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Melissa

Careful What You Wish For (2010 Version) — I Still Want to Hug Him

April 1, 2010

It occurred to me this morning, as I wandered the empty kitchen feeling just a little bit sick over leaving my son in his new classroom, that this surely must not be the first time I’ve thought to myself, “Careful what you wish for.”
Surprisingly, it turns out I last wrote those words nearly a year [...]

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I’ve Been Coming Full Circle Lately

March 29, 2010

I am, frankly, not sure whether it makes me feel better or worse that a piece I wrote almost exactly two years ago more or less sums up my night last night.  It is called — in a feat of clarity — How Being Kicked in the Face By a Baby Reminded Me That [...]

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What If Practicing Compassion Toward Yourself Means Not Being Compassionate Toward Your Child?

March 15, 2010

I did it for the first time last night.
Never, in Jake’s three-plus years or Lily’s one have I even considered letting my baby cry him or herself to sleep.
Last night I did.  I let Lily cry herself hoarse and shaking for a good forty-five minutes.
And you know what?  It didn’t work.

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Is Patience an Achievable Parent Virtue?

March 9, 2010

When I was in seventh grade my health teacher, Mr. Phillips, told me I would make a good teacher because I was so patient.
I immediately declared that I would never be a teacher in the kind of bratty voice that comes with being nearly thirteen years old and not particularly fond of Mr. Phillips.
This brattyness, [...]

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The Triple Crown of Things That Make It Hard to Be a Parent

March 3, 2010

The triple crown of Things That Make It Hard to Be a Parent, as I have just now decided, is a marathon consisting of what at this moment strike me as the most frustrating parenting moments:
1)  Staying home with a sick child.  For a week.
2)  Staying home with a child who is finally well on [...]

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When the Vacation Ends and You Still Have 2,500 Miles to Go. With Kids.

February 18, 2010

My approach to the end of a good vacation is to panic.
My stomach twists into a little cherry-stem bow at the very thought of resuming a regular life.  I see the piles of laundry arranged almost neatly in the suitcases as mountains of unsettled-ness to be scaled before I can breathe again.  I feel like [...]

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At What Point Are There So Many Boundaries That I Can’t Find My Way to My Child’s Heart?

January 27, 2010

I had a heady moment of deja vu this morning.
There I was, crouched over my son in his car seat, using my knee to push his arching body back into place as I struggled to buckle him in and heard a gutteral voice that sounded suspiciously like my own hissing, “You sit down NOW!  Do [...]

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Imagine How Pushy I’ll Be By the Time Jake’s in College

January 20, 2010

I thought I had it under control.
A couple of years ago I had that breakdown over Jake’s fifteen-month evaluation at preschool — the kind where they determine whether said fifteen-month-old can say anything more than “Mama” and “Dada” and pick up a Cheerio with his fingers.  And that breakdown, I felt, brought me to a [...]

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When a Fresh Perspective Requires a Fresh Perspective (Don’t Look at Your Butt Redux)

January 14, 2010

You’d think I’d have learned my lesson when I looked at my butt in a mirror at my sister-in-law’s house while four months pregnant.
You would, in fact, not be expecting too much to think after that shock I would be smart enough not to look at my butt in a changing room mirror at a [...]

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Lily Goes Full-Time

January 4, 2010

Today is Lily’s first day of full-time daycare.
Just writing it is making me cry again.  (As is wandering past my bedroom and the empty bed on which she is not napping and knowing that I will not have that unspeakably joyful moment of my day when she first wakes up from her nap and grins [...]

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Retreat of the December Mom

December 31, 2009

I’m still ashamed, even though I now recognize it was a December Mom thing.
There’s simply no excuse for being — I can still recall the out-of-body experience of watching myself do this — the mom screaming across a crowded coffee shop at her child.  “Jake!  Jake!  JAKE!  DO YOU WANT A BAGEL?”  As if no [...]

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I Can Cook! And Lots of Other Things You’d Never Know I Can Do

December 1, 2009

By the end of our Thanksgiving meal, life as a mother, as someone who is (can it only be?) eight-and-a-half months postpartum, and as a still relative newcomer to my new home — it was all beginning to seem manageable, pleasurable even.
And then Ellen turned to Mike.  “You and I should have monthly Iron Chef-like [...]

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The Co-Sleeper Is Gone … And Time Marches On

November 30, 2009

Next to my side of the bed there is a large, clean(ish) patch of floorboards.  On the other side of that large, clean(ish) patch of floorboards there is room to open the drawers on the left side of my dresser.  In between there is space for my discarded shoes and socks to breathe without having [...]

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Jake and I Go to the Dentist (and Have Fun)

November 18, 2009

On Sunday I climbed the curved ladder to the top of the play structure for the very first time.
Jake beat me to this milestone by several months and four decades.  But that didn’t cheapen the fun of climbing, rung by rung, up and then, a little at a time, over until I crouched horizontally over [...]

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A Truly Scary Halloween, or How I Crossed Over

November 10, 2009

On Friday, Lily will be the same age Jake was when we moved to Asheville two years ago.
Just typing those words is sending me into a shower of I-don’t-know-whether-to-explode-with-joy-or-cry-uncontrollably emotions.  For months after Lily’s birth I had to consult Jake’s old baby pictures to remember  what he was like at her age.  Now, however, I [...]

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H1N1 Pays a Visit

November 3, 2009

Actually, I don’t really know that it’s H1N1 with whom we’ve tangoed over the past week.  But I’ve been told that right now anything that looks like flu must be of the swine variety.
Like most of the H1N1 lore I’ve been hearing, there’s no telling how accurate this information I’m spreading around is.  But no [...]

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New Places, New Faces, New Records for Lack of Sleep

October 23, 2009

Nursing my daughter in the back seat of the Honda as we left town for the weekend — me kneeling over her with a hand braced against the window as if to wave (or perhaps hold out a big STOP!) at passersby — probably should have been a good clue that I would be facing [...]

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High Winds with a Likelihood of Anxiety

October 9, 2009

There are those (my husband) who will think me a little bit nutty for saying this, but windy days breed anxiety.
One might suggest that I am simply looking for something other than my mother to blame my anxiety on.  And that may be the case.  But I have it on good authority — my acupuncturist, [...]

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Turn, Turn, Turn … or Not: What I Learned at Six Months

October 2, 2009

“Yep,” Mike confirmed the other day.  “Lily’s acting like a normal baby.”
He said this after our first sunny fall day in the park.  After Lily and I arrived with her pouting in her stroller because I decided that much as she was demanding it I was simply not up to the task of walking to [...]

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Not Everything Is Easier the Second Time Around

September 15, 2009

It is more than likely that I will spend pretty much the rest of my life debating whether Lily is such a patient, generous soul because I was in yoga practicing vasisthasana right up to the day before she was born or because, as the second child, she is doomed to my “been there, done [...]

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