the girls
I’ve been feeling feisty lately.  The brouhaha over Publishers Weekly’s Top Ten books of 2009 — which had no women authors on it — has left me thinking a lot about women’s place in our cultural conversation.   And, as I’ve been driving my carpools and snaking the grocery store aisles, I’ve been composing an essay about it — fully aware of the irony that my life as a busy mom was going to make it pretty much impossible for me to ever write that essay.   But then I remembered I’d already written it. Or at least, a version of it.

s i s t e r s
I stumbled on this little moment in our old home movies over the weekend and couldn’t believe how sweet it was.  And so I made this video. (I’m the little blond sister, by  the way…) Posted in news!

9 great things about my husband
It’s my 9-year wedding anniversary this week.  (Nine years married, fifteen together.) And so, a nine-best ode to my awesome husband.  Here are nine great things about him — though, really, I could go on and on: 9.  The mustache. 8.  The pants.  7

something we got right
I spoke on a panel last weekend at the Texas Book Festival with the very charming Jancee Dunn, who has a baby.  Fellow panelist and Houston author Gwendolyn Zepeda and I wound up giving her parenting advice.  And while we were talking, I heard myself say something very true.  It can be so easy to second-guess the parenting choices you’ve made — but there is one thing I know for sure we got right: Audiobooks. As babies, both my kids hated the car.  Like, any time I drove anywhere for the first two years of their lives, they

more décor
Here’s another before and after. A really awesome mod chair from my grandfather’s building materials company that I snagged from my mom’s garage a few weeks ago: And now, in my living room, freshly back from the upholsterer’s: