Category: parenting

Other moms assume my daughter eats cottage cheese and blueberries for dinner because I’m a working mom and I don’t have time to cook. If I were a stay at home mom, she’d be eating the same exact thing. Cooking is not my thing.

What’s wrong with cottage cheese and blueberries for dinner? I didn’t put her on a diet, I’m not a great role model for diet, it’s what she likes to eat. It’s not the only edible item in the house. I have frozen, canned and boxed things like macaroni. I read the nutritional panels and most of what I feed my daughter is a whole lot healthier than home cooking. Definitely healthier than the Joy of Cooking recipes I grew up with. The meals I ate at my friends houses, that is. Like lasagna and clams casino.

My love for cooking comes from my mom. She had … Continue reading

November is Prematurity Awareness Month.

I think the main thing we need to be aware of about prematurity is that it sucks.  It really sucks.

Prematurity takes what should be a normal infancy and turns it into a journey into medical hell. It robs both parent and child of a normal infancy. Instead of filling baby books with milestones like “smiled for the first time” you make note of milestones like “weaned off ventilator.” You and your baby are robbed of quiet, private moments. Instead, the two of you spend those moments in a room filled with strangers, doctors, nurses, monitors, alarms and machinery you didn’t even know existed when you filling out your baby registry. People tell you well intentioned, yet terribly stupid things, like “things happen for a reason,” “God doesn’t give you more than you can bear,” “at least you never got stretch marks since the baby … Continue reading

I don’t know what it is about mommy’s bed. But apparently, when a child can’t fall asleep, the only place to go is mom’s bed—and like magic, the sandman comes and knocks said child out. What I found out recently is that it doesn’t even have to be your mom. Marshall was having a friend sleep over the other night. Both boys were snoring happily by about 10 p.m. and I blithely went to bed. About 1 a.m., I sensed a presence by bed. It’s Max saying he can’t fall asleep so I groggily tell him to climb in. He’s asleep in seconds. When I awake in the morning, there’s a boy in bed next to me. No big surprise. But it takes me a minute to realize it’s not mine.

I never intended to co-sleep. But Marshall had other plans. From the minute he was born, he liked to … Continue reading

I took Pink and Purple to see Ramona and Beezus at our local discount theater over the weekend. I didn’t expect to spend most of the movie in tears.

In the interest of full disclosure, I tend to cry at most kids’ movies. I don’t know why. I’m a notorious non-weeper in my personal life. Oh, I feel pain and sorrow, no doubt about it. It’s just that I internalize the negative emotions until they settle in the pit of my stomach like a pile of rusty razor blades, or clench them in my jaws like tetanus. But there’s something about movies that makes it ok for me to release all of that. I don’t know whether that’s particularly true of kids’ movies, or if it’s just that kids’ movies are all I seem to see anymore.

Ramona and Beezus was a little bit different, though. Setting aside the fact … Continue reading

But the weather is not all that is changing. I am slowing down, trying to memorize and appreciate every single moment I have with Sam. Our last few weeks alone. Our last few weeks before we have to share each other. Every night before bed we rock in the double-sized rocker in his room and talk about what we did during the day. He no longer lays on my lap… partially because my lap shrank as my belly grew bigger but mostly because he always wants to remind me that he’s a big boy, that he wants to sit next to me rather than on me. We squeeze into the chair side by side and I wrap my left arm around him and he leans into me resting his head on my belly. Sometimes he jumps up and makes a joke that Baby Sister just kicked him, but mostly he … Continue reading

 

Our rituals soothe us, particularly at night after a long day. And for even more comfort, we’ve retreated into the past. This week’s bedtime selections have been our old standbys, the board books I started reading to my son when he was an infant, the ones I still know by heart. A Color of His Own, The Runaway Bunny, Are You My Mother?, and tonight, Goodnight Moon. Although my son can read these books to me now, we both still enjoy it when I read aloud to him, it’s part of the ritual.

We snuggle in together in his bed, me carefully lowering my head so I don’t hit it against the top bunk. We enter into that great, green room with its telephone and balloon. “And a picture of…” I pause dramatically and then slowly turn the page. “…the cow jumping over the moon.” “Yes! I KNEW it!” … Continue reading

Don’t ask how many times I’ve cried. How many times I’ve questioned the wisdom of this decision (which, honestly, has been based on monetary concerns but also factored in that he’s a very responsible boy who has handled being home longer than this—it’s the letting himself in part that makes me somewhat concerned). My son is self-reliant for his age. And he handles this responsibility with bravado. He has his own cell phone now—so he can call me when he gets home or I can call him while he’s on the bus. He empties his backpack daily and puts his wet towel and swimsuits in the dryer. He lies on the couch and watches television. It all sounds so innocuous.

Yet I feel torn. Am I growing him up too fast? Am I giving him responsibility that’s too old for his years? I know other 9-year-olds who are as independent, … Continue reading

I suppose that’s the tricky part – that time thing. Like many, I’ve been in a series of long relationships that have not withstood the tests of time. A long medical training that I started when I was twenty-eight ended ten years later. And there I was, at thirty-eight, for the first time seriously thinking of having a child on my own.

So many questions came to mind – how could I do it? How could I make it work in time and money and love? And most importantly, would it be, could it be fair to bring in child into the world who would not know his or her biological father? These are tough questions, and every SMC I know has struggled with them. But at the time, now almost nine years ago, I was just plain sad that I did not have a partner to undertake this endeavor. … Continue reading