From the category archives:

too much to do

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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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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Never Say Never, and Never Say, “What Is That?” if You Plan on Picking It Up

May 3, 2010

There are times, I’ve found, when, no matter how certain I was of my choice, the Universe was right there daring me to stick to it.  Telling me, in no uncertain terms, that I would be foolish to be that stubborn.
Take, for instance, bath time Thursday night.
It was then, in one, parenthood-requires-a-good-sense-of-humor flash that it [...]

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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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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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Retreat of the December Mom

December 31, 2009

I’m still ashamed, even though I now recognize it was a December Mom thing.
There’s simply no excuse for being — I can still recall the out-of-body experience of watching myself do this — the mom screaming across a crowded coffee shop at her child.  “Jake!  Jake!  JAKE!  DO YOU WANT A BAGEL?”  As if no [...]

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I Can Cook! And Lots of Other Things You’d Never Know I Can Do

December 1, 2009

By the end of our Thanksgiving meal, life as a mother, as someone who is (can it only be?) eight-and-a-half months postpartum, and as a still relative newcomer to my new home — it was all beginning to seem manageable, pleasurable even.
And then Ellen turned to Mike.  “You and I should have monthly Iron Chef-like [...]

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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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Labor Day Indeed

September 9, 2009

As you may or may not know, Labor Day is a celebration of workers — a “yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country,” according to the Department of Labor.
What I want to know is who figured giving people a day off from work was [...]

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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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Busy with Baby: Me, Myself, and My Baby Who Demands All of Both

May 28, 2009

We have reached that precious stage of infancy where Lily is alive to everything around her, singing out the sounds of conversation to us, staying awake longer between naps, and not looking quite so ridiculous in teeny tiny little dresses.  This can mean only one thing:
Just when I have the most to write about I [...]

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Knowing When to Say No (and Not Just to Target on a Saturday)

February 7, 2009

I can’t remember the last time I went to Target on a Saturday.
As of today, I know why.
It was supposed to be my break, part of the divide-and-conquer strategy Mike and I launched on this Saturday morning of oh-so-cranky toddler.
And, indeed, somehow, I needed a break, despite having spent all of an hour or so [...]

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“Mommy, Go Work.”

January 2, 2009

“Mommy, go work.”
Jake said these words gently, with a firm hand on my knee as if to steady me for the blow of his very first (but, oh, I know, definitely not his last) leave-me-alone-already.
We were in his new classroom, on his first day at the “big kids” preschool across the street from his former [...]

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Why I Was Crying in the Target Parking Lot, and Why I Probably Will Again

December 18, 2008

I thought I was doing really well on Tuesday.  Last of the holiday packages mailed?  Check.  Requisite single container for the lunches Jake will take with him when he moves up to the big kids’ preschool after the holidays finally located and purchased?  Check.  Checks deposited?  Check, checks.
I was aware that in order to add [...]

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Maternity Pants, Fatigue, and Never Look at Your Butt in Your Sister-in-Law’s Guest Room Mirror

October 27, 2008

Fatigue.
I’m not talking tired or exhausted or however I generally feel after carrying Jake up the stairs for the fifteenth time at the end of the day.  I am talking about bone-crushing, crying-because-I’m-so-tired, unable-to-think fatigue.  Have-your-thyroid-level-checked fatigue.
It is, perhaps, no coincidence that it hit me after an afternoon spent at a three-year-old’s birthday party last [...]

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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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Monday Mornings, Sleeping Late, and the Clash of the “Should Do’s”

July 14, 2008

Jake slept in this Monday morning. I did too, for a while. Until Mike told me it was eight o’clock and suddenly my eyes were wide open like a Bush voter who finds out for the first time that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. One minute I was dozing blissfully, [...]

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Mothers, Daughters, and “The Eye of the Tiger”: How a Bad Song from 1982 Moved Me Closer to Stillness

June 16, 2008

On Father’s Day morning, when I started the car in the parking lot of EarthFare (Asheville’s local Whole Foods-ish place I love to shop for groceries even though we really can’t afford it), I had one of those delicious moments that happens when I hear “Eye of the Tiger” on the radio.
Immediately, it was 1982. [...]

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