300 Days of Sunshine

One of my reading goals this year is to appreciate a book for what it is and not be such a genre snob, to embrace the value of literature that is entertaining and relatable without discounting it as "fluffy," and to challenge my biases about what constitutes a "good" book.  I have read some really bizarre and experimental literary fiction than isn't actually that enjoyable but leaves me thinking about it for months, and on the flip side of that I find so much joy and connection in really quick and sappy books that don't have layers and layers of metaphor.  There are many versions of a "good" book and it's healthy to step outside our bubbles. One of the things I love about summer reading is that anything goes.  Maybe I want to read something set on a beach, or maybe I want to be taken away to a fantastical place.  I often want to read about family dynamics and relationship struggles, or maybe I want to time travel or view the world from the pers...

Ady had her last day of PreK this week and her Promotion to Kindergarten ceremony!  In the blink of an eye our first baby is a Kindergartener.  (I have worked on preparing myself for this role, including spending an embarrassing amount of time researching whether Kindergartener or Kindergartner is the correct spelling; it turns out both are acceptable, in case you were wondering.) Ady has been in full-time school since she was 3 months old, so advancing from one grade level to the next doesn't seem as monumental as it might for a kiddo leaving the security of their nest to enter a structured school program for the first time, but taking the leap to Kindergarten still seems like a big deal.  Kindergarten is the foundation of so many important cognitive, social, and emotional skills and the age when math, reading, and athletic skills blossom.  This class of kiddos made it through their first year of in-person public school in the midst of a pandemic and many unknowns, ...

Mother's Day is a time of joy and gratitude for some, a day of honoring the strength and kindness that mothers bring to the world, a time of celebrating our relationship with own mothers and our connections to our community of mothers and mother-like figures.  It's also a complicated day of loss, grief, longing, and feelings of inadequacy for many, of silent struggles and relived trauma, a time of reflecting on the expectations of women and mothers and the immense responsibility of nurturing the next generation.  Mother's Day is as dynamic and complicated as the role of a mother itself.  This year I am so thankful to have two healthy, intelligent, kind daughters who make me smile and laugh every day, I appreciate the wisdom and the guidance of my mother and grandmothers whose hard work helped pave the way for the life that I have, and I celebrate the pregnancies in our extended families and the new babies making their way Earth side later this year. Motherhood is a journe...

I found a twist tie in my desk drawer the other day and I didn't know if I should laugh or cry.  Why , you ask, would a twist tie trigger this reaction?   Allow me to provide some context.  In the beginning of the pandemic our screening process for entering work was to get a temperature check and receive our color-coded twist tie for the day to proudly display on our badge, showing we were safe and screened for COVID-19 with the best technology known at the time.  Every day was a new twist tie, and hence we collected dozens (maybe hundreds) before technology evolved and vaccines ensured a new level of safety.  The twist tie was symbolic on so many levels.  It gave us permission to enter the sacred territory of front-line healthcare when many friends were working remotely from home.  It was an emblem representing the family we belonged to for that moment in time when taking care of people with COVID was everything.  It was frivolous (and ridiculous...

Grace Bay Beach When we started growing our family, we always said that we would be the family that traveled with kids.  We would be the kind of parents who incorporated our children into all the things we loved to do, rather than putting our lives on hold to have kids.  We would courageously brave early flights, disrupted nap schedules, and time zone transitions without hesitation.   We agreed that we valued introducing our kids to worldly experiences, different foods and cultures, and teaching them about the awe and wonder of the world.   Ady traveled to about 8 different states before age one (including an upgrade to first class) and used her passport when she was still small enough to travel as a lap infant.  She was the tiniest aficionado when it came to the routine of planes, trains, Uber rides, and even a cruise ship.  Then Meredith was born and the pandemic hit, and along with all of our other great ambitions and plans for our family of fo...

It was a weird year for reading.  (Well, it was a weird year for everything, as a matter of fact.)  There were periods when reading fostered self-care, inward reflection, and a much-needed recharge for me, but there were also times when my mind was so preoccupied with the stress of the pandemic and all the unknowns that I couldn't concentrate on reading a real book, and I found myself having to go back and re-read entire chapters.  I was in a funk for a while when nothing I read was really outstanding, but then I finished the year with a few incredible and heartfelt stories that left me feeling invigorated.  I read more poetry than I ever have before, and I looked for stories told from a different perspective than my own.  Sometimes nonfiction was exactly what I needed to feel grounded, while other times I was looking for an escape, like fantastical realism or a novel set in a completely different place and time.  Historical fiction still seems to be the ge...