you CAN just be whelmed.

January 28, 2017January 29, 2017 ~ mollyflinkman ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been feeling whelmed lately.

Yes, of course, this is a cultural reference from the late 1900s.

Specifically, it’s a nod to the acclaimed 1999 hit, 10 Things I Hate About You¹ in which high schooler Chastity wonders aloud, “I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?”

Anyway, Chastity, you can be.

The end.

Oh, sorry. You were hoping for something shorter this time?

I realized it the other day. It was 7:30 and all our kids were in the bed (all the praise hands for that one – we’re getting there when it comes to sleep!).

Jake and I were sitting on the couch, and I was trying to put words to an anxiousness I had been feeling.

And as we talked through it, Jake articulated exactly how I had been feeling: equal parts underwhelmed and overwhelmed.

So, whelmed.

The life of a parent is as such.

It’s underwhelming because every day is exactly the same. The same regimen of wake times and meals and toys and bedtimes and negotiations (while being sprinkled with the periodic play date or library story time, of course). And then the weekend comes–those days of rest you used to live for–and nothing changes. You do it all again.

But it’s also overwhelming, and I feel this at the end of each of these predictable days of preschool transit and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when I wonder if I’m doing a good enough job. Am I loving them well enough? Am I offering them enough undivided attention? Are they eating too many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?

(Answer: Yes, of course they are. Whatever, okay?)

So whelmed, although I will admit this to be my own personal definition, is somewhere in the middle.

I suspect I’m not the only one to feel this way. To go through my days spinning my wheels a little as I try to balance the enormity that is life with the ordinary, particularly simple things that are present all the same.

The more I think about it though, the more I have decided that my general “whelming” feelings aren’t so bad because they keep me rooted in the things that matter.

On one hand, the place in the middle reminds me to love my people well in the simple and understated moments. To unplug from my distractions and pay attention (which is, unfortunately, easier said than done). To engage with them and listen to them and really be with them.

On the other hand, those moments in which I begin to feel overwhelmed are important too because there is a world outside our home that I will one day send our kids into, and the only people wholly responsible for preparing them to face that world are Jake and me.

I want to feel the weight of that because I want to do it well. I want their love and compassion and kindness someday to be rooted in the eternal. To be saturated with Truth.

Which is something that certainly won’t happen by accident or happenstance.

So, in the end, I guess I don’t really hate feeling whelmed.

Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.

¹ Great news: 10 Things I Hate About You IS ON NETFLIX. (In case anyone was wondering what we’re doing tonight.)

the importance of being known.

December 4, 2016December 4, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ 2 Comments

I’ve long felt that one of the greatest challenges and responsibilities of being a mom is knowing my kids.

The phrase “I know you better than you know yourself” applies in perfect context to the tiny people who reside under my jurisdiction because I literally do.

I know their triggers. Their buttons. Their tendencies.

Every time my girls react to something (whether positive or negative, although these conversations usually take place on the corrective side of the spectrum), it’s first my responsibility to figure out what they are feeling for them. Then, I’ve got to teach them the words to those feelings. And finally, I have to help them embrace strategies to deal with and/or or process those feelings.

So many feelings. Jake loves it.

What a task though, isn’t it? Especially in this phase of discipline and correction and teaching, it feels so crucial to be a constant student of my kids. What makes them happy? What kind of attention are they trying to get from me? What triggers their negative behavior? What drives them crazy? What energizes them?

These are all questions I work to answer on a daily basis.

Maybe I’m thinking about it so much because I read this in a really great book recently:

Children come into the world not knowing who they are. They learn who they are from those around them.¹

As if I wasn’t already feeling enough pressure.

It’s funny though, because the more I think about my girls and their own various tendencies and needs, the more I begin to think about my own.

For instance, when I see Lily’s tendency to meltdown if she spends too much time in large groups of people, I am reminded of my own introverted need to spend time alone in order to recharge.

When I see Norah’s sadness when left out by her big sister, I’m reminded of the times when I’ve quietly given way to self-pity.

When I see Lily shut down because she picked up on a negative tone in my voice, I’m reminded of my own keen ability to perceive people’s feelings and even keener ability to let them affect me.

I guess I’m finding that the better I know myself, the better I am able to know my kids and help them work through our shared personality traits and downfalls. Similarly, it helps to know Jake, too.

(Goodness knows their joint attempts to sneak out of the house weren’t inherited from me.)

The more I think about this, the more I’m reminded of the cyclical nature of being known. I’ll never fully know my kids or Jake just as I will never fully know myself. There’s no arrival point. As the landscape of our life continues to change, so do we.

We’re still in the thick of the hard work of the middle (which I suspect is really just the constant state of parenting), and my commitment to starting these early chapters off right for my girls remains firm.

And with that comes the added commitment to know them well. To continually know them well. Is there really any other place to start when you’re the ones tasked with teaching them to know themselves?

This parenting gig is not for the faint of heart.

Thankfully, I know this about myself: I love a good challenge and find solving problems exhilarating.

(Just kidding. That’s a pretty good description of Jake. I tend to freak when things don’t go according to plan. But at least I know that about myself, right?)

¹ Katherine C. Kersey as quoted in Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents Whose Child is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, Energetic by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka

kids and the hard work of the middle.

November 20, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ 2 Comments

If you’ve been reading my writing long, this phrase might be familiar to you by now: the hard work of the middle.

It comes from one of my favorite books, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, in which Donald Miller suggests (to over simplify it) that our lives are like a story.

And, more importantly, whether this story I live is a good one is entirely up to me and the choices I make.

As for the hard work of the middle, you can find the larger passage HERE, but, in short, Miller says this:

The reward you get from a story is always less than you thought it would be, and the work is harder than you imagined. The point of a story is never about the ending, remember. It’s about your character getting molded in the hard work of the middle.

I was reminded of this concept again this week during a moment in which Jake and I were paddling especially hard but feeling like our boat wasn’t moving any closer to the shore.

Kids, amiright?

We’re in the thick of the hard work, and we exchange at least one high-five a day because we’re so proud of ourselves for not giving up.

(Also, we just really like high-fives. Big whoop.)

Parenting, I’m realizing, comes with an overwhelming sense of pressure. Because, not only are we trying to write and live the best stories we can for ourselves through the murky waters of the middle, we’re also charged with penning the opening chapters of our kids’ lives.

Eventually they will take the pen into their own hands, but for now, it’s almost entirely up to us.

The words we speak to them. The attention we offer them. The expectations we set for them.

These are the days which set the course for all the ones to follow.

They won’t remember these years with the detail I know Jake and I will, but the importance of the foundation we set for them now is not lost on me.

Parenting toddlers can be defeating. So many nights I’m left dwelling on the things I shouldn’t have said, the ways I mismanaged situations, or the issues I haven’t yet been able to solve.

And, while I believe Jake and I are doing a pretty good job at this whole parenting gig (high-ten for good measure), I also know that we do fail on a daily basis.

Oh the things I already wish I could erase from their books.

But there’s hope. There’s always hope when you look in the right places, and I’m reminded today of these words from Psalm 73:

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Thankfully, my kids don’t have to rely on my strength alone when it comes to these early chapters.

They will certainly see our flaws and failures as we walk through our respective narratives, but I can only hope that through those moments, they also see the promised strength of God and His renewed mercies each day.

And that’s worth an infinite number of high-fives, if you ask me.

the beauty of the village.

October 24, 2016October 24, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ Leave a comment

I officially went back to work full time today. As I type this, I’m 7 hours into my 11 hour shift and, so far, feeling pretty good about my stats.

I got 100% of my kids fed, dressed, and out the door this morning by 8:10 for preschool drop off. Then, this afternoon, I got 100% of them home, fed, and down for their afternoon naps. (Although, my numbers look more like 66% if you want to look at the exact number who are willing sleep in their respective beds.)

Additionally, we’ve only had 2.5 toddler meltdowns, 1 pair of pants peed through, and 1 smashed tupperware container (which found itself too close to an angry foot during one of the aforementioned meltdowns).

Things are going remarkably well.

Before Sawyer was born, I got a mixed bag of reviews as to how hard it was going to be. Some warned me that going from two to three kids was the hardest transition of any, while others suggested that it was really no big deal.

The answer according to my one month of experience with three? Bringing a new baby home is hard regardless of all outside circumstances.

You can sugar coat it with phrases like, “I’m just soaking in all those newborn snuggles¹” or “I wish they would stay this small forever²,” but it’s still hard. It takes time to catch your bearings–to find yourself again.

And I’m filled to the brim with gratefulness that I didn’t have to regain my balance alone. That I have had a village of people around us, near and far, willing to offer support and generosity and encouragement.

For the last four weeks, our refrigerator has been overflowing with meals we did not buy or make. A few of those meals even came from people I had never met before they showed up on my doorstep with arms full (a story for another day, I suppose).

And then there are the postal deliveries. The cards and packages that show up on your front step unannounced, reminding you that someone, somewhere is thinking of you. A village that transcends zip codes is a beautiful thing.

And there are also the prayers. The people, who I know, have been silently interceding for us. We felt, and continue to feel, the answers to those prayers.

And if that’s not enough, then you have the people who are willing to live in your house for weeks at a time and do all the things you shouldn’t have to do when you stay at someone else’s house–wake up early, clean bathrooms, do laundry. Between my mom and Jake’s parents, our house was the cleanest it’s ever been.

It’s not anymore, of course. But it was.

I have been reminded throughout this past month of the beauty of the village and the ridiculousness of the notion that we could do this child rearing thing alone.

I don’t have any particularly deep thoughts on the matter. Rather, as I look back on the complete upheaval our life has undergone in the last four weeks, I mostly just feel grateful.

I feel the village.

My stats aren’t always going to stay this high. I narrowly escaped a meltdown this morning that would have been equal to 3 normal toddler tantrums. I won’t always be so lucky.

But I will always have the village. Near or far, I’m thankful God has placed so many supportive people in my corner.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got an afternoon of meetings to attend to. As I understand it, The Land of Make Believe is voting on some new playground equipment and my own two toddlers are going to have prepared some snack time proposals.

It’s a good gig, this one.

¹ See: My kid makes me hold him all night, and I’ll go crazy if I don’t find some silver lining. (Thankfully, we’re on the other side of this one.)

² See: I’m actually kind of ready for month two.

dear teachers, I promise to never say this to my kids.

August 31, 2016September 2, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ 2 Comments

I went to my first preschool meeting last week and officially shifted my school lens from teacher to parent.

I was all, “This is no big deal” about it until Lily’s teachers started talking about how they are the first teachers she will meet in a long line to follow. How they help set the tone for the rest of her educational experience. How this is the beginning of many years to follow.

And that’s kind of a big deal when I really think about it.

So, I’ve been thinking about the grand scheme lately–what I want for my girls out of their educations and what I hope to model for them in the process.

And in thinking through that long list of things, I have decided on one thing for sure: There is one phrase my kids will never hear me say in reference to the things they are learning in school.

“You’ll never need to know that in the real world.”

I have gone rounds with middle school and high school students on this one during my time spent on the teaching side of things.

My mom said I’ll never have to write a paper once I have a job.

My dad has never read a book in his entire life, and he makes tons of money.

My sister is in 10th grade, and she told me she never uses English. (my personal favorite)

Kids innately want purpose. They want to know that the things they are doing matter. I see this now even with Lily and her propensity to ask, “Why?”

And yet, teachers have such a limited time to convince kids that what they are doing matters in the long run. Especially if when they go home, they hear how much it doesn’t.

Now, I haven’t written many formal speeches since I passed my college speech class. I don’t regularly utilize the distributive property in my daily life or analyze the parts of a cell underneath a microscope. I have forgotten the conjugation of Spanish verbs, the major scale on my flute, and the words to the preamble of the Constitution (which I once had memorized).

Instead, what I do on a daily basis is think and analyze and process and problem solve and learn.

The things that matter are so often hidden within the things kids think don’t.

And that’s where I come in as a parent. I think it is my responsibility to teach my kids that there is value in learning for the sake of learning. That if they approach even the tasks they hate with hard work, determination, and a positive attitude, they will gain skills that will take them far in life (even if they decide to never read another Shakespearean play after high school).

Lily spent the first 15 minutes of her first day of preschool sitting at a kidney table doing puzzles. I suppose I could have let her know that she’ll hardly ever need to complete a physical puzzle once she’s an adult (I certainly don’t do them very often).

Instead, I chose to praise her problem-solving skills, focus, and refusal to give up.

It seemed a no-brainer to me.

So, here’s to the teachers doing the hard work of convincing kids to learn. If my kids ever grace your classrooms, I’ve got your back.

(Also, I may need some extra tutoring sessions on Spanish verb conjugation and the distributive property.)

i want the best time of my life to be now.

August 23, 2016August 23, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ 1 Comment

When I was a senior in college, a girl who had recently graduated told me that she would give anything to go back to school.

“It was best time of my life,” she said. “Nothing will ever compare.”

Now, I had quite a lot of fun in college (see: hosted floor talent shows and road tripped with my friends to every football game so I could watch the cute wide receiver for examples), but even then I think I balked a little at her comment.

Maybe I’ve been thinking about it because the weather dipped back down into the seventies yesterday and reminded me that a change in season is on my horizon. Maybe it’s because all my teacher friends are decorating classrooms and meeting new students. Maybe it’s because Lily starts preschool on Monday.

In any case, my resolve remains strong: I refuse to believe that nothing will ever compare to right now.

I want the best time of my life to be where I’m at now, but, more importantly, I want to be able to say that in every season. With every new milestone.

This thought process always makes me think of the Robert Frost poem, “Nothing Gold Can Stay.”

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour,
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I suppose I could sink to grief. Agonize over the fact that Lily is entering this new, more independent phase or wish I could freeze everything exactly as it is right now.

But, what good would that do anyone?

And, besides, when I think of every new phase—the new jobs, the new people, the new kids, the new houses, the new milestones—each one has added something beautiful to my life (even if it was hard to see at the time). Even during those hard seasons, I don’t think I could ever say, “I just wish I could go back.” (at least, I hope I didn’t.)¹

I want to be a person who balances nostalgia with realism. Who holds onto and cherishes the moments while I have them but also finds joy in the moments of letting go and moving forward. I want to embrace the beauty of new seasons rather than trying to keep my feet rooted in the past.

That’s what I want.

(So, feel free to remind me of these thoughts when Lily starts kindergarten, leaves for college, and/or gets married someday.) 😉

¹ I certainly don’t mean to downplay the tragic and/or devastating seasons of life some people face. I imagine those moments are wrought with many feelings of wanting something back that has been lost or taken away. I’m mostly talking here in terms of the natural changes and milestones we seem to continually face as a family. The mostly trivial but necessary things.

my kids are teaching me about forgiveness.

August 18, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ Leave a comment

I stand by my theory that one of the hardest parts about being a parent is adjusting to the constant ebb and flow of kids. They master one thing, then regress in another. They conquer one milestone, then change their mind on another. In my case, it always feels like just when we’ve found a good rhythm, they up and grab a different instrument altogether.

For instance, all summer, the girls have been waking up at 7:30 a.m., a time everyone in our house felt really good about. Then, suddenly last week, they decided 6:15 a.m. would be more appropriate. Even better is that they have decided it’s best to just stay in bed and yell angrily until someone comes and gets them. They started beating a drum just when we had gotten used to the soothing sounds of a string quartet.

I did not handle this change well. And as I worked to adjust, I realized that I had this innate need for the girls to know that they were inconveniencing me. I wanted them to know how terrible it was to wake up to angry screaming, and I wanted them to feel bad about it.

As it turns out, guilt trips are not a highly effective means toward change when it comes to small children. Go figure.

Anyway, it has me thinking about forgiveness, an act that is much more difficult to come by when the offending party hasn’t actually asked for it.

I err on the side of over-sensitive and easily wounded. I’ve certainly come a long way in this regard (mostly thanks to Jake’s magical prowess with reasoning), but I can still pinpoint times in my life where I had to move forward from something without an apology. Parenting included (let’s talk about how irrational I can get when inadvertently head-butted in the face or made late to something because of an ill-timed tantrum).

And, lately, it’s in each one of these moments that I’m always reminded of what God says to Jonah after Jonah is whining about how unfair it is that God showed mercy on the people of Ninevah.

“Do you do well to be angry?”

Loving kids is to understand sacrifice. Sometimes it’s just easier to be mad. But in these moments, that simple question has started whispering in above the beating drum: Do you do well to be angry?

The answer is always no (even if there is a strong justification for the anger¹).

The principle transcends parenting, really; it’s just another example of how this whole being-a-mom thing is refining me into a better person or whatever.

So here’s to burying the anger, the self-pity, and the other bummer qualities that distract us from better things. Good things. Important things. Refining things.

At least, that’s what I’ll be telling myself at 6:15 tomorrow morning.

¹ For the record, I don’t think a 6:15 a.m. wake-up call is reason to justify being angry. It’s not such a bad time to wake up; it just happens to be the most recent change that has me reeling a bit. And, It’s not my fault that I’m so tired in the morning. I blame NBC, Eastern Standard Time, and Simone Biles.

how to deescalate a tantrum.

August 4, 2016August 4, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ Leave a comment

Jake, the girls, and I drove to Michigan last week, and about three hours into our drive home, I lost it.

Oh, you thought this was going to be about how to reduce toddler tantrums? Sorry, I haven’t figured that one out yet. I only know how to deescalate myself.

Now, our girls are champion travelers for the most part, but for whatever reason, last weekend they were especially owly. They’d yell for a book only to throw the book on the ground. They’d yell for their water only to throw the water the ground. Eventually, they were just yelling to yell, and, I’m not proud of it, but they broke me.

Luckily, when Jake and I are together, it seems like at least one of us has it together when the other hits a breaking point, so as any good parent would do, he lied and told the girls I was asleep, so I could chill myself out.

It always gives me a little perspective and grace when I realize that sometimes I just want to throw a tantrum too.

I was thinking about it today, and I realized that tantrums are almost always the result of a lack of control: a kid trying desperately to assert herself and a parent realizing she, in fact, has no ultimate control over said kid’s choices.

I can control my own responses though. I don’t always (see: usually don’t) do this well, but today I have been trying especially hard to breathe in some reminders so as to keep my cool.

She doesn’t fully understand emotions yet. It always helps me to remember that I literally know my kids better than they know themselves. This won’t always be the case, I know, but for now, I am able to put words they don’t even know to the feelings they don’t even know they are expressing. It helps me to remember that sometimes tantrums come simply because they don’t know the words to say.

She’s not actively trying to destroy you. Right? Please tell me this is true.

She’s watching you. This is the one that usually stops me in my tracks, and I see it more now that Lily periodically tries to calm Norah down amidst her own fits of wild rage. Sometimes, she will calmly say, “Shhhh, Norah. It’s okay.” Other times, her voice rises with frustrated emotion. Both responses could have equally been learned from me (although the latter often seems more likely).

I am the dependent variable. The control factor in each thrown tantrum around here. I can coach and I can teach, but I am only ultimately able to control myself and my own responses. At least, If I choose to.

I stumbled into James today (a remarkable “coincidence”) and have now added a necessary new mantra to my daily interactions with the girls: Quick to hear. Slow to speak. Slow to become angry.

If I can breathe those phrases in each time I feel my body temperature rising, then maybe, just maybe I can set an example worth emulating for my girls. If I can choose to respond well in my heightened states of emotions, then maybe they will start to respond similarly in theirs.

And then I suppose I’ll be ready to write my next post: How to Eliminate Toddler Tantrums Altogether.

[insert all the laughing emojis]

the problem with kids.

July 19, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ 2 Comments

People used to laud Lily on her sleep habits. “Oh,” they said, “How wonderful that she’ll sleep anywhere!” “How fantastic,” they said, “that she sleeps through the night.” “She,” they said, “is a great sleeper.”

Then she turned two and a half. Suddenly, she started waking up in the middle of the night and refusing to go back to bed. For a time, she decided 4:45 a.m. was a reasonable time to wake up in the morning. She held hour long bedtime standoffs and decided naps could be grounds for a battle as well.

Everything I read and everybody I talked to said the phase would be short. “Be consistent and sleep habits will go back to normal,” they said. But months and months passed, and on more than one occasion, Jake came home and found me tear-stained and prostrate on the floor of a quiet house because it was the only way I knew to decompress the terribleness that was bedtime.

But sleep isn’t what this essay is about. It’s about the real problem with kids which, if you ask me, is this: They convince you that they are good at things and then they decide to stop being good at those things.

Or more plainly, they constantly change.

Lily was my champion sleeper. And then, she up and realized she could have her own opinions about things and changed the whole ball game on me. I wasn’t ready for it. She blindsided me and there was no fancy Daniel Tiger jingle to convince her otherwise (believe me, I tried all the things).

Right now we seem to have reached a treaty–a season of bedtime peace–and I’m learning to enjoy these times because I know they are bound to be short-lived. Surely there is another regression in our future which will shake up our rhythm and force us to find a new beat altogether (if Norah stops inhaling all food as she threatened a few months ago, so help me).

It can be defeating. For me, it always seems like my girls hit a regression or make a change just as I’m feeling pretty good about things. When I feel like I have it all together, I’m always reminded that I actually don’t.

As parents, I think it would be easy to live in constant frustration that nothing ever stays the same. It’s in these moments though that I am reminded of the power in my own insufficiency. I’ll never have it all together, and I’m thankful that constant change reminds me of this. Regressions in parenting are a thorn in my flesh, but there is joy knowing that my responses to these frustrations can give room for Christ’s strength if I let them.It doesn’t make it easy, but it does make it worth it.

And so, I’d like to dedicate these thoughts to my sleeping babes. To Lily who has learned that the sleep-time battle isn’t worth fighting and to Norah who hasn’t yet figured out that there’s a battle to be fought. May the beauty of her ignorance be long lasting and may we have patience, wisdom, and plenty of coffee the moment she figures out otherwise.

a few of my favorite things.

July 8, 2016July 8, 2016 ~ mollyflinkman ~ 1 Comment

I tend to love things emphatically. Harry Potter. McDonald’s soft serve ice cream. My kids’ bedtime (and when they actually stay in bed WHICH HAS BEEN HAPPENING). The way a fine-tip sharpie changes your handwriting from everyday average to fancy in just moments (this last one has helped increase my correspondence tremendously).

I’m finding that summer intensifies my love of things which I think is mostly thanks to Vitamin D and longer days to fill with wonderful things.Anyway, mostly for my own reflective purposes and because I love to tell other people about the various things I love, here are a few of my favorite things right now:

The library. More specifically, the fact that I can check eBooks out and have them delivered wirelessly to my Kindle from the comfort of my home. Attention, people who are buying books: libraries let you read these same books for free! Free!

I have, lately, been obsessively reading memoirs and autobiographies. I already referenced Kelle Hampton’s book, Bloom: Finding Beauty in the Unexpected, awhile ago, but recently I’ve been making my way through the minds of various actresses (you can click on the pictures to read more via Amazon although obviously I would suggest utilizing your local library).

I usually stick very closely to fiction, but I can’t stop swimming around in other people’s brains and looking at the world as they see it (which in turn causes me to think about my own lens and perspective).

Our minivan. I almost wrote an entire essay entitled “A Love Letter to My Minivan,” but given that a year ago I wrote an impassioned post about my dishwasher, it felt a little much. Attention, people who have made a solemn vow against minivans: DO YOU EVEN KNOW ABOUT ALL THE SPACE? You can’t because you have vowed to never step foot inside one!

In case the space alone doesn’t convince you, here are some additional perks: The doors open automatically as if by magic. You can fit more people than just your family which often eliminates the need for multiple vehicles. When you go through a drive thru, you are the same level as the cashier which I find to be especially pleasant.

The West Wing. I started watching this series when we moved to Cleveland a year ago and am only now nearing its end. This can be attributed to the fact that I don’t like the things I love to end and because I wanted Jake to watch with me (which slowed me down considerably).

Attention, people who think this is just a boring television show from the late 90s: I’m rolling my eyes at you. Everyone else: Bartlet for America!

Mexican Restaurants. Attention, people with small children: You CAN still go out to eat in your new life. The beauty of a good (“good” here meaning cheap, hole-in-the-wall) Mexican restaurant is that the chips will tide your kids over for exactly the amount of time it takes to cook your food. And then, if you’re real pros like Jake and me, you know how to feed a family of four with two lunch combos and will leave having spent no more than $12.

I could go on and on. The month of July. Splash Parks. Books written by Mo Willems. Rocking chairs on the front porch. Pictures lit by natural, summer sunlight. Oh, and coffee that is sent anonymously to me through the mail.

The other day I was feeling sorry for myself about something particularly insignificant when I stopped and thought about all the good things that had happened to me during that single day. It’s obviously not any sort of original practice (there are books written on the concept, for crying out loud), but it did recenter me. It reminded me that if I can make a list of even one good thing, that’s something to be thankful for. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll spend the rest of the evening watching The West Wing with Jake while I catch up on some correspondence with the Sharpie pen I just found. It’s almost election day and things are really heating up. Santos for a Brighter America!