From the category archives:

yoga class

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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Lily Walks

May 14, 2010

It’s one of those favorite phrases of parents of young children.  “Any day now!”
“Any day now!” we chirp as cheerfully as someone as sleep-deprived as the parent of an infant can chirp when someone asks if she is sleeping through the night yet with unknowing cruelty.
“Any day now!” we promise as we watch her rock [...]

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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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Imagine How Pushy I’ll Be By the Time Jake’s in College

January 20, 2010

I thought I had it under control.
A couple of years ago I had that breakdown over Jake’s fifteen-month evaluation at preschool — the kind where they determine whether said fifteen-month-old can say anything more than “Mama” and “Dada” and pick up a Cheerio with his fingers.  And that breakdown, I felt, brought me to a [...]

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When a Fresh Perspective Requires a Fresh Perspective (Don’t Look at Your Butt Redux)

January 14, 2010

You’d think I’d have learned my lesson when I looked at my butt in a mirror at my sister-in-law’s house while four months pregnant.
You would, in fact, not be expecting too much to think after that shock I would be smart enough not to look at my butt in a changing room mirror at a [...]

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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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High Winds with a Likelihood of Anxiety

October 9, 2009

There are those (my husband) who will think me a little bit nutty for saying this, but windy days breed anxiety.
One might suggest that I am simply looking for something other than my mother to blame my anxiety on.  And that may be the case.  But I have it on good authority — my acupuncturist, [...]

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Turn, Turn, Turn … or Not: What I Learned at Six Months

October 2, 2009

“Yep,” Mike confirmed the other day.  “Lily’s acting like a normal baby.”
He said this after our first sunny fall day in the park.  After Lily and I arrived with her pouting in her stroller because I decided that much as she was demanding it I was simply not up to the task of walking to [...]

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Full of Firsts — And Not a Parent in Sight

June 18, 2009

I thought — mistakenly, as it turned out — that it was pretty momentous to be witnessing Lily’s first props-assisted rollover yesterday.
We were about midway through our hour-long drop-off at daycare.  I was pretending not to notice the time I was supposed to be using for myself slipping away as I clung to my girl.  [...]

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What Happened to My Yoga Practice?: Lamentations of a Postpartum Mom

May 22, 2009

I was initially kind of excited when I sat down to breakfast this morning and discovered an article in the New York Times Style section about a yoga class I attended a few times.
It felt like a brush with celebrity, an acknowledgment of a past life maybe not steeped in but occasionally brushing up against [...]

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The Most Natural Thing in the World

April 29, 2009

What’s the most natural thing in the world?  Breastfeeding?  The naked human body?  Worms and cockroaches and creepy crawlies?  A little flatulence after a satisfying dinner of rice and beans?
Any one of them.  Except for breastfeeding.
This declaration, I know, sounds a bit aggressive, wounded perhaps, certainly not in keeping with the spirit of someone who [...]

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What I Learned in My First Mommy and Me Yoga Class

April 15, 2009

I’ve had this day marked on my calendar for weeks.  My first Mommy and Me yoga class.
It’s been just two days since Lily officially reached the Age Where I Can Take Her Into Public Places, and the prospect of the class was even more exciting to me than Monday’s foray into Target.  Purchasing diapers and [...]

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Alice in Motherland, or Just How Hard It Is

April 14, 2009

Yesterday afternoon, I was like the Cheshire Cat, grinning and purring contentedly about how smoothly the first four weeks of Lily’s life have slid by.
Yesterday evening, I was Alice herself, “shedding gallons of tears, until there was a large pool all round her, about four inches deep, and reaching half down the hall.”  Unlike Alice, [...]

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We Should All Be the Pregnant Lady in Yoga Class Sometimes

January 27, 2009

Sometimes, you decide you must do something that is against your better judgment.
Ideally, these circumstances should not include going to yoga class.  Not because it’s never a bad idea to go to yoga class — although that is the first thought that comes to my mind, even when, as now, I’m writing about why going [...]

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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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“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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Can a Sense of Self Come with Pink Polka Dot Boots?

December 9, 2008

Jake has been wearing his beloved pink polka dot boots pretty much non-stop for over a week now.

We have engaged in successful negotiations about removing them for bed time and bath time (for which he even removed his swim diaper the other night, suggesting he is finally over the traumatic poop-in-the-tub incident).  But otherwise, on [...]

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Forget My Mind — I Lost My Cell Phone

July 24, 2008

Actually, “lost” is mother-of-a-toddler code for, “I left my cell phone in the pocket of the shorts I wore to the pool with Jake and ran it through the washing machine.” Raz-r phones, I probably don’t have to tell you, do not like being run through the washing machine.
When Mike first announced that he [...]

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Why Practicing Yoga Is as Simple as Sleeping with a Sick Child

July 15, 2008

I’m assuming there are women checking out the YogaMamaMe community who don’t practice asanas, don’t know what the word means (it designates the physical poses you see people practicing on the cover of Yoga Journal when you’re waiting in the check-out line at Whole Foods), don’t intend ever to practice them, and yet are kind [...]

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