Last Friday we took our daughter on a college visit. Serene lawns and still hallways echoed the time year: Spring Break. As we toured the campus, thoughts about our sweet girl’s future exploded in my mind like kernels in an air popper. I longed to see some students as evidence that when kids grow up they’re okay. But they were on Spring Break. Inside the dorms, our guide was kind (bold? crazy?) enough to show us several rooms where it looked like the Rapture had taken place. Books, guitars, clothes, pizza pans, and shoes littered the floors and beds. There …
The “Joy” of Parenting in the Friendly Skies
Oh no, I groan inwardly as I slide into my seat on the crowded Southwest Airlines plane. The only remaining isle seat is not just at the very back of the plane. It’s also next to a woman sitting next to her preschool son. Her loud preschool son. This is going to be the longest hour-and-twenty-minutes of my life, I gloomily predict. I am wrong. As time literally flies by, I am first amazed, then awed, and finally deeply moved by the vibrant relationship I witness beside me. After we land, I wrack my brain for a way to tell …
Welcome to Holland, by Emily Perl Kingsley
❀❀ Here is a wonderful essay by Emily Perl Kingsley. She has given us all a wonderful snap-shot of the experience of having a child born with a disability, and allows us to feel some of the emotions that go along with it. ❀❀ When you’re going to have a baby, it’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip-to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It is all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day …
Parenting Teens thru Spring Break
What will your teen do over Spring Break? Maybe you’re in the sippy cup years, looking ahead with fear and trembling to the Facebook years. How can we watch out for our teens in today’s world? Last night I feel asleep to the sound of laughter drifting upstairs from young women in our basement. Two are on the threshold of college; two others are are signed up for the ACT. All are counting the days ’til spring break. If the teen years are such a vibrant time of life, why do we dread parenting through it? You can prepare yourself …
Shaping The Heart
Raising strong-willed children is like having an army of toddlers in your home. These iron-willed babes will test every boundary and challenge any directive given. Please tell me you know what I’m talking about, do you have a stubborn kiddo that you love so much but he/she makes you want to pull your hair out? I’m hoping y’all can relate to the limit testing sessions my youngest has been devising since she entered the terrible three’s (Twos were a breeze mamas; it’s the threes we need to prepare for!) She has decided that pottying everywhere other than the bathroom is way …
Kids and Technology: The “Guinea Pig” Generation
I should have seen it coming. Almost two decades ago, Daniel and I scrutinized the ten or twelve boxes of cutting-edge “educational software” at CompUSA, finally settling on Reader Rabbit. Back home, we devoted the evening to learning the program, ourselves, so that we could help our daughter with it, during the upcoming weeks and months. We stayed up past midnight, and I’m pretty sure we high-fived each other for being such with-it, tech-savvy, forward-thinking parents. Forty-five minutes. What had taken two college-educated adults hours to figure out together took our 3-year-old less than one hour, all on her own. …
Growing Up Different
Another crazy afternoon, a day in the life of me. Except this time, we had just picked up my oldest from school and she is still struggling to keep herself together. I juggle her assignments, Elijah’s off the wall energy and Tori’s victorious antics. We settle in for the evening, supper, showers, stories, and bedtime. After I get the little ones to bed, I hustle Chy into the shower. She takes longer than usual, forty five minutes later, she is out, dripping wet and her eyes hold a brokenness in them. She asks me quietly if I would …
Expecting Stretch Marks
During the 40 weeks of pregnancy, a woman’s body does things she never imagined it could do. It begs for us to use the word “miracle” to describe the whole, amazing process. When our skin stretches more than it’s happy to, reddish or purplish marks develop that remind me of childhood poison ivy moments, minus the scratching. Primarily due to heredity, stretch marks may appear on your stomach, chest, or behind, anywhere the body is doing the miraculous work of growing to accommodate carrying and bearing new life. They appear gradually, so you may not even notice them at first …
Teamwork – Lessons from a Toddler
While learning to walk, Jonathon had clung happily to our fingers, leaning on us for support. We had held him safely between us. Now that he could walk on his own, however, he wanted nothing to do with either parent. If I carried him, he squirmed to get “down.” Once on terra firma, he scurried away as fast as his wobbly legs would carry him. Terrified for his safety, I dashed after him, clamping my hand around his chubby fist. Then I endured ear-splitting screams of protest as he tried to free himself from my restrictive vice grip. (Oh, and …
40 Weeks of Growing Trust
The test stick turns pink, and suddenly your whole world changes. Within days you may start to feel your body change, and new thoughts cross your mind that you never considered before. How will life change professionally, intimately, financially, and physically? With the passing of each day on the calendar, you may feel like time is running out to get a firm hold on the coming addition to your family and the changes to your world. Forty weeks will pass faster than you think, and the urge to be in control may grow right along with the size of your …