From the category archives:

traveling with toddler

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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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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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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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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When the Vacation Ends and You Still Have 2,500 Miles to Go. With Kids.

February 18, 2010

My approach to the end of a good vacation is to panic.
My stomach twists into a little cherry-stem bow at the very thought of resuming a regular life.  I see the piles of laundry arranged almost neatly in the suitcases as mountains of unsettled-ness to be scaled before I can breathe again.  I feel like [...]

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New Places, New Faces, New Records for Lack of Sleep

October 23, 2009

Nursing my daughter in the back seat of the Honda as we left town for the weekend — me kneeling over her with a hand braced against the window as if to wave (or perhaps hold out a big STOP!) at passersby — probably should have been a good clue that I would be facing [...]

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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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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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Travels with Toddler

September 16, 2008

In my last post I stressed the importance of bringing along an Elmo DVD if you intend to take a toddler on a four-hour driving trip without another adult in the car who is willing to spend the entire journey twisted around dispensing handfuls of popcorn.
I would now like to point out that the Elmo [...]

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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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I’m Really Here, Now (Even in Wal-Mart)

June 23, 2008

What surprised me as I stood in a Wal-Mart off I-40 in Hickory, North Carolina, was not so much that I was standing in a Wal-Mart off I-40 in Hickory, North Carolina. The exigencies of a Blankie left far behind at school can leave one in some pretty surprising places. What surprised me was [...]

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