Today things changed.

I’m thankful that I took my kids away for April Break. Away from usually safe, predictable, routine Patriots’ Day down to our Nation’s Capital, where just about anything can happen. Yet here I sit, feeling safe and unthreatened while I watch news reports of fellow Bostonians feeling shaken and upset.

Two bombs were detonated at the finish line of the Boston Marathon today and at least three people are confirmed dead so far.

For me, the mere act of training to run a 5k (3.1 mi) was a major accomplishment; someone endeavoring to run 26.2 is downright lunacy. Imagine pursuing that goal but then the insult and shattering carnage of having a bomb explode as you near the finish line—and in many cases—preventing you from crossing it. That would be more than I could process.

I work closely with a bunch of women around the world who know I live in or near Boston so even before I heard the news, I received a number of texts and Facebook messages asking if I was alright. Of course, I was and am alright, I was enjoying a day at the National Zoo with my two kids and 13yo nephew but as soon as we got back and were near a TV, I tuned in to hear what happened.

My kids, only 4 and 7, watched the reports with me. Like me, they couldn’t really comprehend what they were seeing. When I explained to them that the images were from Boston, “our Boston,” they still appeared confused. We’ve stood in our town—which is just about the half-way mark of the Marathon—every Patriots’ Day for most of their lives, cheering on the runners as they stream past us, hundreds upon thousands of them, for the better part of an hour. Yet still they couldn’t quite process seeing the runners of that marathon on the national news.

When the reporter went on to talk about other “soft target” bombings in the US over the past two decades, most notably the one at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics resulting in six casualties, my 4yo turned to me and said:

“Oh, only six people died? That’s not too bad, Mommy”

That’s not too bad?! Only six people dying from a bomb explosion as an act of malice isn’t too bad?! What are these times we’re living in?! What is this era of terror we’re raising our kids in? When nightly reports of bombings and shootings and school kids or movie goers or marathon runners or spectators getting killed and only three or six, or 12 or 28 isn’t bad…is this our new normal?

I realize we can’t shelter our kids for ever. We can’t shut their eyes or close their ears or silence the media’s mouths, pretending this isn’t the world we live in but can’t we hold on to their innocence for just a little longer?

Must everything we do and let them do be shrouded with caution, and concern and distrust?

Someday (soon), I hope I can let my daughter walk the half mile down a sylvan path to school on her own and not worry. I hope we can stand in a crowd at a public event and not worry. I hope we can board an airplane or ride public transportation or visit famous monuments and not worry…but with each additional incident like today’s, comes more than just human casualties, they kill our innocence; abandoning the fight response and honing the flight response.

I close this with a prayer for all of the innocence, and lives and dreams and memories shattered by today’s Boston bombings. I hope someday soon we can all slow down and stop running scared.

No, really. What do you want to BE?

Because, let’s face it, whatever you’ve been doing in your twenties and thirties, probably isn’t what you still want to be doing in your forties and beyond. (If it is, congratulations, you can stop reading now because you are way ahead of the pack).

I know this is true because in the past few years I’ve been watching friends and acquaintances around me turn 40 and each time, within months of their birthdays, many of them have initiated one type of major life change or another. Some of them have changed careers; some have started families; some have ended marriages; and some have finally worked on turning their dreams into realities.

Forty is reality.

It’s time to take charge of life rather than allowing life to take charge of us. Out with what society expects of us; out with what we’ve been groomed to do or be our whole lives…what is it YOU want to be?

In February, another good friend turned 40. Even though she and I both are writers (or at least aspiring to be so) I turned to Hallmark for the occasion. I couldn’t resist, there was a card that really resonated with me. Inside it said:

40 Is when you deserve to celebrate yourself and take pride in your strengths without apologizing.

It’s when you start to be respected in the world, make an impact and get listened to.

It’s when you let go of everything fake and pursue what’s important to you for real.

It’s when you realize that knowing what you know, you wouldn’t go back.

I figure, if Hallmark’s printing this stuff, I can’t be the only one thinking it.

The only problem is, I’m finding “figuring out what to pursue” a bit of a gray area.

Let’s face it, in our twenties most of us acted whimsically and egocentrically. In my twenties, I definitely pursued experiences and relationships that seemed exciting and daring but not necessarily mature, or well thought out. I was a bit of a lost soul on a mission to find myself.

By the time I turned 30, I had absently fallen into a conservative but lucrative career; had settled down with a very stable and grounded man; was living in our (then Republican) Nation’s Capital; and was starting a family. Definitely more mature and thought out. Things were going just as life had dictated they should.

For the remainder of my thirties, I shifted away from fund raising and into kid raising; from being nomadic to becoming a home-owner; from just thinking about a writing career to actually beginning one. Yet still, my compass was spinning, my path uncertain. I sought greater clarity, I needed to figure out who it was I planned to be before confidently charting my children along their paths.

So what happened? I turned 40. The great What Next.

I am happily married, so that doesn’t need changing. I have two great kids, who seem pretty stable in their bodies and surroundings, good there too. My husband is on a rewarding career path that compliments his skills (but he isn’t 40 yet, so that could change). But what about me? What’s my career path? Where should I step once the kids demote me from Commander-in-Chief to chauffeur?

Writing certainly has surfaced as a highly fulfilling, sometimes cathartic, occasionally lucrative pursuit for me over the past few years. Add to this the multiple events, coincidences, possibly even divine interventions that continue to point me farther down this path and it’s easy to conclude that my next chapter should involve writing. Not just writing for hire like I’m doing now but actual writing to publish, something I own that’s part of me. But how can I be sure I have it in me?

For my 40^th birthday, a few of my oldest-and-dearest pooled together and gave me a deeply soul-searching gift. It was a gift in three parts, sort of a choose-your-own-adventure kinda thing; crafted out of my own indecision. The gift was presented as a beautiful, hand-painted card with three mini cards tied inside. Each mini card had one option with an internet link. The options were:

1. Review and critique of my written work at a venerated, downtown writers’ guild.
2. Sessions with a Writing Coach, to help me sort out what kind of writing I should do and how get down to it.
3. Sessions with a Life Coach, to help me figure out if writing is even a fit for me at all.

It was a big gift. A big, generous, albatross-around-my-neck sorta gift; the kind that could only come from friends that have known me for a very long time, through clarity and primordial fog; under blue skies and gray.

I’ve spent four months deliberating about this gift. I am such a Libra wanna be.

The decision shouldn’t be so paralyzing. Really it’s down to just two options, #2 and #3. Option 1 is out because I don’t have anything to critique. In fact, as of last week, I thought I had narrowed it down to just option 3, the Life Coach. Logically, if I can’t even figure out which option to choose, someone else better help me figure out the next part of my life.

For now, it’s still a bit of a gray area, 40’s like that.

Which option would you pick? When you’re feeling indecisive, how do you find clarity?

The image used in this post is attributed to Kevin Dooley

I wrote it because I grew up surrounded by divorce and because my husband and I reside at almost opposite ends of the Myers-Briggs personality spectrum—I’m a sound ENFJ and he’s an ISTJ. If you’re curious about yourself, you can take a quick test here, (thanks Marisa Hopkins for the link).

DH and I entered into marriage knowing it would require our constant care. So last spring we enlisted the help of a clinical social worker and started Couples Counseling.

People have funny misconceptions about the term “counseling;” it often seems to connote that one is seeking counseling for something that is in trouble. In our case, we’re not in trouble, we just want to make sure we don’t lose our way. We’re not asking for help but rather seeking “guidance.”

Guidance to help us better manage the way we communicate with one another, guidance to bring up topics we didn’t know have the potential to evolve into challenges later, and guidance to prepare us for future hurdles that we may encounter along the way.

Given the option, we’d prefer to sit down once a month with a familiar, non-related, older couple. Folks who have raised their kids, weathered storms and come out strong (or stronger) on the other end. A couple willing to take a younger couple under their wing and mentor them through the journey but sometimes finding the right fit takes time and we wanted to get started so we decided to put our health insurance to good use and find an “in-network provider” to defray the expense of using professional guidance.

A number of you have asked me to follow-up with our experience focusing on our marriage so here’s how it’s been. In the past several  months, DH and I have visited our “guide,” Cynthia, a dozen or so times (we took the summer off); at first we went every other week, then, since the fall, just once a month.

In the beginning, Cynthia explored our relationship, delved a little into our pasts and determined what sort of space we were making in our busy lives for each other. She would start the sessions by bringing up topics and getting us talking about something that might be difficult to discuss over dinner or on a nap drive.

First she’d get us talking, then she’d give us the tools for a successful discussions. Her main objective was teaching us how to listen.

Active listening involves not just hearing the person who’s talking to you but really absorbing what that person is saying in a way that you could then paraphrase it back to the speaker. It’s called empathic listening.Empathic listening involves allowing a person to say their piece and relaying back to them what you, literally, heard them say. Not what you think they are saying or what you think they ought to say but truly what they did say.

Take this example of how people typically communicate vs. how to empathically communicate:

Speaker #1: last week you borrowed my red umbrella and left it at a store without even feeling bad about it. I loved that umbrella, that was really thoughtless.

Speaker #2: Thoughtless?! My hands were full when I left the store and by the time I realized I left it, I was too far away to go back and didn’t have time. Besides, one of the prongs was broken and it wasn’t very functional.

Empathic listening::

#1: Last week you borrowed my umbrella and left it at the store then you didn’t even seem sorry about it. It was my favorite umbrella and it really hurt my feelings that you lost it.

#2: What I hear is that you’re upset because I borrowed your umbrella and left it somewhere. You’re upset because I don’t seem sorry about it and it was you’re favorite umbrella. Is this right?

The human tendency (especially for women) is to analyze and interpret what is being said. Undoing and relearning how to communicate can be both frustrating and belittling but the outcome is both rewarding and cathartic. You go beyond hearing one another and are practice learning how to really listen to each other.

For DH and me, learning to do this is not easy, sometimes we launch right in to our 50-minute session by introducing something very fresh, like a disagreement over something, a concern about one or the other’s character, or bringing up a personal habit that we’d like to adjust.

Initially, even giving both of us equal chance to open the session, I would introduce most of the topics, leaving DH on the defensive and feeling vulnerable; and certainly that was not the goal nor hope. Recently, however, we’ve turned a corner and DH has been the one introducing the topics. Now both of us, using the tools Cynthia has given us, work through the topic empathically. If the conversation becomes one-sided or if Cynthia feels like We are not making progress, she’ll interject.

In our last session—just after my birthday and right before the holidays—DH brought up the topic. He introduced it not by sitting and pondering for a few silent moments as the precious 50-minutes ticked by but rather in the manner in which a person with a burning idea might speak out. Instead of bringing up a recent disciplinary issue regarding our kids, accentuating our different parenting techniques and how we could have done things differently, as I was expecting him to, instead, DH told Cynthia that he didn’t feel like he had enough time with his wife.

I was floored.

Granted, November’s a big “Me-month” because my birthday falls right in the middle and this year it was a big one, so my first reaction was to express concern. Immediately I worried that perhaps he was feeling tapped out by the many events (like a big surprise party, getting a new car, having family come in for the weekend), which had elevated me but eclipsed him. My second reaction was to be affronted that he was criticizing me for using the sparse, kid-free time I have to pursue my writing career. Especially considering all of the missed dinners, late nights and business trips he’s done.

But, Cynthia was quick to adjust my natural tendency to interpret and analyze what is being said rather than to really listen.

So we backed up, DH expressed his concern and I had to reorder it in my head and then repeat back to him what I had heard. Here’s how it went:

DH: I feel like we’re not spending enough quality time together. Lately, when I’ve been on my computer and doing things like looking into a new family car or surfing the web thinking about Christmas, you are off in the other room “working.”

Me: What I hear you saying is that you don’t feel like we spend enough time doing things together like looking for a new family car or Christmas shopping. You fee like I’m always on my computer working while you do these things. Is this right?

Our conversation went along like this for the next 40 or so minutes and was still unresolved by the time our session time was over. As a result, Cynthia asked us to continue the conversation and especially to make time to be together in the coming weeks, whether on date nights, sitting side-by-side on our couch or just “working” at the same table.

As a result, I felt very drawn to my husband. I was touched that he missed me. That he recognized being apart and that he wanted to do and say something about it. How often couples begin to drift in individual circles rather than conjoining ones. How their interests pull them in different directions and they begin living parallel but separate lives. How often have you heard about a couple who raise their kids together and seem perfectly in sync only to send the last off to college and realize they are left alone with a stranger?

In the past month, DH and I have taken great strides to remind ourselves that we on this journey together. That, before we had kids, we had each other and that was a lot of fun. We’ve made time to take time. We’ve asked others to help us make time by staying with our kids or by spending quality time with all of us. We have stopped to ask what each other needs, a glass of water? some tea? help getting something done. It’s cathartic, uplifting and very empathic.

And I highly recommend trying the same.

Today has been looming on the horizon for a good long while now. In fact, in many regards, this celebration began when I turned 38, so unexpected and wonderful was that birthday surprise. Scorpios love basking in the sun, so being celebrated and the attention that comes with birthdays suits us well. In fact, ask most Scorpios and they’ll confirm that we tend toward recognizing the entire birthmonth, not just the day.

Scorpio pride aside, I’m downright lucky that I married the man I did—a man, who speaks his love through action—because so far this month has been one prolonged celebration. From the gathering of friends, family traveling to be together, and the general broadcast over social media, I have no hope (nor desire) to hide my age and, quite honestly, I’m rather perplexed by the notion of people who do.

I’m a staunch believer that age and wisdom go hand-in-hand.

A decade ago, I was still single. I had no idea what it was like to entwine my life to someone else’s for the rest of our years. I only knew the casual leap from relationship to relationship like a frog on lily pads across a pond.

I’ve learned a lot from being married. I’ve learned to practice compromise, patience, support, endurance, sometimes frustration, often gratitude. I’ve learned to share a closet, a bed, a bathroom and a car. I’ve grown to accept my shortcomings and celebrate someone else’s strengths. I’ve relinquished a modicum of my fierce independence, stubbornness, and temper in exchange for the grace of living in concert with others, learning to let go, and taking deep breaths.

A decade ago, I had never been a parent; now I have two exquisite beings to look after. Through them I’m learning compassion, empathy, discipline and conflict resolution. I’ve become a moderator, mediator, meditator and mom. I’ve stopped obsessing about my own birthdays and started fantasizing about theirs.

When I turned 28, I thought it was a fun and unique idea to celebrate my birthday with a group of friends at Chuck E. Cheese. Back then, the closest one was way out in the ‘burbs! Today, I live down the street from that very establishment and my feelings about it have altered considerably.

A decade ago, I was wholly focused on following my own dreams, setting my own goals, celebrating my accomplishments. Today, I share dreams with a wonderful man; I hear about magical, nocturnal journeys over bowls of Cocoa Crispies; I conjure up fantastic futures with the ones I love.

Goals no longer include things like hiking the Annapurna Circuit or diving the Maldives (though I hope we will do that all together some day). Instead, goals are closer to home and easier to realize. They involve recognizing the letters of the alphabet, comprehending Chinese commands, knowing notes on a music staff and keyboard. They include caring for others, deepening our spiritual journeys and baking cupcakes for school fundraisers.

These days, my best accomplishments are more often someone else’s, rarely my own.

There’s not a single thing I would go back and change from the past 10 years. I love that we lived in our nation’s capital, moved back to New England, completed graduate degrees, got married, had kids, traveled overseas, bought a house, settled down.

I embrace that my body may never be as fit and supple as it was in my 20s or 30s but it’s beautiful in different ways. It’s still the same body that once wore bikinis, a wedding gown, maternity clothes, nursing bras, a triathlon suit, and now occasionally Spanx. It’s the very body that birthed other bodies that grew into onsies, pull-ups, booster seats, and back packs.

So, today I celebrate the sum of my parts and all the sizes in between, from a men’s 32-long, right down to 4T.

What sorts of things do you celebrate in life? What has made you wiser for the wear? 

Kyla and Heather get Lois Lowry to sign a copy of The Giver

A little over a year ago, DH made a new friend. It wasn’t a friend for him,it was a friend for me. Her name was Heather Kelly.

DH met her on our daughters’ kindergarten playground. Luckily, in the way children either  become fast friends or sworn enemies, our daughters were instant pals: my exuberant, over-the-top, Type A with Heather’s quiet, shy but equally headstrong Cowgirl. It took the moms a bit longer but resulted in a friendship with far greater symbiosis.

Heather has been the jumper cables for my childrens book writing aspirations and I’ve helped hone her athletic pursuits. It’s a very positive and supportive friendship, the type that enhances ones well-being rather than detracts from it in the way that friends you just share vices with do.

The pursuits we share (sports and children’s literature) make us better people. Neither of us depends on the other for inspiration nor survival—like the symbiosis between plant and animal found in lichen—rather, we are motivated toward our mutualistic pursuits just by spending time together and encouraging each other.

Which is why it strikes me as particularly ironic that one of the galvanizing pieces of our friendship is founded on a dystopia, conjured in the mind of Lois Lowry.

It happened last October, when Heather—an aspiring Young Adult/Middle Grade author—and I did a YA book exchange. She gave me Lois Lowry’s  The Giver, and I gave her Jean Craighead George’s My Side of the Mountain. Since Heather reads considerably more than I, she wasn’t terribly inspired by my recommendation. But, for me, The Giver was one of those enticing, surprising and unresolved books that I’ve always loved and been haunted by. Right up there with Alduos Huxley’s Brave New World, Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan, and George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides.

The Giver is a tale about 12-year-old Jonas, who lives in a dystopian village called the Community. It’s powerful in the way that a really good book should be and the ending made me beg for resolution. I wanted there to be more. I wanted to know what happened.

Well thank goodness I wasn’t alone in this desire because finally, 50 YEARS later, Lois wrote the conclusion.

On Monday night, Heather and I went to hear Lois talk about this new book—the final piece in The Giver quartet—and also about her 50+ years and 60-books-later life as an author. I came away with one solid piece of advice:

Always be kind to your fans.

Lois is a crusty Cantabrigian who tells it like it is and perhaps this is the underlying formula for her unyielding success and two Newbery Medals but it’s not helping convert any of her young fans into aspiring writers. And here’s why:

When a young fan sends you an e-mail going on and on about what an amazing author you are, how you’re “totally awesome,” how “cool” and “great” your books are and then asks for advice about becoming a writer someday, YET fails to include punctuation anywhere in her message, tread lightly.

Instead, here’s how Lois replied to above fan:

“Well, for starters, you should learn how to use punctuation.”

No, I’m so glad my books inspire you. No, thank you for yo ind words. No, inspiration for young fans. No. Lois told it like it is. She tread with heavy foot.

Needless to say, the child’s father promptly wrote back avowing to trash all of Lowry’s books and never be in touch again.

That’s OK, I still love Lois Lowry and am grateful to Heather for reintroducing her to me…complete with her dystopia and all.

Who’s your favorite author? Have you ever been inspired to do something differently because of him/her?

So, we have planted our roots in our cozy, New England suburb and begun to blossom. But by doing so, we realize that if we aren’t providing our kids with an international address, then raising them with international outlooks means finding other ways for them to see the world instead.

When life puts up road blocks, come up with alternative routes.

Earlier this year, while focusing on our greatest asset, our marriage, DH and I did some couples counseling. As we began discussing ways to convert our dreams of raising global citizens into reality, a wonderful, ah-ha solution took shape. We concluded that, even if we couldn’t raise our kids overseas, at least we could expand their horizons by traveling overseas with them.

The dream waves were rolling but where should our maiden voyage sail? We needed a plan…

We need to start somewhere not half-a-world away and manageable enough for kids, ages four and seven. Because DH and I have taken many journeys together in the Far East but never Europe, we decided our first, international, family trip should be to Europe. But where?

My cousin and his wife just moved to Warsaw for two years and have invited us to come visit. That puts Poland on the list. We also have some good friends from business school, who live in Zagreb, Croatia—which would keep our trip in Eastern Europe—and some other friends in Basel, Switzerland, which would bring it west.

To add to the possibilities, DH’s company has an office in Ireland. If he has the ability to log some work hours during our trip, we all have the ability to spend more time in Europe. Not to mention, we live in a part of the US populated by Mahoneys, O’Shaunasseys, McDermots and Kennedys; where Saint Patrick’s Day is a close second to Thanksgiving. Adding Ireland to the list means seeing first-hand a country relevant to our cultural environs back home.

Finally, my sister-in-law and her fiancé are moving to London before summer 2013. Between our kids recent exposure to the 2012 London Summer Olympics and their attachment to their aunt, that puts England in the running too.

What a blessing, to find our options not limited by scarcity but stymied by abundance: Poland, Croatia, Switzerland, England, Ireland.

And so we reached a fork in our new road. We could spin our dreams all we wanted but if we planned to go in 2013, we better take action! But, when should we go and for how long?

Initially, we thought we might travel over April break—a ridiculous, one-week, public school vacation here in New England; too long to have no plans yet too short to do anything significant. Our logic being, if we traveled in the spring, air fare would be cheaper, crowds fewer and the weather in Europe good. Also, since our kids are so early in their academic careers (1^st Grade and Preschool), taking a few extra days on either end to travel abroad would certainly enhance their educations more than hinder them.

But did it make sense to make our biggest plans of 2013 for the spring? That would still leave us with a whole summer to plan and the expenses of camps and all the activities that come with it. So, we have decided to make our big trip part of our summer plans.

Counseling success! We’ve converted our words into action. Next summer, we are taking the kids to Europe, starting in Ireland.

What’s even more remarkable than putting our words into action is that the primary driving force behind the action isn’t me–the one planted firmly at home with the kids, itching (and musing) on a regular basis to stretch the travel legs once more—it’s my career-centric, fiscally-conservative, over-worked husband.

DH and I have talked, ad nauseum, about the value we place on traveling, we have discussed it as an alternative to living overseas, and we are well aware that traveling requires an investment of two things we always feel short on: time and money. So, when DH took the helm and booked our travel, it was a genuine act of love, spoken in his true, native language.

We have a lot of preparatory work to do between now and next summer: there are library books to check out; new cuisine to try; a few foreign words to learn; a route map to plan. But at least one lesson is already learned: sometimes the best way of seeing the world is by staying put.

What’s your plan of action? Do you have an alternative route map to go by?

Did I feel like a bad mother? yes. Did it fry my nerves to listen to his wails? yes. Will I repeat the situation all over again when it happens next? yes.

In just three week’s time he will head off to preschool where no one will be allowed to wipe his bottom. He’s got to do it on his own. But it wasn’t just this motivator that spurned me on, it’s that I’m in Week Eight of the American school system’s ten-week long, summer holiday. I’m toast.

Week One was bliss. I couldn’t wait to have both of my kids with me to take to the beach, go on adventures and explore new camp experiences. We took a few days as a family to attend my brother’s wedding in Pennsylvania and tacked on a side-trip to Sesame Place while we were there.

Then we had a little intentionally unscheduled time before a variety of half-day camps and two visits to grandparents’ houses began. By the end of July, I had done a great deal of idea generating, activity planning, transporting, coordinating, packing and unpacking. Then we took a week “Down the Cape.”

Our week on Cape Cod was something I had been looking forward to all summer. Back in February, our dear friends from Montana came for a surprise, 36-hour visit. While they were here, we talked them in to coming back with the whole family in the summer and we’d all take a house at the beach. Despite lacking any knowledge of the Cape, DH and I endeavored to find the right rental in the right town at the right price for all of us. We succeeded.

We just came back from that wonderful week-away but it was not a vacation.

When DH was little, his pediatrician informed his parents that, “when you travel with young children, you are taking a trip. When you travel with grown, independent kids or on your own, it’s a vacation.” That man should be given a gold star.

We had five kids ranging in age from 6 down to 1. We had a full-efficiency house with the ability and desire to have many of our meals there. We were in a new place with tons of things to do and we wanted to be good hosts to our friends who traveled so far and at great expense to “vacation” with us. We absolutely had a wonderful time but it was NOT relaxing. In fact, it was very much like the rest of our summer just in a slightly improved location.

In summer’s past I have more successfully orchestrated my kids’ schedules and my own writing deadlines to provide occasional breaks for me to work or get things done. In the past I’ve more regularly had breaks by hiring sitters or with longer afternoon nap-times and camp days. Somehow, this year, I failed to coordinate any of these.

Week Five, the one week that I was supposed to have every morning free while both kids were in camps, brought a visit from the Coxsackie virus instead. This heralded the beginning of the end of my coping abilities. It was easily the worst childhood illness DH and I have experienced in our six years as parents.

In Week Six, I rediscovered mojitos…this helped tremendously with my coping abilities.

So here were are, just two weeks away from the beginning of the new school year (queue this). I am enormously thankful for the many good times we’ve had this summer but have also learned a lot about both my kids’ needs and my own and it boils down to one word: routine.

I have long fancied myself a creature of spontaneity. Willing to go wherever and whenever an opportunity arose. Having kids changed that for me. For one thing, I became a Nap Nazi and grew to cherish my kids’ daily needs for down time as a sacred and necessary part of our sanity.

Also, I leaned this summer that selecting several different one-week camp experiences for my older child was no longer a good idea. After the familiarity of attending full-day kindergarten all year and the joy of predictable routine and familiar faces, switching things up every-other week was a bit hard on her.

So what do I have planned for our last two weeks? a whole lot of nothing. And I think that’s a pretty good plan. We all need a little time to reset (like me being here at the library writing while the kids are home with a sitter). I also think there’s great value in the ability to get bored. Boredom fosters creativity and also instills deeper appreciation for the fun events when they occur.

I’m not much in to politics but it’s an election year and once the kids head back to school I plan to get a new ballot question going: I’m going to seriously look in to getting our politicians to reconsider the agrarian school calendar we’ve all been following for far too long and see if we can shorten summer vacation by just a week (or three)!

What started off as enthusiasm for a cute and unique, (non-mouse) first-pet for our daughter, quickly evolved into a loathing disdain for a too-fast-too-hold, quick-nipping-nightmare of a rodent.

The divide widened when my daughter—whose only chance to bond with her pet was by sitting in a dry bathtub together while he darted around seeking an escape root—lost interest in the weekly cleaning of his cage and then abandoned feeding him daily rations all together. Guess who got saddled with hamster duty?

DH and I selected this pet for two reasons: 1. because our daughter desperately wanted two mice and this was as close as we could come to a mouse without the tail and infestation issues; and 2.  life expectancy for Robo dwarf hamsters is 1-3 years.

Well, ours made it half way. Last week, Butterscotch joined the Great Hamster Wheel in the Sky.

I knew his days were numbered when his usual hyperactive, nocturnal stirrings began slowing down. Then I noticed he was eating less and less of the hamster nibblets I put in his dish each day. But when I really knew death was soon upon him was when I noticed the patches of fur missing from his coat.

This was certainly a far cry from the spry, fluffy little pip-squeek we brought home from the pet shop two Christmases ago:

I wondered if his decline was a product of our neglect, his awareness of not being loved or merely the life-cycle of a dwarf hamster…regardless, declined he did until one night I heard no activity at all. I was afraid to look. I gave him until the next day to make his presence known but nothing stirred.

When I lifted his little purple, igloo shaped house off his nest, nothing emerged so I poked inside and found a bony, cold and stiff specimen.

Here’s where my faculties failed me.

Rather than break the news gently and carefully to his six-year-old owner, I thought I’d take the straight-forward approach and bring the wad of cotton, corpse and all, upstairs to show her in person.

The response I expected was somewhere along the lines of feigned indifference. What I got instead was utter lament. Immediately our daughter burst in to tears. Her reaction was akin to the loss of something deeply loved.

I felt terrible that my first response to finding Butterscotch dead was a twinge of joy and utter relief. Now I had to kick in to high gear, righting the wrong-approach I’d taken.

Immediately, I reminded her that he was old and wasn’t well; that he was having a hard time climbing his habitrail and had been slowing down. Then I asked if she wanted me to help her pick a special spot in our yard to bury him. I helped her find a little stone to mark his grave and together, we went into our garden, in a totally nondescript spot (hand-picked by his loving owner), we dug a wee hole and said a gentle prayer. In went our little rodent, over went the dirt, on top went the stone.

For the next four days, our daughter continued to talk about her lost pet and visit his grave, then we went away. When we got back she seemed to forget all about it, until she saw his cage still sitting on the shelf.  I think his loss might fade quicker if I cleaned it out and put it away.

Do I think I handled this well? No. Should I have handled it differently? yes. But, for a child who had already witnessed the death of our beloved cat two years earlier and then the open casket viewing of a great-grandparent the summer before, I certainly did not think the loss of a 3-inch hamster required white-glove handling nor arming myself with a copy of  the Rainbow Bridge. Then again, pretty much every aspect of parenting has taken me by surprise thus far so this was just one more for the list.

Butterscotch’s death has taken us from 5 pets down to four. Luckily, we still have Choo-choo the Beta fish and Rocket the snail along with our two fabulous new cats, Frisco and Charky.

I guess that gives me four more chances to get it right.

Have you experienced pet loss with a child? Did you handle it differently? Is it too late to make things right?

Since I have a post running on that blog next week, I sat down to write. I chose the topic: children and discipline. As I got into the article, writing about how important discipline and enforcing rules is in our house, it occurred to me that I’m not very good at practicing what I preach and I started to wonder why that was.

It’s times like these where I really wish I had taken more psychology classes in college or understood more about what makes people tick.

When I think about my own upbringing, about going away to school just at the time in life when most kids begin to test boundaries for the second time—the first boundary testing period being ages 1-3, when children are figuring out just what the boundaries are; the second being the teenage years when kids test the exact limits of those boundaries—I realize that much of my life has been about testing boundaries and pushing limits.

This is often true even in my writing, which is something I really love. As soon as it becomes something on my “need to do” list instead of my “want to do” list, I have a hard time making it a priority. I don’t like when something starts to be in charge of me, I’d rather be in charge of it (hang on, I’m having a parenting epiphany here in regards to my oldest child…save the comments DH)

Take this morning for example. I woke up before 6a.m. and in a rare instance of “sleeping in,” both of my kids slept until almost 7. This gave me a glorious, fresh, early-morning hour to myself. But, in a twist of irony, rather than sitting down to write, I sat down to read. The book in hand: Time to Write by Kelly L. Stone.

My dear friend over at Slightly Wonky gave me this book a few weeks ago. It’s a book (as the title suggests) about finding time and having the discipline to write so that writing becomes not only a priority but also a habit. On multiple occasions, during the precious 45 minutes I spent reading, I found it ironic that somehow I’d found the time to read but the message of the book I was reading was telling me that instead, I should be using just such found and precious time to write.

You see, I got into this whole blogging business for the specific purpose of practicing the skill of writing. I’m a firm believer that all skills require practice and if you truly want to master one, it requires discipline too. So what happens if you lack discipline?

Let’s take my friend and fellow blogger over at Edited to within an Inch of My Life, as an example of someone who has truly made writing her focus and discipline. I met Heather just as her youngest child (of three) was entering elementary school. Heather has wanted to publish a book for a long time but for the past twelve years, she’s been raising kids. Still, she always managed to find time to write, resulting in multiple manuscripts in various stages of completeness.

This year—with six glorious hours a day, five days a week for 180 days from September to June—Heather has really made time to write. Now, seven months later, she has a manuscript in a near-complete stage and not just one but two agents interested in working with her! Why, because she made something she loved to do and wanted to do into something she had to do. It meant giving up other things (like sometimes housework or errands) but look what she’s accomplished.

Heather began her laser-focus on writing as a daily discipline in September but our friendship officially galvanized in late October, when she not only introduced me to but also encouraged me to get involved with NaNo. But since I’m not out to write a novel (yet) and my initial focus is on a younger audience—the picture-book-set rather than the YA-crowd—she felt PiBoIdMo might be more my style.

PiBoIdMo challenges writers to come up with a picture book idea a day for the entire month of November; 30 book ideas in a month. I made it through 21.

This is where I discovered the power of accountability.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for me as a stay-at-home-mom and a freelance writer is carving out my own time. Some how mothers always seem to be able to manage everyone else’s time and schedules in the family but their own hobbies/outlets/pursuits get marginalized.

In fact, this past Mother’s Day, when I was thinking about how I really wanted to spend the day, taking some time to write actually crossed my mind. Then I realized that I needed to make that a priority on a regular basis, not just on the one day a year that celebrates motherhood.

So, here I sit, two days later, making writing a priority. Of course, the notebook where I jotted down all of those great, future picture book ideas back in November sits here next to me. But hey, it takes all of us  practice and discipline to get where we’re trying to go.

Whatever the reason, out of all of the presents she’s received over the past five years—dolls, doll houses, Play Mobil figurines and sets, craft kits, puzzles, games—the toy she plays with most, in fact, almost every day, is a set of 10 colorful nesting blocks.

She does all sorts of things with them. They have deep social bonds and alternating pecking orders, depending on their size and number. And while it’s a marvel to observe her playing with them, it’s also discouraging to think of all the toys and things that don’t interest her.

Several weeks ago, I began thinking about and planning for her 6th birthday. People started asking me what she wanted and it occurred to me that I really didn’t know. In fact, it’s entirely possible that she really didn’t know what she wanted herself.

Then the idea dawned on me that maybe this year, instead of birthday gifts, people could help my daughter support a cause. But what cause?

Aside from our church, where we’re very active and she sees us contribute our time and money, philanthropy in our house happens on-line or by check, usually while children are sleeping. It’s not something they’re at all aware of. And I don’t think this is atypical.

As a former fundraiser, I have been thinking a lot about how to introduce my kids to philanthropy. How should it happen? And when are kids old enough to grasp the concept of giving back?

In my life before kids, the organizations I worked for helped instill in me a deeper sense of altruism. I gained greater appreciation for the importance of social responsibility, being passionate about  organizations’ missions and supporting the greater good.

But what about my daughter, what would resonate with her?

As parents, we strive to ensure that our children feel protected, confident and secure; knowing that when they’re hungry, they’ll be fed; when they’re hurt, someone will be there to make them feel better; when they’re sick, medicine will make them well.

But it’s not this way for children everywhere in the world. Which made me think about the UN Foundation’s Shot@Life campaign. A campaign to help provide children in need with life saving vaccinations so they can live in a healthier world.

Hmm, one child helping out another child, this just might work.

So I explained the idea to DH, who in his ever sage wisdom pointed out that, despite our child’s lack of wants, still, she’s only 6 and having a birthday party where guests show up without presents—after  attending other kids’ parties that have had gift piles—might not go over well.

So I talked about kids in need with my daughter, explained my idea for her birthday, and shared this short video with her:

Then I explained a little about raising money to help kids, who have less than she does. She seemed to get it.

We set a goal of raising enough money to save 6 kids for her 6 birthday (or $120 at $20/kid).

Next, using the online fundraising site, Crowdrise, I made this page for her to track her progress.

Together, we made her birthday invitations and put this message on the back:

We agreed that giving people the option to bring a gift or make a contribution but not both, was the right balance. Then we sent them to her seven guests (we follow the “age +1″ rule of how many guests our kids can invite to each birthday party).

A week ago, I composed an e-mail to just our family members, informing them of Ella’s venture into philanthropy and also posted a message about it to my friends on Facebook.

I still wasn’t sure if our daughter understood all of this but then the donations started coming in. She got really excited about tracking her progress and every time she got a new donation, I made her call and thank the donor.

Except in some cases, the donors weren’t people she knew directly. Like my good friend from high school, who lives in the Netherlands; or another good high school pal out in Chicago; or her Godfather’s sister in St. Louis. Ella’s message was touching people outside her own circle.

So to some donors, I wrote the thank you note and to others, she called her self. Listening to a six-year-old thank someone for helping reach her goal of saving 6 kids from disease is a really moving experience for me.

And then she reached her goal…and then she passed it.

As of today, she’s raised enough funds for the United Nations Foundation to vaccinate, on her behalf, 13 kids against four deadly diseases: Polio, measles, rotovirus and pneumonia.

When our daughter thanks her donors, she keeps thanking them for helping her save kids from cancer but I think it’s because she knows cancer is deadly and she’s witnessed it first-hand, whereas the vaccinations Shot@Life covers are a little harder for a 6 year old to grasp. Especially from a country where these diseases are all but eradicated.

DH and I are enormously proud of the impact this experience has had on all of us and we’re deeply touched by the people (some totally unexpected), who have supported her effort (and if you’re reading this blog post, thank you!).

So what’s my answer to “what age is a good age to start teaching philanthropy?”

I say make philanthropy, service and volunteerism a part of your life now. Make it visible to your kids and involve them in it and you’ll be leading by example. Six certainly seems to be a good age for a child to start grasping it and involved but if helping others and doing good has always been a part of his/her life, then it will be a natural understanding.

There are little things you can start doing now, like having a child put a part of the money s/he gets as gifts or earns into a special piggy bank for philanthropy. My sister-in-law just introduced me to the Moonjar, a bank that has tree parts: one for saving, one for spending and one for sharing.

You can also encourage philanthropy through service to others, by participating in charity sporting events like walks and bike rides or even through signing your child up (or having him/her pay for) memberships in organizations that support causes that are important to your child.

The only wrong step you can take do when it comes to exploring the world of philanthropy with your kids is not taking any at all.

So go on, get up, get motivated and get giving! There’s a whole world out there waiting for you to help it out.

How do you incorporate philanthropy into your child’s life or your own life? Do you talk about the causes you support openly or do you do things privately?