forgive yourself

September 4, 2013

“Take the long view, I reminded myself, looking out across the fields to our own long view. Life finds its balance. Children grow up. Second chances come along. In the meantime, I could choose to savor this moment.” – Katrina Kenison Can you forgive yourself for not living in the moment? When our babies are sparkling new and swaddled up we set out with intentions we can believe in, but we just don’t know. We are going to live in the moment. We’re going to relish these baby years, these elementary years, for we have been told time and again how precious it all is, and how fleeting. And intrinsically, we know it to be true. But, what we don’t know is that we are about to be swept up inside days and nights that bleed into one. And that our minds will fill with a sleep-deprived dense fog of anxiety and joy […]

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Just Write {100}

September 3, 2013

This is (WOW) the 100th installment of Just Write. Please join me in free-writing your (extra)ordinary stories, your memories, your moments. I would love it if you would…. Here’s to 100. *clink clink* ::::: These were the best fajitas I’ve had in…well, maybe ever. The kids jumped in the trampoline outside, yelling and screaming and bumping into each other on purpose and sweating a lot. Ryan stayed home with an under the weather Elsie who needed bed. Miles rode his scooter, ahead of us and Asher walked with me, behind. He held my hand. He still loves to hold my hand. More and more I want to hold these days and these moments in my hand and keep them for as long as possible because they feel more and more slippery. And then there are other times, in these young years when the whining and waking up over and over and the diapers […]

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Postable Magic

August 29, 2013

This is one of my favorite thank you cards from Postable, a new discovery I made thanks to BlogHer ’13 in Chicago…. In a nutshell, you upload all of your mailing addresses (or send out a message asking your friends and family to click a link and they fill in their address) OR you fill them each in manually. I sent out a Facebook message with the link to my account and people quickly and easily typed in their address, saving me from having to do them all one by one. (I hadn’t stored addresses on my computer before because I was pretending it was a party like in 1999.) Postable is a new-ish company that’s worth checking out, friends. It began when two young boys named Jesse and Scott met at camp in 1982. Well, okay. It didn’t actually begin right then, but that’s when they met. I love stories like that. […]

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Just Write 99

August 26, 2013

We walked through the grass that’s getting too long again, across our yard and into our neighbor’s yard, cut through their driveway and stood on their shiny brown stoop. Elsie was in only a diaper because she was about to have a bath and get ready for bed when I realized we should visit her preschool (yes, at the next door neighbor’s home) before the morning since it had been a while since we’d been inside. She stepped confidently in, but then when the whole family was squatting down to welcome her and tell her all the wonderful things she’ll be doing, her face crumpled with overwhelm and she put her arms up to me, to be held. Home. She said. Bye. I consoled her and showed her toys. Our neighbor told her she could have pancakes or waffles in the morning. She just stared, her big blue eyes all wet. Home. We […]

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