Illyse Lane

With Love Comes Torture

Walking out of the bookstore, my eye caught a book title I couldn't resist. Â 101 Ways to Torture Your Husband. Â Not that I am intentionally looking for ways to make Really Big Guy's life miserable, but I was curious. What could the author tell me that I didn't already know?

Posted -144115 sec. ago.

Reverse Psychology

I was not a believer. Even though all the meteorologists agreed that snow was inevitable, I refused to accept it. After all, we've been down this road before. So when I felt the first drop late Friday evening, I skeptically cracked a smile. And hours later, with a light dusting covering our yard, I insisted to my family that by morning, there would not be much more than the mere inch that had alre…

Posted 5 days ago.

Taking It Literally

It was 4:00AM. The house was silent. And then the dog sat up. He started barking, prompting Really Big Guy to go exploring. He found one kid in bed but the other was missing. At least temporarily. Little Guy was hiding under the kitchen table fully dressed for school. He'd been trying to reach a cereal bowl on a high shelf. And the racket woke the dog who barked and then woke us, simultaneously st…

Posted 1 week ago.

Good Things Come In Grocery Packages

January. What can I say? The holidays have long past. Our normal routines are in full groove. And we may be left with sticker shock as to how much our wallets shrank over December. But I'm not talking about Christmas. I'm talking about groceries. Maybe it was the fact that without school, the kids were around the refrigerator more. Maybe it was since the weather was cold, it took more energy to st…

Posted 2 weeks ago.

Things I Learned in Canada

I'm not adventurous. I like short distance trips. Familiar settings. I don't care for any form of mass transportation. I like to be in control. So when I was voted the parent most likely to be sitting on the bus with Big Guy's hockey team for the roughly 17 hour drive to Ottawa, I didn't see myself as the fortunate parent. This nearly week long trip played into everything I dread.

Posted 3 weeks ago.

Things I Learned on the Bus

There I sat, with 39 of my new closest friends. On the bus. But it was not just any bus. It was a chartered bus. A bus that I paid $147 per person to sit on. A bus that Big Guy and I spent almost two days on as we traveled to the Great White North.

Posted 1 mon. ago.

The Numbers Game

It's New Year's Eve. And it's all about the numbers. It's the number of pounds we vow to lose. The amount of money we vow to save. We'll promise to reduce the number of times we yell and the number of cell phone minutes we use. We'll commit to raise the number of quality hours we spend with our family and to reduce the number spent on wasted activities. Whether it's the number of resolutions we ma…

Posted 1 mon. ago.

A No More Tears Christmas

Ah, Christmas Eve. Once the sky is dark, there's only anticipation. Wonder. It's the sprinkling of reindeer food on the grass. It's not forgetting to put out the cookies and milk. It's trying to fall asleep in a too quiet house, counting down the hours until the sun will show just a glimpse.

Posted 1 mon. ago.

Christmas Slacker

My plan has backfired. I knew Christmas was coming. But I'd been pretending it wasn't just around the corner. I'd been playing a game with myself, not giving into the Christmas craze that surfaced months ago. It started around Halloween, when I noticed Christmas lights and stockings on sale across from the pumpkins, masks and candy. It continued as I stopped by the mall, long before Thanksgiving, …

Posted 1 mon. ago.

Sports Fairy Dust

Years ago, I sat at a hockey game with all of the other parents, watching the then seven and eight year olds battle it out for a win. That day, Big Guy happened to score a goal. After the cheers died down, one mother of a boy on my son's team said to another mother, who was also the parent of a boy on the team, "Yes, but he was cherry picking." Seriously?

Posted 2 mon. ago.

about this blog

Illyse Lane

Illyse is a TriangleMom2Mom featured blogger, appearing every Thursday.

She is a stay-at-home mom who also works as a freelance writer. She resides in Raleigh with her husband and two sons, ages 9 and 10.Originally from New York, Illyse fled the cold to attend Florida State University. After a brief return to life in the city, she relocated to Raleigh to work for GE Capital and has never looked back. Illyse is sure that as long as all the boys in her home continue to speak, she will have plenty of material to write about.

Illyse appears Thursdays on TriangleMom2Mom.