From the category archives:

Mommy time

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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Summertime and the Land of When Things Calm Down

July 26, 2010

I’m nearing the end of Michael Chabon’s book of essays, Manhood for Amateurs. I’ve been reading it for about two months now, approximately the average amount of time it takes me to finish a book since Lily has decided that if I am going to read while waiting for her to fall asleep I [...]

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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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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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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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Passeaster

April 6, 2010

Last week I did something I am pretty sure I’ve never done before — I threw a seder on Tuesday (does one “throw” a seder?) and I put together Easter baskets for Sunday. (Actually, Jake and Lily got Easter baskets and the rest of the folks visiting got some perfectly serviceable Easter bags, but who’s [...]

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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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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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Lily Goes Full-Time

January 4, 2010

Today is Lily’s first day of full-time daycare.
Just writing it is making me cry again. (As is wandering past my bedroom and the empty bed on which she is not napping and knowing that I will not have that unspeakably joyful moment of my day when she first wakes up from her nap and grins [...]

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Jake and I Go to the Dentist (and Have Fun)

November 18, 2009

On Sunday I climbed the curved ladder to the top of the play structure for the very first time.
Jake beat me to this milestone by several months and four decades. But that didn’t cheapen the fun of climbing, rung by rung, up and then, a little at a time, over until I crouched horizontally over [...]

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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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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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Are We There Yet? (Part One: Internal Version)

August 12, 2009

We got our first, “Are we there yet?” in the car on Wednesday.
Mike and I both grinned at each other like kids taking their first bite of a Quarter Pounder — thrilled but also queasily aware that we shouldn’t be.
The great, grin-inducing thing about Jake’s “are we there yet?” is that it lacked even the [...]

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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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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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