“You say yes to everything,” my daughter’s friend remarked late last night, as we blew up the air mattress in the basement. The question my daughter posed was whether they could rent a movie from Amazon Prime to watch at the sleepover. I was heartened to be seen as a permissive mother, given that I […]

The texts came in throughout the day yesterday. This isn’t a camp – it’s a boot camp! I felt light-headed after the warmup. This is SO hard! Can I leave early? And then, when I arrived an hour before the end of day one of volleyball camp, my daughter looked at me with the wide […]

The cloud cover whisked away as bright white sun came out over the amusement park yesterday. I was chaperoning my son’s eighth grade physics trip to Cedar Point, and while I anticipated not going on the rides for fear of motion sickness and heights, a new friend inspired me to keep my mind open and […]

  “Oh my GOD…” She mutters it under her breath on the way to school, but audibly enough for me to hear. It is as if I can hear her eyes roll, too. The five-minute drive to school on Friday goes a lot like that, with quips of “Mom, you are SO defensive all the […]

I just finished reading Brittany Gibbons’ book, Fat Girl Walking, and boy am I glad I did. Here’s a woman who claims to weigh 250 pounds and wears a size 18 and it took until she realized she didn’t want to fill her daughter’s head with self-loathing for her beautiful body to accept her own curvy […]

Kneeling on one foot on the humid grass the other night, I told my soccer players that the other team were a grade younger so there was no reason we couldn’t win the game. Smaller might mean faster or more easily navigating, but we are stronger, taller, older, wiser. We lost. I jinxed the game […]

Last night, my daughter got frustrated with me (read: stomped off with a huff and slammed her bedroom door). The reason? I wasn’t giving her the answer she wanted. She started by sharing with me some frustrations about a friend’s behavior. I totally understood where she was coming from and I knew that at her […]

Night was coming on as Asher, Eliana and I leaned our bikes against a picnic table and my two oldest children ran off to play. The playground was for children far smaller and younger than they, but the urge to skip and jump, climb and frolic overtook them. Their smiles boundless, hair flying behind them […]

Yesterday, I spent 10 hours at Michigan’s largest outlet mall. I am not joking. I am not exaggerating. I am exhausted. My girls and I planned to take it easily and steadily as we spent a day shopping for clothing for my eldest son’s upcoming bar mitzvah. The understanding was that we would meander through […]

Just one look in the eyes of my eldest son, and I had to remind myself to be The Mom. Yes, I am his mom, but that sometimes means I want to do anything, anything at all, to make him happy, even if it’s not in his best interest. Being The Mom means, to me, […]