I read Hunt, Gather, Parent almost a year and a half ago, and the fact that I’m still motivated to chat about it after all these months should tell you something! While it did take me some time to move this post to the top of the queue, it’s not for lack of enthusiasm. This is one of the most interesting, unique, and actionable parenting books I’ve read in awhile, and one I still think about often in our daily interactions as a family. And it’s one I regularly reference in conversation, so this post feels like a natural extension! A brief summary for the unfamiliar: the author, Michaeleen Doucleff (with her three-year-old daughter!), visits three of the oldest cultures in the world: the Maya in the Yucatan Peninsula, Inuit families in the Arctic Circle, and Hadzabe families in Tanzania. All have found success raising happy, helpful, well-adjusted children, and her mission is to understand why by living with families – and applying their techniques to her own daughter along the way. She shares her findings (including lots of practical takeaways) with the goal of resetting the American paradigm, restoring sanity to parenting, and creating better outcomes for our kids. The Maya culture, with their unusually helpful, generous, and loyal kids, is the one that inspired Michaeleen to write the book. It’s the section I got the most out of, too – when I went back to look over my notes to write this post, I had far more starred and underlined ideas than I had room to share! Here are five that have particularly stuck with me: 1. Quit entertaining and instead invite. This starts from the beginning and continues until the teen years. “Toss out the idea that you have to ‘entertain’ the baby with toys and other

We’re in Lent, the season in the Christian calendar that leads to Easter. It’s often a time when Christians will either fast from something or add a spiritual discipline to their days, with the intent of orienting their minds and hearts more toward Jesus. Lent seems as good a time as any to debut this series, though I anticipate it will stretch for years into the future, as our kids grow and the way we seek to form our family and its faith grows alongside them. An admission up front: there will likely be no groundbreaking ideas here. You might find these posts almost at the level of duh simplicity. But if you’re anything like me, you need the regular and very simple reminder that family discipleship does not always have to be complicated. More than perhaps any other area of my life, I have the instinct here to build the big machine, to devise the elaborate practice – and still, more often than not, to worry that I’m not doing enough. This is not all bad: I believe there is a direct relationship between how much creating a fertile environment for our children to know and trust Jesus matters to me (and John) and how much thought we put into how we are doing that. But I hope through this occasional series I can encourage you (if it’s something that matters to you) AND MYSELF that little by little adds up. So without further ado, here are the first three (very simple) family faith formation practices that we’ve been practicing with our 7-year-old, 4-year-old, and 1-year-old. We go to church. Aside from a too-long hiatus during the pandemic, going to church every Sunday has been a priority for our family. This essay does a much better job than

Friends, I have gone back and forth on gift guides this year! On the one hand, they take a lot of time to prepare, they might in the end be only nominally helpful, and the sheer preponderance of gift guides on the internet feels almost distasteful. On the other hand, I genuinely enjoy compiling them, the delight of helping one of you find a perfect gift is intoxicating, and they do contribute to the cost of keeping my internet home online. A conundrum! One gift guide I knew I’d share? What we’re actually giving our kids this Christmas! It’s been a favorite post since 2019, when we had a four-year-old and a one-year-old. Below, I’ve shared what each of our kiddos will be finding under the tree this year, along with a few suggestions I gave to relatives. As a sort of gift guide compromise, I’ve also listed a few of the very favorite kid items we already own at the bottom if you’re looking for a few more suggestions. All three kids will be getting a selection of clothes from my favorite consignment sale. When I shopped earlier this fall, I set aside some of my favorite pieces to place under the tree instead of into their drawers! In addition… June (who is almost seven) will be receiving:— A mama-daughter camp weekend. We have our eye on a particular sleepaway camp for the future (June looooves to watch their promotional video, ha), and thought it might be wise to dip our toe in before committing to a week in the summer. This introvert is a bit nervous, but also thinks it will be SO fun to spend the weekend with just my biggest girl!— The Penderwicks boxed set, because we both fell in love with the first book earlier

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve ended a post on Em for Marvelous with “well, I’m not sure if this will be helpful for anyone, but here you go…?” …and then it has turned out to be one of my most popular posts. In fact, in a survey a few years ago, a reader specifically called out that exact line, saying, “If you say ‘I’m not sure if this will be helpful,’ I know it’s going to be one of my favorite posts!” Reader, I am tempted to write that disclaimer on this post, because it feels deeply personal and highly specific to my unique circumstances. However, having written here for some time now, I know there’s a kind of inverse relationship going on, and it tracks with what I learned as a poet: that the more specific detail you can bring to a piece of writing, the more universally it will resonate. The details that seem so idiosyncratic are actually what make writing come alive for others, because in those details they can see the nuance of their own life. I hope that holds true here. I want to write about working as a mom because it matters deeply to me, and I want to share this conversation with you smart, wonderful ladies, and I also want to capture it in the moment for my children to read one day. And there’s one more reason: it’s important to me to be truthful about what I share here. That doesn’t mean sharing everything, but it does mean (so far as it’s possible) not misleading you – even unintentionally, even by omission. Many of you know me as a working parent. I would hate for one of you to look at me, having classified me as such, and wonder