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. […]
I know that Washington state law allows a woman to nurse anywhere. And that is wonderful. But it doesn’t mean you’re comfortable whipping out your boob while sitting in a 10-top at Canlis, or behind home base at SafecoField (though more power to you if you do!), especially during the first few months.
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 […]
No less than four dozen times a day, my daughter will do something amazing. Maybe she’ll make up a little song about her baby sister in mommy’s belly, or line up all of her stuffed animals and read them a story, or, like she did the other day, wake up from her nap, still half-asleep and say “Big, big nose. Big beard. No, little beard. So fun, so cute. Daddy!”
I will think to myself, “Man, I’ve got to write that […]
Fast forward six months, and the sight of another toddler’s nose running can send you into near-hysterics. Whereas really, that kid’s probably just teething, and it’s the clean-faced angel kissing your child on the mouth who really has CRV, his mama just doesn’t know it yet. The strategically placed bleach buckets for toys and the hand sanitizer bottles just seem to mock us now, don’t they?
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 […]
It happened today. I was at the zoo and I saw a woman cradling a tiny baby and I stopped and stared hard. “I want one,” said a plaintive (and possibly crazy) voice from deep within me.
Well, that is a damn good thing, lady, ’cause you’re getting one in four months! I am quite relieved that my desire for a baby managed to kick in before my baby got here. I got pregnant again when Quinn was just 13 months […]