It’s that time of year again…when all the stores change out lawn equipment and pool toys for notebooks and pens, when all the bathing suits (happily for me) disappear and khakis take their place, and the smell of fall is in the air. OK – well, that last part isn’t actually...

My husband and I are prolific list-makers. Take our to-do lists, for example. His is a 200-line Excel spreadsheet color-coded by “type” of to-do and ordered by priority and updated daily, meaning some items stay on there for a year or longer (case in point: “sell jet ski’s”...

It’s hot. Darn hot. Hot, hot, hot. There are only a couple of times a year when I question our decision to live in Texas, and they are July and August. Because it’s so hot! Before kids, it was easier for me to escape the heat. Park in the garage, drive to an air conditioned office,...

Yesterday was Jim’s birthday. He’d kill me if I told you how old, so let’s just say: he’s older than me. We decided to splurge and take the kids to The Cheesecake Factory for dinner before coming home to have homemade birthday cake (which almost-three-year-old Jack helped make….it...

I recently read a fascinating article in one of my favorite magazines, Wondertime (which, by the way, is unfortunately also owned by Disney – who, like Wal-Mart, will own the world one day – if they don’t already), that a mom wrote about her life with a gifted son. In the sidebar,...

Life with toddlers. It’s so simple, really. For them. Their world is pretty much black and white. They have no hidden agendas (or at least ones so hidden that an adult can’t pretty easily figure them out). They have two speeds: high gear (for running on the playground and eating birthday...

I love going to the Baby Aisle at Target. You know the Baby Aisle – the one with diapers down the entire 40′ section on one side, and baby food/formula/wipes/bath wash/lotion on the other side. I know it well, as it is probably my most-visited area of the store, aside from the milk section....

This was a B.W. (Big Weekend) in the Cooksey household. Finally, after over a year, Jack started sleeping in his big-boy bed. Yes, it took over a year. From the battlefield, here are some lessons learned the hard way on the transition process. These actually apply to any difficult transition, I’ve...

Gravity is something most people don’t think a whole lot about on a daily basis. It is introduced during school in science class, and then (for most of us) once the test for that class is over, your knowledge of gravity is limited to the image of the apple falling on Newton’s head. His Law of Gravitation...