Didn’t get to these on Friday, then found some more this week that just have to be shared, so here we are. It’s beastly hot here, spent the day near the park sprinklers, then came home and set up the little wading pool in the back. Boys are spent, and I’m not far behind as the heat drains me, especially in the first few days of swelter.
- Chicken Nuggets and French Fries: Confessions of a Mother and a Chef (by Allison Robicelli) — A great essay on the expectations we put on ourselves and our kids, and how reality beats them into something else entirely. Well said!
- Mad Mommy Makeover (by Teri Cettina on Working Mother) — I spied this last week, via MyMamaMojo, and certainly needed to read it myself. Uber practical, and well worth it if your temper is fraying faster than you can chill out.
- I’m Supposed to Play with These Kids? (by renegademama on BlogHer) — I related to this one much more than I’d like to admit. I have real trouble sitting down to a game of pretend-this-Lego-thing-is-Darth-Vader’s-Ship, and yet I feel guilty about it all the time. Mom, come play with me! … love to know how y’all react to this one.
- The Moth — Hadn’t heard of this live show/podcast site full of true stories until a couple of weeks ago, and find it riveting. True stories are almost always better than movies, and when they’re well-told in the first person they’re priceless. A great way to spend 10 minutes, laughing and sometimes crying. Good stuff. Going to try to catch a live show here for a date night soon.
- A Dad’s Lament (by Tim Hoyle) — Oh this is good! Long but worth every word. To tickle your fancy … “I’m not worried about the rest of the world steering my kids the wrong way. I’m far more concerned with my own baggage leaving marks on my kids.” Bingo.
- For the Right Reasons (by A Girl and a Boy) — Read this after watching Bridesmaids last night, which helped me understand why I rather liked it, despite it’s terribleness in so many ways. I like happy endings, and life seems to have rather too few of them these days … but she gets to this great point too : “For a lot of people, I think the romance dies because we forget to be surprised by our partners. And/or we forget to be surprising, both for them and for ourselves.” So true, and so easy to do when I think about it.
Happy Wednesday!