I don't get much one-on-one time with my son anymore, despite often superhuman efforts to make this happen. Before T. was born he was my buddy; I took him everywhere, even to classes with me sometimes when he had a day off preschool, or wasn't feeling well enough to go to school. He always sat quietly in the back of the class, drawing on paper, or listening to me even  while students snuck amused glances at him and tried hard to win his attention. The last really special walk we had together was the day I went into labor with T., who arrived ten days early. [more]

Dinner preparation is chaos, usually. Five p.m. is universally recognized by parents to be some type of witching hour, during which kids become possessed by some tiny but fierce inner demons (I imagine them looking like the Mucinex creature), and melt down, whine, cling to legs, and demand unreasonable things; pots boil over, the oven is always too hot, the dog barks at nothing and altogether too many tasks are being crammed into too short a period of time. [more]