Ellen Nordberg, Author

Humor

So Glad They Told Me Book

At Least Your Hair Looks Gorgeous

When I was eight, my sister told me to sit still at the kitchen table, she’d be right back with a special surprise. Her “special surprise” turned out to be a whiffle bat strike to the head. Similar to this whiffle bat encounter, my experience with motherhood has not turned out the way I expected. No one warned me about the “special surprises” that were to come.

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Multiples Illuminated Book

Surviving the Twinning Reaction

The intense bonding connection between twins is called “the Twinning Reaction,” by psychologists and researchers. My neighbor the dog trainer says, “Don’t adopt two puppies from the same litter because they’ll never obey you.” Same concept.

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Colorado Babies

Smooth Operators or Wild Animals?

FROM COLORADO BABIES MAGAZINE, FALL 2015 My twin boys have been fascinated by pretty girls since they could wave from their double stroller. But as a mom who grew up with only one sister, I have zero experience with handling little boys who notice females and recruit their own babysitters.

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Errant Parent

The Pick-Up Artists

Originally featured in Errant Parent When I discovered I was pregnant with identical twin boys, I had lovely fantasies about what that would be like and who they might become: matching denim overalls, sweet manners, a lack of interest in girls until puberty, and a curiosity about the earth that would lead them to become environmental engineers and save the planet, or at least the ocean. The reality is something completely different. Instead, I find myself with five year old blond, blue-eyed tag-teaming hustlers, unafraid to approach any pretty female, regardless of her age.

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Colorado Babies

Mommy and Me²

As a stay-at-home mother of energetic three year old twin boys, the discovery of “Mommy and Me” classes made me happier than non-chafe nursing pads. I’d get out of a house so baby-proofed I couldn’t watch my own TV, and the boys would get exercise.

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Multiples Illuminated Book

Table Manners

*UPDATE* Now on Multiples Illuminated Boulder Lifestyle, 5/14. Pooping in a park in broad daylight? Refusing to get in the car until a hot Brazilian nanny kisses them goodbye?

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Boulder Lifestyle

Foodies In The Woods

Boulder Lifestyle 2/14. I am not a foodie. I have food poisoned myself, realized after six months in a new condo that the oven didn’t work, and over-cooked canned chowder so badly it exploded like foam out of a fire extinguisher on lifting the pot lid. Within the first few months of dating my eventual husband, he invited me on a camp-out in the mountains with his college friends. There was just one caveat. “There’s a food contest,” he said, eyeing me skeptically.

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Boulder Lifestyle

Wine Tasting 101

Appeared in Boulder Lifestyle Magazine 8/13. At the university I attended, there was a school of hotel management. One of the most popular courses amongst non-hotel students was “Introduction to Wines.” We liberal arts and engineering majors snickered like fifth graders taking a second-grade spelling test. Rumor had it you sat in a huge lecture hall and sampled wines all afternoon. How hard could that be?

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Colorado Babies

These Mothers Wanna Win!

When I first moved to Boulder from Los Angeles, I was a fit, athletic mother of twin toddlers. I thought I looked great. When asked by other mothers, “What do you do?” I’d proudly respond, “I’m a fitness instructor!” Published in Colorado Babies magazine.

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Adventure Cyclist

Riding the Volcano

It’s day three of our 310 mile bike ride around Hawaii’s Big Island, and I’m feeling stoked. The landscape resembles an alien planet with olive green ferns and lichen framing black lava boulders.

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Windy City Sports

Big Moguls, Bad Hairday

“Not listening to your intuition,” the man said. He was answering my question about the number one cause of accidents in outdoor active and wilderness sports.

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