Kirjahaku

this is how you know is a debut poetry collection that illuminates ordinary life with stunning verse by award-winning poet Rachel Toalson. Blending the personal with the universal, Rachel explores parenting, friendship, love, anxiety, gender expectations, fear, struggle, hope, and more, capturing pieces of everyday life with humor, irony, and all the seriousness that turns poetry into a window to the world.Divided into four chapters (how to be, how to parent, how to love, how to live), this is how you know explains what it means to love and be loved, to rise above the flawed messages we have heard all our lives, to take off our masks and be seen. Readers will find joy and candor and vulnerability in this collection that proves we find ourselves in each other.

Idiodare: 1. (Verb) To defy or challenge someone to do something idiotic. 2. (Noun) An idiotic challenge. 3. (Fact) Something with which you'll become intimately familiar in a house full of boys.There's nothing like a crew of boys to show you how funny bodily functions are, how loud a house can get, and how little one should care about clothes, nice shoes, style, and personal care. Boys see the world as a gigantic playground. They see home as a safe place to be their truest, messiest selves. They see moms as a source of unconditional, never-ending love and dads as an eternal jungle gym.There's just nothing like them.From the voice behind the popular Crash Test Parents blog comes Book 3 of the Crash Test Parents series. With wit and eloquence, Rachel shines a light on what it's like to live with males who unintentionally destroy everything, unwittingly walk around in a dirt cloud, and wholeheartedly enjoy making everything a competition--especially if it involves eating.This Life With Boys includes hilarious and entertaining essays like: What Sons Do to a Perfectly Good House Food is the Way to a Boy's Heart What it Means to Be a Boy: Compete in Everything Welcome to My Smelly Pit How Boys Fight: Incessantly I See London, I See France, Go Put on Some Underpants How to Dress Like a Boy Things You'll Hear in a Household of Boys How to Turn Family Dinners into Family Gag Fests 11 Mom Looks that are Familiar to Boys 8 Ridiculous Things I No Longer Care About As a Momand many more.Hailed as "the Erma Bombeck of a new generation of parents," Rachel's third full-length book of humor essays in the Crash Test Parents series will make you laugh until you cry and cry until you laugh--but mostly it will remind you that this life with boys? It's pretty grand.Rachel is the mother of six young boys who daily give her inspiration for comical essays. Her work can often be seen on Huff Post Parents, Scary Mommy, Babble and Motherly. She lives with all her males in San Antonio, Texas, where she faithfully writes 5,000 words a day, five days a week.

Textbook of an Ordinary Life is a collection of poetry and prose that examines ordinary life with extraordinary curiosity, wisdom, and insight. With grace and eloquence, poet Rachel Toalson examines the pleasures of reading, the meaning of measured silences, weather, the masks we wear, the unexpected delight of running, art criticism, the soul of music, wandering, regret, love, and many other wonders of ordinary life.The poetry in Textbook is divided into subjects like English, History, Science, Math, Social Studies, Art, Music, Geography, and Philosophy. Textbook of an Ordinary Life is Rachel's fourth book of poetry and her most introspective, honest collection yet.

Life: A Definition of Terms is a playful collection of poetry that explores the immensity of life in all its facets, from family and love to mental health and humanity. Written entirely in haiku poetry, award-winning poet Rachel Toalson proves that the profound can be contained within a few words.The poems in Life range from humorous and spirited to wistful and philosophical, capturing in brilliant simplicity the potential of one life to touch the broad range of human emotion and experience.Life: A Definition of Terms is Rachel's second book of poetry and a spectacular offering from a master of observing and communicating the poetic nature of life.

In this introspective collection of personal essays, award-winning poet and essayist Rachel Toalson provides an intimate and essential portrait of what it means to be human. With essays like "On Family Trees that Look More Like Stumps," "On Childhood Depression," "On Loss and God" and "On Wishing for a Different Life," Rachel uncovers her heart, her soul, and her honest feelings and philosophies.We Count it All Joy is a singular collection of essays that takes one woman's personal experience and wraps it inside a collective experience so that readers connect, marvel, and feel the thread of humanity that joins us all. Exploring topics like anxiety and depression, marriage, loss, and modern femininity, Rachel guides her readers to the end of the world, so that they, too, have a chance to say, we count it all joy.

Choose your battles.It's sage advice. But most parents, before becoming parents, don't have a clue just how many battles kids will place in front of them with seemingly endless energy to engage. Choose your battles becomes a life-saving measure when one has kids. Knowing when to stand your ground and when to lie down is imperative in the face of such admirable yet aggravating persistence.From the voice behind the popular Crash Test Parents blog comes a brand new collection of comical essays about the challenges and joys of parenting. With measured wit and eloquence, Rachel exposes the universal challenges of leaving the house with kids, traveling with kids, putting kids to bed, eating with kids, and, largely, daily life lived with kids.Hills I'll Probably Lie Down On includes hilarious and entertaining essays like: 10 Things You'll Give Up When You Become a Parent Surprise We're Doing the Same Thing We Did Last Night Why I'm a Parent Who Doesn't Care Hoarders: Kids Edition This is Every Family Dinner You've Ever Had Why Does My Towel Smell Like Butt? How to Parent: In 39 Confusing Steps Dear Concerned Reader: Wouldn't You Like to Knowand many more.Hailed as "The Erma Bombeck of a new generation of parents," Rachel's fourth full-length book of humor essays in the Crash Test Parents series will cure every parent's reluctance to say: These are the hills we won't die on. Rachel is the wife of one man and the mother of six young boys who daily give her inspiration for comical essays. Her work can often be seen on Huff Post Parents, Scary Mommy, Babble, and Motherly. She lives with all her males in San Antonio, Texas.

Don't worry about us; we're doing just fine.In the parenting world, we readily adjust our masks, pretend we're having a grand old time, do anything we can to avoid admitting that sometimes we don't know what we're doing, sometimes we question our sanity, sometimes we think our kids might be breaking us. Judgment is rife and large in the parenting world, and we dare not say anything vulnerable, lest we be cast into The Bad Parent Camp.Staring down that very judgment, Rachel opens up the doors of her home and lets the madness spill into the streets. With her characteristic wit and hilarity, Rachel shares her family's most frequent battles (technology time and leaving the house), their failures, their pressure points, their abundant annoyances, and her loudest insecurities as a mother. But even with its ample humor, If These Walls Could Talk is a powerful commentary on modern parenting with a hopeful message: we're all doing the best we can--and that's enough.If These Walls Could Talk includes humorous essays like: So Much for a Yell-Free Year A Realistic Look at Having a Large Family Welcome to Minecraft Motherhood No Sane Parent Ever Did it All What Silence Means in the Life of a Parent The Madness of Traveling with Children The Mysterious Lure of Screens: a Love/Hate Story 8 Steps that Comprise a Strong-Willed Child's Meltdownand many more.Hailed as "The Erma Bombeck of a new parenting generation," Rachel's fifth full-length book of humor essays will simultaneously amuse and soothe modern parents with the bolstering knowledge that they are not alone.Rachel is the wife of one man and the mother of six young sons who daily give her inspiration for comical essays. Her work can often be found on Huff Post Parents, Scary Mommy, Babble, and Motherly. She lives with all her males in San Antonio, Texas.

The Book of Uncommon Hours is a collection of haiku poems that chronicle a day in the life of a mom, a partner, a writer, a creative human being, a woman. It includes both the happenings of daily life and the wonderings and musings that strike at the oddest of hours. Written entirely in haiku poetry, award-winning poet Rachel Toalson demonstrates how the daily, seemingly mundane events of life can be collected with startling clarity, purpose, and wonder, and so become something far greater.The poems in The Book of Uncommon Hours range from humorous and celebratory to solemn and fundamental, touching upon subjects such as parenting, femininity, beauty, anxiety, and living, among many others. The Book of Uncommon Hours is Rachel's third book of poetry and a stunning representation of the small moments that add up to a spectacular life.

Blink and they'll be grown. As new parents, the words of older, wiser parents don't make a bit of sense. Blink and they'll be grown? We blinked and three toilet paper rolls disappeared down the flusher, and now there's sewage water flooding the bathroom. We blinked and three pounds of apples mysteriously disappeared, and no one's responsible. We blinked and someone drew hieroglyphics all over the living room wall with a permanent marker. We blinked and...oh. They're grown. Examining the phenomenon of one day that can last sixty-seven hours and one year passing in the blink of an eye, Rachel once again opens up the doors to her home and her family and shares what it means to parent growing and changing children. With the wit and hilarity readers have come to expect, she examines the laughable challenges facing parents at practically every turn of a kid's life; highlights rites of passage like The Funk and a parent's fall from "The Cool Club"; and details the many different personalities kids assume in their day-to-day, year-to-year lives-from listening personalities to sleeping personalities. But every essay collected within these pages keeps its eye on a sometimes subtle, sometimes overt truth: one day, sooner than we can even imagine, they'll grow up. The Days Are Long, But the Years Are Short includes humorous essays like: The Speaking Personalities of Children How to Misuse LEGOs: a Generous Guide How to Leave the House With Kids: a 5-Step, Foolproof Plan The Subjectively Fun Games Boys Play The Never-Ending Nuances of Rule-Making for Kids Sometimes I Want to Change My Name Co-Parenting: a Tale of Inconsistency and Chaos The Day I Stopped Eating Food Where Kids Could See It and many more. Hailed as "The Erma Bombeck of a new parenting generation," Rachel's sixth full-length book of humor essays is, at its heart, a celebration of the madness that is parenting-every moment that drags on and on and on, every year that flies away faster than a kid who knows he's in trouble. Rachel is the wife of one man and the mother of six sons who daily give her inspiration for comical essays. Her work can often be found on Huff Post Parents, Scary Mommy, Babble, Motherly, and Today's Parent. She lives with all her males in San Antonio, Texas.

From award-winning poet Rachel Toalson comes a brand-new collection of poetry inspired by the parenthetical years of life, perfect for fans of Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, and Billy Collins.Textbook of a Parenthetical Life is a poignant collection that tells the story of years spent feeling invisible-in careers, in families, in lives. With her characteristic candor and curiosity, Rachel reflects on the power of nature and the mundaneness of motherhood; challenges societal thought around feminism and women's issues; and delves into past and present to examine falling in love, how history affects our lives, coming to terms with death, rising above our mistakes, and becoming who we are.Divided into nine sections that resemble a college undergraduate course load (English Literature, Biology, Health Science, Family and Child Development, Mathematics, Women's Studies, History, General Studies, and Philosophy), Rachel boldly opens her heart to her reader, sharing her imaginative assumptions, her shortcomings, her mistakes, her brave wonderings, her storied past. Examining themes of love, mental illness, body image, family life, feminism, identity, and so much more, Textbook of a Parenthetical Life is a witty, intimate, sometimes lighthearted, sometimes deeply contemplative testament to the joy and pain of life lived in parentheses-some of the most important years of our lives.Earnest, eloquent, and evocative, Textbook of a Parenthetical Life is Rachel's seventh book of poetry.

"You forget / how remarkable your family is / how remarkable your kids are / how remarkable you are / and / this is how / you remember," writes Rachel Toalson in this captivating, honest, and achingly beautiful volume of poetry that illuminates love, parenting, and self-acceptance in the time of COVID-19. Probing the realities of working from home, living in quarantine with seven other people, the desperate search for solitude, and balancing depression, disordered eating, and the mental health of family members, this is how you fly is an examination and celebration of life upended by unforeseen challenges. Written during and after the pandemic, this is how you fly is a candid documentation of the realities of life, illness, and, ultimately, survival. Toalson celebrates the day-to-day moments in lockdown, highlights the annoyance and the pleasure of living with so many people with nowhere to go, and time both flying and dragging. Her words rise above the anxiety of the unknown and offer an inspiring portrait of triumph, showing her readers: This is how you fly-you make the most of your situation.Perfect for fans of Mary Oliver, Sharon Olds, Billy Collins, and Maggie Smith, this is how you fly is Toalson's ninth book of poetry.

In this reflective collection of micro-essays, award winning poet Rachel Toalson examines what it means to be human, how we live, and the ingredients for a joy-filled life. Guiding her readers through lessons like "Own Your Wrong Answer," "Don't Take Unkindness So Personally," "Take Heart: The Kids Will Be Okay," "Lose the Apologetic Tone," and many more, Rachel meditates on life, love, parenthood, and relationships in an illuminating blend of poetry and prose. Life's Little Lessons is a profound reimagining of who we are and who we might be, a collection of thoughts and reflections that range from humorous to wistful, spanning endearing childhood tales to brave cultural commentary. At its heart, the clever compilation reminds us to love not only the people around us and out in the world but also ourselves. Life's little lessons, after all, usually lead to love.