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!” [...]
{ 43 comments }
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 [...]
{ 57 comments }
As I have mentioned before, Tiny Baby is not a fan of tummy time. Put him on his tummy and he becomes irritated. Ornery. Sometimes he’ll push up and roll over as quickly as he can. Other times, he’ll surrender to gravity, burying his face in the blanket, admitting defeat. Not surprisingly, Tiny Baby’s aversion [...]
{ 27 comments }
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 [...]
{ 25 comments }
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 [...]
{ 21 comments }
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 [...]
{ 14 comments }
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 [...]
{ 22 comments }
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. [...]
{ 7 comments }
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 [...]
{ 8 comments }
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 [...]
{ 17 comments }
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 [...]
{ 17 comments }
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 [...]
{ 14 comments }
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 [...]
{ 10 comments }
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 [...]
{ 7 comments }
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 [...]
{ 10 comments }
He lays on his back, lips curled over gums and the faintest suggestion of teeth. He lifts his legs into the air, then reaches his hands, chubby knuckles still dimpled, toward his toes. He grabs his feet and begins to rock. Instinct and presence. An unknowing yogi. A Happy Baby. He turns his head to [...]
{ 7 comments }