We are only one week into adding Fiona to our homeschool routine, and already it feels like a massive weight has been lifted. Homeschooling isn’t some perfect, magical solution, but it is amazing how much happier Fiona seems already. It has been a great relief for me as well. Last night, I realized that I didn’t feel the normal sense of dread that I usually felt on Sunday nights. Our weekly routine generally involved at least two hours of struggling to get Fiona to school in the morning while trying to also help her work on being calm and happy. The entire process wore me out, and by the time…

Yesterday, a magazine came in the mail addressed to Squeegee Beckenheim and for a moment I felt this warm, radiating happiness. Then, I cried. I remember the first time I received a magazine in the mail addressed to Squeegee Beckenheim or Tooky Clothespin. Calvin was so confused, but I immediately saw the Gilmore Girls reference and knew that my mom was behind it. Watching Gilmore Girls together was a staple of my high school years. My mom had many commonalities with Lorelei, and I saw myself in Rory. Squeegee Beckenheim and Tooky Clothespin are from an episode when Lorelei is trying to unsubscribe from a mountain of catalogs and mail…

This is my third year homeschooling Connor. For whatever reason, I had never really considered homeschooling as a serious option for my family before 2020. Then, the school shutdowns and remote learning that Spring opened my eyes to a whole world of possibilities. Connor was in fifth grade and becoming more stressed out everyday. He was doing well in school – so we’ll that he no longer qualified for the IEP supports that had helped him when he was younger. But what the grades and submitted work didn’t show was the amount of pressure that he put himself under to complete those assignments. He wanted everything to be perfect all…

We welcomed Cara Colleen into the world on a beautiful afternoon in December. It was bittersweet welcoming a new baby without my mom here to share in the joy. When I had Connor, I was young and scared, but my mom was there for me through it all holding my hand. When I had Fiona, I was living in New Hampshire and Calvin, Connor and I had settled into me re stable family life. I was no longer living at home and needing my mom to drive me to the hospital and hold my hand. Calvin was the one holding my hand, but my mom was the person whose phone…

I have always loved writing. It feels like a core part of me. Writing helps me relax and to organize my thoughts. When I am writing for a little bit, I am at peace. It has always held a therapeutic quality for me. When I don’t write for a while, I notice that I am more anxious and on edge. Still, I have hardly written anything over the course of the past year. It has been a tough year for everyone. I had to make a lot of adjustments very quickly as COVID hit, and I lost my writing routines in the process. A year and a half ago, I…

I wish that I could manage to write more than three sentences without being interrupted by the unending demands of my four year old. Lately it feels like my brain is constantly in writing mode and there is so much that I want to get out onto the page, but as soon as Fiona sees me trying to write something, she has to demand my full attention. It is incredibly frustrating. In theory, I could wait until she goes to bed, but that means ignoring all those writing moments where I just have to write. Not to mention, bedtime is an incredible fraught routine with her and I usually don’t…