Eliana Osborn

Your partner will make you want to throw up at some point. Pure, unadulterated disgust.

There are some days of parenting that are magical, full of unicorns and four leaf clovers and lottery winnings. Those are the moments when I catch myself, just for a second, feeling content and happy and looking around trying to freeze things. Out of 7000 days, those maybe make up five a year.

I’ve got two tales of hideous male behavior — at the elementary school, somewhere typically full of good vibes and happiness and all that.

I get how we want to make our kids successful and everything, right from the start. Feeding into the pressure, here’s the tagline from Starling’s company: “The world’s first word-tracking system that can improve your child’s trajectory for life.”

My Life on the Road (or MLR) is not what I expected...the idea of not waiting for experience to come to you permeates the book.

I cried every single day of my life until I was 18 years old. I did not know this was abnormal.

A new, exciting trend is to have food pantries for college students. I talked to an AmeriCorps volunteer running one of these centers and she was matter-of-fact about the need — and how little is being done. Today’s college students may be young and single, living la vida loca. But more and more are what we call ‘nontraditional’: slightly older, employed full-time (or close to it), supporting a family, a veteran, etc.

Hunger for nontraditional students doesn’t mean surviving on ramen: It means they are not the only person in the household who's in need.

Sometimes the nicest kids turn into whole new people when they come over to your house.

When did I discover that sterilization isn’t as cut and dry as it seems? While sitting in a hospital gown, signing my life away, awaiting surgery.

I’m not a fan of repeating things over and over so that they lose their meaning. "Pledge: a solemn promise or agreement." It is that extra level, the solemnity, that makes me uncomfortable with casual usage.