Growing Up

If you're a parent you know the lingo. You know, that weird language where we stop mid-sentence to spell choice words we don't want our children to understand. Over the past few years my husband and I have gotten so proficient at speaking this code that we can even understand the context of a conversation by just spelling the first few letters of a word. With a four-(almost five)year-old in our home the glorious time when we can still utilize this special language in our daily interactions is quickly drawing to a close (insert spelled expletive here). This year as my daughter soaks up knowledge daily in pre-k, she's quickly acquiring the skills needed to decode our parent spelling language,...

“Ma’am! Your son -- he’s making his way to the deep end!” a grandma on vacation alerted me while swimming in the pool on our most recent family vacation. To paint the picture for you, Kellan happened to be doubled down in flotation devices that day, a puddle jumper and one of those super pool noodles that are filled with styrofoam balls … you know, the ones that have like a 300lb weight limit? I knew where exactly he was. I was in the shallow end with Matty and Kade. Kellan was right behind us kicking his way into uncharted waters. After this sweet grandma let me know in a panic that he was making his way away from...

You probably recall a few months ago when San Francisco 49er’s football player Colin Kaepernick dominated the news. Not for his performance, but for his very visible stance against racism and police brutality by sitting/kneeling during the National Anthem. And, as recently as yesterday he has been back in the news with his decision not to vote in the presidential election.  Kaepernick is seemingly everywhere from social media to the cover of Time magazine and when I see him, I see my son. When I say that, it’s not meant to be symbolic or profound. I mean that they literally look like each other. I was first introduced to this guy in 2013. I was watching what I thought was a Beyoncé...

About a week ago, before the 2016 Presidential election, my kindergartner came home one day and announced that his class had held a vote. "We voted for our favorite cookie," he said proudly. "We voted for chocolate chip or Oreos. I voted for chocolate chip, and we won!" He was really, really excited that the cookie he voted for won the class election. Then, on Election Day, my husband and I loaded the kids up into the minivan and headed to the polling place and told our boys that Mama and Daddy were going to vote. We would have let them go into the voting booth with us, but during last year's gubernatorial race Noah, my kindergartener, was in the voting...

When we started this journey way back when, I knew that with your rough and tough background there would be some expectations to raise our boys the same. I just knew they wouldn't be allowed to cry or that fighting would be the only way to resolve anything. I had already set myself up for the fight in our parenting differences. But I was wrong. So wrong. You see, it took me a while but eventually all surfaced how wrong I truly was.  You, a seemingly Southern man's man with your callus hands and caveman-like work ethic, don't "match" the boys we are raising. To society, boys like yours should be the biggest and the best of them all; they should want to excel in...