Allison Cooper

I’m planning ahead for the holidays, getting a budget intact, and asking some experts about how to really up the ante with my multitasking skills.

I grew up dreaming of living in that house with the perfect blue shutters and the white picket fence, three perfectly interspaced children running

[CN: mention of suicide] It’s not all real. We don’t live curated lives that are built around purposeful omissions of reality...

Luck.

I've noticed an evolution within myself over the past year: I’ve been avoiding leaving my house at all costs.

When I brought my son into the world, I thought that he would be an awful lot like me. He had to be, right? He grew inside me; I nourished him; I was the one home with him day in and day out during those very impressionable years, while my husband worked a grueling military schedule — yet there are few similarities to be found.

I am still a very spiritual person, but don’t necessarily agree with a lot of the things I was taught growing up — or the way it was shoved down our throats. So when Branden came along, we decided not to baptize him, because I just didn’t believe our sweet baby was born in sin. My husband wasn’t religious, and this was the right choice for us.