A few days ago, we were getting ready to go out. Not anywhere special, really, just out with a few friends who also have kids, and we were all bringing our kids. Hubby was holding the girls at bay while I got ready. These days, that pretty much means just redoing my ponytail, putting on a clean shirt and brushing my teeth. I might smear on a little lipgloss and throw on some earrings if I can find them, but […]
My bosses and colleagues were amazing, but they couldn’t hold a candle to my cooing little being back at the ranch. Too-tight work clothes, pumping my milk in the bathroom, and the million other crazy things working mommies live through every day did not sweeten the deal.
One by one, the babies in our yoga class, play groups and PEPS group have left the land of immobility. I’ll watch a baby slide backwards on his tummy, or push up into downward dog not sure what to do next, or plane in frustration, prone as a snake, and then the next time I see him he will be crawling from one corner to another as fast as a door slams.
Parents will tell me how they hastened the crawl by helping […]
A few years ago, right before T and I started trying for a baby of our own, I went to visit a friend who had recently given birth.
Actually, it was a whole group of us childless 20-somethings sprawled out on my friend’s patio drinking beer and feigning nonchalance at the tiny baby in our midst.
Noticing my friend’s mostly untouched Fat Tire, I pointed out to her that she could always “pump and dump” if she wanted to drink more.
I know. […]
My grandmother had two matroshkas that she kept on a shelf in a tiny bookcase in her bedroom. I bought them for her 10 years ago in St. Petersburg, one a silvery city girl with 18th century Leningrad landmarks etched on her front, and the other a country lady, with a strawberry on her dress and a kerchief on her round head. Each nesting doll is a wooden mother inside a wooden mother inside a wooden mother, and so on, […]
We are out at the lake with my parents for one blissful week. In the mornings, Quinn wakes up early and points frantically to the bedroom door.
She knows her grandparents are out there, and she knows mornings out here mean a walk with them through their orchard and down to the dock.
I know that mornings out here mean more sleep for me and my husband. I can’t say which of the five of us is happiest!
The other day, my mom shared some reflections […]
When I found out I was having another baby, my thoughts immediately turned to my first daughter: Would I be able to give her all of the love I had before? Would we still be as close as we were? Would she still feel like she was the center of my world? Would she be OK?
Well, here I am 10 months later, with a six-week-old and an I-can’t-believe-she-just-turned-two-year-old, and so far the answers to my questions are usually, no, no […]
I know I’m a little late to join the pig-pile of vitriol over this whole kid with pink fingernails thing, but I’m slogging in anyway. It’s an interesting topic, and one that struck a nerve with me (and 60 million other people). If you’re sick of it already, feel free to ignore me.
As the mother of two young girls (OK, one of them is only a 34-week fetus but I have already been mothering aka worrying about her for what […]
Quinn has entered the cuteness stage far earlier than I expected. No, not the stage of being cute herself. That’s one she’s always been in and will never, ever leave (note to self: Re-read that sentence when Quinn’s in eighth grade, then cue the chianti).
No, my toddler is in the stage where she remarks upon the cuteness of other things and people. Like her pigtails, my earrings and her friends (especially a certain little boy at preschool, who is actually […]
My whole life, I’ve felt like I was obtaining random skills and taking up random hobbies for just my own pleasure. I am one of these ever-curious people who likes to try new things, learn new languages, make new circles of friends. I like the liberal arts approach to life, reading Gray’s Anatomy one week, a graphic novel the next, and splicing my Paul Krugman/ Malcolm Gladwell with Jane Austin fan fic.
I always thought that my lifestyle put me at […]