From the category archives:

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When Good Girls Go Mad

November 23, 2010

It’s been a while since I’ve written.  (Blame the novel.  Or don’t blame the novel, just read it when it’s finished.)  A lot has happened.  Lily is speaking in three-word sentences — “Jake eat pasta” is a common one; “Man is gone?” a particularly clever way of saying she can’t find the man in the [...]

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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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But We Got to See the Goats

May 23, 2010

We were on our way to the Dairy Goat Parade and Festival in Spindale, NC (where else would we spend a Saturday afternoon?) when it happened.
We were rolling around mountain passes, zinging like a pinball whacked between paddles, cruising through towns with names like Batcave and Chimney Rock.
“It’s too far,” Jake whined.  Until this moment [...]

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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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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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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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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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I’d Rather Have My Mushrooms Fresh with Maggots than Processed with High Fructose Corn Syrup

February 16, 2009

I guess I’ve been thinking more lately about how to feed my children healthily (without instilling in them my own seriously warped food issues) because everyone has.  You know, that peanutbutter thing.
Then, on Friday, I read an op ed piece in the New York Times entitled The Maggots in Your Mushrooms. Suddenly, it all [...]

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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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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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Zzzzz, or Do I Wake Myself Up or Honor My Exhaustion?

November 12, 2008

I do not deal well with exhaustion.
I feel demoralized, lazy, like I am squandering opportunities, watching the economy sweep the can-I-get-published? bus off the road and into the deep muck of a future in which Mike and I are — we know — crazy to imagine raising our children on freelancing and, even worse, journalism.
Mostly, [...]

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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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Shouldn’t My Sick Child Be Crying for His Mommy?

September 21, 2008

Mike and I had one of those glorious Asheville Saturdays yesterday.  We took Jake to Plow Day at Warren Wilson College, a small school just outside of town with — as the Plow Day moniker would suggest — a working farm.
Yes, one year of living here, and I consider Plow Day at Warren Wilson College [...]

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When Families Happen

September 10, 2008

The remarkable thing about my taking Jake to visit my sister-in-law Maureen last weekend was that it seemed so very unremarkable to me.
Mike, you see, had brilliantly realized that even if three of us couldn’t travel to Napa for three days to attend a wedding I had, quite frankly, been dying to attend, he could [...]

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Twice Bitten: More of the Wisdom of Toddlers

September 4, 2008

Not long ago, I arrived to pick Jake up from school to find not one but two incident reports awaiting me.
“He got bitten,” one of Jake’s teachers said apologetically.  “Twice.”
From the deliberately pared-down details they provided — perpetrators’ names and identifying characteristics are omitted from incident reports to protect those too young to deserve the [...]

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A New Olympic Event — Caring for a Toddler While You Have the Stomach Flu

August 22, 2008

How about that Michael Phelps, huh? Single-minded determination, laser-like focus, conquering his body’s limitations. The ultimate competitor.
I’d like to see him take care of a toddler while suffering from a good bout of stomach flu. (Dara Torres has probably done it, but then she’s a goddess, being over 40 and an Olympic [...]

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Careful What You Google For

August 14, 2008

About a week ago I googled an old boyfriend. The one I thought I’d marry but didn’t.
It wasn’t a stalker sort of thing. It wasn’t, amazingly, a raging case of misplaced nostalgia brought about by panic over finding myself a work-at-home mom living on a neighborly street in Asheville, North Carolina. I [...]

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