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Archives from 2002-2006

We have returned from a weeklong road trip and therefore my default background noise has changed from the thrum of tires on the highway to the pew pew pew pew KAPOW! *random dance music* of Fortnite.

My GOSH, family vacations are a grind, aren’t they? We traveled to Montana with the intent of visiting Glacier National Park (which didn’t work out because of fire-related closures), spent a few days on Flathead Lake, then motored back to Sunriver in Eastern Oregon before heading home. Everything was mostly delightful — the scenery, the activities, the sodium-laden convenience store snacks — but also as the days went on I kind of felt this growing desire to hurl myself in front of a speeding freight truck?

Just: the bickering. So. Much. Bickering! About everything it is humanly possible to bicker about, and when they had exhausted every single subject known to mankind they transcended the boundaries of the known universe in order to dig up more shit to bicker about. Really, my kids had two modes during this entire trip: 1) plugged into devices and therefore sweetly, blessedly silent, or 2) arguing with each other about SOME POINTLESS GODDAMNED THING.

Dylan in particular has entered a mischievous Calvin-esque stage and continually plots to annoy his easily-annoyed brother, which resulted in a couple of standout moments: a scene mid-conversation in an Idaho restaurant when we all suddenly noticed Riley had a tiny straw-wrapper spitball lodged in his braces, blown there by Dylan, who instantly collapsed in the sort of hysterical laughter that had other patrons eyeing our table and visibly wondering if they should call 911, and a scrawled note that sent Riley’s hair on end after he’d suffered mightily through a horror movie (which I admit was definitely a mistake on my part) which read, in red crayon, YoU CaN’T GeT RiD of the BaBadoOk.

The fighting, the loudness, the clothes strewn everywhere, the relentless closeness of being together 24/7 for days on end … whoo, I don’t know, it just adds up, you know? And then there are all these amazing times where everyone is in sync and we’re laughing and experiencing something awesome together or just looking over from one hotel bed to the next and smiling and that’s everything, that’s why we do it.

A family vacation is just the perfect microcosm of parenting in general: it’s so incredibly great, it’s so ridiculously hard.

I wrote a book! If you have a Kindle, or you don’t mind downloading the free Kindle app, you can buy it here. It’s called New to Me: A Mostly Ridiculous, Highly Undignified, and Occasionally Heartfelt Diary of Pregnancy and First-Time Motherhood, and that is pretty much what it is.

If you were a blog reader back in 2005, this will be familiar territory: New to Me is a yearlong collection of entries, from that first terrifying double-line pregnancy stick to Riley’s 6-month birthday. It’s been quite a process, from copying and pasting old entries to embarking on a major edit and rewrite, but I’m so glad it’s all in one place now. I enjoyed revisiting those days and I sure hope you do too.

Thank you so much for this, you guys. I never would have captured this time in my life without a blog, I never would have remembered half the silly/awful/wonderful things I wrote about. Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading.

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