Jenn

Some mornings in our house start with laughter. Someone tells a ridiculous joke at breakfast, and suddenly all four boys are cackling so hard they can barely eat their eggs. Those are the mornings I feel like we’re doing something right. Then there are the other mornings — the ones where my 10-year-old is convinced […]

Some mornings I walk downstairs to find my 15-year-old and my 6-year-old sitting together on the couch, the older one patiently explaining something about a video game while the younger one listens with wide, devoted eyes. And then there are the mornings where those same two are at each other’s throats before breakfast is even

When Life Gets Loud, Something Has to Give There was a Tuesday in February — gray sky, mud on the floor from soccer cleats, a argument brewing between my 15-year-old and my 11-year-old, and dinner somehow still not started at 5:30 — where I stood in the middle of my kitchen and thought, we need

The Morning That Finally Broke Me It was a Tuesday in February — one of those gray Connecticut mornings where the cold seeps under the door and everyone wakes up on the wrong side of everything. My 15-year-old couldn’t find his curriculum binder. My 11-year-old was convinced the world was ending because we were out

When Busy Becomes Your Default Setting It happened on a Tuesday in February. My husband and I looked at each other across the dinner table — two kids arguing about a board game, one teenager buried in a history project, the youngest dragging every single blanket he owned into the living room for reasons still