When my sister Brittany asked me to watch her two energetic boys for a few hours, I ignored the uneasy feeling in my stomach and said yes. She had always been the confident, attention-grabbing one in our family, while I grew up learning to keep the peace. Now, as a mom myself, I try to create a calm space in my home \u2014 something my husband Sam and I had worked hard to build, especially after finally saving enough to redo our living room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new flat-screen TV felt like a small milestone, a symbol of the life we were steadily building. But within minutes of Brittany\u2019s kids arriving, that peace was tested. A single loud crash ended any hope of a smooth day. I walked into the living room to find the TV shattered, orange juice spilled across the rug, and Mia watching with wide, worried eyes. The boys admitted they had been throwing a ball indoors \u2014 something I had already told them not to do. Still, I tried to stay calm, even as the reality of the damage settled heavily in my chest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When my sister Brittany asked me to watch her two energetic boys for a few hours, I ignored the uneasy feeling in my stomach and said yes…. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"views":590,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21691,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21689\/revisions\/21691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinbr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}