From the category archives:

expectations

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 [...]

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Who Said It’s Easier With One?

May 15, 2010

I frequently find myself conned by rose-colored memories of the days when Jake was my only child and things were just so easy.  Sure, I cried frequently, often felt shut-in and lonely, and was already pregnant and too late to go back the first time Jake played by himself without demanding parental involvement about a [...]

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Never Say Never, and Never Say, “What Is That?” if You Plan on Picking It Up

May 3, 2010

There are times, I’ve found, when, no matter how certain I was of my choice, the Universe was right there daring me to stick to it.  Telling me, in no uncertain terms, that I would be foolish to be that stubborn.
Take, for instance, bath time Thursday night.
It was then, in one, parenthood-requires-a-good-sense-of-humor flash that it [...]

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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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Labor Day Indeed

September 9, 2009

As you may or may not know, Labor Day is a celebration of workers — a “yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country,” according to the Department of Labor.
What I want to know is who figured giving people a day off from work was [...]

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Everything Grows Faster in the Summer

September 1, 2009

I have acquired yet another in the growing number of items on my list of Things I Know Better Than to Do But Do Anyhow.
I have just finished sorting through Jake and Lily’s outgrown clothes, putting them away in anticipation of the spring kids’ rummage sale at the Jewish Community Center to which I will [...]

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Poop, Pee, and a Port-a-Potty: A Parent’s Life

July 23, 2009

Frequently, in child rearing, just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does.
Take the day my son pooped on my foot.
We’ve been doing a gentle form of potty training in our house, the kind that does not require us to abandon the four-month-old for an entire weekend spent running around after our naked [...]

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I Want to Go to Shabbat

June 26, 2009

Shabbat starts in ten minutes.
In ten minutes, Jake will sing and dance.  He will yell, “Shabbat, shalom, hey!”  He will smile and mug and everyone there will tell me what fun he has in Shabbat.  He may even sit in another parent’s lap with one of his friends.
He will not sit in my lap because [...]

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Full of Firsts — And Not a Parent in Sight

June 18, 2009

I thought — mistakenly, as it turned out — that it was pretty momentous to be witnessing Lily’s first props-assisted rollover yesterday.
We were about midway through our hour-long drop-off at daycare.  I was pretending not to notice the time I was supposed to be using for myself slipping away as I clung to my girl.  [...]

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Be Careful What You Wish For … and then Wish Away

May 19, 2009

I don’t suppose I blame the other parents for laughing at me, even though I resented it deeply at the time.
Shouldn’t the sight of a woman holding a screaming infant to her shoulder as a two-and-a-half-year-old clings to her leg crying, “Mommy!  MOOOOOOOMMMMMMYYYYY!” invoke sympathy — nay, even empathy, considering the limited reasons any adult [...]

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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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