Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

About Me

Reluctant Red

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“In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” ~Mr. Darcy

I love Taylor Swift against my will. Love. For a while I pretended I was buying her music for my kids, but when I’m blasting her CDs on shuffle as I drive alone in my car, singing along with every word of even her most obscure songs, I know I need to stop denying what we have together.

When her new album Red dropped this week, I was proud of myself for waiting until the day after release to pick it up because I wasn’t going to be near a Target on release day and didn’t want to go out of my way. I thought that showed great restraint. Why didn’t I just pre-order on Amazon? Good question.

Because the Target version of the CD has several bonus tracks and what’s better than a CD full of emotional songs about teenage break-ups? A LONGER CD full of emotional songs about teenage break-ups. Indeed it is.

I love Taylor Swift because her songs are about raw emotion and angst and drama, whether real or imagined. Essentially, I love her for the same reasons I love writing young adult fiction. The highs are so high. (You flew me to places I’ve never been) The lows are so low. (Now I’m lying on the cold, hard ground.) I could always use a little more passion in my life.

And her songs are danceable. And they’re fun. And when I listen to them, I feel like she stole material from my junior high journal in all its melodramatic glory. It’s the kind of music that makes you stop at your girlfriend’s house on the way home from Target with a swagger wagon full of kids so you can blast your favorite new song and dance together in the front seat, while your exhausted toddler sleeps like a log in the back seat.

Listening to Red last night brought me back to the days of 6th grade Paula Abdul obsession. Forever Your Girl!!1!!!111! How many artists have CDs I’m content to listen to all the way through? Over and over?

I just wish her perfume didn’t smell so freaking good, because I draw the line at trying to smell like a 22-year-old pop/country starlet. Yes, I smelled the perfume. Don’t judge me.

The Magical Kathryn Thompson of My Dreams

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What Would Jesus Do? You see it on bracelets and bumper stickers, in books and on the radio. This is a question I ask myself a lot. But, sometimes it’s hard to wrap my head around the answer. I don’t always know what He would do if He were me… at Target… with an emotionally eruptive, potty-training-resistant three-year-old. Okay. I do know what He would do, but I am oh-so-muchly-much more mortal than He is.

Over the years, I’ve built up a pretty clear picture of who Kathryn Thompson is, not necessarily the real current Kathryn Thompson, but more a Magical Kathryn Thompson of My Dreams. This Kathryn uses product in her hair as regularly as if it were deodorant. She is so focused on others that she completely forgets herself. She never worries that she’s overshared at book club and this Magical Kathryn Thompson has more patience than Taylor Swift has ex-boyfriends.

I thought a lot about the MKTOMD at the Coca-Cola conference this past week. We created vision boards for our blogs/lives and talked about building our personal brand. I found that my vision board wasn’t much about the content of my blog but more about the intended purpose of what I write.

In my theoretical, Magical Kathryn Thompson of My Dreams fantasy, I want my blog to bring a little more light and joy into the world of motherhood. “How do you intend to do this by blogging about fecal matter and parenting meltdowns?” you ask. I’ll tell you.

I believe that motherhood is the single most universally soul-defining experience shared by women around the world. And it’s in the mess and the chaos, the self-doubt, the clawing our way towards stability that we become who we’re meant to be. We learn compassion, patience, love, and strength as we shove aside our own needs in the face of these overpowering emergent personalities and then learn to reclaim ourselves.

I want my blog to be a place where mothers come and remember to laugh and enjoy the journey, and to find companionship in what is arguably the most isolating, emotionally draining, and simultaneously fulfilling sorority on the planet.

In a panel on Women in the Workplace, female Coke executives were talking about work/life balance and what they said really struck a chord with me. They said, “There’s no such thing as balance.” What you need to do is put yourself 100% into what you’re doing at the moment. Be in the moment. You will be so much more successful than if you’re always trying to multi-task. You will also enjoy your life so much more if you’re living consciously and being present.

This fit perfectly with a talk I recently heard at a church General Conference by Dieter F. Uchtdorf. He was talking about regrets people have when they’re dying and one that many people experience is that they didn’t allow themselves to be happier throughout their lives.

“Do we listen to beautiful music waiting for the final note to fade before we allow ourselves to truly enjoy it? No. We listen and connect to the variations of melody, rhythm, and harmony throughout the composition.”

There is a melody, rhythm, and harmony to our lives as mothers. We hear it in the jangling of the change the tooth fairy brings three or four or sixteen days late, in the sound of sucky nursing lips our six-year-old still makes in his sleep. We hear it in the sound of tinkle hitting the potty just minutes before they decide they’d rather do their SERIOUS business in their pants and in one child telling another the secret of how she always manages to win when pulling the turkey wishbone.

The trip to Atlanta, paid for 100% by Coca-Cola, was a great time to get away and refocus my energies for the blog and just for life. I’m hardly on the express lane to perfection, but I did come out of it asking myself more frequently, “What would the Magical Kathryn of My Dreams do in this situation?” and then trying to do it.

More often than not, MKTOMD will laugh, hug her kids and then blog about it. MKOMD is also a fantastic hip hop dancer, and completely unafraid of rodentia. You would like her.

Amy has a great post up if you want to know more about the why of the conference.

Livin’ It Up in Hotlanta

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I’m typing this from my room at the W Hotel in downtown Atlanta. The room is gorgeous and filled with swag from Coca-Cola. They’re hosting ~20 mom bloggers for a 2-day conference at their corporate headquarters, teaching us to live positively, giving us advice on branding and marketing ourselves, and possibly harvesting our organs while we sleep.

They’re being very nice to us.

I stayed at the W in Chicago when I was on a panel at Blogher several years ago. I shared a room with my friend Erin and new friend Jenny and, although we loved the room, the bathroom arrangements were a little awkward for a budding friendship.

The W is big on chic-ness, leather divans, employees that wear black, and it’s also big on dance music in the elevator. What it’s not big on is bathroom privacy. In Chicago, the bathroom was separated from the bedroom by some very thin shutters.

In this room, the shower is clear glass with no curtain or door and is located in the middle of the room, right next to the bed. It’s all very lovely and oh-so-not-sharable with women you barely know. Luckily I’m alone here.

The hotel is chic. The dress for tomorrow is supposed to be “casual chic”. My fashion icon friend Emily said that means “wear a scarf.” I shall do so. And I will report back to you about what I learned… about both chic-ness and positivity.

When speaking to marketing people, I always tell them, “If you want to market to mom bloggers, give them an experience.” We want to blog about experiences much more than products. I loved blogging about Nintendo because they set up events where me and my kids could play wii at a nursing home. I loved blogging about Method because they hosted an event that I’d been planning to host anyway and they paid for everything.

Well, I can tell that this is going to be an experience worth blogging about. I’m hoping to meet and network with some great women, get some much-needed relaxation and writing time in this way-too-swanky-for-everyday hotel room, and learn some things to energize my blogging and fiction writing career.

I’m not entirely sure what Coca-Cola is hoping to get out of the arrangement. I hope we all end up happy and with all our kidneys intact.

So far, I’ve spent a great day with Megan, whom I carpooled to the airport and shared a flight and Taxi with. We’re practically neighbors and I’m glad to know her now. I’m sure I made an awesome first impression, taking two wrong turns on the way to the airport, and then inviting her join me for dinner, only to walk two blocks, change my mind and tell her I’d rather eat a sandwich in my room. So many awesome points for me.

When I’m away from home like this, I vacillate between being overjoyed to have some time alone and missing Dan and the bebes desperately, calculating how many days it would take me to walk home to Seattle from Georgia were the Apocalypse to occur in the next two days. (Write YA post-apocalyptic fiction much? Why, yes, I do.)

The best part of the day was getting a text from my brother, whom I never see, who said he was in Seattle on his way to a Border Patrol training. It turned out he was at the Seattle airport on a layover from Montana and had no idea I was traveling today. So he came and found me as I came through the security line and gave me a hug before I headed to my terminal. I love this guy! What a fun surprise!

Notice the scarf in that picture. See? Previously un-chic. Now CHIC with added chic-ness. BAM!

Dental Fairies

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Magoo still believes in the tooth fairy and defends her honor in the face of mockery at school. The only downside to this centers around the tooth fairy’s complete and utter moron-acy. She is totally intellectually insufficient.

When his tooth fell out this weekend, I thought, I should care about this. There’s some reason I should care about this. This isn’t my first rodeo. I know the drill. But somehow I missed the clue bus. (I did not, obviously, miss the metaphor train.)

Then the next morning, he comes downstairs distraught. “The tooth fairy didn’t come last night!”

As my friend Stephanie said this morning, “A tradition where a kid hides a tiny tooth under their pillow and the tooth fairy is supposed to magically remember it is ridiculous. The tradition should be that the child places the tooth ON his parent’s pillow. I’m sure the fairy would find it there.” I agree. But that’s not the world we live in. We have to take our magical creatures the way they come and the tooth fairy in this dimension likes things done a certain way.

So when Magoo comes to me oozing drama over the fairy’s failures, I have to defend her.

“Well, maybe your tooth is flawed and she didn’t want it.”

He looks shocked.

I continue. “That book we read said she uses the teeth to build her palace and maybe your tooth wasn’t palace-worthy.”

“No-o,” he counters, “It’s a good tooth.”

I shrug. “Well, you can try and put it out again tonight and if she doesn’t come, I’ll pay you 50 cents for it. I’m not building a tooth palace, but I like you. And besides, I could put your tooth under my pillow the next night and try to make a profit.”

“I’ll put it out one more time.”

The next morning he comes downstairs distraught. “Mom! The tooth fairy still didn’t—“

At this point, I have to physically restrain myself to keep from slamming my head into the table. She didn’t come again?! What the hockey sticks?!

I reiterate my offer to compensate him for his dental refuse. But he won’t play. He can’t stand the thought of me hitting the tooth fairy jackpot with one of his extracted body parts.

“You know what it probably is?” he muses, “It was under my Pillow Pet and she probably didn’t realize it was a pillow. She probably thought it was a stuffed ANIMAL.”

So last night he gets a normal pillow from the guest room, and places the tooth underneath. I write TOOTH FAIRY in gigantic letters on my To-Do list. I tell Dan that if he sees her, he should under no circumstances let her go to bed until she’s done the deed.

Then, when the children are slumbering in their beds, and the tooth fairy’s ready to sleep, she creeps up to his room with a fist full of sparkle-dusted coins, removes the tooth from under his pillow… and steps in a massive carpet puddle of urine.

Someone, who shall remain nameless, periodically sleep walks and sleep hoses down his room. This is shocking to find in sock-feet and the fairy ends up waking him up. So there she is with a tooth in one hand, coins in the other with a wet, confused boy awake and staring at her.

I call Dan into the room to help with cleanup and hand him the tooth, telling him that if Magoo notices it’s missing from under his pillow, Dan should “help him find it where it’s slipped down onto the floor.”

Sure enough, as we’re stripping the sheets off the bed, Magoo yells, “Oh NO! My tooth!” and we have to “help” him “find” it.

So we get everything cleaned up and put the tooth back in play and Dan and I leave. The fairy then has to wait 30 minutes for him to go back to sleep before trying again.

And the fairy is tired. And the fairy is sick of it. And the fairy just wants to build her house out of wood with granite countertops like a normal person. And she wants dry socks.

Almost a Rider

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Mandy Hubbard spoke a couple of times to our SCBWI chapter today, her evening keynote being playfully titled “Rejection Sucks.” She makes me glad to be part of a community of writers. She was candid and shared the dirty details of what it takes to make it in this industry, even sharing actual text from rejection letters and revision requests she’s received.

What does it take to make it? It takes persistence. Insane, unswerving, willing-to-beat-your-head-against-a-brick-wall-and-beg-for-more persistence.

Sometimes that’s hard to muster. I do not like having a hobby/career that involves pouring my heart out on paper and then sending it around for people to reject or ignore. Suckage? Indeed.

But tonight I was reminded that I’m part of a collective, a sisterhood/brotherhood, a familyhood of people who are passionate about words and ideas and stories and who all experience rejection and who all hate it almost as passionately as they love writing, but they carry on anyway.

And she says it’s worth it. And I choose to believe her.

So far I’ve entered one contest, where I didn’t get past round one. I’ve sent out queries to 15 agents, been flat-out rejected or ignored 10 times, received 5 requests for full or partial manuscripts and had 4 of those rejected so far. Today I participated in a Twitter pitch frenzy and got one and a half requests from that. (One of the requests turned out to be someone who was looking for adult fiction.)

This process all makes me think of Magoo, who yesterday decided that he wanted to ride his bike with no training wheels. So after years of preparation, successes and failures, today he decided to ride and he just rode and now he’s a rider.

Wednesday he was not a rider. Today – rider.

Today I am not a published author. Tomorrow – who knows? I’ll dust off my helmet and get ready for success.

This is cross-posted to my author blog at KatWords.com

Losing IT

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Sometimes I’m a great mom, times like yesterday morning and afternoon when I walked all over town taking Wanda to the park and the library for story time. Then every once in a while I snap and it’s not pretty. It’s not even homely. It’s bad.

We’ve been stressing out, maybe too much, about where Laylee would take ballet this year. She’s nine and she loves to dance and there are altogether too many things to consider when raising a kid. How do we encourage her passion for dance without pigeon-holing her and cutting her off from all other activities? How will she know if dance is the only activity she loves if it’s the first activity she’s ever kissed? How much is too much?

So, we decided to slow down from her dance school’s 4-hour per week class recommendation and move her to a school in the next town over that offers a slower road to pointe. It was a tough decision and I’m not sure if it’s right, but my head was exploding so I just cried Uncle and paid the registration fee.

But we’re both nervous to try a new place. Will she like it? Will they like us? Will she be challenged enough but still able to have a life outside of dance?

So yesterday, the first day at the new studio, she didn’t get off the bus at her stop. We had to search the bus and drag her out and she came off the bus late and sobbing. SOBBING. Apparently the book she was reading was way sadder than a book should ever be.

“And it just ends like that,” she sobbed, “That’s it. There’s no sequel. It can’t get happy because it’s just over. The end. This is a bad, bad book mom. It started out sad and then got as good as a book can possibly get and then got as bad as a book can possibly get.”

The characters were so real to her and she couldn’t handle the emotion and the betrayal. She was nearly inconsolable and, as an insanely easy crier, I was extremely proud. Her reaction showed compassion and sensitivity and, oh crap, we were gonna be late for our first day of ballet.

So, I drove her home, got her dressed, arranged her hair into a perfect ballet bun, (Doesn’t it feel like that should be spelled B-U-N-N-E?) and told her to grab her shoes. She’d worn her ballet shoes off and on all summer as she stretched and practiced.

“Grab them,” I said.

Blank stare, followed by grimace.

“Are they lost?”

Shrug.

“Look for them.”

Ten minutes later, she informed me that they were really, for real, very truly lost and… oh well.

And. Then. I. Snapped.

She lost her shoes and I lost it. It was nowhere to be found.

We had 2 minutes until we needed to be in the car driving if we wanted to be on time and I started tearing around her room, searching. And she just stared at me. As soon as I was on the case, she gave up. And I lost it a little more.

With her standing there watching, I dumped out her drawers, and her laundry basket and all the one thousand little purses full of nothing that were stashed all over her room. It turned into a full-on tantrum. The shoes! The SHOES! Where were the ever-loving SHOOOOOES! I yanked all the bedding and books and stuffed animals and reading lights and grocery items and 4th grade necessities from her bed while she bawled her eyes out.

I couldn’t stop and I couldn’t calm down.

And I was horrified with myself for acting like a bratty toddler.

But it was like I was outside myself looking in and thinking, STOP, but I couldn’t.

We left shoeless and we still can’t find them. I knew she was devestated on the drive, but still I lectured her. She went to her first class crying.

I can count on one hand the number of times in my life that I was doing something and I could tell it made someone feel small and I did it anyway. I hate those times. I want to yank them from the record and start fresh.

But my apology can’t erase this one, the time I forgot who I was because… shoes. Laylee will remember this. She may talk about it at family reunions or tell her kids. I hope that when she does, she will add in the part about how I apologized and maybe how she learned that being a grown-up doesn’t mean being perfect. It means putting the room back together better than it was before while talking about our lives and giving periodic hugs. Being a grown-up means knowing when you’re wrong, feeling utterly crappy about it, fixing it as best you can and doing better.

Dark Bird

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Most of you know I’ve been hard at work for the last year, finishing a novel. The first question everyone asks is – When does it come out? And the answer is – After I get an agent, do a bunch of rewrites, sell it to a publisher, do a bunch of rewrites and go through a rigorous editing and production process.

Currently I’m working to find representation and today that process includes posting my query and first page as part of an online contest to get my work in front of some impressive literary agents. So, for everyone who’s asked for more details about the book, here goes:

Title: Dark Bird
Genre: YA Fantasy
Word Count: 70,000 words

Query:

Neen Sinclair’s obsession with super hero Dark Bird has gotten her into trouble more than twice, but she’s always been able to roundhouse kick her way out of it. Always, that is, until her little sister Mae decides to offer herself up as chum in the fight against evil. In trying to protect everyone else, Neen has inadvertently led her sister into danger.

So, when she’s offered a spot on a dive team at a wealthy Seattle high school, Neen leaves Dark Bird and her vigilante lifestyle behind in an attempt to set a different kind of example. Concentrating on her sport, she will become Neen the straight A student, Neen the championship diver with a billion college scholarship offers, Neen who leaves crime-fighting to the professionals and no longer has a chair with her name on it in the principal’s office.

However, cross-training at an off-the-grid martial arts studio, Neen ends up entangled with Hayden, an unpredictable and easy-on-the-eyes teen crime fighter who embodies everything she’s trying to run away from. Diving competition takes a back seat as a psychopath with a Robin Hood complex starts terrorizing her classmates’ wealthy families, and she can’t resist taking a stand.

As Hayden and Neen train and work together, she finds herself pulled further and further from her mysterious roots. But can they succeed at taking down their nemesis without the help of Dark Bird, a hero whose connections to Neen go far deeper than anyone realizes?

First 250 Words:

We’re so close now.

My heart echoes in my chest and I wonder if he can hear the drum beat of my fear. But he doesn’t look up, too focused on his own careful movements. Creeping along the stone wall, I struggle to calm my breath.

I’m getting stronger and, whether real or imagined, there’s a power to Dark Bird that gives me more confidence in myself. Just saying that name gives me a sense of protection, and standing here with this guy in front of me, I feel a surge of strength greater than my own.

Dark Bird is powerful. I am powerful. Tonight I make the first move, striking forward from my place in the shadows.

#

The wipers squeak across the surface of my windshield as I turn the key in the ignition. Screech, slam, screech, slam. They were running full tilt during yesterday’s deluge but today they only serve to startle me, adding one more knot to my mounting anxiety, a gut-tugging anticipation that’s left me slightly shaky all morning.

Whatever happens, after I cross the lake today, things will be different. I tell myself that I like nearly everything about different, except maybe the fact that it means things won’t be entirely the same. There are things I’ll miss.

I ease my car down our gravel drive, weaving to avoid the familiar potholes, only to slam down hard into a fresh one. Pavement would be nice here, Dad. But I’m sure I’ll get plenty of that in Seattle.

Mini Food Blogger in Training

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She doesn’t blog about mini food. She is mini and she’s already thinking like a food blogger.

Today I told Wanda it was lunch time and she said, “I want lunch abouuuuuuut apple sauce!” She added that she also wanted apple slices of the orange variety. All sliced fruits are apple slices, just different flavors.
mini-food-blogger
The apple sauce is topped with probiotic powder or as we call it, “Sprinkles.” The Thomas train is not for consumption. Maybe I’ll catch her with some protein or grains later. For now, I’m excited when she expresses interest in anything that’s not candy.

I took this picture because once she’d laid out all the food, she said, “Okay, now take a picture of my lunch like this!” She staged and I shot. We are good team.

This is cross-posted at my food blog BiteUponBite.com.

Mouseketeers

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Dan called me from work yesterday, his voice somber. “I have something to tell you,” he said.

“Okay?” My heart started racing.

“So, how’s your anxiety?”

“Oh, for the love, you’re freaking me out. Did you lose your job?”

“No. I saw something in the garage this morning.”

Silence.

“A mouse?” I said with my tiniest voice.

“Yeah.”

“Where was it?”

“I won’t tell you that.”

Now, you should know that I have a near-psychotic fear of rodents. I’ve improved over the years and even worked with a therapist to resolve some of my issues but I’d still classify myself as a grade A level phobic.

I don’t want to be afraid and logically I know they’re no big deal. I tell myself that they are just teeny and harmless.

I tell myself that what I should really do is make them tiny shoes and hats like Cinderella and encourage them to fashion me a stunning gown for the ball.

But I am as yet unable to turn off the drama. Mice trigger an intense physical reaction, panic, inability to regulate body temperature, teeth-chattering body tremors. It’s not pretty.

So I fought it as hard as I could and we did some clean-up in the garage, throwing out tons of food, craft supplies and cloth items. The mice had chewed through our winter coats and pooped in my yarn bucket. The sad thing is that many of these things were in Rubbermaid totes that I didn’t take the two seconds required to snap shut so the critters got in and violated the contents.

Knowing my level of anxiety over these bad boys, my friend Erin dropped everything and came over to help me for a couple of hours. She even took charge of cleaning out the scariest boxes, boxes of clothes that just screamed, “Build a nest in me so you can birth several truckloads of pink slimy babies!” I have yet to choose an appropriate gift to reward her bravery and valor.

We cut off their food supply, throwing out anything that they’d chewed on or opened and Dan bought an arsenal of mouse-fighting tools. My favorite is a little box that zaps them when they step inside. Then a little light flashes on the outside of the box so you know to go dump the corpse in the yard waste bin.

On top of that, to stop my adrenalin from ripping my insides to shreds in a series of panic attacks, we called in an exterminator who charged us a billion dollars for a year of service, only to tell us that the destruction in the garage looked like the work of probably one or two mice.

Well we’ve already caught two mice ourselves so that was a pretty expensive visit just to give me peace of mind. Alas. It looked like a lot of poop to me. I thought we had an army of mice out there. However, according to the exterminator, mice are incontinent and poop falls out everywhere they walk so they’re always “producing”. Then they use the trail of poop to find their way around. They are prolific poopers.

Maybe that’s why my kids never flush the toilet and leave dirty clothes, lego and pencils all over the house. They just want to mark their territory so they can successfully navigate our house.

Rejection Letters

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I’ve been thinking a lot about rejection lately. I’ve been shopping my novel around to agents and they’ve been telling me, “No thank you.” I expected to be rejected repeatedly before finding someone who wanted to represent me but it doesn’t make the sting any more fun. The night of my first rejection letter, I cried for two hours, while saying to Dan, “I don’t know why I’m crying.”

But I did know why I was crying. I want everyone to like me and be excited about my work and to validate me and want to work with me. I want acceptance, not rejection.

Magoo asked me if I thought anyone would ever want to publish my book and I said, “Yes. I know they will because I will never stop trying.” Again, that determination doesn’t make repeated rejection any more fun.

I’ve been struck this week by how badly I want acceptance and I’ve been noticing this same need in my kids. They are constantly petitioning me to love them and accept them and to tell them that they are okay. These petitions come in little ways, holding my hand while we’re sitting together in church, asking me to tell them a story at bedtime, telling me a joke, or showing me the picture they drew on the bus. They’re even looking for acceptance when they sass me.

How often do I give them little rejection letters by being only partially engaged in our conversations or telling them I’m too tired to walk up stairs and snuggle with them at bedtime? Too often. In every look, gesture, and use of my time when we’re together, to some degree, I am showing my kids acceptance or rejection.

It won’t be much longer that they want me to tuck them in or hold them on my lap. In a couple of years I may have to beg them to share their school work with me or tell me about the book they’re reading and I’m going to wish I was more attentive and more free with acceptance when they were begging for my approval.

We all hate rejection and after a certain amount of it, we just give up. I’m not saying I’m the wicked witch of the west to my kids but I know that I have it in me to give them more of my time and attention than I currently do.

I’m far from suggesting that you never say no to your children. Like a busy literary agent, I must say no to my kids frequently in order to teach them and to maintain order in our house. However, unlike a literary agent, I only have three children and one husband and I love all four of them. I need to think, do I really need to say no to this request (whether expressed verbally or not) or I can make this happen to validate my child?

I also need to think about how I say no. I received two rejection letters in two days last week. One was kind and validating, even as it rejected me. The other was cold and formulaic, and sounded like he hadn’t even read my stuff.

When I tell my kids no, I can be thoughtful and loving. I don’t need to always act out of instinct. I find that things go far better for everyone if I say yes unless I have a really good reason to say no, than if I say no unless they can convince me to say yes.

So, yeah. They can always use more love. I’m learning firsthand what repeated rejection feels like and I’d like to spare my family that feeling as often as I can. I’ll listen to their lame jokes with both ears and a willingness to be entertained. I’ll take an extra minute to cuddle with them, even though I’m SO busy. I’ll more frequently play trains with Wanda and do a Mario Kart race with Magoo after homework is done and sometimes I’ll even let Laylee pick all the music while we’re driving in the car.

They can get rejection at school or at work when they’re older. In my house, I choose acceptance.