Babble

Some background: I work full time, outside the home. My better educated, 22-months-younger sister Betsy (she has a graduate degree, while I dropped out of law school) is deemed a "stay at home mom," even though she probably works harder and works more hours than I do, ferrying her three kids to and from school, piano lessons, doctor ...

 The most e-mailed story at TIME at the moment is the new cover feature from the issue that hit the stands three days ago.  The story takes a fresh look at a topic Babble covered 24 months ago, namely, our societal tendency in the past decade to "overparent" our children. The fact that the TIME story is already being emailed ...

This is a photo of me, earlier tonight,  talking to the very clever students who run the University of Tennessee's digital journalism showcase, TNJN.com.  I had a great time, and appreciate having been asked to talk about what I do for a living. As you can see in the photo below, I am wearing my defacto version of adult Garanimals ...

 As I have mentioned, I have been working A LOT lately. The reason I am working a lot is a good one; the area of business that I oversee for our agency is booming. That's fantastic and it's especially fantastic given the fact that the economy is not booming. I am trying to take full advantage of the opportunities that are happening ...

 Lately I've been thinking a lot about being a bad parent.  Specifically, I've been thinking about ways in which I have been a bad parent. H turned 18 a few weeks ago, so I have now had ample opportunity to screw up. And I have screwed up, in big ways and small, and in important ways and in ways my kids will never ...

 Last night C and I were driving home from the grandparents' house - just the two of us - and for whatever reason, I decided to drive around the block before pulling into our driveway. As we drove past our house, where 28 month old C had clearly been expecting me to stop, she suddenly began crying, "No, No mama! Go back to C's ...

So lately, C has been an absolute joy to me. She's 27 months old, talking in complete sentences - which are generally hilarious - and she's increasingly engaging in real play with her toys. I love watching her "cook cook" at her play kitchen, or pretend that it's time for the Breyer horses (passed down from her previously ...

Seventeen  days ago, I got sick with a virus. The sudden intensity of how hard and fast the virus hit me apparently gave some kind of nasty wallop to my autoimmune system and my previously happy thyroid. In these past 17 days, I have been hospitalized for nearly a week, readmitted to the hospital for another 24 hours, and have spent the ...

(NOTE: H, J & E all gave me specific permission - yes, I asked -  to blog about this particular topic before I put my typing fingers to laptop ;-) )    Before H became a teenager, I always kind of imagined that he would be willing to talk openly with me about his dating life. I am not sure what made me imagine such a thing ...

In late 2002, my three eldest kids' father and I separated, followed by a legal end to our marriage about 18 months or so later.  Our kids were 10, 6.5 and almost 5 years old at the time. So for the past eight years or so, their father and I have shared legal custody 50/50 - and for the past two years or so, we've also shared ...