From the category archives:

intentions versus goals

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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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 time [...]

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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.  I [...]

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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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Why Practicing Yoga Is as Simple as Sleeping with a Sick Child

July 15, 2008

I’m assuming there are women checking out the YogaMamaMe community who don’t practice asanas, don’t know what the word means (it designates the physical poses you see people practicing on the cover of Yoga Journal when you’re waiting in the check-out line at Whole Foods), don’t intend ever to practice them, and yet are kind [...]

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MIA Part Three: Not Doubting Your Path

July 11, 2008

Sometimes there are good reasons you don’t have time to, say, write a YogaMamaMe post for two weeks. And I don’t mean “good” in the “eat your spinach, it’s good for you” sense of good. I mean good, like good for my soul, happy, fun.
I mean, to get to the point, Coon Dog [...]

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MIA Part Two: Learning Who You Are

July 9, 2008

So another reason I was missing in action for two weeks (even though, I say again to the empty echo-chamber of a deserted readership, I don’t think anyone really noticed): a visit to Louisville for my grandfather’s funeral.
Sad as this sounds — and much as the past couple of posts might, um, bring the [...]

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Letting My Child’s Inner Beauty Shine Past the Tests

May 20, 2008

At Jake’s school this morning one of his teachers showed me the developmental evaluation they had filled out for him. It was a standardized list of questions — a la “Can the child pick up a Cheerio between his thumb and forefinger?” — in such categories as Communication, Gross Motor Skills, Fine Motor Skills, [...]

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A Sick Boy and a Lesson About Intentions

May 17, 2008

I really didn’t mind too much when I got the not-unanticipated Please Pick Him Up call on Wednesday from Jake’s school.
True, I had picked him up early on Monday and kept him home all day Tuesday, which I really thought ought to have scored me a few points with the teachers. And he had [...]

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Geez, I Haven’t Had the Hip Replacement Yet, or Thoughts on Age and Youth

May 14, 2008

Something occurred to me yesterday in yoga class as I observed the places where I feel just a tad tighter and achier than I did before my pregnancy.
“Maybe,” I thought with a rush of horror threaded through with an unsettling warmth of acceptance, “I’m just getting older.”
For the past couple of years I’ve had these [...]

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Jake and My Heart Free Me From a Scary Rat’s Maze

May 5, 2008

I had one of those moments yesterday, the kind where suddenly everything feels completely wrong.
It begins with a weird sense of displacement — in my case, sitting on the floor of my yoga room/office in the middle of my asana practice. “What am I doing here?” or something like it started the internal conversation. [...]

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When It Takes Effort to Experience Effortlessness

April 30, 2008

“I made that,” I marveled, not for the first time, as I watched Jake at school this morning. He was banging two farm animal puzzle pieces together, making a loud clacking noise appreciated by no one but himself. His eyes were clear and as blue as his shirt, which hung over the top [...]

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Grandma Versus Jack’s School, or Trusting Myself as a Mother

April 10, 2008

I didn’t apologize to Jake’s grandmother for taking him to school today. This is a sign, I believe, of progress.
An awful lot of what I’ve done as a mother is apologize — for decisions I’ve made as a mother (sure, everyone tells you you’re right because you’re the mom, but do you ever really [...]

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Judge the Man in the Red Yoga Shorts only if You Are Ready for Him to Judge You

April 5, 2008

The man in the red yoga shorts was in class again on Thursday. I wasn’t the only one looking.
None of us, I assure you, were staring with pleasure. He was wearing the traditional yoga shorts that no doubt were the inspiration for European bathing trunks, the kind regretfully worn only by old German [...]

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Being Open to Change

April 2, 2008

I was stuck in the back of yoga class again yesterday.
This is not my favorite spot, for no particular reason, other than habit. I like being in the front, in my own world, diving into empty space instead of someone else’s mat. No doubt books (or at least lengthy articles) could be written [...]

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How Getting Knocked Off My Feet Helped Me to Grow

March 25, 2008

Yesterday I surveyed the field of unexpected obligations suddenly stretching between me and my YogaMamaMe website and declared myself okay. Getting published, I realized, had become too much of a goal, and I should feel deep gratitude to the Universe for throwing a bunch of other things at me as a reminder that I [...]

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Why Waiting for What You Want (and Maybe Not Even Getting It) Is a Gift

March 24, 2008

So, I’ve been working on this being a writer thing more or less steadily since I quit my teaching job in 2003. And, not for the first time, I feel like I’m on the verge of it actually panning out. All I’ve got to do is finish my YogaMamaMe book proposal, get the [...]

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