From the category archives:

Mama instinct

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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My Matching Set, or Our Second Stitches

August 3, 2010

I think Jake tells it best:
“Mommy yelled, ‘LILY!’ and she fell off the porch and all the blood came out of her head.”

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What Wonder Woman and I Have in Common: It’s Not What You Think

July 6, 2010

For those of you who somehow missed the news, last week Wonder Woman unveiled her new look.
When I saw her picture, two thoughts flashed across my mind in quick succession:  First, she dresses a whole lot like me.  Second — and this is the one that stuck, overcoming any embarrassment the first ought to impart [...]

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The $300 Nap

June 24, 2010

Those of you who read my last post are no doubt wondering if I ever made it home to North Carolina or if I chose, instead, to raise Lily in California until she is old enough to watch DVD’s of The Backyardigans with her brother for six or seven hours at a stretch.  Or perhaps [...]

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Does That Macaque Have Frequent Flyer Miles?

June 18, 2010

The other day I read an article in the New York Times about a new study of male Barbary macaques. Seems these guys love to care for babies — grab ‘em from their mothers and haul them around to male pow wows. Doesn’t matter if it’s their own baby; any infant will do. [...]

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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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What If Practicing Compassion Toward Yourself Means Not Being Compassionate Toward Your Child?

March 15, 2010

I did it for the first time last night.
Never, in Jake’s three-plus years or Lily’s one have I even considered letting my baby cry him or herself to sleep.
Last night I did.  I let Lily cry herself hoarse and shaking for a good forty-five minutes.
And you know what?  It didn’t work.

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At What Point Are There So Many Boundaries That I Can’t Find My Way to My Child’s Heart?

January 27, 2010

I had a heady moment of deja vu this morning.
There I was, crouched over my son in his car seat, using my knee to push his arching body back into place as I struggled to buckle him in and heard a gutteral voice that sounded suspiciously like my own hissing, “You sit down NOW!  Do [...]

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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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Not Everything Is Easier the Second Time Around

September 15, 2009

It is more than likely that I will spend pretty much the rest of my life debating whether Lily is such a patient, generous soul because I was in yoga practicing vasisthasana right up to the day before she was born or because, as the second child, she is doomed to my “been there, done [...]

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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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How Can You Love Me So Much When …?

July 10, 2009

Lily and I are having a bit of a love fest these days.  We gaze into each others’ eyes.  We smile and giggle.  I marvel at the double dimples in her elbows and the figure-eight temple dents she inherited from her father.
And then, after forty-five minutes or so of mutual adoration, I whisk her off [...]

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Our First Stitches

June 25, 2009

When I was in eighth grade, my two best friends and I had an inexplicable obsession with the movie Kramer vs. Kramer.
We pined for Dustin Hoffman (must have been the feathered early-eighties hair).  Pre-VCR’s and DVD’s, we sat through it in the theater multiple times trying to memorize the dialogue.  We tracked down and then [...]

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Sharks and Bunnies: A Potty Primer

June 16, 2009

It’s been a big week for growing up in the Jake-and-Lily household. And, not surprisingly, I have mixed feelings about it.
First, Lily received glowing reviews of her first afternoon in daycare yesterday and spent last night and this morning grinning and babbling at me.  Plainly, she approves.  Or so I am telling myself as I [...]

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Everything Bad for Me Is Good Again (or at Least a Few Things)

April 27, 2009

There are a few things that feel unshakably bad for me:  Voluntarily being outside in the snow.  Spending my work weeks in an office building (and, even worse, a suit).  Wearing my pajamas all day.  Watching television in the middle of a beautiful afternoon.  And eating chocolate.*
* I understand that I have just alienated 90% [...]

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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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I Like Pink

April 3, 2009

It occurs to me as I type in the title of this piece that I may generate hits from some fans of the singer Pink.  Who seems like a perfectly nice person but isn’t the pink I’m talking about.  On the other hand, I find it fortuitous to have the opportunity to declare “I like [...]

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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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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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