I found a present in my inbox today. Heather Janssen, editor of get born magazine, wrote that the Fall issue of the magazine is finally live on this second day of winter. (Her blog post announcing the issue has the subtitle a little late, but hey, we’re moms.) I have an essay in the issue, [...]

There’s so much to set a person atwitter in December. rendering my beeswax: For the first time I melted down the bits of wax I’ve collected from my girls. I got a nice golden prism–enough to make into two (count ’em!) candles. I was hoping to be able to make more for gifts, but I’ve [...]

If you ever think it might be fun to rile me up, to get me talking so fast that my sentences overlap and my hands dart about like an Italian grandmother’s, just say the words “five-paragraph essay.” Really. Ask the moms at my homeschool park day what I do when the topic comes up. Ask [...]

I have this old friend named Betsy Warrington Ray. Do you know her? Any of you Betsy-Tacy fans? Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy books were my no-contest favorite books as a girl. I can still see the particular corner where the “L” books were shelved in the portable that served as my hometown library. In fact, [...]

Yep, Little Man, I get it. I get what it’s like to be fired up about something. This weekend I went out of town with a couple of writing friends. We woke and walked along the beach and wrote and walked to the beach again and wrote some more. We cooked from what seems to [...]

One of the best parts of blogging is, of course, the comments one receives. On days that I don’t receive comments, I have to satisfy myself with reading my blog stats. On WordPress, there’s a very handy, easy-to-read, single-page stat report. And one section of that report lists “search engine terms”–the phrases that people type [...]