Dear Jen,I know you're tired. Really, really tired. I don't know how many times the baby woke you up last night, but I know it was a lot. I know that sometimes you fall asleep in the rocking chair and wake up with her still attached to your breast and wonder how long you've been in that position, and whether or

So here is my goal for the year: just be awesome.And so you don't think I'm horribly egotistical, let me explain my thought process."Just be awesome" is shorthand for my bigger goal of being intentional about my life. My version of a WWJD bracelet, if you will.

It's the mess, messiest daaaaaay....of the year, here at the Rouse House. Yes, it is the day once again when Mama chucks her sanity to the wind and invites the children to participate in a little tradition called "frosting Christmas cookies."

Here's the thing about Oregon: it does not have self-service gas stations. This means that when you pull up to the pump, you can't jump out and start filling your own tank. You must stay put inside your vehicle and wait for an attendant to do the task for you.

When I was a kid, my grandma had a dress-up box for the grandkids. She kept it in the back bedroom closet, and in it were her old clothes, I think dating from the 60s and 70s: A-line skirts that we hiked up to our chests and pretended were strapless dresses; brightly patterned blouses; multitudes of handbags; and high heele

The other day I drove past shirtless guy's house. It was a cold November day, grey and wet, and there was a man outside raking leaves.This man was wearing a green T-shirt.If this is not blowing your mind right now, go back and read ab

I've been spending a lot of time on hold with customer service lately. We're having a refrigerator melt-down around here (literally--it stopped keeping things cold) and it has turned into a long, drawn-out drama of me on the phone with various help lines, trying to convince them that YES, in fact, they SHOULD repair or repl

Or... reason #1,240 why parenting is making me a better person.I am not a neat and tidy person.Shoes? I like to kick 'em off when I come in the door. Or when I'm sitting at the couch or working at my desk. I end up with little shoe piles all over the house.Same with papers. Mail? Pick it

These days, it's just me and Evie hanging out together most mornings. Lucy's in kindergarten, Beth is in second grade, and except for a couple of hours a week when she's in preschool, that leaves just me and Evie.It's really quite a change. I've never had one-on-one time with a 3-year-old before. When Beth was t

I am a crusher of creativity, a destroyer of dreams.Every single day, my daughters create pages and pages of artwork. And every two or three days, I gather it all up, and fold it up real small, and shove it to the bottom of the recycle bin. And out the door it goes.I always feel guilty about this, ev

Ok, here's a correction to an earlier post: I was worried about one thing with Lucy starting school. I was worried about how she would get along with her sister.My oldest daughter is a very social kid. She has a lot o

Yesterday I cleaned out my cat's water dish, which had been contaminated with little bits of kitty kibble from small over-enthusiastic cat feeders who can't dump a scoop of food without getting it everywhere. So the water looked gross anyway.But then I dumped the gross water/mushy kibble down the garbage disposa

It’s been one of those weeks.The kind of week where everyone in the family has a cold and you’re all feeling a little bit cranky.The kind where the cat throws up all over the kitchen.And where you sp

Before I became a mother I was pretty sure of one thing--that whatever else may happen, at least I would a *fair* parent. You always hear that the first-born gets the most attention and the youngest is constantly babied and the middle child is neglected. None of that would be true in my family--I would always treat each chi

A couple of weeks ago the editor of my local newspaper (a man I like, and respect, and whom I happily worked with for five years) wrote an editorial about home gardening. After a few sentences in which he damned

A long, long, time ago, we moved into this house (OK, four and a half years ago). And when we did, we knew from the start that we wanted to fix up the master bedroom. It had been converted from garage space into living space, but it hadn't been done very well. There was no closet. The floor was covered with cheap tiles, stu

Although I didn't mention it at the time, my husband was actually out of town last week, when I was writing my sappy anniversary post. He had a business trip to Tel Aviv (poor him, right?).He's been away on business trips before, and we've gotte

I regret buying a house *riiiight* at the peak of housing bubble.I regret not going to Europe the summer before we started having kids.I regret not discovering that I liked long-distance running until my late 20s. Maybe I could have been a cross-country runner in high school if I'd given it a chance.

Let's have a little confession time here: you know how family dinners are supposed to be the holy grail of parenting? How you all sit around and share about your day and laugh together around the dinner table, and doing so is supposed to raise your kids' IQ and make them less likely to do drugs and

We just got back from a wonderful family camping trip, full of sunshine and water and long nights around the campfire. Camping with your kids along is like wine, I think. It only gets better with age.The trip was so much fun, it made me feel like doing this, too.

2,134 miles.Tha

I have always been quite happy to be a woman. Never in my life have I thought that my life would be better in any way if I had only been born a man.But suddenly, for the first time in my life, I am finding myself a little bit jealous of the male anatomy.Why? Well, our family has spent the last severa

I have a love/hate relationship with my digital camera. With digital photography in general, actually. So let's be positive and start with the love, shall we?I love the fact that the cameras we have nowadays are so gosh-darn GOOD. With the zooming ability and different flash/lighting settings, not to mention com

Rainy summer morning. Three antsy children. Brilliant idea: get them involved in a fun project.Twenty minutes later, all three girls are sitting on an old plastic tablecloth stretched out across the kitchen floor, happily painting with home-made finger paint. I am in the adjacent bathroom, scrubbing the shower,

Well, folks, I finally did it.In 2010-11 I made the perfect amount of jam. Forty-four jars. Those forty-four jars lasted us all the way through until last week, when I scraped the last few spoonfuls out of the last jar.They lasted us all the way through until the new strawberry season, when on the ve

Yesterday afternoon my girls were being awful to each other. Really mean. I think they are just not used to being *around* each other all day, every day. And afternoon quiet time is much harder to do with all three girls around too. So I was attempting to let them all stay up and play, but playtime soon disintegrated into a

Let me count the ways:(with sincerest apologies to Elizabeth Barret Browning) I love you for the swish of the ceiling fan, that spins away the heat of the day.

Eric and I are looking at doing a few renovations to the house this summer. Namely: new gutters. Oh, so exciting. It's one of the things that no one tells you when you become a homeowner. Home improvement magazines tend to devote their pages to glorious bathrooms and spacious kitchens. And while I would love to have a glori

It's the last day of school--finally!--for my oldest. Lucy has been done for a week, and now Beth is done too.