A Little Chaos Theory

The stress from the multiple irons that I have in the fire are getting to me.  Actually, it’s wearing on our entire family.
So, because my family is my first priority, we’re leaving for the beach and won’t be back until late tomorrow night.  We hope that it will allow us to recharge and reconnect.
If anyone [...]

Take two parents who love to talk.  Add in 3 cats and 2 dogs.  Read lots of books together building vocabulary.  Before you know it a river of words will start streaming from your children’s mouths.  Okay, I’m being flippant here.   I realize that it’s not that easy .  For those of you who have [...]

Roegen’s favorite word these days is “naughty.” He is a one-toddler behavior patrol who marches around looking for infractions so that he can proclaim at the top of his voice “naughty (insert name here).” The culprits that he catches most often are Mickey Socks (because Mickey loves to swipe the leg of anyone [...]

Chaos Theory is the theory that looks at how nonlinear and dynamic systems interact with each other. While from a scientific basis those systems actually do have a type of symmetry to them they appear to act randomly and on their own, separately yet together.
Breydon is a child that craves order and consistency. If [...]

My two older sons are very different. Breydon walked before he talked. Jude talked before he walked (and has never stopped talking). Breydon hates soft foods like pasta and yogurt. Jude loves pasta and yogurt. Breydon stops to think things through before taking action. Jude leaps before he looks. And at night, Breydon wants to [...]

We live in an old house, and we deal with the idiosyncracies that older homes have. Drafty rooms and erratic electricity may be annoying but we also have the benefits of mature fruit trees, blackberry vines, and a grape arbor.  It seems like a fair trade to me.
The other day, however, shortly after I [...]

Jude was overjoyed by the news that I was pregnant. He spent months telling everyone he could, even strangers in the grocery store, first that he was going to have a baby brother, and then that his baby brother had arrived. In the early weeks after the baby’s arrival he spent hours planning all the [...]