Dana Burland

Yellow tulips Bright, cheery, bold Stand tall and bend to the light in an optimistic search for brightness Yellow tulips Sat on my table 1 year ago, when we didn’t know, when we weren’t sure, when we hunkered down. Low, contained, closed When each day felt too heavy to start again Our home base constantly quaked We kept the kids home and worked around them while my working hours were slashed in half and uncertainty was all we knew Yellow tulips Remained constant on the center table of our home for weeks Making me smile through my clenched jaw, eyes heavy and bagged, mind racing and constantly bracing Yellow tulips Stand tall Bend toward the light Search for brightness I survived and am learning now. I’m taller. I’m bending. I’m searching. Nearly cherry Like you Yellow tulips

Guys, it's 2021–we’re not out of the darkness yet but there’s a lot of hope ahead.  Let’s get bangs. Let’s blow up our gardens and start from scratch. Let’s get crazy making homemade bread again. In my defense with the bangs thing, this seems to have been predetermined for me due to weird postpartum hair regrowth. I finally had a if-you-can’t-beat-em-join-em moment at the salon a few weeks ago. It’s working out so far. Now the garden… I'd call last year's garden a flop . The biggest drama was a gang of neighborhood animals getting to my produce before I could. This year I’m building a damn fence. Before the fence I needed to clear out what was there so I can start with a blank slate, which includes expanding from last year‘s footprint.  If we're going big enough to build a fence, we're going big enough to expand the garden footprint too. Here's a look at the cleared out space, brought to you by an insanely wonderful Spring like day at the end of March. I...

A few Saturdays ago I found myself sitting at the kitchen table with Ben drinking coffee and talking. Did you read that? Two adults. Who are the parents of two young children. Sitting down. In a room separate from the young children. Drinking drinks that were meant to be warm while they were warm. Talking to each other (which implies it wasn’t too loud to hear one another). And enjoying it. Truly this moment could have been sponsored by Brio trains. And it was worth about as much as a Brio train set too, my god the price on those things! At 3.5+ years of moming getting more of these little moments is an indication the levers have shifted. There’s an ease in the minute-by-minute work: everyone in this house can walk and play and eat on their own. Which comes with a bump in daily work: prepping more than one mealtime option due to variations in teeth and food acceptance; teaching personal and household responsibility expectations; bigger learning lessons in general. T...