Kelly McClymer's Blog, page 25

Does this girl look like she's ever suffered the indignities a little brother can heap upon a big sister? No.

**Woo Hoo! 25 Days! HALFWAY there! Today I'm doing a BIG push to get the news of the 50 Day 99 cents sale of the Fairy Tale Bride promotion to benefit Turtle Mom Daughter's Wedding Fund. Please help get the news out. Tell everyone you know to come take a look.**

This Turtle Mom had three sisters and no brothers. Perhaps if I had had a brother (he would have been called Kevin, as my...

Our first "family" car was old, yellow, and tended to break down a lot.

Family is a good thing. Traveling with family can quickly become too much of a good thing. I think of the time when daughter was just a baby and we drove to Long Island for a family reunion in a car without air conditioning. In July. She sweated away miserably in the car seat strapped in the back as we sat in traffic jam after traffic jam. Sweltering really doesn't do the experience justice. Smeltering, maybe? I thought s...

NOTE: My computer is acting wonky and I can't get pictures to load. Will put up tomorrow. If computer behaves.

First of all, I don't want to tar all Turtle Mothers with my messy brush (tar is sticky, after all). However, this one, solitary, individual Turtle Mom is an extremely poor housekeeper. No ifs, ands or buts about it. There are pictures that document this lack of housekeeping sprinkled throughout this blog series. There are more, but I will not subject you to them. I will concede the p...

This Turtle Mom tends to come out and blink in surprise at the arrival of most holidays. Including Memorial Day (my first clue was the sign warning about a parade in town this a.m., which effectively prevents me from leaving my house for two hours).

I debated forging ahead with my intended post. And then decided to switch gears and use this post to honor those in the family who have served. I don't have everyone here (couldn't scrounge pictures fast enough). Hope to add more as day...

We have a lot of pictures. A storage tub full of them. And another storage tub full. And there are still some pictures I haven't (re)found yet that are tucked into drawers and boxes.

The hand-me-down furniture. The awesome umbrella stroller. Corded phones. Bean bag chairs. How could I throw history away?

Horror effects without effort.

A lot of them are very bad, technically.

The kind a Tiger Mom would throw away.

Or burn.

Or rip into tiny shreds and then burn.

But I'm a Turtle Mom, so I keep them, ...

Can you tell he already thinks being the youngest is a raw deal?

To the even mix of one-boy-one-girl family, we added another boy. This made a lot of change for daughter to handle in just about two years: new state, new house, new school, new friends, new brother, another new brother.

She would have preferred a sister, I'm sure. Someone to dress up in pink and practice making french braids with.

That's not what her youngest brother brought to the mix.

His motto: What's mine is mine...and what's...

It seems appropriate that I would be late to post this confession. I've been in my shell all day formatting and editing the rest of the Once Upon a Wedding series books. Three are up at Smashwords, two at Amazon, and two more are close to being put up.

There are no pictures to depict this confession. If you've ever picked a child up from daycare, school, karate, dancing, or the Y, you've seen it. The last kid left. The one waiting for the mom or dad who hasn't yet arrived.

That was sometimes...

It seems reasonable to assume that Tiger Moms dress the part –  a wardrobe that says success, drive, winner, get-outta-my-way-or-get-run-over. They probably know what decade it is, too, so you won't see a Tiger Mom with a 70s perm.

Not me, but an excellent metaphor for my sartorial crimes against nature.

Turtle Moms, by their very nature, not so much. Unless fashion is their shell? I am on hazy ground here, though, because…I am a definite fashion fail. Pepto-Bismol pink sweat pants and a...

Covered head to toe, except for that pesky bared arm!

Both Tiger Moms and Turtle Moms know how critical family can be.

In both senses of the word.

Especially grandmothers.

From the day she was born, both grandmothers waged a campaign to keep a hat on her head and a coat on her back in the winter.

They waged this campaign with sighs, tongue clicks and outright statements such as, "You're not going to take her out with a hat/coat/sweater/suit of armor? In this weather?"

She loved this coat. Can you...

The phrase Tiger Mom gives the impression of a mom who would rip you apart if you threatened her child, right? Turtle Mom, not so much.

This Turtle Mom thought I would do anything for my daughter.

When ScienceDad was ready for grad school, he considered several schools. We visited Stony Brook, and took in the sights, thinking about how our life would change. Picnicked by an idyllic duck pond. I sneaked into my shell, inspired by the many ducks on the pond, to begin thinking of a story about...