Image Credit: Crista Ballard Photography 
Originally published in the February 2017 edition of 605 Magazine. 

If there is one thing being a parent has taught me so far — in my measly almost six years of experience —  it is this: Just as we cannot create a human on our own, we cannot raise, let alone prosper, a human on our own. No parent, single or married, can wholly shoulder the tremendous honor and responsibility of helping shape a life. No way. We need some major reinforcements. We need sage advice from those that have been there, raised that. We need friends and family to help love our child. Sometimes we need teams of medical professionals to care for our child. Other times we just need someone to bring us a (or several) glazed donut(s) and watch us, without judgment, as we eat our feelings.

But moral of this story, parents and future parents? As trite as it sounds, we can’t do it alone.

I’ve been thinking about this truth lately, and I was reminded of a time a few years ago when I saw in action the validity of this “it takes a village” mindset.

My husband and I were relatively new to the Sioux Falls scene and we randomly saw an advertisement for the Sioux Empire Home Show. Trapped by the frigid temps and with nothing really else to do, we packed up our young daughter and off we went to look at things that we couldn’t buy nor knew nothing about. But, regardless, we were out of the house in February: VICTORY.

When we arrived at the convention center, we purchased tickets and we were given a plastic bag, which we learned later was for all the samples, trinkets, candy, etc. you can collect at the various booths along the way. A goody bag, if you will. Our daughter, probably around three-years-old at the time, was riding face-forward in her stroller and really perked up when she saw there was potential for candy consumption.

As we walked through the giant conventional hall, we were overwhelmed and in awe of all things home this “Home Show” boasted. Not knowing quite where to start, we went with a crowd favorite and where all roads should start and end: The concession stand. We bought some sort of unhealthy carb and gave it to our daughter in hopes of distracting her from the fact that she would be bored out of her mind in approximately seven seconds. Content for now with her carb, we pushed her in the stroller as my husband and I delightfully wandered the aisles of the show.
At one point, we stopped to look at kitchen sinks. As we were talking and admiring, out of the corner of my eye I saw a man looking at us and waving from across the aisle a little way down. I waved a casual wave back, and looked away.

Sidenote confession: I am horrific at remembering names and faces. Horrific. My husband, however, is the exact opposite. He never forgets a face or a name and we would be hard pressed to go anywhere without him recognizing someone.

So, as I saw this man out the corner of my eye and he really seemed to know us as he was waving and smiling a little more frantically now, I began to silently panic. Who is he? I have no idea who he is. Have I forgotten that I met him? Mayday! Mayday! He’s closing in on us!

Trying not to make eye contact with the man, I sharply nudged my husband. “Jon, do you know this guy?” I said between clenched teeth. My husband looked up and surprised at how fast he was coming at us, said “No, do you?”

Breathless, the man arrived at our scene and before I could get out my best awkward “Hello!?” greeting, he pointed at my daughter sitting in the front of the stroller while we were standing behind her. “Your daughter ... Your daughter put a plastic bag over her head!”

What?!

SO not what I was expecting.

I ran to the front of the stroller and there she was, our three-year-old giggling … With a plastic bag over her head. Panicked, I ripped the bag off her head and she burst into laughter. I sighed a big sigh of relief, hugged her obnoxiously, and begin to tell her the danger of plastic bags. “Oh no! You could suffocate, honey! We cannot put plastic bags over our heads! Where did you get this plastic bag?!” She pointed to a table near her where there were other Goody Bags like the one we were carrying around. I sighed. We were standing two-feet away. We had maybe looked away for mere seconds, but in that timeframe she had grabbed a bag, and put it over her head as a joke. You know those warnings explicitly written on plastic bags to KEEP AWAY FROM CHILDREN? Yes, those warnings are apparently for us.

I’m pretty sure our “Parents of the Year” trophy was revoked that day.

I stood up and profusely thanked the man. He laughed and said, “Don’t worry! I have kids, too. Can you believe the stuff they do?” He was a stranger. He didn’t have to notice my daughter. He didn’t have to come running down the huge aisle to warn us. But he did. He was part of our village that day.
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As parents, we can do our most very best. We can be the most vigilant parent on earth. We can hover until we can hover no more. But, at some point along the way, we will need help. Sometimes it will come in the form of a stranger running down an aisle to warn idiot parents their child has a bag on their head, or it may come as advice, it may come as someone simply listening, or, help may come, again, in the form of a gifted glazed donut. But most times, I’m realizing, help comes when we realize we as parents can’t do it all and just ask for help. Recognizing that we simply, for the sake of our children, cannot make this journey alone.

Image Credit: Crista Ballard Photography 
Originally published in the November 2016 edition of 605 Magazine.

I’ve always thought it quite odd whenever I have heard someone say “If only I could be a fly on the wall …” This particular turn of phrase usually means the speaker wants to covertly eavesdrop on an event or conversation by becoming a fly. But, I’m always wondering; Why would you want to be a fly? Why not some other small, more cleanly, less-demonic creature? I hate flies. I find them to be useless, disgusting, vexing creatures. And so it comes as ironic that I learned a valuable life lesson via a poor fly a few weeks ago.

It all began when my husband sweetly asked months in advance if it would work for our schedule if he took a much-deserved four-day trip away. With naive enthusiasm and what would turn out to be false confidence in my heart, I flippantly said "Of course!"

As the four-day trip approached－as with most things on my calendar and basically tasks and events in general －I completely forgot about it. So it came as a shock when two days before, my husband gently reminded me. I gave him a blank stare. What trip? I vaguely remembered something about him going away, but that must have been a joke, right? Ok, husband, you got me! Big “LOL”! But as I quickly checked my calendar there it was: “Jon Away” with the menacing all-day banner spanning Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Uh-oh. Who agreed to this, again?

I feel like I should pause here and say, I am an independent woman, gosh darnit! I know I can care for my children AND not burn the house down for a long weekend. But for some reason, four days suddenly felt incredibly daunting. Nonetheless, I set out planning what I hoped would be one grand adventure for our four-day time together. On the first day, we went to an idyllic apple orchard, we baked, we napped, both the kids and I were filled with glee and I felt like, Boy, oh Boy, I am an amazing mother.

And just like anything else in life, pride truly does cometh before the fall.

The disasters started small. While out to eat, my toddler took one of his new tennis shoes off and threw it out of the car. I searched everywhere for a half hour－only to find it after getting on my stomach in the dirty parking lot and crawling underneath a parked car to retrieve it. No big deal. So, I had tar on my shirt? Survivable.

That same night, my daughter suddenly had a weird rash on her leg. And while rashes usually make me hyperventilate into a brown bag, I confidently breezed past it.

Next, I got a phone call from our realtor that we would be having a house showing the next day for our house that is (STILL) on the market. Again, I was optimistic. I could easily clean the whole house while everyone slept at night.

Except … no one slept. For some reason, my brag-worthy heavy sleeping children chose this weekend to sleep regress. The house was in shambles. And 30 minutes before the showing, I heard the unmistakable sound of my dog throwing up. Finding that extremely odd as he never does that, I quickly mopped up the mess only to walk in the living room to catch my daughter accidently spilling her chocolate milk all over the living room carpet. Now, at defcon 5, I was manically scrubbing the carpet and out of desperation I sequestered the children in my daughter's room, the last room to be cleaned.

As I entered her room, both children were sweetly playing and I began to do my speedy vacuum routine. I opened the curtains and raised the blinds and aghast in disgust, I noticed a dead fly on the window sill. I quickly turned back to grab the attachment to vacuum up the deceased little spawn of satan, and just as I had my back to it, my toddler son suddenly was standing at the window. As I walked toward him I noticed him pick up something and－like he does with everything－put it in his mouth. Not registering what just happened, I went to suck up the fly and … it wasn’t there. Confused, I looked everywhere and then in slow motion with horror music playing in my head, I realized what happened. I glanced at my smiling son and I knew.

Oh, Lord Jesus, take the Wheel.
He. Just. Ate. A. Dead. Fly. I repeat, a dead fly.

Horrified, nauseated, and frozen in terror, I screamed dramatically “Nooooooo!!!” But it was too late, my son smiled at me as if nothing horrific just transpired and nonchalantly went back to what he believed was a run-of-the-mill Friday.

The day and honestly the whole weekend went on with more disasters that I do not have room to document here. By the end of the four-day adventure, I submit to you, dear reader, I felt like I was failing at life. How could I not? My children were literally eating dead flies.

But the valuable lesson I learned was this: As a parent, not everyday is going to be a stroll through an idyllic apple orchard.  I’m going to have “my kids are eating flies” type days. All I can do, honestly, in that moment is, admit defeat. Call it. Laugh it off, clean my window sill, buy a fly swatter, and start over the next day.

​(And never agree to your husband going away on a four-day trip. Ever.)

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Image Credit: Crista Ballard Photography
Originally published in the July 2016 edition of 605 Magazine 

It started off like a perfect day. We were visiting the pacific northwest for a family wedding and we were gifted with a few hours of rare sunshine. So, I donned my mom-friendly swimsuit, lathered up my fair-skinned family in sunscreen and away we went with an obnoxiously heavy pool bag to find the sun and water.

My family was there (gathered from all corners of the earth) for the wedding and my daughter, Avianna, excitedly ran to find her cousin. My husband and I went on man-to-man coverage; he with our son and me with Avianna. While we were swimming and having a summery time, Avianna and I noticed some bees began to swarm where we were. Alarmed, I picked her up and went to more of the center of the small pool hoping we would out-maneuver the little stingers. When they kept coming after us, I moved faster and finally got away from them. However, in all the maneuvering, my four-year-old daughter began to clutch me tightly and quietly cry in my shoulder because, as she is with every other kind of bug or insect, she is deathly afraid of bees. (I blame her city-girl mother.)

After we had escaped, I hugged her tightly, gently whispering it was okay, and she immediately calmed. But right then, I felt a small, but forceful tap on my shoulder. Cradling Avianna in my arms in the water, I turned around to find a woman in her 50’s staring coldly at me and the scared little girl in my arms.

Staring at me as if I had just murdered her prized family goat in cold blood, she said in a stern and loud voice. “I have been listening to you and that girl, and I don’t even think children should be in this pool. So, why don’t you take her out of here now and make sure she has her tantrum some place else.”

Stunned. I completely froze. Perhaps I have been in the friendly midwest too long, because my brain could not compute the harshness of her statement. Children aren’t allowed in the...pool? Tantrum? What tantrum? Am I on some type of bizarre TV show? Where are the cameras? Looking around confused and not seeing any cameras, I looked back at her face as she continued to stare at me as if trying to bore a hole into my soul.

I turned away quickly, trying to shield my daughter from her crazy stare. I wish I would have said something in defense of my daughter. But instead, in a total daze, I just turned and walked away. I had not encountered such blatant hostility since…well, middle school. My daughter, started to cry and said, “Why was that lady so mean? I’m sorry I was crying, Mommy.”

Pause. If you have read any other of my columns, you know I am the first person to admit I have witnessed public disorderly tantrums by my daughter, in which I quickly remove her from the scene and apologize. However, this just wasn’t one of those times. She was barely crying. She was simply scared. As I got out of the pool and dried my sniffling child, I got down and looked her straight in the eye and said, “You did nothing wrong, honey, let’s just get out of here.”


The rest of the day, I played that moment over and over and over in my mind. What had we done that so bothered that woman? What could I have done differently? Why did this whole scenario make me feel so…gross? And the more I thought about it, the more a grander picture began to materialize. This woman at the pool looked at my daughter as a mere inconvenience. My child, just by being a child, inconvenienced her.

When did children become such an inconvenience?

Aren’t children, as horrifically melodramatic as it sounds, truly our future? Aren’t they *duh* the key to carrying on the human race? If there are no children, there is no one to take care of us when we are old. No one to perform surgery on us. No one to keep our family name in play in the universe. No one to retell history to keep us from repeating it. And no one to tell us we are getting old and crazy.

Seems odd then, to treat the kings and queens of tomorrow as inconveniences of today.

Yet we all do it. We see it in our foster care system. Orphanages. Insanely short maternity and paternity leave. Underfunded schools. Abuse. Neglect. Abandonment. Or a dirty look and a roll of the eyes at a restaurant. And yes, we even see it when a woman yells at a 4 year-old at a happy pool in Portland. The systematic labeling of children as “inconvenient” surrounds us.

Yet, despite that, there are still some that see beyond that label. What I didn’t tell you was that after we got out of the pool, a couple followed us out. When they approached me, they pulled me aside and said, “We are just so sorry. We cannot believe that woman said that to you. You need to know, your daughter did nothing wrong. We got out of the pool because we don’t even want to be near a woman like that. We love children and you’re doing a great job.”

Words cannot express how thankful I am for that couple’s words to me that day. I hope I, too, am always a fellow cheerleader of parents. I hope I always appreciate children and the parents that are trying to raise them. I hope I, like that couple, always remember that children are not ever, not even for a moment, an inconvenience.

Image Credit: Crista Ballard Photography
Originally published in the April 2016 edition of 605 Magazine 

No matter the season outside, there is always one sure place that will deliver respite and satisfaction to any parent seeking refuge from the sometimes suffocating walls of their very own home: Target. The welcoming, glistening aisles bustling with red carts and fellow utopia-seekers often beckons our souls with the promise of not only a hefty bill, but of priceless moments of retail joy. Some wise Targets even have coffee shops inside of them (silent sob of gratitude) providing for the ultimate experience.

But as with any good thing, there often comes another side to the coin. And the other side of the coin, for me, happens to be when I travel to the Target oasis with my children in tow. Now, you all know I love my children. I mean, I love my children. But sometimes, just sometimes, they can really ice my game at Target. A recent experience will prove to you such.

I was in need of a few random household items after picking up my daughter from preschool one day. So, I informed my daughter (now four-and-a-half) that we would be going to Target and that she could pick out one or two small treasures that would later act as a reward after working on her reading at home. (Don’t be fooled. This is just a bribe dressed up in fancy educational language.) She happily agreed and off we went.

However, my dream of a peaceful trot through Target quickly veered off course into a torrential tirade of preschooler angst. My promise of one or two small treasures somehow, in her mind, turned into the inalienable right to purchase anything. She must have been hypnotized by the red bullseye. After calmly teaching a lesson after she threw in a few items and making her put them back; I thought we had avoided any further trouble. Unfortunately, I so severely miscalculated. Without any warning, the weight of the realization that she would not, in fact, be taking home the giant play doh box placed directly at her eye level and reach (by the way - thanks for that crucial placement, Target) became too much for her to bear. An epic meltdown began to unfold before my very eyes. There were tears. Wailing. Flailing of limbs. The calmer I was, the worse it got.

​I was in uncharted territory.

I finally was able to pick her up and her crying began to subside. As I attempted to push a stroller and carry a heavy toddler, my infant chose that moment to wake up. His normal jovial spirit became inflamed by the cries of his older sister and into the abyss of tantrum he also began to spiral. Instilled with a new found confidence to add to the noise from her baby brother, my daughter erupted into wails again. Wailing en stereo. Also known as “my nightmare.” Panic began to set in. I could feel the eyes of fellow patrons pretending not to notice, but secretly really noticing.
I needed to get out of there. Quickly.

I grabbed everything in my stroller cart and unceremoniously laid it on an unsuspecting shelf, silently apologizing to the Target staff. I have always heard of mothers having to leave carts full of items behind in a moment of desperation, but never did I think that would happen to me. And there I was. Leaving a cart full of items behind. Thank you, God for always sending a way to humble me.

I walked quickly to the car trying not to make eye contact with anyone. I placed my children in the car, and of course they immediately quieted. As I put the stroller in my back seat, my eye caught a rogue item that my daughter had placed in the cart without my noticing: A pack of earrings. She doesn’t even have her ears pierced! So now, in addition to breaking the peace, WE ARE ALSO SHOPLIFTERS.
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I ran quickly back into the store and breathlessly handed the earrings to customer service without a word and sprinted back out to the car. At the sight of my anguished, fatigued face, my daughter with her red, tear-streaked face said, “I’m sorry I was naughty, Mommy.” And after a long exhale and a moment to collect myself, I peered back at her and said “Thank you for saying sorry, honey. I forgive you. We’ll do better next time.”

​That, dear readers, brings this harrowing tale to an end. And, echoing my daughter’s words, I want to say to you, beloved Target staff, “I’m sorry we were naughty.” And to add, “I promise, we will do better next time.”