Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Parenting

Lows and Highs

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I wrote this post a week ago.

This day could not figure out what it wanted. For a while things were great. The sister missionaries from our church stopped by and chatted and shared this amazing Christmas video with me and Wanda. Incidentally, Wanda cursed them in her prayer tonight by praying that they’d “grow big and strong” and “have great travels.” So she wants them to grow fat and leave, basically. Sad.

We got some stuff done. Men were no longer excavating my crawlspace and hauling hundreds of pounds of rock through my entire house to lower through a tiny hole in my hall closet. That was yesterday.

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It was cold but not freezing. There was snow on the ground but not the roads. This strange yellow orb was sending magical light rays down on us from the sky. I spent some fun time chatting with a friend today.

And then things sort of unraveled. There is just this sort of brain-slamming chaos that happens sometimes in the hour after everyone gets home from school. We need snacks and we need to share the stories from our day and everyone wants to hear about everyone else’s day while simultaneously telling about their own day and if we are five-years-old, we need to yell, “MOM! MOM! MOM!” into the wind every few minutes in hopes that anyone will pay attention to us ever.

If it’s a day like today, people lose their homework and procrastinate the rest and they ask you for some wood and a saw to make a quick catapult… for science. Eventually you decide you have to skip Cub Scouts because the homework is too big and too deep and too wide. And everyone cries. Because Cub Scouts is where the joy lives.

And through the tears and the mania and the MOM! MOM! MOM!-ing, you work to make dinner for your family and the family up the street whose mom is sick, only to get a text telling you that the dinner didn’t come soon enough so the whole family has already left for their evening activities and you KNEW you should have asked what time they needed dinner but you neglected to ask and you just want to dump the coconut chicken curry and naan bread out in the snow.

And then you realize that your problems are actually quite small and that you should be grateful that you have lovely children and you’re all in good health and your marriage is going strong and your careers are going well. You realize these things, but you don’t feel better. You just feel guilty because you shouldn’t be frustrated, but in that moment the day just really REALLY eats rocks.

That was my day today. And when Dan got home from work, I stood there in my un-earned stretchy pants. No yoga happened today, even though I was dressed up for it in case it somehow snuck up and attacked me from behind. And I unloaded on him about each and every straw that had contributed to my camel’s back injury. He listened. And then he left for his band rehearsal.

My internal Magic 8 Ball told me that its sources said no good would come of this night. But its sources were wrong.

Laylee, who had been madly reading her scriptures all night in an attempt to achieve a very aggressive, bribery-induced study goal emerged from her reading with a happy glow about her. And she made peace in our house.

She listened to Wanda while I worked with Magoo. Then I took Wanda up to bed and when I came down, Laylee was tenderly coaching Magoo through a written assignment. There is such a thing as coaching someone in a way that lets them know exactly how big of a moron they are with sighs and eye rolls and repeated reminders of your own personal brilliance in comparisson to their pitiful nine-year-old pea brain. This was not that. This was kind, gentle, encouraging study help, the kind of study help parenting dreams are made of.

For a second, I considered relieving her and taking over homework helper duty. Then I listened to them for a minute more and chose to sneak away and let the magic happen.

“That’s a great sentence, Buddy, but you already started one with that word in this paragraph. How could you say it a little differently? Perfect!”

When they had finished, Magoo proudly showed me the paper.

“I wrote this whole thing myself,” he beamed, “With a little help from Laylee.”

And she stood behind him grinning and giving me a thumbs up. Um? Angel choirs! If I could bottle that moment and uncork it next week when angel choirs are far far from my thoughts as I look at the way those two interact, I would shave my head in payment.

I apologized to the kids because, oh, yeah, I forgot to mention earlier, I had snapped at and yelled at and snapped at them again earlier in the night.

Laylee, still bearing a halo, smiled and said, “Of course you did. Anyone would. Your day was really stressful, mom.” WHA?

I asked Laylee if she thought her time reading the scriptures had made a difference in how she treated everyone tonight and her eyes got really big with understanding. “Yeah… I really think it did!”

Deal. Sealed. I love watching my kids choose things that make them happy.

And to think, only a few hours earlier my scalp had been going numb at the thought of all we had to do and the frustration, stress and chaos of my home. Parenting is a bipolar realm.

Love Notes

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Wanda moves at her own speed, to the beat of her own crazy drum. Her awesomeness will not be rushed and she very sweetly and joyfully goes about doing what she does. Last night what she does did not include going to bed ever. She would come down and get a drink and come down and ask us to unclasp her unicorn helmet, an hour and a half after she’d been sent to bed. That’s the problem, really, the sending.

We’ve been doing a lot better lately making bedtime a social experience, taking her up, reading to her, tucking her in, singing songs, and snuggling. Last night we fell back into the lazy, “Go to bed” mode and she did not, in fact, go. Well, she went upstairs. And she growled. And she giggled. And she kept her brother awake. And she did some feat of bravery, requiring a unicorn helmet.

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And then she came downstairs when she couldn’t take it off. What amazes me is the way she so calmly and sweetly approaches us at 9:00 at night, as though of course she needs help with her unicorn helmet deep into the sleeping hour.

“Hey. Can you please help me get this off?” She beams.

Dan helps and sternly reminds her to get the heck in bed and stay in bed… also the heck.

“Okay,” she says unconvincingly. Then she bops out of the room, the unicorn helmet unclasped but still resting on her head. I wait for the sound of the stairs creaking. Nothing. I peek my head around the corner. She’s walking slowly across the dark living room in her unicorn helmet and Snow White dress, weaving back and forth with her arms arching and curving around her body in a slow motion interpretive dance. She is silent and happy and in no hurry at all.

I just stand and watch, fixing the image in my mind. I love that tiny person more than my own life.

And things stay quiet. I’m assuming she’s gone to sleep. And two hours later when I head up to bed, I find a love note on my pillow, a love note made on the stationary I keep in the cupboard in my room. Dan and I muse about when she must have made the note. Then we see it. A unicorn helmet sits at the foot of our bed.

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I add this to my collection.

Fighting For My Kids

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I like to keep things light on DaringYoungMom. It’s a place for silliness and positivity and jello. But, every once in a while, my desire to share something that will contribute to long-term happiness outweighs my desire to make you laugh.

So, let’s take a minute to talk about pornography. It’s truly the worst. I have too many friends and family members whose lives have been affected negatively by it to pretend it doesn’t exist. Guess what. I don’t know one person who has been affected positively by it. But that’s just anecdotal. Scientific research is showing more and more how exposure to and addiction to porn harms individuals, families, and our entire world.

You can read more on Fight the New Drug. It’s a fabulous website created by a non-profit organization dedicated to educating people about pornography with a science-based approach so individuals and families can make informed decisions about whether to let the new drug of pornography into their lives.

I choose not to, as much as I can possibly control it.

What I didn’t know was how to teach my kids about this topic in a way they could understand. However, I knew from my research that porn addiction often starts with young children, children too young to deal with the images they’re seeing (heck, I’m too young to deal with those images), children whose brains are still developing, hindered by an addiction as powerful as any illegal drug. With pornography, your brain creates its own drug and many scientists and health practitioners believe it’s as difficult to overcome as heroin addiction.

Here’s the good news. More and more groups from all backgrounds and moral/ideological traditions are springing up to fight the tide of this drug.

A friend recently pointed me towards a website specifically designed to help kids stay away from pornography before it becomes an addiction. The website points to a book to read with young children to help teach them practical tools to resist the pull of pornography.

We bought the book Good Pictures Bad Pictures and went over it with our kids on Monday night. It was amazing. Talking about porn causes me major anxiety but I was completely calm as Dan and I shared this information with our kids. It was serious but not stressful and it gave me a feeling of power that I could teach them concrete ways to deal with the images they will doubtless come across in their lives.

Read more at the Fight the New Drug website. Fighting porn isn’t just for religious prudes anymore. It’s a global issue that crosses gender, race, religion, and political lines. It’s something that matters. Consider ordering and reading Good Pictures Bad Pictures with your kids. It’s a fight we can win, one educated, empowered person at a time.

For teens already struggling with porn addiction, visit Fortify.

Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands

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I was woken up at 5am last night-morning by Dan palming my face like a basketball he’d lost in a dark closet. His hand was flapping around on my face and I just finally said, “Stop. Stop. Seriously. What are you doing?”

The clock said 5:00am and I was super confused.

“I’m sorry,” He whispered. “I was just getting back in bed and it’s dark in here and I was trying to find where you were.”

“By hitting me in the face?” I am grumpy like that when I’m awoken in the middle of the night-morning.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly, “I was trying to cuddle you and I thought you were facing the other way.”

“It’s okay, but why are the lights on downstairs?”

Laylee.

Laylee had gotten up and was downstairs fully dressed, eating cereal and reading a book. She’s become more and more of a morning person lately, setting her alarm and getting up before anyone else so she can have some alone time in the stillness before everyone starts running around throwing peanut butter sandwiches at each other and yelling, “YES, BUT DID YOU BRUSH YOUR TEETH?!!”

I get it. Sort of. If I weren’t so grouchy in the night-morning, I’d get up then too. But 5AM? Dan said he went down and she’d been up for a while. He told her she could stay up but we’d have a talk about when was an acceptable time to get up in the future. She’d fallen asleep the night before after 10pm, which meant she’d had less than 7 hours of sleep, which is not enough for an eleven-year-old. And in the day-morning she had a field trip planned with a lot of walking, followed by a band rehearsal and she would be exhausted.

And when she’s exhausted, she feels awful and when she feels awful, she is mean to me, because obviously everything is my fault. Because when she is tired, everything I do is suddenly jerkish with jerkishly rude motivations. I didn’t want her to be mean to me and I didn’t want her to feel awful all day, so I went downstairs and told her to go back to bed. Then I laid with her and stroked her back to get her to sleep again.

Tonight, we talked about appropriate waking hours. Let’s just say her alarm is no longer set for 4:30 AM. FOUR THIRTY AM, PEOPLE!!!

Laylee’s not the only child in this family who likes to take control of her own destiny while simultaneously blaming me for her problems.

I’ve been telling Wanda that I would frame her hot air balloon watercolor and hang it on our gallery wall for weeks now. I finally got the frame but it’s taken me a few days to actually put the picture in the frame.

Today she brought it to me like this:

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“You never did it so I put it in here myself. Can you hang it up for me?”

Sigh.

And as far as blaming goes, yesterday Wanda and I had the following conversation.

Wanda – Why are my bubbles empty?

Me – Because you left the open bottle lying on its side on the top shoe shelf and now my running shoe is full of bubble solution.

Wanda – But I wanted to USE those bubbles! I need them back.

Me – You can’t have them back. I am rinsing them out of my shoe.

Wanda – But those were my bubbles.

This is when I disengage. I’m not going to fight with Wanda about how I stole the bubbles that she poured into my shoes or with Laylee about how I could possibly be so mean as to ask her whether she’s practiced the piano.

Sometimes motherhood is about molding young people and other times it’s about choosing your battles. Sometimes it’s just about keeping a spare pair of running shoes in the garage.

You Never Need to Ride a Bike

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“If there’s one profession that can fill you with pride and joy one minute and then make you feel like a total Jerk-Nugget the next, it’s motherhood. It’s okay though, because another moment is on its way in which you will feel righteous anger, over-tear-filled-whelming LERVE, or complete bafflement.

No emotion is off the table for parents. We’re very much like humans in that way.”

[read more at HowDoesShe.com]

Don’t Be Their Negative Voice

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I’m really into giving myself a break lately. This morning there were no clean clothes. Pretty much none. Laundry has not been a priority lately as I’ve thrown myself into several home projects. I redecorated my writing space/office/junk room/guest room from a dungeon of despair into something beautiful and I rewired the lights in my kitchen because, according to YouTube, I am an electrician.

So when everyone was naked and frustrated this morning, I thought, Drops of Awesome. It’s been so long since everyone was naked and frustrated in the morning due to a laundry shortage. I’ve been getting much better at this domesticality thing. I am awesome.

They just sighed and lived. It’s true. All survived. Magoo wore soccer socks. Laylee searched for half an hour and found some cleanish pants and Dan just loved me anyway.

It’s kind of amazing. I could easily have let the experience ruin my entire day or week as I beat myself up, but I didn’t. I don’t like to listen to those voices anymore, the ones that tell me I’m a failure. They’re not productive. And they are jerks.

Here’s the problem. I may not listen to those voices in my own head but it doesn’t mean I don’t dish them out on my husband and kids.

A couple of nights ago, I was going over homework with Laylee. It was sloppy. It wasn’t her best effort. She could do so much more. I was being kind and constructive. I was trying to help her improve by pointing out every little imperfection. Halfway through the session, she got tearful and angry.

“Tell me what’s wrong, honey,” I prompted her.

She couldn’t talk. She was too upset. I told her to breathe and get back to me when she was ready. Half an hour passed and she tearfully and sincerely told me, “You are disappointed in everything I do.” She proceeded to list everything she felt she was doing to disappoint me and my heart broke a little. Tears came to my eyes.

I am not disappointed in this little girl. I am, in fact, in awe of her. So I feel like it’s my job to push her to fulfill her potential. And looking into her vulnerable, tearful face, I felt devastated. I’m not a John Gottman groupie, but I do believe in ratios, and as I thought about it, I really couldn’t think of many ways I’d built her up in the past couple of months. I would give myself at least a 5:1 negative to positive interaction ratio.

“You got ninety on this test. What happened here?” (pointing to the missed question)

“Were you paying attention?”

“This isn’t your best work.”

“Why is the milk out?”

“Whose shoes are these and why are they in the living room?”

“I’ve asked five times. Seriously. Set the table. How hard is this?”

“Your teacher says you’re reading when you’re supposed to be doing math.”

“You know better than that.”

“Oh, and I love you. Have a great day.”

“Why didn’t you brush your hair?”

I imagine that my kids’ negative inner voices sound a lot like me, nagging them.

I hugged Laylee. I apologized. I told her that if she thought I was disappointed in her, then I was not doing my job as a mother. Then I told her all the ways I was proud of her.

This was a Drop of Awesome. Just a drop. I can do more and I will. In that moment, that was the drop I could give. But, in that moment, I also decided that the next time I had the choice to correct her for something that did not matter, I’d hug her instead and offer to help.

So, the rest of the whole wide afternoon, I was not a nag. I was an encourager. I am an encourager. That’s who I am now. It’s on my radar. Am I perfect at it yet? Heck-to-the-ask-my-kids-NO.

Having a negative inner voice is super destructive. Having a negative outer voice, that’s embodied by your mom, who’s supposed to love you no matter what? Probably not helpful either.

Just Love Em, Dad Gum It

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The weirdest thing happened at dinner tonight. My little angel babies of light were *gasp-snork* fighting with one another. And it wasn’t a good fight or a noble fight. They were not fighting to protect the honor of a fallen comrade or to maintain their basic human freedoms.

They were fighting about whether or not Magoo had seen me and Dan kiss. He maintains to this day that he NEVER sees us kiss. We’ll kiss in one room and he’ll yell from the next room, “I didn’t see that!” It’s sort of a joke in our family. Well today Dan and I were on the make-out war path. He’d kiss me mid-sentence, whenever he thought Magoo could not possibly miss seeing it.

Magoo would calmly close his eyes and say, “Didn’t see that.”

Well, by golly, Laylee was pretty sure he had seen one of them and she would not stand for the lies, those dangnable, dangnable lies. If a person has seen two other people snog at the dinner table, he’d better darn well man up about it.

She would not let it go.

“I didn’t SEE IT!” he protested.

“Yes you did,” she persnicked.

“Did not.”

They would not stop. Dan told them to stop. Then he commanded them to stop. But they just kept nitting and picking at each other. Tears were shed and the war waged on.

Dan encouraged them to use kind words. “We just need to build each other up. I know you love each other. Why say things that are hurtful? Will this fight matter in ten years?”

“Well he did see it,” Laylee said in that really annoying voice of a Disney star, who’s bound to get busted for shoplifting or a DUI because she’s so mad to be 18 and still playing a 13-year-old snot face on TV.

AAAAAHHHH.

Then the thought came to my mind, the best way to behavior modify is to set a good example. You’re supposed to love them into wanting to be kind.

But that takes too long.

Maybe if I love them really really hard.

So I grabbed Magoo and asked Dan to grab Laylee and I said, “You guys are obviously sad because you don’t feel loved enough. We’re just gonna love you until you can be kind to each other. We’re gonna love you like widdle babies, yes we are, goochy-goo-googly goo.”

We scooped them up into our arms, 7 and 9 year old infants, giggling and struggling to get free.

“Do you feel loved enough to be kind? I just want to love my widdle Magooly-face until he feels the love in his heart just spilling over into the way he talks to his sister. Do you feel loved enough?”

At this point we were rocking them back and forth and everyone was laughing.

“Yes, I feel loved, I feel loved. Put me down!”

So we did. And the cycle was broken. The fighting stopped. Stellar parenting? Not necessarily. But it got the job done. Love heals all, even raucaus, what-the-heck-are-you-doing-Mom love.

Stop! Person Who Made a Poor Choice and Stole Something!

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I would title this post, Stop! Thief!, but that would mean labeling one of my children and from what I’ve read in these here parenting manuals, there is no such thing as a “bad child,” just a child who makes poor choices. Although, if you read Dickens, there is such a thing as a “poor child” and according Robert Kiyosaki, there is also such thing as a “poor dad.” But that’s neither here nor there. The sweet little fruit of my loins shoplifted this afternoon, bless her heart.

Wanda is not highly diabolical. In fact, she’s not even the most diabolical three-year-old I know. She is an addict, always looking for her next sugar fix. And her head often resembles a muffin. One might say she was muffin-headed. But she pulled a pretty smooth con today.

So, we were at the grocery store today, buying the supplies for the OhMyGoshICan’tTellYouHowMuchILoveThem meals from my meal planning service and Wanda was a big help. She helped me throw the giant butternut squash on top of the other produce. She helped me develop stronger resolve to eat healthy by asking me to buy every single processed food in the entire store. She helped me load items onto the conveyer belt. And then she helped herself to a baby bottle pop.

I’m not sure where she hid it or why I bought her a coat with pockets, but I didn’t notice the thievery until we’d driven home and I went to unload her from her seat. She was grinning from ear to ear and her entire body, car seat and inside the car seat buckle mechanism were covered with pink toxic sugar dust. She was SO proud.

I didn’t know quite how to explain to a barely three-year-old pumpkin face about the wrongs of stealing. But I did know we needed a memorable lesson, so I gave her a simple definition and my best “I’m disappointed but I still love you but oh NOOOO this was not a good choice” talk.

We drove back to the store. She gave a muffled apology to the Customer Service manager who, coincidentally, was also her church nursery teacher last year. Then I made her empty out the dollar and twenty-five cents from her allowance envelope and give all of it in payment for the pilfered merchandise.

She was slightly stricken but handled it all pretty well, frequently burying her face in my sleeve.

Then our friend handed her the candy she’d just purchased and I DUN DUN DUN… took it away.

That’s when the emotionally fueled detenatory convulsion occurred. I carried her from the grocery store, sobbing and yelling, garnering pitying looks from strangers. I’m not sure if they pitied me or Wanda. Maybe both.

It’s so hard to be a three-year-old felon. Even if you don’t have to wear hand cuffs. Even if your mug shot looks like this.

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Three-year-old felons persons who have committed felonies don’t ever ever get to eat the spoils of their offenses.

Light

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What do you do when the world seems full of darkness? Fill it with light. I had the talk with my kids today – the “bad people exist and there’s nothing we can do about them but there’s something we can do about us” talk.

I’d say it went well. I was the only one who cried and no one vomited and they’re currently asleep safe in their beds, hopefully with dreams of sugarplums in their little noggins. I wanted them to hear about Connecticut from me, not from their friends at school.

Today’s massacre makes me sad and sick and steers me toward hopeless. But after getting advice from my wise sister, I told my kids what I needed to hear. We cannot change other people. We can love them. We can pray for them. But we cannot control their decisions. We can only control our own.

So for every crazy, merciless, mentally ill terrorist who destroys life, and light, and innocence in this world, for every act of darkness, I need to do a thousand acts of light. The only way we win is by living better, by pushing back harder, by loving, and by nurturing in tiny and slightly less tiny ways and then repeating. Darkness only wins when the good people of the world stop generating light.

We will never do that.

For every bully who tears someone down, I will build up 10 people. For every guy that cuts someone off in traffic, I will let three people go ahead of me. For every senseless act of violence, I will perpetrate enough acts of love and beauty to help me start to forget the sharp pang of first hearing about it. The ache will never fully go away. But that’s okay. The ache is a reminder of how much work there is for me to do.

If I am part of the light, I need to commit every day to shine brighter, to love stronger. We can never. Ever. Give up. We can never let Sandy Hook be the world we live in. It’s not even an option.

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.