One kid should be a lot easier than this!

My two older children are gone to “camp” this week– that is, Caleb is at a real camp, and Elizabeth is at a “camp” that my parents made up. Caleb has gone to sleep-away church camp for the first time (sob!). He left early Monday morning and will be home Thursday night. [...]

Top ten things I learned at Disney World

We just returned from a week at Disney World, and I took a 2-hour nap today. I feel like I need a vacation from my vacation! This was our second trip to Disney World with the kids (first trip with Phillip), and I feel like I’ve learned a few things that I need [...]

I hope it’s just a healthy interest in material texture

Tuesday, we went to a sporting goods store to pick up a swimsuit for Caleb. He had a swim meet Tuesday night, and he had to have a Speedo. I’m not saying we’re thrilled that he has to wear a Speedo for swim meets, but at least they come in a long shorts [...]

Everything was fine until we tried to go out to eat

My sister-in-law Kim is 8 months pregnant with her fourth child. She’s having kind of a hard summer (go figure), so I offered to take all of the kids to the zoo today. That’s my three kids and her three kids, for those of you who are having trouble counting. As Lannie [...]

Decisions

After nearly two months of trying to decide what to do about school next year, we’ve finally decided to continue homeschooling Caleb. Elizabeth will go back to public school. I’m not sure what I expected from this homeschooling experiment of the last semester, but I certainly thought it would be temporary. I [...]

Ultra-competitive

A friend was asking me yesterday about the hardest part of having three kids, and I have to say it’s the competition for attention. All of my kids, but especially Elizabeth, are constantly competing for more attention. Yesterday, the competition was particularly fierce.
Lannie and I set up the slip and slide and the [...]

Mommy Wars

I enjoyed reading this Newsweek article, “Enough with the Mommy wars!” I agree with much of what the author had to say (I do think that most people who don’t have children are baffled by the fact that these parenting things are debated ad nauseum). I also think that the reason most of us mommies [...]

Add "blog" to her expanding vocabulary

We visited Lannie’s family in Memphis this week, and we spent a very hot afternoon at the Memphis zoo. While we generally enjoy the Memphis zoo, especially the pandas and the new polar bear exhibit, the near-100 degree temperature forced us to scoot from inside exhibit to inside exhibit looking for air conditioning. We brought [...]

Solidarity

Caleb doesn’t often defy us, but he threw a first-class fit today over what we would eat for supper, so he was sent to time out. Almost as soon as he went to the “time out chair,” Phillip pulled up a chair next to him. He hates for anyone to sit in time out alone.

Love pats

Ellie and Phillip were sitting at the dinner table last night when Ellie reached over and patted Phillip on the back. Phillip immediately screamed, “Spank! Don’t Spank!” No, no, we assured him, that’s just a “love pat.” Phillip reached over and hit Ellie as hard as he could on the back and said “LOVE PAT!” [...]