you can’t control everything

“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 [...]

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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 [...]

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Do I Really Have Any More Control Than a Two-Year-Old?

November 24, 2008

Mike does not believe in the Terrible Two’s. I wish I were as certain that Jake is not, in fact, entering his Terrible Two’s as my husband, even though I know it would do me no good.  (Witness Mike’s frequent less-than-patient exchanges with Jake in which he variously commands, wheedles, and begs Jake [clench teeth [...]

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Just Let It All In

November 19, 2008

I experienced a whole new way of thinking at the end of yoga class yesterday. I’d spent the past several days mulling over how I wanted to approach writing about continuing toddler-inspired sleep interruptions; guilty, crying morning-afters; plummeting four-season temperatures; and that frustrating in-between period where the choice between too-big maternity clothes and too-small normal [...]

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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, [...]

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“Read My Lips . . .” Oh, Wait, You’re Still Learning to Talk

October 28, 2008

There are few things worse than having “The Heart of Rock and Roll” stuck in your head at two o’clock in the morning. Except possibly having this catchy ’80′s ditty replay itself over and over as your child reaches out across the pillow you have erected as a barrier between your bodies because you refuse [...]

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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 [...]

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Let the Comparisons Begin, or How Much Control Do I Really Have?

October 6, 2008

We had our anatomy-screen ultrasound last week, and, inevitably, the comparisons began. “This is an active one,” the technician commented, as she tried, unsuccessfully, to snap a picture of the wiggling baby’s heart before it shifted out of view again. I told her about the time Jake wouldn’t wake up for his ultrasound.  And about [...]

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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 [...]

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The Friendship That Doesn’t Change When You Do

August 12, 2008

I took my dearest friend — Kali I’ll call her and she knows why — to the airport this morning. And I started crying — again. Not just because “Carolina in My Mind” was playing on the radio. (That song makes me cry every time, dammit, and not because I live in North Carolina.) I [...]

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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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At Least Now I Can Eat Dinner at a Normal Time, or Something I Actually Can Control

June 10, 2008

Most people probably consider it an obvious choice to eat dinner with your child. It is, after all, the foundation of all those sitcoms we grew up with, isn’t it? Remember Richie Cunningham … eating hamburgers at Arnold’s restaurant with The Fonz. Or … the hijinks taking place in the otherwise unused kitchen during those [...]

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Fixing Everything, Even When You Can’t, or How I Learned to Diffuse My Energy

May 7, 2008

Today my acupuncturist spent a lot of time diffusing my energy. And it got me thinking. I was probably not thinking what you are — Acupuncture! Therapy! Yoga! This gal spends an inordinate amount of energy searching for the mindfulness in motherhood! And is maybe a little bit crazy to boot. But, see, it’s what [...]

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When It Takes Effort to Experience Effortlessness

April 30, 2008

“I made that,” I marveled, not for the first time, as I watched Jake at school this morning. He was banging two farm animal puzzle pieces together, making a loud clacking noise appreciated by no one but himself. His eyes were clear and as blue as his shirt, which hung over the top of his [...]

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Respecting Your Body (and, of course, your child’s) in a World That Doesn’t

April 24, 2008

Boy, you think you’re a careful, concerned parent doing everything anyone could to ensure that your child will never contract autism or cancer or any of the other scary diseases that seem to lurk everywhere in our toxic world, and along come abundant assurances that you could be doing so very much more. It’s enough [...]

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Surrendering When You Can’t Decide How to Put Your Child to Sleep (or How to Make Some Other Important Parenting Decision)

April 23, 2008

The worst part of lying awake in bed at 4:30 this morning listening to Mike’s deep sleep breaths was not knowing if I’d done the right thing. I’ll bet we all have that one area of parenting that refuses to yield a clear course of action. No matter what we decide, we find ourselves wondering [...]

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Facing Life’s Daily Detours Like Bamboo

April 12, 2008

Yesterday I planned on writing a YogaMamaMe entry even though I really didn’t have time for it. As a result, I found myself with 10 minutes to go before yoga class began as I threw myself into the car and marveled yet again at how it always seems to be 5 minutes later by the [...]

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Honoring Where Your Heart Has Taken You

April 7, 2008

I was sitting at the local ball park with Mike and Jake yesterday, enjoying the spring day and the buzz of peanuts and beer and baseball gloves, when “Here Comes the Sun” came over the loudspeakers. Normally, I resist writing essays built around a song that someone else has written. (I haven’t ever written a [...]

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Judge the Man in the Red Yoga Shorts only if You Are Ready for Him to Judge You

April 5, 2008

The man in the red yoga shorts was in class again on Thursday. I wasn’t the only one looking. None of us, I assure you, were staring with pleasure. He was wearing the traditional yoga shorts that no doubt were the inspiration for European bathing trunks, the kind regretfully worn only by old German men [...]

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Shopping for Groceries without Jake, or Following the Path I Have Chosen

April 3, 2008

Wednesdays are my no-yoga-class days, when the 7 hours Jake is at school (and I’m not) stretch ahead of me like a pint of Ben & Jerry’s waiting to be eaten without interruption. I imagine productivity the likes of which have never before been seen in a middle-of-the-week frenzy to do all the things that [...]

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