I am Meredith Solberg, and this site is a record of the days my family spends together, kept by the person who is usually holding the calendar and losing it.
There are four of us. We are not a well run household. We are four people trying to be in the same room at the same time, and most weeks that is the entire project. I started writing this down after a Sunday where everybody snapped at everybody else over nothing at all, and I realised by Wednesday that I could no longer remember what the nothing had been. The days that go smoothly leave no trace. The days that go sideways leave one, and then they leave that too.
What this site is actually about
The together part, not the growing up part. This is not a record of my children reaching milestones, and it is not a set of notes on how they are turning out. It is about the shared middle of an ordinary week: who cooks, what gets said at the table once the how was your day has run out, the fifteen minutes before we leave the house, what a Saturday looks like when nobody planned it. My children appear in these stories because they live here, but they are not the subject. The four of us in a room is the subject.
The eight corners of the board
Weekends Together, for the unstructured part of the week. Family Meals. Little Traditions, which are almost never the ones we set out to start. Holidays and Birthdays, including the years we did much less than we meant to. Getting Out the Door, which is its own discipline. Screens and Together Time, where I have changed my mind more than once. When Days Go Wrong, which is the section I would keep if I had to drop the rest. Growing Up Fast, for the things I only noticed after they had already stopped.
What this is not
It is not parenting advice. I have no training in child development, education, psychology or family therapy, and nothing here is a method for your household. There are no age charts, no discipline systems, no scripts, no schedules presented as ones that work, and no claims about what any of this will do for a child. What worked in my kitchen is a story about my kitchen. If you are worried about a child’s development, behaviour, or wellbeing, that belongs with a paediatrician or a qualified professional who can actually see the child.
About my family’s privacy
The people in these stories did not choose to be written about, so there are rules. I use no photographs of my children’s faces anywhere on this site. I do not publish their full names, their ages against a date, their school, or where we live. The pictures here are licensed stock photographs of other people, chosen to sit alongside the writing. As my children have got older I have started asking before a story that is really theirs goes up, and if the answer is no then it does not go up.
Why the bad days are here too
Because a family blog that only publishes the good mornings is a catalogue, and nobody’s week looks like that. The morning everyone was crying before eight is on this site. So is the birthday party we ruined. Those pieces are the reason I trust the rest of it.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, tell me. The page gets fixed with a note saying what changed rather than being quietly rewritten. Write to hello@joyfulfamilydays.org.