I’m proud to announce that I’ve just been signed to write Writing Young Adult Fiction for Dummies for Wiley Publishing’s For Dummies line. The book is scheduled for June 2011 publication.
I’m so excited! And with my triplets just having started full-day kindergarten, the timing certainly couldn’t be better. An amazing new chapter in our lives kicks off with a bang.
Apparently I only cry over the thought of animated children leaving their animated mothers. My boys started school last week, and I didn’t shed a tear. It helped that we all got a two-hour orientation day first, where we parents got to stay in class with our kids. Grandma S. joined us, ensuring that each of our boys had someone dedicated to him. That made for an easy slide into this whole school thing, and zilcho tears. Well, for me, anyway. Read More…
Heartbreak! My firstborn, the loser of the first tooth among the Halverson Trio, lost his second tooth today . . . in the plastic ball pit at Ikea’s playroom. No joke: My frantic boy couldn’t find his pearly white in that pool of red, yellow, and blue plastic despite the help of his equally horrified brother.
But have no fear, Super Mom is near: I calmed them both with ice cream cones and a triple pinkie swear that absolutely, positively, for sure and without a doubt THE TOOTH FAIRY WILL STILL COME.
No joking about that, either. Trust me. Super Mom knows these things.
Disclaimer: No, you’re not seeing things. This photo is after the loss of the FIRST tooth. My camera’s batteries were kaput tonight.
On Tuesday we took the boys to their first in-theater movie—Toy Story 3. I’d been told I’d cry by the end, but I’d just poo-poo’d the prediction. What I hadn’t taken into account was how much a certain scene would resonate with me. When Andy’s mom cried about her baby growing up and going to college, I crumbled. Or rather, blubbered. Read More…
I kinda sorta know how to play chess. Which may explain why we had a chess set stashed in our toy closet. Or maybe the set was my husband’s from forever ago and he kinda sorta knows how to play chess, too? Regardless, the youngest of my five-year-old triplets found the chess board a couple of months ago and asked me to teach him to play and now he kinda sorts knows how to play chess, too.
Yesterday, he beat me—no kinda sorta about it. Read More…
More than 60 beachgoers were stung in the surf along La Jolla Shores yesterday, with three victims needing hospitalization. That would be the same La Jolla Shores where I learned to surf on Sunday and was told to shuffle, shuffle, shuffle instead of walk while in the water.
Guess they weren’t kidding. Read More…
So there I stood, a pen in one hand and a yellow legal document waiving responsibility should I be “maimed or killed by a carnivorous or poisonous creature” in the other. To sign or not to sign? Or more correctly, to surf or not to surf? That was the question. Read More…
By the time you’re an adult, you’re used to the fact that people move in and out of your life. And you also learn, what with social media being what it these days, that the “out” part doesn’t have to be finite. 
My boys are getting their first real taste of that. Triplets they’ve known since all six children were infants are moving tomorrow. To the other side of the country.
I’m pretty near devastated to see my sons’ first great friends leaving. Their mom is a frequent blogger, so we’ll be able to keep up, and there’s Skype, and there’s email. But that’s very different from walking up the street to their house, or meeting them in the park or at the pool at least once a week. And what will it be like to drive by the park and the pool in our van without looking out window for Read More…