By Holly Vanderhaar Back from a brief hiatus! It’s been a remarkably busy few months around our house. I was working two jobs for the first part of the summer, and then we had a three-week trip back East. The girls started 4th grade after Labor Day, and the following weekend we flew to Arizona […]
By: Holly Vanderhaar In honor of its 100th anniversary, Girl Scouts of America has declared 2012 “the Year of the Girl.” I realized tonight that this summer is also, at least in our little corner of the world, “the Summer of the Woman.” I have no idea if something’s going on in the stars, but […]
By: Holly Vanderhaar Summer is well and truly upon us, and while I’m tempted to dwell on all the petty and not-so-petty annoyances that seem to be hovering around us like a cloud of mosquitoes lately, I’m making a conscious effort to set that aside tonight, and focus on the season. It was a sultry […]
By: Holly Vanderhaar Gracie had her wrist surgery last Monday, and it went great. It was a ganglion cyst after all—that’s what my gut was telling me, but the tests all reported that it wasn’t consistent with a ganglion—so it’s a relief to have that settled. She was really nervous about the anesthesia, but she […]
By: Holly Vanderhaar This is going to be a brief update, because Gracie’s having surgery in a few days to remove a questionable cyst from her wrist, and with all the tests and doctor appointments —and Isabelle being sick from a nasty respiratory infection— I don’t know which way is up. For what it’s worth, […]
Interview with Holly Vanderhaar by The Next Family TNF: How has it been blogging for TNF? It’s great. I tend to think in “personal essay mode” anyway, and I often find that, in the process of writing my entries, I work through the issue and I find answers to questions I didn’t even realize I was asking. […]
By: Holly Vanderhaar It’s true: I took my 3rd-grade daughters to see The Hunger Games yesterday (I’d already seen it twice). I had read all three books about a year ago, and was eagerly looking forward to the movie. It wasn’t really my plan to take the kids until recently. I knew the books were […]
By: Holly Vanderhaar Many moms—especially single moms—in my circle will list Anne Lamott among their favorite parenting authors. Not because she gives parenting advice, per se, but her memoir Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year has saved many a new mom’s sanity. She gave me the courage to become a writer myself, […]
By: Holly Vanderhaar I should be writing about the ridiculous bill that is on the floor of the state senate in Wisconsin, Senate Bill 507, one that equates single parenthood with child abuse. Either that, or I should vent my spleen about the loathsome Rush Limbaugh and his complete and utter…well. Never mind. I really […]
By: Holly VAnderhaar I love being in my 40s. No, really. I do. It’s not all a bed of roses, of course. I don’t love all the gray hair (or the cost involved in hiding it), and I’m not crazy about the tendency of body parts to expand and/or move southward. I expected to be […]
