From the category archives:

work

A Little Grey’s Anatomy, a Little Kindness

May 30, 2008

I know how this sounds, but I’m going to say it anyway. Yesterday I paid more attention to Grey’s Anatomy than to my child. Just a little bit more. And just for a little while. And only because I really, really needed to.
It had, you see, been a rough week. [...]

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A Sick Boy and a Lesson About Intentions

May 17, 2008

I really didn’t mind too much when I got the not-unanticipated Please Pick Him Up call on Wednesday from Jake’s school.
True, I had picked him up early on Monday and kept him home all day Tuesday, which I really thought ought to have scored me a few points with the teachers. And he had [...]

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Geez, I Haven’t Had the Hip Replacement Yet, or Thoughts on Age and Youth

May 14, 2008

Something occurred to me yesterday in yoga class as I observed the places where I feel just a tad tighter and achier than I did before my pregnancy.
“Maybe,” I thought with a rush of horror threaded through with an unsettling warmth of acceptance, “I’m just getting older.”
For the past couple of years I’ve had these [...]

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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 [...]

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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 my [...]

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Grandma Versus Jack’s School, or Trusting Myself as a Mother

April 10, 2008

I didn’t apologize to Jake’s grandmother for taking him to school today. This is a sign, I believe, of progress.
An awful lot of what I’ve done as a mother is apologize — for decisions I’ve made as a mother (sure, everyone tells you you’re right because you’re the mom, but do you ever really [...]

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Breaking from Break, Part II: Back to Being a Mom

April 1, 2008

So, it turns out it’s not as hard as I had anticipated to jump right back into mothering, working, and living at breakneck speed.
Except, that is, for those five minutes this morning when I was trying to change Jake’s poopy diaper. He has now decided that a choice between lying down and standing up [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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How Getting Knocked Off My Feet Helped Me to Grow

March 25, 2008

Yesterday I surveyed the field of unexpected obligations suddenly stretching between me and my YogaMamaMe website and declared myself okay. Getting published, I realized, had become too much of a goal, and I should feel deep gratitude to the Universe for throwing a bunch of other things at me as a reminder that I [...]

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Why Waiting for What You Want (and Maybe Not Even Getting It) Is a Gift

March 24, 2008

So, I’ve been working on this being a writer thing more or less steadily since I quit my teaching job in 2003. And, not for the first time, I feel like I’m on the verge of it actually panning out. All I’ve got to do is finish my YogaMamaMe book proposal, get the [...]

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Silencing Your Mind When Your Mind Is on Your Child

March 21, 2008

“Keep it short,” my husband Mike told me, not for the first time, last night. It’s been his advice about both of my blogs. “People don’t want to read anything really lengthy.”
Usually, I ignore him. It’s just not in my power to be brief, I shrug to myself. It’s part of [...]

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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 [...]

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Day One

March 18, 2008

Last week, I told an agent friend about the proposal I’m working on for a book called YogaMamaMe: How to Be Mindful When Your Mind Is on Your Baby. It deals, I explained, with that period of new motherhood around a year after giving birth when you decide you’re ready to be yourself again [...]

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