Chloe is a jeans teen. She loves her jeans. She only wears jeans, except in the summer when she wears shorts. She used to like to primp, but that was when she was seven and shopping for her was an absolute nightmare. I will never forget spending almost five hours at the mall in a tearful (she wasn’t the only one crying) quest to find a dress she’d actually be willing to wear. I firmly believe that the trauma of trying to find “fancy” clothes she liked in 2007 turned her against dresses and skirts for the next six years.
Category Archives: Sentimental Blather
Who Was I in 1989 & Do I Really Want to Know?
Find old journals and letters.
This was one of items on my every-growing to-do list since I left my job almost one year ago. It’s not that the letters and journals were lost – I’ve always known that they were stored away in boxes in our basement, but until recently, I hadn’t given them much thought. I started journaling in high school and continued it on and off for many years. The last time I regularly recorded my thoughts in hard copy tomes was during the two-year period just after my father died in 2000 until Chloe turned one in 2002.
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Happily Drowning in Nostalgia
The task has been on my list of projects since I left my office job almost one year ago. The photo files on the computer. Almost 10,000 pictures memorializing our family’s adventures since 2006. Plus a few stray photos from many moons ago when my husband and I were kids ourselves, scanned for posterity in case the paper versions someday disintegrate into thin air. And lots and lots of garbage – blurry photos, duplicate photos, ugly photos – that have no business taking up valuable computer memory.
A Letter to Chloe on Her 13th Birthday
After years of acting like a teenager, Chloe has officially entered the realm of teenagers. It’s hard to fathom, especially since I can still see myself – as if it were yesterday – holding her as an infant in my arms.
Protecting Sophie’s Shrouds of Turin
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Sophie’s two precious towels, which have comforted her since infancy and which I last wrote about in September 2012, are continuing their slow but inevitable decline into dust. Random pieces of fabric fall off on a regular basis. They are filled with holes. You’d never know from looking at them that they were once square-shaped. We haven’t washed them in at least a couple of years because they would never survive the ordeal.
Sometimes All It Takes Is a Desk (and a Solar System)
It’s the little things that often remind me of how quickly the girls are growing up. The most recent examples of this phenomenon occurred with Sophie over the holiday break, and involve a new desk and a solar system. Who’d have guessed that these two random things – a surface on which to write and a bunch of painted spheres – would make me feel incredibly happy to be Sophie’s mom, yet bittersweet about the little girl in her ceding space to the big girl increasingly asserting her individuality?
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With a Tinge of Sadness, Santa Lets Sophie In On His Big Secret
After we opened the presents, it was time. And Sophie handled the news like a trooper, although I think that she’ll always believe in Santa deep down inside.
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When Being A Mom Is All That It’s Cracked Up To Be
I am the first to admit that there are days when I just want to throw in the towel and escape to an island with a beautiful white sand beach, turquoise water rippling with rainbows of tropical fish, hotel staff wanting nothing more than to ensure my happiness, and most of all, quiet. Quiet from the kids and quiet from the day to day trials and tribulations of parenthood.
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On Sophie’s Cuddles, Discovering the Joy of Reading and Growing Up
Sophie has always been our resident cuddle monkey. I’ve written about her propensity for hugs on many occasions over the years, and until Saturday night, it hadn’t occurred to me that my little monster has not been as cuddly as she used to be.
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Andes Mints, Lucite and My Grandmother
I ate an Andes mint today for the first time in about 20 years. As the candy melted in my mouth while I was driving to the store, I took a sensory-filled trip back in time to my grandparents’ condominium in Lauderhill, Florida. For more than 30 years, this modest two-bedroom apartment was my grandparents’ castle, the place where their children came to visit and their grandchildren came to play.