From the category archives:

aging

Summertime and the Land of When Things Calm Down

July 26, 2010

I’m nearing the end of Michael Chabon’s book of essays, Manhood for Amateurs. I’ve been reading it for about two months now, approximately the average amount of time it takes me to finish a book since Lily has decided that if I am going to read while waiting for her to fall asleep I [...]

Read the full article →

Girls’ Night Out

June 1, 2010

When my friend Teri invited me to a girls’ night, my first idea of what to do was panic.
There was a time when I was all about the girls’ night out. When I believed in a sort of aggressive-defensive-sexy Woman Power and cosmopolitans and thinking my friends and I looked like the gals in Sex [...]

Read the full article →

Little Shifts, Big Changes

May 20, 2010

Although Lily has been walking for over a week now, she does not yet view it as a mode of transportation. Walking, for her, is a game that starts with a parent placing her at one end of the living room and yelling with great excitement, “Walk to Jake! Walk to Jake!” It is unclear [...]

Read the full article →

Full Circle

April 19, 2010

I’ve been writing YogaMamaMe since Jake was younger than Lily is now.
This makes me think a lot of things: How quickly time passes when you have kids. How scary it is to watch time pass so quickly, especially when you have kids. And how I seem to be repeating myself.
Take last night, for instance. I [...]

Read the full article →

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 [...]

Read the full article →

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 [...]

Read the full article →

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 [...]

Read the full article →

Sharks and Bunnies: A Potty Primer

June 16, 2009

It’s been a big week for growing up in the Jake-and-Lily household. And, not surprisingly, I have mixed feelings about it.
First, Lily received glowing reviews of her first afternoon in daycare yesterday and spent last night and this morning grinning and babbling at me. Plainly, she approves. Or so I am telling myself as I [...]

Read the full article →

What Happened to My Yoga Practice?: Lamentations of a Postpartum Mom

May 22, 2009

I was initially kind of excited when I sat down to breakfast this morning and discovered an article in the New York Times Style section about a yoga class I attended a few times.
It felt like a brush with celebrity, an acknowledgment of a past life maybe not steeped in but occasionally brushing up against [...]

Read the full article →

Photographs and Memories. And Babies.

May 5, 2009

Friday night, after a lovely family evening eating pizza at an outdoor table overlooking a local parking lot, I relaxed on the couch and looked through old pictures of Jake when he was Lily’s age.
That was my first mistake.

Read the full article →

Is There Such a Thing as a Full Circle and What Does It Look Like?

May 1, 2009

I hung up the phone yesterday thinking I had come full circle.
We hadn’t spoken in nearly twenty years, and I wonder how long it’s been since I’ve heard the laugh that brought me right back in a joyful slide to the summer I turned seventeen. That laugh, I now remember, made me feel like I’d [...]

Read the full article →

When the Glamour Is Gone: How a Pregnant Mother of a Toddler Watches the Oscars

February 24, 2009

Like Kate Winslet, I, too, used to practice my Oscar acceptance speech in front of the mirror when I was eight years old.
But I don’t any longer. Instead, last night I propped my swollen ankles up on a few pillows, threw an old baby blue blanket over my wriggling belly, and polished off the organic [...]

Read the full article →

Trusting the Nostalgia (Even When You Should Be Embarrassed by the Songs You Are Listening to on the Radio)

January 14, 2009

I am awash in nostalgia these days.
Certainly it has something to do with the impending transformation of my status into “mother of two.” One child, Mike and I agree, is an accessory. Two children is an adult family. Who can approach such a spectre without a slightly longing glance back at the [...]

Read the full article →

Zzzzz, or Do I Wake Myself Up or Honor My Exhaustion?

November 12, 2008

I do not deal well with exhaustion.
I feel demoralized, lazy, like I am squandering opportunities, watching the economy sweep the can-I-get-published? bus off the road and into the deep muck of a future in which Mike and I are — we know — crazy to imagine raising our children on freelancing and, even worse, journalism.
Mostly, [...]

Read the full article →

Maternity Pants, Fatigue, and Never Look at Your Butt in Your Sister-in-Law’s Guest Room Mirror

October 27, 2008

Fatigue.
I’m not talking tired or exhausted or however I generally feel after carrying Jake up the stairs for the fifteenth time at the end of the day. I am talking about bone-crushing, crying-because-I’m-so-tired, unable-to-think fatigue. Have-your-thyroid-level-checked fatigue.
It is, perhaps, no coincidence that it hit me after an afternoon spent at a three-year-old’s birthday party last [...]

Read the full article →

Yom Kippur, Spirituality, and a Pair of Black Chuck Taylor Low-Tops

October 9, 2008

It occurred to me, as Jake ate his lunch at Green Sage today, that having your child drop pieces of pork sausage in your lap may not be the most appropriate way to honor Yom Kippur.
Normally, I would spend this day fasting, meditating, reflecting. Not, I must explain, in any kind of religious service. I [...]

Read the full article →

The Friendship That Doesn’t Change When You Do

August 12, 2008

I took my dearest friend — Kali I’ll call her and she knows why — to the airport this morning. And I started crying — again. Not just because “Carolina in My Mind” was playing on the radio. (That song makes me cry every time, dammit, and not because I live in [...]

Read the full article →

What Do I Really Wish For?

August 1, 2008

Jake and I spent the last week with his aunt and uncle and his three teenage cousins. Jake thinks teenagers are wonderful, especially 14-year-old Cousin Jeff who is as happy to throw a ball with him as to hold his hand, even if he draws the line at receiving a big mmmm-wah! kiss on [...]

Read the full article →

MIA Part Two: Learning Who You Are

July 9, 2008

So another reason I was missing in action for two weeks (even though, I say again to the empty echo-chamber of a deserted readership, I don’t think anyone really noticed): a visit to Louisville for my grandfather’s funeral.
Sad as this sounds — and much as the past couple of posts might, um, bring the [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries