I’m going to come right out and admit that I had a meltdown on Saturday. I had just picked up the older boys from a friend’s birthday party and was relating to them how their father and I had taken apart the trailer in their absence. We were expecting to just replace the wood, but [...]

When TechnoBoy and The Mercenary were little we refused to tell them who was older. This wasn’t intended as any kind of sociological experiment; we were just trying to keep the playing field balanced. TechnoBoy, who was born first by 5 minutes, was smaller physically. That discrepancy has increased over the years, to the point [...]

A battle that the older boys and I keep returning to is pretty straightforward: I think they should work. They disagree. Early in school, we struggled (A LOT) over learning issues. They’ve definitely grown past those, but somewhere along the line the picked up the idea that life should always and only be fun. The [...]

The older boys have been complaining about our insistence that they go to Scouts every week, and also that we expect them to participate in Tae Kwon Do. When I ask what’s so terrible about either of these activities, there’s not much of an answer. The Mercenary told me about 6 times today: “All we [...]

Tonight when Hubby got home from work he happened to notice that two sweets he’d put in the cupboard yesterday were gone. I’d noticed them mid-day myself. Now the shelf was empty. No one had asked me about eating them, and I hadn’t done it. I had the last slice of carrot cake, not the [...]

photo credit: ladybugbkt Well, it’s official. I’ve been a mother for ten years now. Ten. Years. It’s difficult to wrap my mind around that, and yet I know the next ten years will go even faster. I see parents of teens around the neighborhood and wonder if they’re enjoying their kids to the fullest. Are [...]