Here I am, getting one last post under the wire in 2013. Seems like a good idea, since I haven’t written here since November. It’s not that I haven’t tried. I have, in fact, written two nearly complete blog posts in the past few weeks; in both cases by the time I got around to finishing them, [...]

I got invited to this party too. Lulu has been writing college application essays. For the past few months she’s been talking through them with me. Often that’s meant she comes home from school on a Friday afternoon all worked up and wanting to talk. I’m not sure what it is about Friday afternoons, but [...]

She appreciates Wes Anderson films down to the art on the walls and the title fonts. She texted me when Pagoda died. She says that her brothers are “my favorite people in the world.” She has the biggest blue eyes. As a newborn, they overwhelmed her face: she looked a little like Yoda. Before long, [...]

My last post had only two comments after a week, and I couldn’t quite understand why. Was it because I’d posted on a Friday when no one was reading? Was it because the post was, as usual, too longwinded? The topic mattered to me–offering positive feedback on kids’ writing–so why didn’t it resonate with more [...]

Feedback on one of my drafts from a writing friend. Note all of the smiley faces and “I like this” checks. I learned that I’d done something right in this paragraph. All I ever meant to do was write a simple post on how a parent might offer writing feedback to their kids. I’d written [...]

For several years I’ve had this crazy little practice when someone leaves a comment on this blog. After I respond to the comment, I copy my response from the blog and paste it into the email notification that WordPress sends me each time one of you leaves a comment. The notification arrives via the email [...]