expectations

The Road to Potty Training Is Paved with Good Intentions

February 11, 2009

Potty training is a big subject in our house these days. Not because Mike or I have decided it’s time — Jake’s just 25 months old, after all.  But because Jake has shown an interest in it.  At least, he’s shown an interest in: getting our hopes up, testing my theory that all I have [...]

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Darn You, Michael Pollan! What Am I Supposed to Feed My Child Now?

February 9, 2009

I just finished reading my first Michael Pollan book, In Defense of Food.  Which is somewhat strange, because I have been a big Michael Pollan fan for some time now. Mostly, I have depended on Mike to give me the information I need to tell people I’m a big Michael Pollan fan.  He does the [...]

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Who Won This Round of the Battle of the Bath?

February 2, 2009

There comes a point when you must put your foot down. Mine came after an astonishingly patient 3 1/2 weeks during which the closest Jake came to taking a bath was wading in some warm tub water while I used a funnel to rinse his privits, as I like to call them.  That’s 3 1/2 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 days when [...]

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Why It’s a Blessing to Find Out the Path Is Bumpier than You Expected

January 6, 2009

Jake started crying before I so much as moved toward the door to leave him at school this morning. Real tears. Not the almost-obligatory yells of faux abandonment he would throw my way when I dropped him off at his old pre-preschool.  No, these were the kind of tears that a parent feels right where [...]

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Why I Was Crying in the Target Parking Lot, and Why I Probably Will Again

December 18, 2008

I thought I was doing really well on Tuesday.  Last of the holiday packages mailed?  Check.  Requisite single container for the lunches Jake will take with him when he moves up to the big kids’ preschool after the holidays finally located and purchased?  Check.  Checks deposited?  Check, checks. I was aware that in order to [...]

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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, [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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, [...]

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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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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 [...]

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Travels with Toddler (Low Country Edition)

October 14, 2008

“Elmo!” Jake crowed the second he saw the portable DVD player set up in the back seat of the car.  Plainly, he was ready for a driving trip, as long as we had Elmo’s Big Outdoors at the ready. As was I.  After a year of living in the mountains, I was craving some beach [...]

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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.  [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Travels with Toddler

September 16, 2008

In my last post I stressed the importance of bringing along an Elmo DVD if you intend to take a toddler on a four-hour driving trip without another adult in the car who is willing to spend the entire journey twisted around dispensing handfuls of popcorn. I would now like to point out that the [...]

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When Families Happen

September 10, 2008

The remarkable thing about my taking Jake to visit my sister-in-law Maureen last weekend was that it seemed so very unremarkable to me. Mike, you see, had brilliantly realized that even if three of us couldn’t travel to Napa for three days to attend a wedding I had, quite frankly, been dying to attend, he [...]

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