Jim and I pride ourselves on having excellent relationships with our teenaged sons. We all talk together, a lot. Unfortunately, every now and then our younger son J can’t get his entire thought out because he gets interrupted by our older son D (okay, and sometimes Jim and I). It’s very, very frustrating for him (understandably), which is why I make sure to make the most out of any time I can get alone with him. I ask him lots of questions that require essay-like answers and really LISTEN to him. Like yesterday, for example. I had to take him to the doctor because his right eyelid was swollen up…
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A Power Outage Is A Great Time To Count Your Lucky Stars
Due to a vicious 90-minute storm early on Monday morning, one that blew out as quickly as it blew in, more than 600,000 Chicagoland folks were left with no electricity, my family included. July power outages are no fun: we typically have temps in the high 80s/low 90s. No air conditioning? Ouch. When the power first went out, I figured that, due to the length of the storm, it would surely come back quickly. I was wrong. The power would be out for nearly 36 hours in total, for my family (there are still folks who are being told not to expect the return of their electricity for several more…
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What Teenagers Will Do When Left Alone For The Weekend…
I’m back. You didn’t even really know I was gone, did you? That “rare opportunity to disconnect” that I wrote about on Sunday evening? That was me being away from home for five days, alone with my husband (that means no kids). Jim and I flew to New Mexico and stayed just south of Santa Fe for a much-needed break, and in fact when I wrote that post, I was still “sitting in my southwestern office” at our Bed and Breakfast: It is going to take me a couple of days to assemble a proper post (or two) with pictures (I took about 550, but don’t worry: I won’t share…
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Hey, Nineteen
THIS BABY? The one who HATED how grass felt on his feet that first spring? The one who used to chew on my dirty shoe laces whenever he could? IS NINETEEN TODAY. Despite a babyhood that left Jim and me wondering if we’d survive parenting him (the aversion to grass, the shoe lace-chewing, oh, and the fact that he cried for most of his first year if he wasn’t in the same personal space with me), THIS KID has grown into such a wonderful human being, way beyond our expectations (which, admittedly, were still pretty high even after that first year) and still pleasantly surprises us on a regular basis.…
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Working For A Living
The events surrounding the release of my book weren’t the only big happenings around the Wells house last week. In fact, we had a couple more reasons to celebrate: both D and J found summer jobs! This development could’ve been some kind of miracle: I’ve read that this summer is supposed to be one of the worst summers ever for teenaged job-seekers. Thankfully, the rate of employment for teens in my house is booming. D got a full-time job at Jim’s company. The company has a program specifically for the student-aged offspring of employees. The program has been on hiatus for the past couple of years, so we hear (Jim…
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My Official Book Launch: An Epic Celebration of All Things Chicago
I don’t even know where to start when it comes to summarizing my book launch event that occurred in the city on Tuesday night. I would love to tell you about everything, but I don’t want this post to be a novel and so I have to skip the fine points on: ~ all of the ideas I tossed around in my head starting about two months ago as this event was conceptualized ~ the great conversations (and epiphanies) I had with the ladies of my “Event Advisory Board” (I made up that name but it’s perfect), made up of friends who have experience with the ins and outs of…
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Simple Gifts
My sister, upon seeing the title of this one, will think that this post is about one of my favorite songs, which is “Simple Gifts”. The older boy used to play it when he was in middle school orchestra, and then the younger boy learned it on the guitar. I adore it, and he rarely plays it for me anymore. Don’t know the song? Since I haven’t yet caught my kid playing it on camera yet, here’s my second favorite version. But this post isn’t about that. As a second grade religious school teacher, I sometimes receive gifts at Hanukkah or at the end of the year. It’s not necessary,…
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If The Quality Of A Birthday Is Any Indication Of How The Next Twelve Months Will Go, I’m Gonna Have An Awesome Year.
A couple of weeks ago, Jim asked me if I was getting excited about my birthday coming up. I said, “Eh, not really.” It wasn’t that I was dreading it (I wrote about my thoughts leading up to it in my last post); I was looking forward to our family dinner out and evening at an improv comedy show, but I couldn’t say that I was jumping for joy about the birthday itself. The day started off great and only got better. When I opened up my laptop for the first time in the morning, I had a flood of well wishes from my Facebook friends. I put up this…
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Sending Your Kid To College Is Exactly Like Being Pregnant, But Different.
I never thought I would experience pregnancy more than twice, but I was wrong. No, no, I’m not really pregnant again (bite your tongue!). I am, however, exhibiting many of the same symptoms. When we found out I was pregnant the first time, the wheels started turning immediately. We started wondering about so many things: Were we ready for this change?Were we up for the challenge of raising another human being?Could we actually afford this? Of course, those were only some of the questions. And it was a little late to be asking those questions, anyway. We put lots of time into figuring out our name choices. We did research…
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Parenting Phase One? Complete.
To our Older Son: Eighteen years ago today, you were born. It was not only the first day of summer and the longest day of the year in a sunlight-to-moonlight ratio kind of way, but also, as we’ve told you many times while grinning from ear to ear, the longest day of our lives up to that point. You weren’t the easiest baby, either. Of course, we could have had it way worse but you used to cry and cry for seemingly no reason at all. And then there was that issue regarding your not tolerating being held by anybody except for me, for months. That includes your father who,…