From the category archives:

compassion

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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A Brief Return to a Past Life, or How (Really) Did I Get Here?

March 6, 2009

A couple of weeks ago, Mike handed me a book that had come free to his workplace.
“I doubt it’ll be very good,” he said, “but it’s a memoir about going to Columbia Law School.  I thought you might be interested.”
Maybe it’s the buddha-like peace that has descended on me as I prepare to give birth.  [...]

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Am I Completely LOST or Would Any Mother Choose the Husband She Thought Was Dead over the Three-Year-Old Child She Knows Is Not?

February 12, 2009

Is it just me?  Am I the only one who’s still in a state of disbelief over what the writers had Sun do?
Maybe it’s the pregnancy.
Normally, I don’t get too wrapped up in the motivations of television characters (unless they appeared on The Wire — oh, Randy, I still mourn for you).  I mean, I [...]

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Knowing When to Say No (and Not Just to Target on a Saturday)

February 7, 2009

I can’t remember the last time I went to Target on a Saturday.
As of today, I know why.
It was supposed to be my break, part of the divide-and-conquer strategy Mike and I launched on this Saturday morning of oh-so-cranky toddler.
And, indeed, somehow, I needed a break, despite having spent all of an hour or so [...]

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We Should All Be the Pregnant Lady in Yoga Class Sometimes

January 27, 2009

Sometimes, you decide you must do something that is against your better judgment.
Ideally, these circumstances should not include going to yoga class.  Not because it’s never a bad idea to go to yoga class — although that is the first thought that comes to my mind, even when, as now, I’m writing about why going [...]

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Can I Make My Child (or Anyone Else for that Matter) Happy?

January 21, 2009

Jake has just discovered the concept of righteous indignation.
As in, “How dare you comb my hair for me!”  Only expressed in howls of unhappiness perfectly calibrated to get on my last nerve.
Or, “Don’t you dare fill up that bathtub!  Don’t even mention the word ‘tub’ to me!  And certainly don’t ask me why I am [...]

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How Much Influence Do I Have on My Toddler’s Tantrums — and the Tantrums of Others?

January 16, 2009

It was only after the fact — as I recounted the incident to Jake’s preschool teachers this morning — that I saw the humor in it.
There I was, seven-plus months pregnant and clad in a thick black winter coat bulging at the zipper, crouched in the back seat of my CRV as I straddled my [...]

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My Toddler Teaches Me When to Say “I’m Sorry”

January 5, 2009

Jake has picked up a rather impressive and useful new habit.  He now frequently says, “I’m sorry.”
The thing is, I’m not entirely certain whether he’s saying it when he’s the one who has something to be sorry for.  More often, I fear, he’s merely pointing out my own lack of social graces.
When, for example, I [...]

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Can a Sense of Self Come with Pink Polka Dot Boots?

December 9, 2008

Jake has been wearing his beloved pink polka dot boots pretty much non-stop for over a week now.

We have engaged in successful negotiations about removing them for bed time and bath time (for which he even removed his swim diaper the other night, suggesting he is finally over the traumatic poop-in-the-tub incident).  But otherwise, on [...]

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Do I Really Have Any More Control Than a Two-Year-Old?

November 24, 2008

Mike does not believe in the Terrible Two’s.
I wish I were as certain that Jake is not, in fact, entering his Terrible Two’s as my husband, even though I know it would do me no good.  (Witness Mike’s frequent less-than-patient exchanges with Jake in which he variously commands, wheedles, and begs Jake [clench teeth here] [...]

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Giving and Receiving Toddler Style — In the Bathtub

November 21, 2008

Jake took a bath last night for the first time in a week.
This fact is notable for three reasons.  First, he is generally quite fond of the tub, so a one-week boycott is a serious thing indeed.  Second, the fact that I was able to ease him back into the tub wearing a swim diaper [...]

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Just Let It All In

November 19, 2008

I experienced a whole new way of thinking at the end of yoga class yesterday.
I’d spent the past several days mulling over how I wanted to approach writing about continuing toddler-inspired sleep interruptions; guilty, crying morning-afters; plummeting four-season temperatures; and that frustrating in-between period where the choice between too-big maternity clothes and too-small normal person [...]

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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, [...]

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The World Has Shifted

November 5, 2008

My baby will be born in a world where an African American man is President.
My twenty-two-month-old son will grow up knowing nothing but a President who is black and a Governor who is a woman.
Overnight, everything has shifted.
My children live in a much better world than the one I grew up in.

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“Read My Lips . . .” Oh, Wait, You’re Still Learning to Talk

October 28, 2008

There are few things worse than having “The Heart of Rock and Roll” stuck in your head at two o’clock in the morning.
Except possibly having this catchy ’80’s ditty replay itself over and over as your child reaches out across the pillow you have erected as a barrier between your bodies because you refuse to [...]

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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 [...]

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Let the Comparisons Begin, or How Much Control Do I Really Have?

October 6, 2008

We had our anatomy-screen ultrasound last week, and, inevitably, the comparisons began.
“This is an active one,” the technician commented, as she tried, unsuccessfully, to snap a picture of the wiggling baby’s heart before it shifted out of view again.
I told her about the time Jake wouldn’t wake up for his ultrasound.  And about how everyone [...]

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Shouldn’t My Sick Child Be Crying for His Mommy?

September 21, 2008

Mike and I had one of those glorious Asheville Saturdays yesterday.  We took Jake to Plow Day at Warren Wilson College, a small school just outside of town with — as the Plow Day moniker would suggest — a working farm.
Yes, one year of living here, and I consider Plow Day at Warren Wilson College [...]

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