Hearth

It was 5:17pm and I had defrosted exactly nothing. What followed was either a disaster or a dinner, depending on who you ask. My kids said "this is actually good." That's the bar. That's the whole bar.

— recipes that actually got eaten

My son asked me if clouds have feelings. My daughter told me her stuffed elephant was "going through something." I said "same" and meant it. This section is for all of it — the questions, the phases, the inexplicably long conversations about dinosaurs at bedtime.

— tender dispatches from the small years

These are the essays I wrote for myself first. The ones where I'm not explaining anything to anyone, just trying to figure out who I am on the other side of becoming a mother. Turns out she's still there. She likes long baths and strong opinions about fonts.

— essays from outside the mom role

I promised myself when I started this blog that I'd write about the hard things the same way I write about the good ones — honestly, without tidying them up too much. These posts took the longest to write and got the most messages afterward. That felt like proof they needed to exist.

— the posts I almost didn't publish