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 I don’t need any gifts for Mother’s Day.  All I want is a piece of Denny’s French toast smothered in butter and syrup.  With a dusting of confectioners sugar.  Oh yeah, and I’ll have fresh-squeezed orange juice, too, please.    I really don’t want anything else.     …But a side of peace and quiet would ...

Crocs and Croc-wannabe's are springing up everywhere again, which reminds me of an encounter Holly had with the fashion police last Spring.   “You got the wrong ones,” her friend announced, with eyes downcast at Holly’s new shoes.  They’re pink, plastic, and closely resemble those wildly trendy ...

The surest tip-off that times-are-a-changin’ was this simple statement:  “Mom, I need a new comb,” Noah announced one recent morning.  It could easily have been overlooked in those stumbling-around-to-get-out-the-door moments before school, but my ears perked up and I realized immediately that this seemingly benign request portends ...

I can feel the crankies coming on already, thanks to a good dream cut short by the appearance of a not so little person at my bedside before dawn this morning.  Noah, my nine-and-a-half-year-old, isn’t sure what woke him up and prompted him to climb into bed with us, but I have a hunch: an earthquake.   Measuring 5.2 on the Richter ...

Kids say the darndest things, and my daughter Holly is no exception.  Recently, Holly issued directions to my husband, who'd agreed to play a game with her.  She decided they should swap roles.  She'd play the parent, and he would play the child. ''Act like a kid,'' she instructed her father, then ...

Cradling my newborn should have brought me nothing but joy, right?  Shouldn’t I have been content to marvel at the miracle of Holly’s tiny fingers wrapped tightly around mine the night we brought her home from the hospital seven years ago?  So why was I a sobbing mess?   Because my firstborn, slumbering in the next room, felt a ...

  Easter has always been about new life, and about believing in things not easily seen.  For my kids, it’s also about chocolate.      The Easter my son Noah was four, he unwrapped his chocolate bunny and closed his eyes.  Like a cigar aficionado, he smelled its length, deeply inhaling the heady scent of ...

You've seen it happen.  The guy in charge explains that each child is allowed to keep up to seven plastic eggs, and then you watch -- as one after another they dart past you with dozens, scurrying to grab more, while you remind your own kids that they may keep only seven. ''But Mommy, those kids have a ton,'' Noah protested last ...

  The comfort of my anonymous little existence, in which I mull over major life decisions like meatballs vs. meatloaf (or take-out vs. drive-thru), has for five years now been overshadowed by the stark and sobering intrusion of war.  Though most of us have long since given up the daily vigil in front of our TVs, the death toll ...

My kids are setting a trap for a leprechaun tonight. Seems Noah was told by a classmate that if you succeed, the leprechaun will reward you by leaving a treat. Huh. This must be a Midwestern leprechaun thing, 'cause it's news to me. And I'm nearly 100% Irish, with green eyes and everything. I was raised in upstate New York, but the leprechauns ...