Mother of Invention

Parenting often feels like a constant cycle of trial and error. And often those trials don’t feel particularly productive. There are lost causes, like trying to find matching pairs of toddler socks. There are upheavals, like a newborn’s sleeping patterns. There are outright forfeits, like handing over your iPhone in the grocery story line to stave off your toddler’s meltdown. But strife is also extremely fertile ground.

Ripe for innovation.

So long as the parent can be patient and wait. Because somewhere amidst all the failures, a genius breakthrough is able to bubble up to the surface and change your life forever.


Stair Basket

Growing up, my best friend Kate lived in a two-story house. This meant that—unlike my own family’s small one story farmhouse—she had stairs. As if that weren't fascinating enough, she also had a stair basket. This was not just any basket. This was a basket that takes on the shape of stairs. A step-patterned profile that can sit atop two steps simultaneously. This basket blew my f*cking mind.

The basket at my friend’s house kept the stairs free of clutter, allowing everyone to put in various items that actually needed to go upstairs but were not worth making the trip up for.

Last Christmas, my mother asked me for some gift ideas and I mentioned the special stair-shaped basket. Now that Jim and I had a staircase of our own, I longed for an oddly shaped basket to place on it. Christmas morning she gifted me with an irregular shaped basket—unwrapped, because, come on, how would you? So happy was I finally to have both a staircase and a basket to put on it. I felt unstoppable.

And yet, for months I couldn't figure out its purpose. At first I tried to put magazines in it. But magazines are really only needed on nightstands and toilet tanks, so that idea was scrapped. I tried putting throw blankets in the basket, but because we only use blankets on the couch that’s typically where they stay. I tried putting my purse in it when I came through the door, but frankly it just looked stupid having a bag inside a basket. Week after week the basket contents changed until there was an odd month or so when nothing was in it at all. It just sat vacant on the stairs. Amazing, but empty.

But then one day, one magical day I shall never forget, my oldest child took off her shoes after school and left them on the stairs. They were muddy and in the way, so I, in a fit of rage, scooped them up and slammed them into the basket as I walked up the stairs. As I ascended, I felt my anger replaced with something far bigger: a revelation. When I reached the top of the stairs I practically shouted out in excitement. Shoes! The basket could be for my three-year-old’s tiny, muddy, scattered everywhere, can-never-find-the-mate, shoes! I ran into her bedroom and gathered up every pair she owned. I raced back down the stairs and yelped when I realized all eight pairs of her tiny, dirty shoes fit perfectly into the stair basket.

The next morning, without provocation, my child came down the stairs and dug through the basket to find her favorite pair of sparkly TOMS. That evening, when she came through the door, dirty and muddy, she took off her shoes and threw them in the basket.

I had never loved her more.

We embraced in a way that most veterans do with their loved ones when returning home from war. We spun around the living room joyfully realizing that both of our problems were solved by one gloriously mutated basket. Our lives would forever be improved by this solitary piece of woven wonder.


Hair Purse

My three-year-old has curly hair. This statement means something to people who have curly hair, or mothers with children of curly hair. And if you are neither of these, you probably know someone with curly hair, or perhaps know of someone who knows of someone with curly hair. Send them loving thoughts.

My own hair, which is straight, can be easily brushed and pulled back into a ponytail with little to no whining and not a drop of product. But, as I’ve learned, curly-haired people are not afforded the same luxuries.

As an intentional strategy on my part, I give my child freedom over her hair. This means that every morning she gets to decide how she wants to wear it (this does not apply on picture day, national holidays or her birthday). She can choose a ponytail, pigtails, barrettes, a headband, or down and curly. For a while she demanded the Elsa braid from Frozen, which is improbable given her short, spiraled hair. Sometimes she demands to wear a hat, but never a stylish hat. A ski cap or an old birthday party hat. But, with my styling abilities being the only limits, she gets full follicle freedom.

Each morning she chooses a different hairstyle, which requires accoutrements scattered around the house. The spray bottle is always in the laundry room. The hair gel stays in the bathroom. The hair ties, clips, bows and headbands stay in Lowery’s room on her dresser. And the brush and comb are usually in places we fail to look as we are hurrying in the morning.

For her third birthday, Lowery was gifted with a little canvas purse with two leather handles. It’s adorable and she loves carrying it around. She likes to fill it with things a gal-about-town would need, like raisins and socks. But one day, after I had pulled her hair up in two glorious pigtails with sparkly bows and a pink clip, I asked her to pick up the living room before we left for school. Lowery looked at everything strewn on the couch—hair bows, gel, a water bottle, detangler, a comb and a brush—scooped them all up into her arms, took them over to the little canvas purse and dumped them in.

“Let’s hang this with the coats!” she declared.

I shrugged, happy she was helping pick up, and hung the bag of hair products on the coat rack next to her rain jacket and my umbrella. The very moment I hung the bag on the hook, my life forever changed.

For a year I had tried different approaches to our morning routine. Getting her ready in the upstairs bathroom. Fixing her hair in her bedroom. Wrestling her to the ground to put in a sparkly clip. Doing her hair before she even got out of bed in the morning. But no matter the process I tried to implement, we always ended up doing her hair by the door right before she left for school. And this was always stressful because I was running around looking for clips and combs.

But now, there by the door hangs a bag of all of Lowery’s hair products. So as we walk out of the house, I can easily access everything I need to get Lowery’s day started off right: perfectly coiffed.

Shopping Cart

There are few activities I hate more than grocery shopping. I find it long and boring and expensive, and I never get home with everything I needed. Jim is more than happy to go for me, and usually does, but I still have to write out an extremely detailed grocery list. I can never decide if I should go during the week after work when I’m tired, but without the kids. Or on the weekends, when I’m more energized, but am with the children. If I go with the kids, I usually come home in such a state of depression, or exhaustion, that I refuse to cook anything I bought.

But one Saturday, a few weeks back, Jim and I needed to get diapers and wipes and a variety of foods to nourish our children. While we have done many configurations of grocery shopping, we’ve never gone together with both children.

When we went to reach for a cart, our three year old demanded to ride in one. Because we had the infant in her carrier, there simply wasn’t room for both children and groceries. Jim and I looked at each other blankly.

“I guess I could just get a cart by myself and Lowery could ride in that…” Jim shrugged.

“Ok…” I said. Unaware of how my life was about to dramatically change.

So with London safely resting in her carrier in my cart, and Lowery in the seat of Jim’s cart, we began rolling one after the other into the grocery store. And I swear a fluorescent light came on above me.

“Do you think you could take your cart and go get toilet paper?” I asked Jim.

As he left, I gathered up everything we needed in the produce aisle and then texted Jim to get eggs and butter. I went off in search of meat and bread. After a bit, we saw each other across the store and he yelled down the aisle: “MILK?”

“YES!” I declared. “I’LL GET RICE!”

Texts whirled back and forth:

Got diapers

Got chicken

Pancake mix?

Yes. I’ll get syrup

I’ll get diaper rash cream

Oh no….she has a rash?

Ketchup?

Yes. And get mayo too.

This is fun.

You’re fun.

Stop flirting. Get bagels.


On and on until we finally met up at the checkout lane with two carts full of food. And children. We looked at each other proudly. We had done it. We had figured it out. We had invented the smartest, easiest, quickest, most productive and relaxing way to grocery shop with children. We embraced each other passionately. A tear rolled down my cheek. Swollen with pride and elation, we wheeled our carts one after the other into the checkout lane.

“We are together!” I exclaimed to the checkout lady.

She looked up and over her half glasses. Peered at my cart and then at Jim’s. And I could tell by the expression on her face that what she was seeing was nothing new.

Becoming a parent warrants ingenuity. But for the first few years of parenting, everything felt like a loss. A loss of sleep. Loss of time. Loss of privacy. Loss of identity. But eventually, we began to have some victories. We began to see our lives adjust and accommodate our children. And when we are open to it, we can see how we are innovative when we patiently allow for circumstances to take over.

Because it is true that necessity is the mother of invention.

So long as she mates with Father Time.