Last month I shared some of my concerns over Big Boy’s nervous behavior during what was supposed to be our trip to Disney World. A comment on that post by The Absence of Alternatives has been ricocheting around my head ever since: I read this post and I thought, “We went through the same thing!” [...]
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Welcome to the new, and hopefully improved, Motherese! What do you think? While you’re here, take a look around. See something funny looking? An entire post filled with HTML gobbledygook? Please let me know! Before you go, please take a moment to subscribe to Motherese via an RSS feed or e-mail. You wouldn’t want to [...]
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I think a lot about the ways in which spending so much time online might compromise our relationships with the people we know in real-time. But what about the people we don’t know? The larger community of mothers with kids who could use a seat, or strangers carrying trays full of hot coffee? During some [...]
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In a recent post at Privilege of Parenting, Bruce offered some advice to a reader concerned about the sleep issues of her six-year-old son. In his response, he shared the advice of two of my personal parenting heroines, Jennifer Waldburger and Jill Spivack, the dynamic duo behind Sleepy Planet and the authors of the Motherese [...]
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Are you pro-choice? No, I don’t mean it like that. Do you let your kids choose – and, if so, how much? A post at Privilege of Parenting and a comment on a post of mine have me thinking about the choices our kids make and the choices we make for them. On Sunday, Bruce [...]
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To me, the most resonant of Gretchen Rubin‘s Four Splendid Truths is the third one: “The days are long, but the years are short.” Indeed, as far as this mother of two is concerned, truer words have never been spoken. For the past couple of weeks, I have really been feeling that “long” part of [...]
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The day after we arrived in Orlando, Big Boy, Tiny Baby, and I visited Downtown Disney. I was excited to introduce the dinosaur-obsessed Big Boy to the dinos at the T-Rex Cafe and thought we might just catch a glimpse of a Disney character or two. Won’t he be delighted, I mused. [Big] Boy, was [...]
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Flying home on Sunday afternoon after another week away, I was actually a bit sad to see the trip come to an end. That is unusual for me: I usually prefer to stay home than to travel. I enjoy planning vacations, mapping out an itinerary, but, as often as not, I find myself counting down [...]
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In the early days of Motherese, I reflected on the November shootings at Fort Hood. Many of the emotions that filled me then resurfaced this week, with perhaps even greater poignancy, in learning about the earthquake in Haiti. I feel like drawing the shades, locking the doors, turning off the television, the radio, the computer. [...]
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Last week my blogging buddy Liz at …but then I had kids presented me with the Happy 101 award, given to bloggers who make you smile. Thanks, Liz! Your witty, insightful writing never fails to make me smile – so that happy thing? It’s reciprocal! Today I give you a special edition of Six Quick [...]
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My beloved Big Little Wolf e-mailed me yesterday to ask: “‘Tiny Baby’ isn’t that tiny anymore, is he? When he turns one, what will you call him online?” A provocative question indeed, especially since Tiny Baby has never been all that, well, tiny. In fact, “Tiny Baby” was a nickname given to him – perhaps [...]
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I have just come up with a hypothesis so revolutionary that I wanted to share it with you right away: Youth just might be wasted on the young. My first piece of evidence: Big Boy has recently decided that he will not deign to eat dinner, regardless of what is served to him. Whether it [...]
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Two weeks of family time over the holidays got me thinking about birth order and how it affects us as kids and as adults. When I was pregnant with Tiny Baby, I spent some of my weeks of bed rest reading uniquely unhelpful books about birth order, gender, and age spacing between kids. These books [...]
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In this week’s edition of Six Quick Picks, I bring you some highlights from my own personal 2009. 1. January: Big Boy and I traveled to Orlando, Florida with my parents. It was on this trip that his language skills really began to explode. He started naming everything in sight. We started having conversations. At [...]
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I have a heart-shaped uterus. A septum divides the two sides of my womb. This so-called “Mullerian anomaly” is a birth defect that affects less than 1% of the female population. I had no idea it “affected” me until I had some complications early in my pregnancy with Big Boy. Having a bicornuate uterus is [...]
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Friends, think of me on an airplane. Think of Big Boy, hopefully docile. Hopefully enraptured by our new portable DVD player. Think of Tiny Baby, hopefully asleep. Hopefully sound asleep. Think of Husband, hopefully multitasking contentedly. Think of the people – hopefully patient, hopefully child-loving – seated in front of us. Think of their kidneys [...]
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A friend of mine in California recently decided to move her four year old son to a new preschool. He was being bullied at his former school and the school staff did not intervene in a way that my friend found effective. When she told the preschool director of her decision, the older woman told [...]
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I like to bake. Baking appeals not only to my insatiable appetite for sweets, but also to my love of order, my passion for following directions. (Yes, it is possible to feel passion for following directions.) I like to cook, too, but not in the same way. To cook well, I think, takes improvisation. And, [...]
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