By Paige Smith Orloff
I SWORE UP, DOWN and all around, that I would never raise another puppy. Puppies, I said glibly to friends considering getting their own, are like children, without benefit of diapers. What I should have said, instead: Be careful of the stone certainties, the pronouncements, the “I’ll nevers”–they’ll bite you in the ass, every time. And it did, as you can read here.
From the category archives:
Raising Kids
By Paige Smith Orloff
RIVALRY? HA! THAT’S teeny, tiny potatoes. My resident little sister and big brother–my beautiful kids–have tabled competition, in favor of all out war. It’s looking like Afghanistan in my house: no end in sight. How do you cope?
From 'The Betty Betz Teenage Cookbook', 1953
By Paige Smith Orloff
MY FIRST PICNIC of the season is breathing down my neck: it’s the capper to the kids’ last day of school. Sounds lovely, right? Well, maybe for someone less spent than I am at the moment. With none of my own cooking creativity left to mine, I decided to delve into the archives here at TSP to see what past picnic resources I might unearth. Are you in need of outdoor eating support? Read on.
http://www.vimeo.com/12300775
By Paige Smith Orloff
FOR WELL OVER a year now, our family’s little sister, aka the Rock, has been telling just about everyone she meets all about her professional ambitions. You’ll never guess. Princess? (She’s got that covered.) Doctor? (Only when we’re at the pediatrician’s office, and she’s intrigued by the reflex hammer.) Mommy? (Well, yes, but there’s much more than that to life, she says...)
Pleiades and Stardust. Credit: Rogelio Bernal Andreo (Deep Sky Colors)
By Paige Smith Orloff
MY KIDS ARE exploding this spring, turning into ever-evolving, endlessly fascinating, newly reinvented versions of themselves. And though I try to pay attention, it seems that many days, I’m just hanging on for the ride. It goes like this:
By Paige Smith Orloff
WHEN I FIRST LEFT LOS ANGELES for the rural slice of paradise where I now live, I had trouble adjusting to lots of things: No dinner delivery. Strangers’ insistence on actual conversations at the Post Office. Repairmen operating on their own, often secret, always elastic, schedules. But my biggest adjustment? Dialing my own speed way, way down. I’m finally gaining on it. The details are here.
By Anastasia Smith
OY, I’VE GOT IT bad. As I round the quarter-century bend in my life, some primordial alarm clock within me is screaming. (Anyone else?) Here are the details of my current “issue.”
By Paige Orloff
I DON’T KNOW about you, but I am obsessed–OBSESSED–with Glee. If you have any memories of high school at all, good or bad, and you like to sing in the car, the shower or somewhere more public, this show is, dare I say, for you. My enthusiasm for the Glee kids has me singing everywhere (much to the horror of my kids). Well, screw that. I can sing if I want to, and dance, too, and damn it, I’ve got the playlist to prove it, sisters. Here it is.
This is not my tattoo, Mom.
MOTHER’S DAY, A manufactured holiday that can sometimes be second only to Valentine’s Day in overpromising and underdelivering, is mercifully over, says Sister Paige. The final score in her three-generation household, where she’s not the only mother: not bad. Get the full story right here, in reprise.
HAPPY MOTHERS DAY! Our Sister Anastasia has an homage to her vintage mama (above).
Bedtime's not quite this peaceful...but it's close
F OR THE LAST few years, our Sister Paige’s family’s bedtime routine has been one of divide and conquer. The H would take bathtime, and Paige dealt with pajamas and teeth. Then her husband landed a project overseas…and the system had to give. Did all hell break loose with just one parent on hand? A tale of sweet sibling surrender.
The Rock, with her favorite meal.
THIS WEEK, THE (PRETTY EXCELLENT) parenting site Babble released its list of the top 50 Mommy Food Bloggers. Or is that Food Mommy Bloggers? You all know Paige cares deeply for her blogging sisters, and for her kids, but the list made her confront a dark secret: When it comes to cooking (and blogging) about food for kids, she could not care less. Read her confession (and win a kid-friendly cookbook or two she’s handing down).
OUR SISTER MARION LOVES PASSOVER, though it’s not strictly in her religious heritage. It is the traditions of the annual meal that inform her, including, as they do, the ancient questions that are repeated and pondered again. One of those questions only Marion asks, and only quietly to herself at that, as she is reminded of her personal all-time favorite man of faith, quietly reassuring herself that it’s just fine that he was imaginary. Meet her favorite magical guest now.
First time here? Here's the idea: TSP is a network of blogs about the many facets of the word sister, and the concept of sisterhood. A sisterhood of sister blogs, you could say. Whatever sister means to you, from identical twin to sister-in-law (or in-friendship or in-feminism), we’ll make room to listen in about it or express it on TSP. Like the slogan up top says, “Don’t you have something to say to your sister?” We've got galleries of art and literature by and about sisters, and a Sisterpedia of sisterly trivia...but now we're getting ahead of ourselves. The quick study: 
As the suffix of its name suggests, 
No surprise, really, that sisterhood, often life’s longest relationship and always one of its most important, has been the Muse for so much creative self-expression by women, and also by men. 
