Sick Break
Featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Multitasking Mom’s Survival Guide
Moms need social outlets. My favorite is book club. Once a month, my literary friends gather for intelligent conversation and homemade coffee cake while our children play in another room under the watchful eye of a babysitter. I look forward to it for weeks. But one morning, when the club was slated to discuss a popular new biography, my two-year-old woke with a fever. So, of course, we stayed home.
Bummer.
“What are we going to do today, beanie?” I crouched to my toddler’s level and smoothed her wispy hair with my fingertips.
“Read books.” Her eyes twinkled. Then she coughed in my face.
“Okay, bring me three books.” And a box of Airborne.
“Five books!”
“Three books to start.” I grabbed a tissue and wiped her nose. “Then when we’re done reading, you can help me put some laundry in the wash.” Might as well take advantage of our quarantine and catch up on the housework, right?
“Okay, Momma!” She ran to her room and returned with—yep—five books.
Read the rest of this story and others in Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Multitasking Mom’s Survival Guide, released March 2014.
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Sometimes You Need to Do the Laundry
Featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Multitasking Mom’s Survival Guide
“Mommy, will you play this with me?” My two-year-old peered over a mountain of heaping laundry baskets. She clutched an UNO Moo barn in her hand.
Ugh. I looked at my daughter, then at the laundry, then back to my daughter again. I thought of the advice I’ve read countless times on blogs and Facebook quips—those popular phrases meant to encourage frazzled moms.
“Days are long but the years fly by.”
“Rock and don’t sweep, because babies don’t keep.”
“A messy house is a happy house.”
So true! I believed that!
But then I stared down a pile of grubby socks and realized—enough, already. This family is one day short of recycling our dirty underwear. Sometimes the laundry just needs to get done.
I swallowed hard and gazed straight into my daughter’s pleading eyes. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I cannot play right now. Mom has to do some chores.”
Suddenly, a strange sense of empowerment tingled through my veins. It felt a little like rebellion. Yes! I must do the chores! And that does not make me a bad mom!
Quite the opposite, I think.
Read the rest of this story and others in Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Multitasking Mom’s Survival Guide, released March 2014.
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Why I Date My Husband
Featured in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Devotional Stories for Wives
She reached for my hand, giggling, eyes wide and sparkling with mischief. “Come on, Mom, we have a surprise for you.”
I followed downstairs to the spare bedroom. A dusty VCR sat on the floor, hooked to our ancient tube television.
“Are you ready?” my husband grinned. I settled on the edge of the bed, a toddler in my lap, big sister bursting with excitement as she knelt beside Daddy on the carpet. Pop! The black screen sprang to colorful life, piano keys trickling in the background. I recognized a white satin princess, a raven-haired prince.
Our wedding video.
Read the full story, plus 100 more devotions by women of faith, in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Devotional Stories for Wives, released September 2013.