This morning as we celebrated Meredith’s birthday, I pointed the camera at her and asked her to talk about Nine.

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I absolutely love that most of you remember the spelling word that took you down in elementary school. The word that Meredith will remember for the rest of her life? Defiantly. The great news? Meredith finished in third place. (Of course, because she’s just like me, she HATES that she came in third. She’s PISSED [...]

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About a month ago, Meredith appeared extra jazzy when she got off of the bus. She reported that she had won the class spelling bee, which is her ticket to participate in the school spelling bee. For the past four weeks, she and Jeff have been studying the list and taking words apart and putting [...]

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Last week Meredith and I started a Mom & Me journal, and it’s turning out to be the greatest thing we’ve ever done. Because it’s a secret from the rest of our family, we decided that our code word is Pancakes. When she is finished writing in the journal, she places it under my pillow [...]

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Yesterday afternoon we went to the animal adoption event where we met the little Dachsund I had shown you earlier in the week. We hemmed. We hawed. In the end, our family works like this: It takes Four Yesses, but it only takes One No. We had a No. Meredith was pretty much destroyed at [...]

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Scene: I’m in the shower. The girls are on their own with the puppy. The cats are downstairs plotting. Meredith: Mommy! MOMMY!!! Me: What? WHAT?! Meredith: Scout just pooped on her piddle pad and it looks like popcorn! Me: Okay! I’ll take care of it when I get out! Meredith: You don’t understand! I think [...]

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If I test positive for an MRSA infection, my entire family will have to be medicated. We won’t have the results until Tuesday, but Meredith and Harper are already Very Angry. If my test result is negative, I know two little girls who owe me big apologies. (Incidentally, research shows that the at-risk population for [...]

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So, it’s Spring Break at The Pudding Chalet, and your guess is as good as mine as far as what Spring Break should entail. We were going to go see Rango, but one kid called the other kid a Liar, and that’s really all it takes to cancel a movie. (Confession: It doesn’t really take [...]

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Meredith: Mommy, do you know what Hypohogia is? Me: I’ve never heard of it! Meredith: Hypohogia is a rare made up condition where a groundhog throws up and coughs so hard that its teeth fall out. I saw it on the news. With this condition, groundhogs sneeze so hard that they fall to the ground. [...]

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If you’ve been with me for awhile, you know that Meredith was diagnosed with amblyopia when she was three. She was super-farsighted in her right eye, and her brain had pretty much turned off the switch in her left eye. To get her left eye working again, she started wearing a patch over her right [...]

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