The Gruffalo is real. The entire neighborhood goes to sleep when you close your eyes. The Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny are married. These are “facts” by which my children abide. In the early stages of life, truth and fiction are blurry. The idea that the stuff in their picture books isn’t real, but the news on television (supposedly) is feels confusing and arbitrary. Yet they have an instinct for altering facts in their …

Tina Fey may have said it best in her New Yorker article, “Confessions of a Juggler.” When asked if she was going to have more kids, she gave them this: “All over Manhattan, large families have become a status symbol. Four beautiful children named after kings and pieces of fruit are a way of saying, ‘I can afford a four-bedroom apartment and a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in elementary-school tuition fees each year. How …

Tidak apa apa. Say it with me. Tidak apa apa. “It is okay.” Please keep this Indonesian phrase in the forefront as you read Lisa Kusel’s memoir, Rash. You’ll need the reassurance, for her and you, that it’s all going to come out right in the end. You don’t move to Bali on a whim. Unless you’re a writer and a mother and in desperate need of a scene change, a soul change, a room with …

“Now that I’m a mother, I look to my own kids and wonder, what do I do when you start to break away from me, peeling off like bark from a tree? Do I trust you to know your moment? Do I trust myself to know it?” I didn’t mean the first lie I ever told. I didn’t know what I was asking for. Click the picture to read the rest of the story on …

How long, I caught myself wondering in the shower, could I push this before it’s considered child neglect and someone calls social services? I was taking my twins, newly-minted three-year-olds, to their annual appointment with the pediatrician and I knew she’d ask the question she always asks – the one that earns me an eye roll and another note added to the appointment summary along with weight and height and current medications. Have they been to …

“You really need to stop looking in the mirror before 7 a.m.” “Why did I put the keys in the refrigerator door?” “Why do they always run out of my favorite wine at Costco? I mean, it’s Costco.” “Note to self: Don’t park next to the teenage driver in your neighborhood.” I’ve always been a self-talker. But it used to be subtler. In my college years, it came in the form of mumbling over a …

Who doesn’t love a good concert? There’s just something about live music thrumming in your chest until it reverberates through the rest of you. But sometimes, when the kids are very little or threenagers, the music has to come to you. So, I’m putting the music in their hands for the last Kiddie Pool Digest to round out the summer. You might have a musical prodigy on your hands. You never know until you try …

Poop. Doodoo. Dump. Turd. Peepee. Urine. Tinkle. Wee. Whatever you want to call it, I’m seriously over it. How many nicknames can we give it before my kids start to care? How long does it have to cling to their bodies before they’re ready for it to land elsewhere? How many low-riding diapers does it take for the bowels to move themselves on over to the toilet? My twins are three. Yes, three, and nowhere …

I can no longer go into the therapy room with my kid. If I’m there, he’s done. Forget walking. Forget tasting new foods. And you can definitely forget using his communication skills. When he spots me, he thinks the work day is done. He can sit back and relax because I should instinctively know what he needs. And he’s right. I usually do know what he wants to say before he says it. But letting …

I was at the beach recently with my toes in the sand watching my three-year-old twins attack what they thought was a live crab. It was actually a carcass. They are savages. With the breeze and the birds and the reef in the background, I couldn’t make myself care. This was the first time I’d sat down on a vacation in five years. With three kids under five, sitting wasn’t an option. If I could …