Hey, Jenna. You’re turning 10. Or, rather, you did last weekend. I wrote your post that day, but getting photos onto my computer is hard. Whatever. Anyway. I want to tell you a couple stories that you haven’t yet forgotten, but that maybe will be fun to remember in a few years. We were at …
Author Archives: robininalaska
Brian is Six
Hey, there, Bud. You’ve actually been six for weeks now, but it’s been a wild month and I didn’t have words to do justice to your you-ness. I still don’t, actually, but I have the space to try, anyway. You learned to read this past year. It was funny, because I expected that to be …
thanks, no thanks, Pinkie Pie
Hi again! Long time, no write. (Wait. That sounds stupid. Whatever.) Anyway. I have a piece up at Kindred Mom again, so you can head there for the whole thing or read on for the first bit. Lilly, barely 4 and still the baby, is laying on her belly in my bed beside me, chin …
the best decision I didn’t want to make (guest post at Kindred Mom)
Hi! Kindred Mom has kicked off the fall series and I had one go up last week. You can read the whole thing here or continue reading for a piece of it. Do I really want to do this? I was eight months pregnant. Four hours of tossing and turning now counted as “a good …
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would you help?
Hi! I haven’t posted in more than a month, despite good intentions, prompts, and “I’m gonna post weekly” commitment that was unbroken into July. I’m betting you didn’t notice (I barely did), or if you did, you weren’t super worried about it. I only bring it up because of why I wasn’t posting. I wrote …
my fourth baby’s fourth birthday
Lilly, you are four today. The older you (and I) get, the less likely it seems that there will be a fifth baby, so each time you leave a phase behind, it’s a little bittersweet. Is it a lot of pressure, sweet girl, to carry all my baby nostalgia? I’ll try to keep that in …
a look back at June
Somehow it’s July already (and not even the beginning anymore). As I’ve done the last few months, I’m borrowing Emily P. Freeman’s reflection questions to pause and look back over my month. Once again, I’m reordering them capriciously. What’s the best thing that could happen in July? Done already happened: Alycia arrived Sarah and Beth …
pink tutus as a cure for overwhelm?
“How do I stop defining myself as overwhelmed?” Melissa asked this question five minutes ago in slack (one of an absurd number of platforms our team uses to communicate), but it’s been in my head for at least five years. My two basic moods are overwhelmed and asleep. Lindsey chimed in “fragmented” which is a …
on gardening (and motherhood)
I’m part of Exhale, a creative community for mothers of faith. They’re doing a creativity challenge this week, and today was “Write 20 minutes.” So here are twenty minutes of my thoughts: I’m sitting on the edge of a planter in my “office” (the parking lot of the library). I can smell the honey scent …
prayer of petition and lament for white people during racial unrest
Lord God, we see the pain around us—the rage rightly boiling over, from and on behalf of the oppressed. We confess our participation within this system, our willful ignorance of suffering and injustice, our indifference to the pain we see that does not affect us, the reticence to see the ways in which we are …
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grace enough 