“Don’t bite off more than you can chew.” I don’t know where I heard this first, but I know we heard it around the dinner table. The rule at our house was that if we served ourselves, we had to finish the entire portion: lock, stock, and barrel. However, if someone else piled that portion onto our plates, we could get by without consuming it all. After all, it wasn’t our eyes that were bigger … Read more
We’ve heard the saying, “She may not be the head, but she’s the neck that turns the head.” It’s intended to be a negative comment about a wife; and while many times it is, it doesn’t need to be. You know what I think of that saying? I think it can be a positive statement – if the head gets turned in the right way. Sadly, the connotation we usually get from that saying is … Read more
Refusing to Cave I remember parenting young kids and having one whose temperament or mood threatened to mar the entire day. The natural inclination is to cave, or “give in” to keep peace. It’s harder to steer a wheel uphill than it would be to just allow it to rumble down to the bottom of the hill; but then, how would we ever get that wheel to the top of the hill?! Trouble was, if … Read more
I don’t usually have trouble going to sleep at night – or sleeping through the night. There have been times, however, when I’ve needed to deploy a tactic to be able to go to sleep or go back to sleep when I’ve laid awake at night, fearful, worried, or afraid. It’s something I used to tell my kids to do when they couldn’t sleep at night. You see, the reason we have trouble sleeping is … Read more
What is it about us that makes us think we can create the perfect Christmas scenario? I wonder how many years I have thought to myself, This Year or this Christmas . . . ! and it never happens. Those Norman Rockwell photos where all the kids’ pj’s match; there are no stains and tears in their britches and not an ornament is out of place on the tree? Does this really happen?! Those calendar-perfect photos of mom … Read more