Meredith Carson... Across the Pond and Back Again...

I sent this beautiful person off to middle school for the first time this week. She wasn't wearing the war paint when I hustled her onto the wrong bus at 7 am.  She was dressed in a pair of orange shorts and a t-shirt, an outfit she hadn't agonized over very much, by the looks of it.  She was nonchalant and relaxed, but as I watched the wrong bus carry her away into the darkness of the early morning, my insides seized up unexpectedly and I had the unnerving desire to chase after the bus screaming, "Come back, sweet girl!!"  What the hell happened? The overwhelming sense of worry that overtook me that morning was completely unexpected.  After realizing that the number on the bus that my daughter was riding was NOT the number of the bus she was supposed to be riding, I hurried home and called our public school transportation office.  The rather bored secretary confirmed that Emma would arrive at her own school after the high school kids ...

Last week my oldest daughter attended a poetry camp.  She was pretty private about all of the camp happenings during the course of the week and mentioned very nonchalantly on Wednesday that there would be a poetry reading on Friday.  "How exciting!" I thought.  I knew that I'd love to go and hear my girl recite a poem or two that she'd scratched out during the week, so I arrived with average expectations and left with puffy eyes and a bursting heart. I think that Emma Carson is a little bit special, and here are a couple of her poems for your enjoyment.  Hearing them read by my girl with cool confidence and captivating expression was almost more than this mama could handle. An Inspiration My dad is Christmas pancakes in August. My dad is a ghost-buster on Halloween. My dad brings you a rose at school on your birthday. My dad is unexpected. My dad knows everything but doesn’t boast. My dad is a teaser. My dad is heart-fully sorry that he teased you. My dad w...

I had never devoted much thought to the trumpet.  It is a fine instrument, and Dizzy Gillespie was beyond words fabulous, but before tonight, I had never really had a personal experience with the trumpet. But lately my daughter Emma has been talking a lot about the trumpet.  She is a girl who knows her mind and knows exactly what she wants.  When the opportunity to join the 5th grade band presented itself, she was all over it, and she knew that the trumpet was the instrument for her. What?  Everybody plays trumpet in bed, right? Tonight Emma's Dad took her out and signed a rental agreement on a brand new, shiny, fantastic trumpet.  I looked at the final price on the agreement, and made Emma swear that she wouldn't change her mind about the trumpet next week.  She promised.  Then she took off all of the plastic and attempted to wow us with a forceful, solid blast from her new instrument.  She got there eventually, and the littlest Carso...

I don't exactly know where to begin. Sometimes I feel compelled to state the obvious.  Bear with me.  I am a little slow, and "the obvious" is not always so obvious to me. I live with three children.  All of them are very comfortable leaning on, nuzzling into, and generally treating my body like a beanbag chair.  Most children are like that.  My daughters think nothing of climbing into my bed and burrowing into my flesh as though I were a favorite cushion.  There is great security in that kind of physical intimacy.  Children know this.  We are all born knowing this, but at some point we forget.  We grow up.  We become independent.  We stop snuggling close to our mamas and friends. (At least most of us do.)  Not too long ago my eldest daughter told me, "Mom, I just cannot even imagine you being a kid.  You are just SO boring and grown up."  I tried not to take offense.  I am her mother, after all,...

So there we were in an average, over-priced hotel room while buckets and buckets of rain dumped down on the outside world.  We were just about to put on our bathing suits and head down to the unexceptional hotel swimming pool when my oldest daughter blurted, without thinking, "I don't even mind having a baby sister if I still get to go swimming with my Mom!" I wondered how long she had been waiting to say something like that.  Earlier that afternoon the two of us had climbed into the car and driven less than an hour away where we checked into a hotel and headed out to do some shopping.  She had hardly stopped talking since we left the house.  At one point she paused to take a big breath and then carried on telling me about everything important that happened in fourth grade, things I had never even imagined.   There weren't any toddlers to chase or sighing eight year olds to console.  All of my attention was focused...

"Wake  up!  Wake up, everybody!!  It's time for fun Christmas today!!" And now a note from my ten year old: "Yes, you read that correctly.  CHRISTMAS IN JULY!  Around the Carson house things are... well, Christmasy!  You may see  holly by the door, a jolly Santa figure, and even a small, lit tree!  There may be snowmen lurking in the bathroom and all sorts of other small surprises.  There are literally candy canes hanging from the ceiling.  There will be cinnamon rolls and treats too.  Of course Santa is a little too busy to visit today, but there's still that good ole Christmas spirit!  Who would have guessed what a wonderful idea it is to have a fun Christmas day in mid-July to be precise?  Keep your Christmas spirit folks because Santa watches us all year long, even in July!" Today, for several reasons, we had a Christmas in July day.  My daughter Sophia's cooking camp was canceled at the last minut...

I promised my brother in law that I would share the fictional war journal that was written by my daughter Emma for a school project a couple of months ago.  Needless to say, she was given an A+ on this one, and her mama is a bit proud.  I used to teach fourth grade writing, and in my experience, this is rather extraordinary writing for a nine-year-old.  My apologies for tooting my own daughter's horn.  Of course she says that she doesn't like writing, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating.  Enjoy... April 17,1861 Do people on one side ever notice those who are not?  The ones who have not chosen sides are important too.  They call us neutrals.  Some of us write for newspapers.  We are good at it too.  Some stories seem to be like swimming across the Atlantic Ocean: never ending.  Of course it's hard to get news in a damp, dark dungeon.  The cruel blackness is blinding like a whip. April 18, 1861 Every morni...

To be clear I am not a competitive "Build-a-Better-Birthday-Party" Mama.  I have definitely rolled my eyes at some of the over-the-top kids' birthday parties I've seen chronicled on the reality TV shows on TLC.  No, I'm pretty sure your two year old doesn't need a 10 foot tall Cookie Monster ice sculpture on his big day, but if it makes you happy, whatever.  I generally try to keep birthdays relatively simple.  Cupcakes and "Pass the Parcel" are more my speed, but this year Harry got involved, and things got a little bit colorful.  So please know, if you are reading this, that I fully support whatever level of birthday party planning you're into.  I happen to be a ridiculous Harry Potter fan, so all of this was a labor of love.  I already had the Harry Potter character dolls, the Harry Potter Christmas lights, the Gryffindor scarf, and a head full of crazy Harry Potter ideas.  We also found that lots of our Halloween decorations worked wit...

This morning my daughter and I got up really early.  I made coffee, the real kind, and fed my girl the breakfast cookies I had made around midnight the night before.  We made our way to the Community Center at 7:00.  My daughter donned tacky mismatched socks, had her hair painted red, stretched her muscles, listened to some motivational tunes on her mp3 player, and then set off with her official "running buddy" on her first ever 5K run. Emma ran and ran with her trusty running partner, Mrs. Adams, who also happens to be her adorable art teacher.  While my girl ran, I cheered for girls.  I cheered for all of the girls, especially the girls in blue shirts who were part of the Girls on the Run program.  (I also cheered for an old guy wearing a neon yellow "Jogging With Jesus" t-shirt, not that he needed my encouragement.)  I cheered and cheered.  I yelled until my throat felt sore, "Go, Girls!!"  I hooted and hollered and shook a pink...

None of us knows what happens before we become conscious on this earth.  I will be the first to admit that I know very little about anything.  All of the girls at my house, however, like to believe that we come from the same place to which we will return when we leave this earth.  My little girls like to imagine that they were all friends in a different realm before they met on Earth as sisters.  We like to collectively tell the story of how the three of them looked down from heaven where they were probably seated on a cloud and surveyed life on the earth below. "Look," one of them says, "Those two are going to be our parents.  They seem nice."  The other two agree.  Emma, being the dominant, adventurous type, decides that she should be the firstborn child in our family.  We pause to reflect on what a stubborn, grouchy, and serious baby our beautiful Emma was, and she reminds me that she was obviously just missing the sisters that she left...

All of those thankless, sleepless nights when she was a thankless, sleepless infant are paying off.  I'm so glad I didn't send this girl back with the stork when he dropped her off on my doorstep nearly ten years ago.  I might have seriously contemplated it one night when I hadn't slept in 72 hours and found myself aching, leaking, and staring into her purple, inconsolable, squalling face.  Yes, I am glad I stuck it out because she finally did stop crying, and now she is a perfectly delightful companion.  Yesterday my oldest girl and I had a day of fun doing nothing particularly special.  I think there was a moment in the grocery store parking lot when we both looked at each other and silently thought, "I really like being with you."  Then we resumed skipping toward the store in our flip flops and sunglasses (in March!  I know!). Yesterday also happened to be St. Patrick's Day, so we found the traditional Irish music station on Pandora, and I made...