Mommy time

Sometimes It’s in Your Nature to Take Your Toddler to Play at the Mall

April 22, 2008

A good friend told me yesterday how difficult she finds it to spend a whole day entertaining her twenty-month-old alone. That, she realized, is what those weekly Target outings are about. “Target?” I thought to myself. “Target? Honey, you haven’t sunk to the depths of toddler entertainment desperation until you become a regular at the [...]

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Why I Can’t Take a Compliment (Even of My Kid)

April 18, 2008

When I picked Jake up from school yesterday, one of his caregivers told me he’d been “doing much better lately.” Since I thought he’d been doing just fine for some time now, I found this cheery message about as welcome as one of Jake’s epic morning poops. “Better?” I asked, carefully modulating my voice to [...]

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Making the Little Choices

April 14, 2008

I’m on my way to the Carl Sandburg house, and wondering if I learned anything at all yesterday. It was Saturday, I’d been cutting into my work time entertaining relatives, and I really just wanted to stay home and get some work done. Still, there’s a difference between deciding to get some work done and [...]

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What the Friday Morning Bothered Blues Can Teach You About Time

April 11, 2008

“Is this the kind of day I’m going to have?” I whined as I pinched my fingers in the buckle of Jake’s stroller while rushing to get him to school. YES! boomed something much bigger than me a few minutes later, when Jake dropped the windshield scraper he so loves to carry to school on [...]

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Shopping for Groceries without Jake, or Following the Path I Have Chosen

April 3, 2008

Wednesdays are my no-yoga-class days, when the 7 hours Jake is at school (and I’m not) stretch ahead of me like a pint of Ben & Jerry’s waiting to be eaten without interruption. I imagine productivity the likes of which have never before been seen in a middle-of-the-week frenzy to do all the things that [...]

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Breaking from Break, Part I: Why We Are Allowed to Take a Break from Being Mothers

March 31, 2008

It began before I left to take my friend Sam to the airport at the end of his weekend visit. Panic. Anxiety. An unsteady feeling, as if the floor beneath me had disappeared, leaving me spinning my legs in an ethereal nothingness. I thought about what was causing this feeling half an hour later as [...]

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When I’m Sleepy I’m Even More Critical of Myself

March 26, 2008

It never really goes away, does it? How many times your brand new baby wakes you up every night and how you get him back to sleep morphs into whether, when, and how to sleep train. Once you’re over the guilt and/or exhaustion produced by your decision, a bout of teething sends you over the [...]

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Practicing Not Yoga with a Glass of Wine and 2 a.m. TiVo

March 23, 2008

There are days when you don’t have time for a yoga practice but can still practice yoga. On these days I still eat in a way that nourishes my body (mostly — we went to Trader Joe’s in Charlotte last weekend and walked out with three packages of Droste dark chocolate pastilles that aren’t very [...]

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Learning to Let Go of the Saturday Morning Baby-Free Panic

March 22, 2008

Here it is again. It’s Saturday morning, I’m gloriously still in my pajamas, and Mike has taken Jake on an expedition. We should both be thrilled: he gets the Jake Time of which he manages only snippets during the work week and I get a morning free to practice yoga. The problem is, I spend [...]

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I’m Finding a Way to Practice in the Time My Life Allows for It

March 20, 2008

Today is Thursday, a yoga day. This means at noon I will dash away from my computer to throw on yoga clothes, sweat through a 12:15 class, and return home to shower some time between 2:00 and 3:30 in the afternoon, an exercise that will never cease to feel, just, wrong. I did the same [...]

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How Not to Start Out as a YogaMama Blogger

March 19, 2008

Yoga and my life frequently seem to be at cross purposes. Yoga is about slowing down, being in the moment, focusing on exactly what you are doing and nothing else. It is about not pushing, about slow and steady change, respect for one’s limitations, and gratitude for the beauty within us all. It is about [...]

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