Title: What You Wish For Author: Katherine Center Publisher: St. Martin’s Press Publication date: July 14, 2020 Genre: General Fiction, Women’s Fiction Summary: Samantha Casey is the librarian at the Kempner School where the founder and principal Max Kempner believes in making school joyful. It’s an incredible, warm, colorful school that’s really focused on the students’ needs. Until Max dies and the board installs a new principal, someone from Sam’s past. She remembers Duncan Carpenter as being fun, silly, and colorful, but the man she comes face to face with is anything but. War between him and the teachers ensue, but Max’s widow has a card up her sleeve and, maybe, Duncan isn’t quite the stick…
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Looking Forward to Having Both Kids Home All Summer (revisited)
Since another summer has come along, I thought I’d go back to this post from last summer. Even though both of my kids have been home with me due to COVID-19 since mid-March, I’m still happy to have them with me all day every day because at least I know they’re safe and healthy and won’t be able to spread anything to my husband and me. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a lazy summer! As you read, you’ll learn how I spent my summers and how my kids will spend their summers, but this year will be a little different as I don’t intend on simply maintaining…
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How to Pass the Time When You’re Stuck Inside
I find it funny that, when it’s not always socially acceptable, I’d rather stay home, but, when it is socially expected, I’d rather go out. As an introvert who’d rather stick to sliding along the walls to avoid as many people as possible, staying home makes me happy. But now that I’ve been ordered to stay home, well, I don’t like being told what to do. Initially, I was going to write about how to combat isolation when you live in an apartment and have no outdoor space except a small balcony because that’s our life right now. But, other than opening up the door to the balcony and snuggling…
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5 Reasons Why Our First Year of Regular School Has Sucked
My husband and I have tossed around homeschooling for years, since well before we even conceived our first child. Ultimately, we decided to go with a regular school, primarily for the socialization. And to see how he would fare in a regular school. As a stay at home mom, it’s well within my abilities to homeschool, at least for a few years. But we really wanted him to be with his peers. At first, things went swimmingly. He seemed to like his classmates and always came home saying how much he liked his teacher. He was always eager to go to school and would sometimes have his shoes on before…
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Finding Magic in Motherhood, Part 12: The Relief That Came From Telling My Secret
I was always afraid that, because I’m skinny and petite, I would start showing early on. I was lucky winter went on and on into March that year since my warmer, winter specific dresses tended to be looser than my summer dresses. My closet was also full of colorful scarves my mom had made me over the years, which made it easier to shift attention to my neck. Between them and my coat, no one who didn’t already know knew. Originally, I had intended on telling my classmates once I passed the 12 week mark, but, having miscarried, I was afraid I would lose this, too, if I shared my…
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Sending My Child Back to School Makes Me Sad
This post is publishing today, which must mean my sweet little boy has gone back to Kindergarten after 3 weeks off for the winter holidays. I know many parents count down to this day, and there’s even a Christmas song that mentions parents looking forward to their kids going back to school. But I’m not one of them. Before my son started Kindergarten, I was looking at my calendar, thinking he would be off for the winter holidays for 2 weeks, which is what I had grown up with. I remember thinking 2 weeks wasn’t a long time. They would go by in the blink of an eye. I was…
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Finding Magic in Motherhood, Part 11: I Don’t Believe in Stress
When I learned I was pregnant with my son, I was also somewhere in the middle of my seventh year of formal study in psychology (third year of graduate school). I knew the effects of a mother’s stress on a developing child. Knowing I’m generally an anxious Type A person, it was important to me that I minimize the risk of anxiety in my child. Neither my husband nor I have any known relatives who have ever been diagnosed with anxiety, so I was just keen on minimizing the risk of him developing even a normal level of anxiety. In order to keep my cortisol levels as low as possible…
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Finding Magic in Motherhood, Part 10: School and Pregnancy
I had about a week between the ultrasound and the start of my Spring semester, a week to finally let the thought I was pregnant settle in. Of course, that came with a whole host of other fears. I still wasn’t past the first trimester, so there was still a good chance I would lose this baby, too. But my more pressing issue was having to sit in classrooms for most of the day twice a week while battling nausea and keeping my symptoms under wraps. I was lucky. The first trimester was kind to me. It was almost as though the universe decided I’d gone through enough with my…
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And a New Phase of Worry as a Parent Has Begun
Parents understand worry very well. Not only is the world a scary place, but babies and young children are just so fragile. I remember worrying about my kids when they were both newborns. SIDS terrified me and, since both were born early, both were slightly more likely to succumb to it. When my oldest learned to roll over just before he turned 6 months, he loved sleeping on his face. I spent a very sleepless week worrying about him. I slept with the monitor glued to my ear. I got up every 10 minutes to check on him. All night. Every night. Then the kids started to crawl and walk…
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Not Snow Days, But Fire Days
My son was born in Pennsylvania. We moved to California when he was six weeks old, so he has no memories of his first home, and only a dim understanding of what snow is as we have yet to take our kids to the mountains during the winter. He’s five and has just started school. He’s loving it so far, but, as he gets older and understands more, I wonder how he’ll react when he learns he could have had snow days. I’m a California girl, born and raised. I never knew snow days existed. I grew up watching TV shows that took place back East and always saw high…
