Life after loss with one teenager, two surviving triplets and a rainbow baby
Dear Superintendent, Principal, teachers, parents, girls and maybe even the mayor, When my daughter began high school I was not worried about late night parties or dating or even her grades. I was worried about her being accepted for who she is. I was worried that, in a sea of students who didn’t know her, she might be bullied or alone at the lunch table or lost in a busy hallway. We have known for a while that college would {Read More}
There is something about the autism community that is so strongly intertwined you can almost feel it. Whether we know each other or not, we are drawn to each other’s stories. We pass knowing glances in the supermarket and offer letters of support and outrage when our children are wronged. And we send virtual hugs as we sit helpless when tragedy hits another autism family, because they are our autism family. In the last week, beginning with the tragic death of {Read More}
Right now I am balancing my laptop with coffee in hand, drinking it while it’s hot. Sawyer is upstairs watching Alvin and the Chipmunks with eyes drooping from fresh air and the weight of his lashes. I can hear Parker, McKenna and Ashlyn’s giggles drifting through the window. They are playing drive-thru window in their old playhouse that is brand new only because it’s standing in a different space. I’m dying to videotape them but it will break the spell. {Read More}
In my previous life I was the director of a nearby autism center. We ran many kinds of programs out of the university-based center but my favorites were the programs that involved the siblings. There was something about these kids. My daughter was still an only child at the time so I had no idea about this dynamic and how it presented itself in everyone’s homes. The one thing I did know was the siblings I was fortunate enough to {Read More}
We are in the middle of moving and this week has tilted me completely off center. There’s no morning schedule of coffee then oh-shoot-we-should-be-out-the-door-already. The kids have missed their 2pm chill out time with Peppa Pig and I have missed sitting down for that millisecond between getting someone’s juice and fixing the zipper on someone else’s backpack. We sat down at dinner tonight and I really sat and looked at this table full of people who are mine. We played {Read More}
Motherhood is… frosting 24 cupcakes at midnight, getting up at 1 am to feed the baby and waking up with a bed full of little people by 5 relenting to socks with sandals, mismatched gloves, sunglasses and an inside out shirt with Barbie jewelry, on picture day telling the kids to stop licking the bowl while swallowing a mouth full of cookie dough watching two episodes of Mike the Knight and a Dora rerun before you realize you’re the only {Read More}
When Hadley passed away, another grieving mom suggested I get a piece of jewelry to hold a bit of her ashes. I sat at the funeral home, looking through catalogs of jewelry I never knew existed for such a purpose, and settled on a teardrop-shaped necklace. I wore Hadley’s necklace every day for years, feeling the weight of it at my chest as I put it on every morning. I held onto it at holidays and birthdays and moments that {Read More}
There are days that creep by slowly, ebb more than they flow. Morning comes before my eyes open and bedtime comes long after they close. I check the clock one time too many, linger in a chair long enough to want to stay. I bury myself in peeling stickers off walls and fastening princess clothes, gather train tracks and crumb covered fingers, and remind myself to breathe it all in. Because these days that drift, long after they should have {Read More}
When I was a full of drama, teenager/middle-schooler/probably elementary schooler and preschooler too, I would stomp off to my room when mad. Shutting my door, I would flop in dramatic defeat onto my bed and sigh loud enough for the house to hear. Laying there, unsatisfied with the lack of results from my grand showcasing of emotions, I would add another sigh or two, for effect. Being mad never really got me anywhere other than staring at the back of {Read More}
This week is World Immunization Week, the perfect time to talk about global immunizations and the children around the world who don’t have access to the most basic of medical care. Shot@life and the United Nations Foundation are working with great people like Nicole of Sisters From Another Mister who will be hosting a link up of motherhood stories to help raising funds for the campaign. The link up opens May 8th and ends the 18th, I will be taking part and I hope {Read More}
I'm Jessica, 30-something mom to five, four in my arms and one in my heart.
On any given day you will find me taxi-ing a teenager, mopping up our latest "art project" and trying to remember when I turned the crock pot on… all the while, looking for the closest Starbucks drive thru. more
