that fabric on the ceiling of the car’s interior – started to pull away from the roof and sag down like an inverted parachute. Before it got low enough to brush against the tops of our heads, we performed a do-it-yourself fix using thumbtacks. We spaced them out evenly which created a quilted appearance, and we used gold thumbtacks, which did not add the […]

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My kids used to ride the bus. Now they don’t. Now I spend more than an hour in the car on weekdays sitting in long car lines at three different schools so I can pick them up. It’s not one of my favorite activities, although I’m slowly learning how to make better use of my “sitting in the crazy long car line” time. So why don’t I just make the kids ride the bus like they used to? I’ll tell you. The bus has changed. When my kids first started riding it in elementary school, they had this incredible bus driver named Ms. Virginia. Every time she pulled up at the stop sign, it felt like Mother Goose herself had […]

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Dear Facebook, We need to talk. I think we need to take a break. It’s not you, it’s me. Okay, maybe it’s a little bit you. It’s not that you’re a “bad” social media platform. You’re not. It’s just that when I spend time with you, I feel like a loser. And I just don’t think my self-esteem can take much more of this relationship. Please don’t take this the wrong way. There’s a lot to like about you. Thanks to you, I get to see adorable pictures of nieces and nephews and watch them grow up even though we’re hundreds of miles away. And I love the way you make me laugh sometimes. That video of the hamsters spinning […]

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If I had a business card for my job as a mother, the job description would read “Finder of Things.” Because that’s what I do. I find things. I love my husband and kids but they’re terrible finders. And I wouldn’t mind it so much if they weren’t also excellent losers. The most frustrating part of the problem is that I consider our house to be somewhat organized and generally tidy – certainly not “eat off the floor” tidy, but it’s what I’d call a “someone could stop by the house unannounced and I wouldn’t die of embarrassment” level of tidy. Chaos makes me anxious, so I organize things to make it easier for us to find and keep up […]

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Charlie Brown and I have something in common. We’re both in love with and completely exasperated by a beagle. My fondness for Snoopy was one of the reasons I happily welcomed a beagle into the family nearly four years ago. The kids named him Charlie. At the time, I had no idea how many times I’d stand at the front door and call that name over and over again, waiting for our wayward beagle to come home. Perhaps I should have known a beagle would be trouble. There were plenty of clues in the Peanuts comic strip that should’ve tipped me off. Snoopy clearly had a passion for adventure, as evidenced by those daredevil flights as the Red Baron. And […]

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My name is Gwen Rockwood and it’s been two hours since I accidentally left my phone at home. I realized it roughly 20 minutes after it happened, and by that time I was already 15 miles from home with no time to drive back and get it. When I reached over to the passenger’s side seat to grab it, I found nothing but a lifeless charger cord with no phone attached to it. I hoped that perhaps it had slid off the seat and onto the floorboard. I searched the cracks and crevices around the center console. “Please be here. Please be here,” I chanted. But it wasn’t. My phone was home alone. I wanted to slap my hands against […]

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