Penny started talking about kindergarten over a year ago. She's like her mom. She likes school.

But lately the reality has set in. She seems to know that going to kindergarten marks a rite of passage. She'll move from a 3 hour school day to almost 7 hours. There will be more kids in the classroom. Less ...

Yes, I have the song lyrics in mind, and yes, that's William on the left with the microphone his great-grandmother gave him for his birthday. We've tried to teach William to use his performance skills to sing "You can't always get what you wa-ant,"  but he's had a hard time appreciating the message. ...

As I mentioned last week, the past ten days were a staycation, which is to say we stayed home, for the most part, and didn't work, for the most part. (And for any of you who didn't check in last week, I highly recommend scrolling through last week's posts–four excellent reflections on different aspects ...

Sara Hagerty is a friend through marriage–her husband and mine were housemates for two years in college. But in recent years the bond has grown stronger as both of us have found ourselves with families that are less conventional than our peers. Sara and Nate adopted Eden and Caleb three years ago from ...

Margot Starbuck, author of The Girl in the Orange Dress: Searching for a Father Who Does Not Fail, comes at adoption from two angles. First, as her book narrates, she was adopted as an infant. Second, she has two biological children and an adopted son. In Ellen Painter Dollar's post on Tuesday, she ...

Earlier today, I ran a guest post from Jennifer Grant. I also had the opportunity to interview Jennifer after reading her new book, Love You More: The Divine Surprise of Adopting My Daughter.

How did you and your husband decide you wanted to adopt?

In Love You More, I wrote: ". . . the idea of adopting ...

As I explained yesterday, all the posts this week will center around the theme of adoption. Today we hear from Jennifer Grant, author of the new memoir, Love You More: The Divine Surprise of Adopting My Daughter. (For those of you who are interested in reading Jenn's book, leave a comment on this post ...

Two pieces of exciting news. One, I'm on vacation this week with my family. Staycation, actually. We're going to go to the local beach, eat at the snack bar, visit my grandparents (he's 91 and went sailing last week!), and enjoy our home. But I'm not going to spend time at the computer. No email or ...

I have a new post on Motherlode ("Learning to Walk in Another's Flip-Flops"), the parenting blog of the New York Times. It was prompted by reading a recent article in TIME ("Chore Wars"), in which Ruth Davis Konigsburg reported that men and women work more or less equal hours if you add together their ...

Peter left yesterday morning for some meetings in New York City. He returns this afternoon. I didn't think too much of it ahead of time. My mom was around yesterday morning. We had plenty of activities–camp, swimming lessons, dinner with friends. And it was only a day and a half, for goodness sake.

But ...

One of these days, I'll write more on this topic, but for now, I'd like to offer the words of Andi Sligh, of the blog Bringing the Sunshine:

Last week, the government released statistics in the United Kingdom on the number of abortions performed during 2010.  Of the 2,290 abortions performed for a medical ...

I used to think that communication was all about words. Spoken words. Written words. Whispered words. Shouted words.

Then I had children.

And I began to realize that communication may include words, but more often it entails hugs and tears and sometimes screeches and yawns and holding hands.

As a part ...

My friend Ellen Painter Dollar has a guest post on her blog, Choices that Matter: "Beating on the Chest of God: Christian Responses to Infertility and Suffering." It's a poignant and helpful reflection upon what not to say to someone who is dealing with the pain of infertility in particular, and even ...

A few months ago, Peter discovered an ancient songbook (circa 1960) filled with folk tunes and campfire songs. William was fascinated. We started singing some classics–"Skip to My Lou" and "On Top of Spaghetti" and "The Bear Went Over the Mountain." Soon enough, ...

A friend and reader recently wrote: "Marriage question– Is it offensive and/or helpful in the union to allow your partner alone time, which could be anything from prayer to seeing friends to going out to eat without you?"

Peter and I have a regular date night, during which we almost always go out to ...

Penny and William are now sharing a room. We thought we had concocted a plan that would allow for a smooth transition. We let William have a "sleepover" with Penny for a few weekend nights over the course of a month. Everything went well–they lay in their beds and fell asleep and woke up in the morning. ...

Happy Fourth of July!

I learned that we can travel for thirteen hours in our Swagger Wagon without hurting one another, especially during a three hour nap:

I learned that, much as Peter and I love Chipotle, our kids prefer different fare (although they did greatly enjoy the techno music in the background):

I learned that I ...

Okay, that's about the most narcissistic title for a blog post I can imagine–sorry! But some of you might have noticed that I haven't responded to any comments in the past week, and I didn't post anything on Tuesday or Wednesday. Because we took a family vacation (check back in tomorrow for some thoughts ...

I have a new post for her.meneutics called "The Lost Girls of India and China" that reports on the ongoing problem of "gendercide," or abortion based upon the sex of the fetus. The post begins:

Across most cultures and throughout time, parents have wanted boys more than they have wanted girls. Recently ...