Tag: mothering

It’s These Moments That Catch Me

It’s these moments that catch me.   This morning before work, way too early for my liking, I walked my three year old son and his bestie Elmo to his car seat and strapped him in. As he often does, he smiled and asked, “Hug, Mommy?” after I fastened his seat belt. I leaned in and hugged him, feeling the strength of his tiny little arms pulling me in.

I then brought my daughter’s infant car seat around and fastened it in place, bending over to kiss her downy head as she slept through the whole process, more beautiful than I have words to describe, cooing softly and smiling.

It’s these moments that catch me. When I am doing everyday Mommy things and I get blown away with how much I love these itty bitty humans that am privileged to call my children.

I loved my life pre-kids, I orchestrated great … Continue reading

I Am Thankful For…..

This is a compilation of posts by some of our SMC members. They were posted on our lively online discussion Forum, inspired by the Thanksgiving holiday.  Good Thanksgiving wishes to you all!

I am thankful for:
My two beautiful, healthy, smart, funny girls.
My amazing family, who are supportive, though many miles away.
My job, which was at risk for many months, but is once again mostly stable and secure.
My friends, without whose help some weekends would last months, and who have provided a local family for my family.
The internet, without which I never would have found SMC and the incredible community of women you are.

Parents who, after struggling to accept me, are excited and supportive of my journey.
Friends, past, present and future, some of whom are other SMCs I’ve met through this wonderful community.
I am finally on my way to building the family I’ve … Continue reading

Hear This Truth

Parenting is hard. I don’t care if you’re a single mom, a partnered mom, a married mom, or something in between. Not one of us is handed a how-to manual when our children enter our lives. And even if you think you have this parenting thing down pat—so much so that you convince yourself to have another, there’s no guarantee that what worked with number one will work with number two.

I’m Nancy, and I’m mom to Marshall, who turned 14 this past May, and believe me when I say we’ve had our ups and downs. I tell people that I always loved Marshall but I didn’t like him till he turned about 4. Sure, I heard some gasps from the crowd, but those first years were difficult for me — trying to figure out how to incorporate this incredible, wonderful, temperamental, opinionated being into my solidly independent life was … Continue reading

A Peek Into The Meaning of Life

Ok, so I got a peek into the meaning of life….  .

Yes, that’s a big statement…..on a Monday.  But hey.  It comes in drips….to me….every now and then.

I spent the weekend in NJ – assessing things that need to be done to prepare a house my family owns there for sale.   The house – the house I grew up in – is vacant now.  It has been rented for a number of years.  I spent a few hours cleaning the kitchen cabinets and replacing all the knobs (31 to be exact).  I got on my hands and knees and looked into drawers and under stairs and in the nooks and crannies…  I saw my father’s handy work…here and there.  I flicked light switches that I used to touch every day.  I criticized elements of the house that I always accepted before.  I slept on an air mattress in … Continue reading

Meditations on Choosing Single Motherhood

I was interviewing a parenting expert who has written over 23 books on parenting and appears on shows like Dr. Phil and The Today Show about disciplining the preverbal toddler when I decided to just go ahead and ask her, the expert, what she thought about women who intentionally choose to have a child on their own, a child who would be brought into the world without a biological father.

I did this, I thought, because I want to write about how children of SMC moms fair compared to the conventional mom-dad household (which is actually pretty non-existent today anyway), but after hearing her response, I was surprised by the way I felt. Basically she iterated what many SMC moms who have written on the subject say. I’m paraphrasing here but she said women who plan to have a child are committed to parenting and any kid with a parent … Continue reading

Coping with the Growing Up

Pre-kids, I predicted that I would enjoy parenting an infant a lot, and would really love the years from two to five. I expected I might lose interest after that, based on my experience with other kids. I found it easy to talk to toddlers and preschoolers, but found the fads of grade school tough to follow, and always felt like I reverted back to that shy, awkward kid I’d once been, when I tried to engage friends’ school-aged kids.

I wasn’t as much of a “baby person” as I’d expected to be. Maybe that was having two infants at once, but I was exhausted for the whole first year of my daughters’ lives and while I do still sometimes long to do it again (with a singleton!), a large part of me experiences a mild version of PTSD when I see really little babies. It’s fading, but it’s there … Continue reading

No One

As I sit here tonight going through pictures of Tate,’checking’ Facebook, deleting some emails, I am overwhelmed by the quiet of my home. Tate has been in bed since 7, and Vincent is still not pleased with me over his visit to the vet yesterday. I looked around and just became insidiously aware of my aloneness. Every. Single. Night.  Once Tate is asleep I do have a myriad of things to accomplish before I can rest and just be. I have to clean up the dirty dinner dishes, clean out his lunch bag and backpack and put all those items into the dishwasher or clean them. There’s always laundry to be done, picking up after Tate (and the cat), dishwasher to be emptied, bills to pay and showers to take. But it’s all done alone.

Just me.

No one to share the details of my day with.  No one to … Continue reading

I Want Daddy

“I WANT DADDY!” Cara woke up from a late nap crying and fussing and then she started screaming, wailing, “I WANT DADDY!”

She has never expressed any desire for a dad or concern about not having a dad but there’s been a couple of threads on the private Single Mothers by Choice (SMC) Forum recently about other four-year-olds wanting dads who never really had seemed to care before. Still, she’s really shown zero interest so I thought maybe I misunderstood. Do you mean Papa? My dad. You want Papa? “NO! DADDY DADDY!” Still thinking she must be saying something else. Dani? (A good friend and babysitter.) Do you want Dani? “Nooooo! Daddy!” Getting desperate, I start throwing other ideas out: Grammy? Blankie? She gets more ticked off. “NOOOOO! DADDDY! I WANT MY DADDY!”

I give up on translating and start the talk. Ya know the one. Cara, you know we … Continue reading

“I've been part of the SMC community since I was thinking about getting pregnant. They always have my back with useful, nuanced advice, trustworthy info, and personal experience. I feel honored to be a member, and to see all the children grow up alongside mine.”

– Sophie Holland