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Emma tugged at her piggy tails. “They’re too babyish,” she muttered. I knew she was feeling too babyish, as well.

At 39 weeks pregnant, I can’t think about anything except going into labor. Is it going to happen now? How about now? Maybe now?

Emma just walked by me. My 6-year-old girl is decked out in my wedding veil and a summer sundress despite the 17-degree weather.

My 5-year-old son, Vincent, tells the truth. Well, more specifically, he tells the truth on others. In other words, he's a tattletale.

There are a lot of things I’m good at. Cooking isn’t one of them.

My baby boy is due in a month. Of course, I’m worrying about the little guy’s health, labor and delivery, and how I’m going to lose my baby weight. But I also can’t stop wondering how my daughter is going to adjust to sharing the spotlight.

Though Benny has a great vocabulary and has no difficulty expressing his needs and wants, I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever fully understand what he’s thinking.

I thought that once the video game was hooked up he’d be immediately engaged in some game for hours.

At first glance, you might think our dog, Jasper, isn’t the brightest pup of the litter.

My usually bubbly girl stared out the window as I drove up Interstate 83. Her frown spoke volumes. I knew she didn’t want to go to the dentist. She had made that clear in the days leading up to the visit.

My little guy, age 3, hadn’t played outside in what felt like weeks. Sure, the grass was soggy, and small piles of snow peppered the ground. But the sun was shining, and Benny was decked out in his new waterproof boots. So we went out to play.

Is it wrong that I threaten my son to be good or Santa won’t come?

The three-year age difference between my children is never more apparent than at the holidays.

Although I know I should send her back to her room, she looks so sweet with droopy eyes and disheveled hair. I can’t help but pull her into bed next to me.

My family’s a little particular about routines. Mom and Dad eat at the same restaurant every Sunday morning. They take a long walk along the same Hanover path. When it comes to holidays, our routines are even more defined.

What’s harder for a dad? Shopping for his daughter’s dress for homecoming? Or realizing that his little girl is growing up.

One of the worst things about the holiday season is making small talk at gatherings. How interesting can the weather, the economy and Balloon Boy be?

As someone who’s never been a fan of mornings, I know how hard it is to wake up. I also know what it’s like to be jostled awake, against my will, and forced to face the day.

“When I was a penguin,” Benny told me recently, after we read a book about penguins. “I had all my friends over to my home. And then a monster came. And then ....”

The arrival of a new baby is quite a motivator.

Six years ago, new motherhood hit me with waves of worry, joy, responsibility, love and more worry. Add to it the fact that we moved to a new home in Chambersburg — where we had no family and few friends —and I often felt like I was drowning.

See, I have lost the battle of cleaning my 5-year-old’s room. Well, actually I gave up. And I don’t give up easily. But it’s not my son’s fault. It’s because he has over-indulgent parents.

Seeing how different my children are from myself can be jarring. But seeing how much we’re alike is more of a shock.

In an attempt to educate folks on how to act around pregnant women, I pulled together this list of do’s and don’ts.

I wonder how much loss aversion influences my parenting. How what I’ve gained slips through my fingers like a minnow, flashing away before I appreciate its beauty, while what I’ve lost crashes like a boulder into still water, rippling through me long after first impact.

“Mommy, if I get lots of money, I can buy anything I want. You can buy everything with lots of money,” Vincent chirped. I began by saying “Well, honey, money can’t buy love.”

Poor puppy Jasper is getting a little snip-snip that will hopefully make displaying inappropriate affection for Emma’s stuffed pony but a distant memory of dogs gone wild. And because I (foolishly) taught my children to be inquisitive beings, there are a lot of questions surrounding this event.

Would I be a better mother if I didn’t work? It’s a question I ponder at least a hundred times a day, while I’m at work.

When a friend, entering the second trimester of her second pregnancy, lamented how much faster she was gaining weight this time around, I told her that was nothing.

I actually dread mealtime, or hope that my husband, William, just decides to throw a pizza in the oven, a staple of the Dellinger household.

Some rules parents set are obvious. Don’t hit, don’t bite, play nice. And then there are the rules that, even as the words fall from our lips, we are sure no one has ever had to actually utter until that moment.

In my professional life, I love learning new things. I embrace new technology and the latest online initiatives. At home, I’m the complete opposite.

“If you were a dog, Daddy, what dog would you be?” Emma asked recently at dinner. Random questions are popular among the 6-and-under crowd.

I never really wanted to have kids. Then I met William. He was everything I was looking for: funny, good-looking, ambitious, hard working. And did I mention he had an 8-year-old daughter?

Benny walked up to a bunch of big kids — at least, big kids by his 2-year-old standards — at the park. No hesitation, no shyness. “Whatcha doin’?”

Time can be my best friend and my worst enemy. When Mara wakes me at 4:30 a.m., I’m not a big fan. When I’m rocking on the front porch on a breezy summer afternoon with Mara on my lap, I’m happy for every second.

If environmental consciousness had a brute squad, Emma would be its commander-in-chief. The squad leader’s favorite tactic: Strategically aimed guilt.

I have a theory about the folks at Disney. They don’t like women. And, more specifically, they don’t like moms.

Emma sat down with me on the couch. “Mom, I have to tell you something. Something real. Something important.” “OK,” I answered, knowing this something could be anything from the puppy chewed up another of Benny’s diapers to So-and-so at school has stinky breath.

Add a colorful punch to your Fourth of July bash.

Mail is piled on the mantle, and I know I have to go through it. But I dread going through the bills, junk mail and envelopes filled with insurance paperwork. I’d rather scrub 12 toilets, wash sinks full of dishes and fold clothes from morning ’til night.

Emma had puppy fever. All she talked about was puppies. How cute they are, how responsible (“consponsible,” as she put it) having one would make her, how if she could just have a puppy she would never, never, never want anything else ever, ever, ever.

My husband and I need Mara as much as she needs us. This became apparent after spending a recent weekend without her.

As a mother, most of my day is spent teaching, everything from how to zipper a jacket to why we say “thank you.” But I never realized just how much my children would teach me.

Check out these step-by-step instruction to help you turn a daily newspaper and a tablecloth into something your mom can sit-a-pon.