It snowed Saturday morning and stayed on the ground for a few hours. Long enough for us to terrorize the neighborhood with a multi-street snowball fight (involving only ourselves). I was the conscientious objector/documenter, of course. Here’s a slideshow of the carnage.
My mother never seemed to appreciate some of my early attempts at artistic expression, like running free in a crowded parking lot, putting my face too close to things that were either on fire or boiling, licking all the candy at the freestanding candy kiosk at the mall, or shoving my hands directly into whatever food was placed in the middle of the dinner table even if I had no intention of actually eating it.…
One of the strangest but most helpful Parenting EpiphaniesTM I’ve had is when I realized that parenting and cooking often give me the same kinds of anxiety because they are both a kind of alchemy. Sure, there are basic recipes and best practices and knowledge handed down from generation to generation. But every set of ingredients is unique, and the oven at your place might not act like the oven at Barbara’s, because Barbara blackmailed…
I watch him grow and change and it’s hard to believe I made him with my body. So sweet and funny and feeling. So much like me in so many ways but so much himself. My heart bursts on a constant basis. Motherhood.
In case you ever get bogged down in the mundane and the frustrating and forget.
It’s such a weird thing to watch a child acquire language. When your child is in school full time, he’s picking up all sorts of stuff from teachers as well as the adorable little tykes he’s with all day, on top of the stuff he picks up from you and anyone in your house. So you are never quite sure where some of the stuff comes from. And when he busts out with something hilariously…
To Holden, on the eve of his third birthday: Three years ago at this moment you lived inside my belly and I had no idea who you were. I knew you got the hiccups regularly and I knew you had a rump about the size of your head, and that I could never be quite sure which was which just from running my fingers along your contours. But I didn’t know you. I saw ghostly…
It’s kind of amazing how each weekend brings little doses of new words, phrases, behaviors. I get to see Holden for about an hour each morning during the week and that’s it. I drop him off at school and I go to work and I’m at work until after he goes to bed. It makes weekends more precious (and weekends spent working more dreadful) but it also makes his little changes seem much bigger to…
More weepy dropoffs. He wailed and shook his head and reached out for me and called for me. Every time, it feels like pieces of my heart are being scooped out with a melon baller. BUT! Today I got to do a pickup. My first ever. I walked into the room and all the children were playing quietly, independently. Holden was on the floor, playing with blocks or something in a container. “Hi everyone!” I…
It went well overall, I’d say. The first morning Ray and I dropped Holden off and there were no tears. Probably because he didn’t realize what was happening. His teacher said he had no potty accidents, he ate his lunch, and he napped for two hours. He was chatty, happy, cooperative and curious. Model student. The next morning I did the dropoff solo, and he cried. It was tough. He had another good day, though.…
You must be logged in to post a comment.