From the category archives:

gratitude

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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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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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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The Triple Crown of Things That Make It Hard to Be a Parent

March 3, 2010

The triple crown of Things That Make It Hard to Be a Parent, as I have just now decided, is a marathon consisting of what at this moment strike me as the most frustrating parenting moments:
1) Staying home with a sick child. For a week.
2) Staying home with a child who is finally well on [...]

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Sometimes You’ve Just Gotta Cry (Especially at Four O’Clock in the Morning)

September 3, 2009

There are times — many, many times in the life of a mother of two children under three — when you know that whatever it is that is making you cry is a normal part of parenthood. The incident that has driven you to tears of despair is, you could easily tell yourself, a positive [...]

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Are We There Yet? (Part Two: Preschool Version)

August 18, 2009

Today was the end-of-the-school year potluck in Jake’s preschool class. Same summer-ish excitement that I recall from the end of my somewhat-older-than-two-and-a-half-years-old school years. Same excuse to eat ice cream instead of lunch. Same sense of happy displacement at having parents on the playground in the middle of the day.
Plus, as a mother, a little [...]

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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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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 [...]

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My Refuge

April 6, 2009

On Friday afternoon, I was lucky enough to be invited to the dedication of a lovely meditation space in downtown Asheville, the WriteMind Institute. And even more lucky to have a mother-in-law in town and an infant feeding schedule that allowed me to attend.
It felt pretty darned great to take a shower, put on real [...]

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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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It’s a Girl! and Thoughts on the Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable

March 19, 2009

Jake’s little sister arrived on Friday, proving that Friday the 13th isn’t so very unlucky after all. Unless, that is, you find it the least bit unlucky to have only 3 hours of labor to produce a nine-and-a-half-pound baby. I prefer to use the word “intense.”
A good word, as well, to describe the feeling of [...]

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The Sweet Times, and Remembering to Savor Them

March 3, 2009

“Enjoy this sweet time as a family of three,” the midwife said to me at the end of our appointment on Friday.
Of course, I panicked.
Was she suggesting that life for Jake was about to be rendered far from sweet? Soured? Curdled? Bitter enough to take away his constant smiles and laughter and remarkable goofiness?
I’ve never [...]

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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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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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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 [...]

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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 her [...]

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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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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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