Am I the only one who doesn’t find the efforts of everyone else’s children on Mother’s Day heartwarming? Not gonna happen around these parts, I think. It’s not like I’ve never gotten any appreciation from my children. For the most part they’re good kids. But celebrations are not something we’ve ever done well. And now…
parenting
View from day 47: pandemic papers
Just as some food allergies can cause delayed reactions that are hard to place, so are all the weirdnesses caused by sheltering in place wreaking havoc on my children’s emotions and their abilities to self-regulate. Take today, for example, when my 9-year-old smashed her iPad down onto the dining table at 10:13 a.m., shattering her…
Fall into Winter (again)
Although much has changed since this summer-fall recap post was originally written in December 2019, I’m backdating the post upon belated publication to reflect my reality at that time. —— When I look back on past Novembers when I did NaPoWriMo – National Poetry Writing Month – I love knowing that I found joy in…
It all comes back to – or starts with – childhood
Five years ago, in January 2013, shortly before I was to turn 40, I experienced something of a seismic shift from which I’m still feeling aftershocks. In the space of just a few weeks, I had the opportunity to interview three amazing people and be present to the same message told from three different perspectives:…
On screens, suicide and surviving
It was a year ago that I got clear just how profoundly my brother’s suicide nearly 30 years earlier had affected my life. I’d started to think about its impact on my health when I read Donna Jackson Nakazawa’s The Last Best Cure in 2013 and, in July 2015, Childhood Disrupted: How Your Biography Becomes Biology…
Gender today
The National Geographic special issue on Gender and the Gender Revolution documentary that airs this month could not have come at a better time. I was thrilled to get to see the documentary last week at a pre-release screening at Nat Geo headquarters here in DC. My post on The DC Moms goes into more detail…
Water me like a new lawn or watch me wither
My lawn and I have a lot in common. We both have struggled over the past several years, and we both require a lot of maintenance to thrive. When we first moved into this home that we fully renovated on the inside, there was no lawn. There were dozens – hundreds? – of baby oak…
Lab report & retort
If you don’t think blood test results from the lab are super exciting, I get it. It’s not like I expected to be distracted the entire afternoon by their bolded “high” numbers. I would have preferred to actually look at my children, to attend to them instead of breaking the rules about no screen time…
What would “success” look like
Today I was challenged to define success. This was at the end of a networking meeting, and I was spinning my wheels about what I’m trying to achieve with Mindful Healthy Life vs. what seems realistically possible given the commitments I have to my health, to my family, and to my community. Well, that was…
Missing the moment, and then not
When I saw the other parents in the room at my daughter’s last dance class of the session, I froze. What were they all doing in there? I was supposed to be on a phone call! I mean, I could have figured we might be invited in at the end of class, but from the…
What I wish for my daughter on her fourth birthday
My daughter is about to turn four. Her grandparents are asking what they can get for her. The question has made me feel hollow and heavy at the same time. I don’t feel like I can give her the things I really, truly want her to have. She is a hilarious and fascinating…
The importance of laughter
This post is part of the first Humor in Parenting (and Breastfeeding!) Blog Carnival inspired by the anthology Have Milk, Will Travel: Adventures in Breastfeeding, a collection edited by Rachel Epp Buller and published by Demeter Press in August 2013. The anthology looks at the lighter side of nursing. All of its contributors found something…
Why didn’t I think of that? Grandma saves 1/72 of the day!
It might be said that I had a perfectly fine day, parenting the children alone from 9 to 5 on a Sunday. Except that I appear to have gained 5 pounds from stress-eating and might have let my children’s eyeballs get singed by TV and computer screens. At least it was from gorging on Mr….
Humor in Parenting (and Breastfeeding!) Blog Carnival
The hilarious anthology Have Milk, Will Travel: Adventures in Breastfeeding was published in August by Demeter Press (and reviewed glowingly by Literary Mama). The editor is heading up a Humor Blog Carnival this month. Details below! The book contains some 30 essays from mothers sharing the funniest breastfeeding stories you’ve ever heard. Even if the…
Making the scary or different okay
Welcome to the March 2013 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Tough Conversations This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have spoken up about how they discuss complex topics with their children. Please read to the end to find…
Reading is fundamental (and so is writing)
I did not go to my child’s school to read in my pajamas today. Does this make me a bad parent? I’m going to vote no. I did have his dad pick him up some new non-flame-retardant-sprayed pj’s at Hanna Andersson yesterday (for the “it’s organic and in the mall” price far above Costco rates)…
A day of focus
That crazy sound you hear is my head spinning so fast I think my eyeballs will melt from the inside out. In other words, today blew my mind. I left the house at 9 a.m. for a workshop with healer Dr. Claudia Welch on breath, Ayurveda, and hormones. I left that gig an hour early…
The short and long view
It’s now been over three months since I started reading Katrina Kenison’s The Gift of an Ordinary Day. I’d picked it up even before that, but three months ago I devoured as much as I could while away from my kids at a conference. Since I’ve been back, time has been scarce amid getting unpacked,…
Day Two on the road
So tonight it’s Monopoly I’m missing to write, but I’ll be brief with this, inspired by our visit to the Indianpolis Children’s Museum, and as I noticed as I wrote, the cadence of some children’s book I haven’t read in a long time. Maybe Freight Train? From two to twelve Orange ball Rock wall Kids…
What’s it like to be an adult?
Today skipped by with no chance for any fun photo shoots out in the fall air. But that’s just as well, because this commitment to photograph and write daily in November prompted me to snap some shots of my son and husband playing music together. Sometimes I wish they would both help me get dinner…