E. L. Lane Writer

My husband walks out of the kitchen in a huff, “I’m done,” he says running his fingers through his hair, “I don’t know what else to do. You try.” We cannot get our four-year-old daughter, Leia, to eat. We’ve tried not giving her any snacks so she’s hungry for mealtime and negotiating bribes of desserts/outings/toys/gold/diamonds at the end of a meal. These tactics seem to work at first, but after the novelty wears off, she flexes her stubborn-muscle and squarely refuses to eat. She then uses that muscle to play a game of tug of war with us where she drags our asses through a mud pit and leaves us with bruised cheeks, low morale, and a fair amount of post-traumatic stress. Leia’s entire diet consists of: 1. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. 2. Tyson’s Dinosaur Chicken Nuggets or McNuggets (and heaven forbid you try to feed her any other kind of chicken nugget or chicken in any other form!). 3. Pizza Hut, Little Caesar’s, Papa John’s, or certain local pizzeria piz...

Thanksgiving 2017 Family Photo Above is our Thanksgiving 2017 family photo. Cute, right? But look at those bandaids on my daughter’s forehead. These are covering up what remains of our visit to the Science Museum just four days prior, which is also the day I consider the worst day of my life as a mom. If you follow me on Instagram , you’ve probably already read an abbreviated version of what happened that fateful day, but I’m writing this now with the hope that if you ever find yourself in a similar situation (but I pray that you never do), you’ll be able to deal with it like a champ. On the day in question, my daughter had woken up a bit fussier than usual, but I thought, “Eh, she’ll lighten up and start having fun at the museum when she sees all of the fun stuff there.” We packed up the day’s snacks, drinks, lunch, and pull-ups, and drove to the museum. Once there, she seemed to be getting in a better mood. She was awed by the fish, and she was ecstatic while petting a...

The exterior of the Museum of Ice Cream. If you look closely, you can see Little Leia and her "Dada." Before I went to the Museum of Ice Cream, I read a few reviews from other moms in one of the Facebook mom groups that I frequent. They weren’t shining reviews by any stretch of the imagination, so I was a bit nervous about going with Leia and my husband. The first thing I took note of was that parking was a pain. The installation is in Miami Beach, so that means that only street parking is available. So here’s the first tip... 1. Get there early to look for parking, but not too early! We got tickets for December 22nd. My husband took the day off of work, and we left our house an hour and a half before the time on our ticket (11:30am). We got there an hour early (10:30am), and found parking two blocks from the building. We tried to enter the museum early, but they explained that they couldn’t let us in until 20 minutes before our ticket time. So we went across the street ...