Category Archives: Motherhood

Peet’s Coffee Wants To Know What You Give A Cup About: Listen to one mom’s story

Posted on by July 12, 2013

What do you care about? What I mean is, what gets your heart thumpin’? Is it soccer? Women’s rights? Same-sex marriage? Money? Coffee?

This post is sponsored by Peet’s Coffee & Tea, which is conducting what it calls the first social sampling experiment to launch their new Single Cups. It took them five years to develop this product — sounds like they’re fellow perfectionists, right? But that’s good, because you know you want your coffee done right. For this experiment called Give A Cup… Read more ...

Honoring the Plants I’ve Killed With a Vow to Improve My Green Thumb

Posted on by May 7, 2013

There’s something therapeutic about working with my hands and now that Spring has somewhat arrived in Chicago, I have started making fragile promises of developing my green thumb by planting flowers and other greenery.

I call the promises “fragile” because I’ve made them before, only to watch them break as little sprouts wilt away.

It’s really sad because my 5 year old loves plants and watching things grow. He was going through a

The little green leaf in the middle belongs to a random seed

… Read more ...

Running Late: Another entry for my Mom of the Year nomination

Posted on by March 13, 2013

We were running late. Again. Since having kids, I’m late to everything, I’m so late, I’ve begun to change the definition of late.

If we show up 5 minutes after the appointed time, we’re not late, that’s on time, or even early. Today, I was hoping against all hope to be “on time” for swim class.

Sitting at a stop light, willing it to turn green I looked over at the SUV next to us and saw a huge, cinnamon-colored dog that looked like a … Read more ...

Alabama Standoff: All of us breathe a sigh of relief as boy is freed

Posted on by February 5, 2013

Some stories just grab you by the heartstrings and don’t let go. I can’t always predict which stories are going to immerse themselves in my thoughts. But when I heard about the boy in Alabama who had been snatched from his school bus, I knew this was one tale that would be woven into my daily life.

It began on Jan. 29, when Jimmy Lee Dykes approached a bus demanding two boys between the ages of 6 and 8. The bus driver, Charles Allen Poland, … Read more ...

Talking About Race With My Biracial 5-Year-Old

Posted on by January 21, 2013


It’s interesting being a parent of biracial children in that like with most things with motherhood, I’m fumbling around in the dark.

Digging through my 5-year-old’s backpack, I ran across a worksheet on Martin Luther King, Jr.  Curious, I asked him what he learned about King in school.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Image from mattlemmon.

He told me that white people used to not let brown people do things and King made a lot of white people mad because he was helping the brown people.

Hmmm. Well, kinda.

Since … Read more ...