From the category archives:

compassion

The Best Balm (even works on yet more stitches)

August 19, 2010

The anxiety began, I’m pretty sure, a couple of Fridays ago, the day I took Lily to the doctor to check on the brand spanking new set of stitches put into her forehead by the lovely resident in the emergency room.
The doctor was a nice man, we had a nice chat, and he declared Lily [...]

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What Wonder Woman and I Have in Common: It’s Not What You Think

July 6, 2010

For those of you who somehow missed the news, last week Wonder Woman unveiled her new look.
When I saw her picture, two thoughts flashed across my mind in quick succession:  First, she dresses a whole lot like me.  Second — and this is the one that stuck, overcoming any embarrassment the first ought to impart [...]

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The $300 Nap

June 24, 2010

Those of you who read my last post are no doubt wondering if I ever made it home to North Carolina or if I chose, instead, to raise Lily in California until she is old enough to watch DVD’s of The Backyardigans with her brother for six or seven hours at a stretch.  Or perhaps [...]

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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 [...]

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Mother’s Day Massage and Other Goodies

May 10, 2010

Last Wednesday when I went to collect Jake’s things from his classroom at the end of the day I noticed that all the cubbies had notes instructing parents to pick up the Mother’s Day gifts awaiting them on nearby shelves.  All the cubbies, that is, except Jake’s.
I wish it weren’t true, but it is:  My [...]

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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 [...]

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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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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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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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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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Are We There Yet? (Part One: Internal Version)

August 12, 2009

We got our first, “Are we there yet?” in the car on Wednesday.
Mike and I both grinned at each other like kids taking their first bite of a Quarter Pounder — thrilled but also queasily aware that we shouldn’t be.
The great, grin-inducing thing about Jake’s “are we there yet?” is that it lacked even the [...]

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How Can You Love Me So Much When …?

July 10, 2009

Lily and I are having a bit of a love fest these days.  We gaze into each others’ eyes.  We smile and giggle.  I marvel at the double dimples in her elbows and the figure-eight temple dents she inherited from her father.
And then, after forty-five minutes or so of mutual adoration, I whisk her off [...]

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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 [...]

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Traveling with Two: An Ode to My Generous Little Spirit

May 12, 2009

Last week, Lily was awake during my acupuncture appointment.
Her newfound alertness was one of those developments you look forward to in theory, only to realize once you get there that it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Sort of like when I used to stay up half the night anticipating a trip to Disneyland [...]

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What I Learned in My First Mommy and Me Yoga Class

April 15, 2009

I’ve had this day marked on my calendar for weeks.  My first Mommy and Me yoga class.
It’s been just two days since Lily officially reached the Age Where I Can Take Her Into Public Places, and the prospect of the class was even more exciting to me than Monday’s foray into Target.  Purchasing diapers and [...]

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Feeding My Child without Starving My Soul

March 26, 2009

When I was pregnant with Jake I received a mysterious “congratulations, new mom!” package in the mail from a company whose name looked vaguely familiar to me.  Nestled inside the box were two shiny blue and white cans of Similac formula.
I was appalled.  Outraged.  And yet too lazy to pack them up and send them [...]

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Is a Toddler in the Lap Worth an Infant Who Can’t Sleep?

March 22, 2009

I had a hour of heaven in front of the television last night.
Normally, I don’t think of anything having to do with watching television as particularly heavenly, unless it involves putting my pregnant feet up for an hour of total rest before picking up my son from preschool.  Those days, however, are no longer with [...]

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