Kristen D 
We are better than this, my friends. Fellow moms, we are used to loving selflessly, giving when we don’t think we have anything left, and caring even when we don’t want to. Now is the time for us to lead. Not (just) by how well prepared we are or how well we protect our own families (although both are important), but by how we love our neighbors.
Be flexible. As we are learning from the current ever-changing news cycle, things change rapidly. Make a schedule — and set goals, because kids need to know what to expect — but be willing to hold it loosely, and adapt to what your kids are communicating. If they’re having a blast building Legos, don’t move things along to get to “requirements.” Don’t be so hell-bent on a particular goal that you miss the bigger lesson your kids are learning about kindness and care for others.
I texted my husband today, feeling kind of ridiculous: “I’ve gotta do it… I’m running to Costco for toilet paper and boxed macaroni. You know …
6:30 a.m. Alarm goes off! Oh my gosh, why are my children so bouncy so early in the morning? And how are their toes so …
As I think about parenting, I want adventure to be part of that as well. My favorite memories with my kids are the ones where we are throwing caution to the wind and doing something wild, out of the ordinary, or totally unplugged. In order to make adventure happen more often, these are the promises I’m making to my kids this year:
This got me thinking — I wonder if there’s a power pose equivalent for moms? Sure, we’re good at talking ourselves up to other moms. We’re good at pretending we have everything together and know all the answers. But have an honest conversation with almost any mama, and she’ll readily confess that it’s mostly smoke and mirrors.
Before we moved to East Boston, it felt like a distant land, far across the water from the rest of Boston. Now, after having lived here for almost a decade, I cannot imagine a better place to live — or raise kids. One stop away from downtown Boston on the MBTA Blue Line or a short water-taxi ride away, it’s an easy location for an adventure and offers a myriad of options to parents of young children!
My children are pros at wasting things. One of their favorite nap-time activities is to take sheets of printer paper and cut them into minuscule pieces that I find for days. They don’t color on them — they just cut them up, and then throw them away. When school starts, they bring home reams of paper, covered in “art” that will be treasured for approximately five seconds and then cut into tiny pieces. The same is true for toys. They are joyously acquired, and then quickly forgotten about. Water is left running, lights are left on. Don’t even get me started on the food I throw out every evening. You get the picture.
Two years ago, when a persistent cough and mild chest pressure turned out to be a non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma tumor the size of a dollar bill compressing my husband’s airway, we joined that club. My husband was 31 and I was 32. Our children were 4, 3, and less than 1. Welcome to the cancer club.