Dear Melina, Maybe you don’t know this, but a certain person we both know thinks of me as a parenting expert. I always shrug that thought away—it holds way too much responsibility for one person—but I understand what she means. With four kids in the mix, I’ve experienced many scenarios and draw from those to…

Dear Zoe and Talia, It just hit me this morning (many years too late) that I probably should have been writing you separate birthday letters—you are, after all, separate people. But I decided I wasn’t going to feel guilty about that because I have so many other items already on the things-to-feel-guilty-about list. Plus, I…

Dear Aaron, I thought about trying to write this letter in the manner we converse nowadays. If I did that, it would go a little like this— Me: Good morning, kiddo. You: Eh. Me: That’s it? You: Eh. Or it might look like this . . . Me: Hey, how was soccer? You: Good. Me:…

Dear Melina, Wow. What can I say? It’s been an interesting year? Odd year and a half? Both of those are true. You and I have spent most of our waking moments together since March 13, 2020, and that is a very long time for two people of our age to be together. (Had I…

Dear Zoe and Talia, These letters get more sappy as the years go by, but I hope someday, when I’m gone, you can look at them and know how much I loved you. This past year for you has been strange, to say the least. The other day, in fact, Zoe came into my room…

Dear Aaron, Here we are, November 1, 2020, and I’m not really sure how we got here. It feels like eons since last year at this time, and yet, it also feels like I just blinked, once. Like with the closing of my eyelids, we moved forward in time at a speed so fast, I…

Dear Melina, Back in March, when we celebrated Daddy’s birthday quarantine-style, I’m not sure I really understood that we’d be celebrating your birthday in a similar manner. But here we are, 107 days (!) later, and we’re choosing to shelter-in-place as much as possible. I personally haven’t found the quarantine all that disruptive to my…

Dear Zoe and Talia, January has been a long month. Abnormally long. In fact, I feel as though we should be in March right now, even though I don’t really want to be in the third month of the year. And with the month feeling so long, I should have had time to prepare for…

Dear Aaron, As we sit here in the middle of the power outage, I look at you in wonder, wishing the light would flick on so I could see you as I write. You’ve grown this year, and you’re currently the tallest one in the house (and probably always will be). You’ve cut your long…

With your first children, it’s easy. You schedule every detail about their birthdays, whether a party is planned or not. You cook them all their favorite meals. You wrap their presents two weeks in advance and buy special plates and napkins. You design a cake just for them. With your fourth child, you have the…