The Unexpected Life

The Unexpected Life Blog

  • I Wore the Wrong Shoes For This

    I Wore the Wrong Shoes For This

    It has been a rainy week here. And when I say rainy I don’t just mean brief periods of soft rain lightly misting the flowers and greening up the grass. I mean absolute downpouring rain. I mean standing at the bus stop waiting for my kid with water gushing around my ankles in a river Read more

  • A Train of Thought

    A Train of Thought

    Recently, someone gave us a box of conversation starter cards to use with kids. The cards cover a range of topics, and have been a fun way for us to talk about some different things at our dinner table. Sometimes Finley’s answers are predictable and sometimes they catch me totally off guard. The other day Read more

  • What Does Normal Even Mean?

    What Does Normal Even Mean?

    The algorithm knows me well and frequently feeds me parenting/mothering specific content. There’s a lot of it. Something I’ve been seeing more lately is posts with the general idea that it takes mothers some extended amount of time to “return to normal” after giving birth. I’ve seen it in a few iterations, taking about “getting Read more

  • Are we having fun yet?

    Are we having fun yet?

    Today, the twins are 9 months old. I remember that this age was around when I started to really have fun with my oldest. I remember shortly after Finley was born, I showed up at a friend’s house for a group hang, baby in tow. It was the first time many of them were seeing Read more

  • A Lesson in Friendship

    A Lesson in Friendship

    My son is almost 5 years old and we’ve officially entered the era of having friends over. Finley has been asking to have one of his little buddies over for dinner for months, and this weekend I finally got my act together enough to make it happen. I had a million excuses for not inviting Read more

  • Not Enough

    Not Enough

    Last weekend, I participated in an IF:Local women’s conference at my church. We enjoyed some time together and watched several of the sessions from IF:2024 that took place in February. The first session of the day was a message from Christine Caine, someone I’ve heard about for years but never heard speak until now. It Read more