Tag: picture book
To Santa, or not to Santa—that was the question. We were new parents raised with Santa-rich holidays, and that first Christmas with our first baby, that decision sat before us, ours to make. But how? […]
That first week of September, I dropped all four of my children off at school and drove home in an empty minivan. Ordinarily, an empty minivan is a treat: a chance to put on a […]
Teaching kids to pray can be tricky. When we talk to other people, we take in all kinds of cues, from their posture to their facial expression to what they do with their hands. They […]
Last month we had to put a beloved cat to sleep. Her name was Captain Jack Sparrow, and she was one of two littermates my husband and I adopted early in our marriage when we […]
When my eldest daughter was a toddler, she discovered James Herriot’s Moses the Kitten. She dropped that book in my lap again and again, and we read it until the book spine felt limber and […]
One of the bits of writing advice I absorbed during college was “Show, don’t tell.” Show me the character gnashing her teeth; don’t tell me she was angry. Show me the geriatric cat holding his […]
“I love stories like this,” my ten-year-old said, holding up a biography she found at the library. “The ones where they have to overcome something.” And it seemed to me that most of history could […]
In the decade or so since we bought our house, I have planted many things: rhubarb, periwinkle, strawberries, summer after summer of vegetables, even a few forsythia bushes. But a few weeks ago, I planted […]
I’m used to feeling like an oddball during Lent—fasting privately and aware, perhaps, of a few other friends from church who spend the weeks leading up to Easter forgoing good things and meditating on what […]
This week, our middle two daughters competed in their first spelling bee: a circumscribed affair, thanks to COVID, of course. But leading up to the Bee, our dinner hour turned into Spelling Bee Practice, with […]
