Last August, my little family met my parents in Estes Park. We have done this trip every couple of years since I was a kid. We stay in cabins and hike and explore and breathe in the fresh mountain air. COVID made things a little different, but we were just happy to escape Dallas for …
Well, today the Wise family said hello to a new bed and goodbye to two of The Baby’s teeth. A few months ago, we started the laborious process of getting a SleepSafe bed approved through The Baby’s insurance because his crib had become unsafe. He was able to stand up in it and when he …
The Baby turned five this week. It’s crazy. All of those five years tend to blur together. After all, time flies when you’re drowning in medical chaos (just kidding…kind of). On the night of his birthday, our dinner conversation centered around remembering all of his firsts- the first time he sat up, the first solid …
(You can listen to an audio version of this post here.) I went to David’s Bridal today to purchase a bridesmaid’s dress for a friend’s wedding next summer. She had a dress already picked out in the system so they pulled her profile up and I followed the very nice saleslady to the racks laden …
(I realize this is very lengthy so I have strategically placed pictures of smiling animals throughout the piece so that you can mark your place if you need to take a break and come back to it. At my sister’s suggestion, I’ve also made an audio version of this blog. You can download/stream it by …
I grew up in West Texas- land of wide-open spaces, sky high teen pregnancy rates, and a colorblind racial ideology that masks racism instead of confronting it. In colorblind ideology, it is impolite to talk about someone’s race. I remember hearing a story about a friend who was trying to tell her son which store …
I just got back from San Francisco. I went to (hides face) a Christian conference. I found myself hesitant to tell people that it was a Christian conference because of the connotations of that. My sense is that many Christian conferences are lame attempts at pep rallies for God, the adult version of church camp, …
“What was I thinking?” I thought as I stared forlornly into the mirror. I should have known better than to impulsively stop at the hair salon directly adjacent to the Tom Thumb, still clutching my bag of avocados. I was hoping for a cute haircut before I left on my 10th anniversary weekend trip. Instead, …
I was a mere 21 years old when I got married. My uncle officiated our wedding. Before the wedding, my then-fiancee, now-husband, Alex, and I drove down to Corpus to do some premarital counseling sessions and stay with my aunt and uncle. After one of these sessions, Alex and I got ready to leave and …
I went to a vigil in Balch Springs for Jordan Edwards last week. It was everything you would want a vigil to be- beautiful and sad and moving and comforting. Like most, I was horrified by Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice’s deaths. I have been deeply affected before by deaths caused by police brutality, but …
One of my foundational memories as a kid was going through the automated carwash behind the convenient store near our house with my mom and my sister. We spent a lot of time perusing the aisles of that convenient store. I specifically remember that Leah would look for the candy with the strangest packaging- if … Continue reading
I have several distinct memories of observing parents whose kids had nurses in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. Sometimes we would get caught on the elevator with them, other times they would make their grand entrance into the waiting room- a parent or two followed by a kid in a wheelchair with a … Continue reading
My Grandaddy once swallowed his watch battery instead of a baby aspirin. He usually carried the medicine in the front pocket of his striped polo shirts and, apparently, that’s where he put his watch batteries too. My Grandmother, convinced that he was near certain death, called poison control, who told her that they just needed … Continue reading
The other morning, The Kid and I were on our morning walk with Baby and dog in tow. The dog had stopped to poop so The Baby and I paused on the sidewalk in one of the Top Three Most Interesting Yards on our street. For some reason, three artsy hippy families bought houses in … Continue reading
During this quarantine, I’ve been doing this app called 1 Second Everyday, where you basically create a video montage over a period of time made up of, you guessed it, a video clip of 1 second from each day. The Kid, who is a perpetual optimist and doesn’t want to think about or remember anything … Continue reading
Hi little boy, I remember the first time I held you in my arms. You were only 5 months old and you were hooked up to all these machines, lots of beeps and boops, but your eyes were bright and we stared at each other quietly. You’ve always had expressive hands, a sassy left hand, … Continue reading
Well, today sucked. There’s just no way around it. The Baby’s seizure activity has increased at an alarming rate, even from Wednesday. He had three seizures during the Zoom session with his speech pathologist. We’d be singing a song and he would just lose control of his upper body and then look up at me … Continue reading
On a whim, I picked up a plastic kite for The Kid on my shopping trip to Kroger last Friday. It was my first in person trip to any store in several weeks and The Kid and I had begun to feel the quarantine crunch. If you had asked me in January whether both The … Continue reading
We’ve been taking family walks every day. The Kid pretends that he hates it but thus far, we’ve discovered two wisteria plants that smell lovely, a mint plant that we’re trying to grow a clipping from, interesting artwork in our neighbors’ yards, a drama between a crow and a hawk worthy of daytime television, and … Continue reading
I threw a bowl across the kitchen today. That sounds more dramatic than it was. It was an empty plastic bowl that had toppled off the teetering tower of clean dishes in our drying rack. I had finally cleared the sink and this clean bowl had the audacity to follow its gravitational pull and land … Continue reading
