thoughts and stories from a twenty-first century homemaker
Nearly six months after finishing the last book on this list, I finally found enough time and motivation to finish up all the blurbs about why I chose to read each book and a final thought or two about each.
There are some really good ones in here. I hope my commentary helps you pick out your next read! …
Context #1: Why I Hate Crickets
In the Summer of 2012, there was a drought in Oklahoma. It was so dry that a certain parasite could not survive. Said parasite usually eats many, many cricket eggs in the early summer, but this year, all the crickets hatched in late summer. When I arrived on campus to begin my senior year of college, and on into the fall semester, basically until it got cold enough to freeze, I learned firsthand what a “plague” of insects is like. There were so many of them on the sidewalks that one could not physically avoid crunching them while walking or biking across campus. They swarmed around street lights at night. They somehow came into apartments through air vents. And the smell of their rotting corpses wafted across campus from the mass graves that happened to be created each time exterminators came through with pesticides.
One evening….
(Leave Time for Poop)
Or, “You just can’t make this sh** up.”
I was going to be on time. I really was. Everything was ready, the diaper bag was packed, snacks and waters and wipes. We were actually going to get to the parking lot with enough minutes to unload the car, walk at a 3-year-old’s short legs’ pace, and be where we were supposed to be right on time, without hurrying, rushing, worrying, or needing to pray for green lights.
And then, as I picked up the baby to carry him to his car seat, an unmistakable smell reached my nose….
My precocious seven-year-old said a few hilarious things while she was six. If you’ve heard my importuning about this before, you’re about to hear it again: If you have a kid in your life, make a google doc in your phone that you can access at a moment’s notice, put the kid’s name as the title, and use it to record all their funny one-liners and surprisingly deep insights with the utmost exactitude. You’ll thank yourself, perhaps through tears of laughter, at the end of the year.
Click to visit the post to read the quotes!
Hello, there! It is summer: smack dab in the middle of it. It’s hot. Also, the most ironic thing I’ve ever written was in my last post, when I said, “I think everyone is done being sick now.” The universe certainly took that as a challenge. I cannot even begin to explain the torrent of covid, strep throat, pink eye, ear infections, and other unidentified viruses we have experienced over the past two months in this household. So many plans canceled. So much sleep lost. So many doctor appointments. I am thankful for the age of the video visit, for those visual-diagnosis ailments, at least.
I don’t dare….
Where has the time gone? At 7 weeks old, my sweet little guy is more than halfway through his “newborn” time. I’m trying to soak up all the snuggles.
But today, I have his birth story for you.
You know, I never was into birth stories until I wrote my first one (about my third birth experience), and then I got interested in what different details women choose to include when telling theirs, as well as all the very different ways a birth can go. I’ve retrospectively written about births #1 and #2 since then as well. If you’re not a birth story person, feel free to skip. Details are more or less uncensored. FYI.
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This was my shortest full-term pregnancy yet….
I know this subject is so last year, but I’m just so excited about it anyway, and the end of last year was full of, you know, having a baby, so, a few weeks late, here we go!
Back in 2020 I read a whole seven books, the last two of them during December, because I was so mortified by my only having finished five so far when December arrived. I had set a goal for myself at the beginning of the year to read 12 books. One per month, on average. Should be totally doable, right?
Well….
This Thanksgiving felt a bit like deja vu. Five years ago, I was 8.5 months pregnant on Thanksgiving. Same thing last week. Although that first time I wasn’t hosting the meal/party, and I only had one other kid underfoot while making the few items I was in charge of. This year, I did 100% of the grocery shopping, made the pie crusts, baked one of the pies, and then tag-teamed with my husband for most of the additional prep, so that Thursday could be relatively relaxed: whip up toppings, set grill and oven temperatures, cook. But still….8.5 months pregnant means I was only able to enjoy a tablespoon of each dish on the table before I got full. Don’t worry though, I had a whole piece of pie a couple hours later.
Anyway, with this new baby’s birth fast-approaching, I feel it’s time to tell the last remaining so-far-untold birth story—that of the child who was due in early-to-mid-December last time—Luke’s.
It was a Friday morning….
Potty training is a touchy subject. Parents who have chosen to wait longer before beginning to potty train their kids can go straight into defense mode when the subject comes up. Parents who have had raging success with potty training before age 2 can dismiss the real struggle that some kids and parents have. Let me be clear upfront: When to Potty Train Your Kid is not an issue of morality. If you’ve picked a different timeline than I have, I’m not judging you.
My goal in writing this is just to share my story. This is Potty Training 3.0. It looks a lot different from the 1.0 and 2.0 versions.
Feel free to use my story as a point of reference for the beginning of your own Potty Training Story, take comfort in commiserating with me on it, or simply roll your eyes at me for writing sooo manyyyy wordssss about tiny people’s #1 and #2. Reader’s choice….
My oldest is six-and-a-half now. 😱 She’s tall and skinny, but still has baby-face cheeks. That one runs in the family. 🤷♀️ For lack of more exciting content, and because it seemed unfair that Cecily’s is posted here but not the other kids’, I thought I’d share her birth story with you this month as she enters first grade. 😭 (Luke’s to come….someday.)
*Usual warning about details about body parts and functions. Keep reading at your own risk.*
I was 41 weeks pregnant. I went to my routine—at that point semi-weekly—appointment with my OB. Everything was fine. She said….