February 2012
44 posts
This is what I want to remember
It is Monday evening. I serve you the first course of your dinner, which is peas. (You eat three courses at lunch and dinner—vegetable, main dish, fruit. I could call you a fancy baby, but really it’s just to keep you from devouring the fruit, eating half the main dish, and never getting to the vegetables.)
I start by feeding you peas by the spoonful, so I can blow on them, because...
I haven't kept up with the Feb Photo Challenge
but I got a Florida Driver’s License today, which has been on my to-do list, which I forget to look at, ever since we moved.
Why We Hide Emotional Pain (Leon F. Seltzer,... →
psychotherapy:
Excerpt (via Psychology Today):
“Not to show vulnerability is typically viewed as a strength, a “demonstration” of character. But in reality the major motives in hiding our emotions are (as I’ve already indicated) fear-based. We’re just afraid to look weak or susceptible to others. Paradoxically, though, unashamedly disclosing our vulnerability can actually be a deliberate...
Eavesdropping
I am at the B&N cafe near my house, working on stuff, and there’s a tutor sitting at a nearby table. He’s a grandfather’s age and has a white beard and hair. A succession of students are joining and leaving him. Every time one of them sits down, they catch up on life happenings for a few minutes and the tutor dispenses life advice corresponding to the aforementioned...
Every Wednesday morning Mini and I go to a music class. Today, Mister joined us. I joked with him on the way over that he wouldn’t be the only dad; there are at least two who go every week. This week one of those dads didn’t make it to class. He was hit by a car while riding his bicycle on Key Biscayne this morning. It was a hit and run.
I can’t fathom the last sentence I...
This is what I want to remember
It is Valentine’s Day and I am asleep. I hear footsteps on the stairs and open my eyes. I’ve learned to read early-morning light since becoming a mother, and I can tell from the shade of the curtains that it’s after eight. My husband walks into the room with our son, holding his hand. They’ve brought roses. I think this is a moment to acknowledge love and gratitude, and I...
Insomnia
After Mini was born, insomnia crawled into my bed and refused to leave for more than a year. She nagged me night after night and I hated her. She is a maddening creature. I slept an average of four hours a night, weighed 120 pounds (I’m 5’9”), and worried about my moodiness, which was at an all-time high (or, more accurately, low). I reduced and rearranged my caffeine intake. I...
Hurdle
When you don’t have the option of asking family members to babysit your child(ren), you either learn to rely on other people, or you never have time to work, or time for yourself or for your marriage.
When we hired a nanny in LA to care for Mini once a week while I worked, it was a slow adjustment for me. Weeks passed before I felt comfortable with the arrangement. Then, I was thankful for...
Husband-back-in-town syndrome
When Mister travels, I don’t stop, because I can’t. Being responsible for a child 24 hours a day without the help of a spouse/partner is no joke (especially when you’re pregnant) but I’ve arrived at a place where I feel fine when he’s out of town. Mini and I have routines. If I’m tired I just forget about it because I have no other option, and if I’m in a...
This is what I want to remember
I’ve been teaching you to give kisses for weeks now, but the only thing you’ll kiss on command is Thomas the train. Now, it is Friday morning. I am sitting in the red armchair in the living room, waking up. You, my lark child, are playing with the farm animal puzzle I bought for you at Whole Foods. You stop to pick up a stuffed lion and place it on the coffee table next to the puzzle....
“Americans today probably belong to the first generation on earth that looks at a...”
– Lauren Slater, Welcome to My Country (via psychotherapy)
I don’t know about ‘constitutional right’, but I do think there is too much emphasis on happiness these days—so much that it has the opposite effect.
I'm still not over the fact that Ron Artest...
Things I never imagined
That watching my 15 month-old child meet Elmo, live, would cause me to blink back tears, because his excitement was so unadulterated that it shot me in the heart.
Bullseye, Elmo.
A note to Mini and Babytwo on this day in history
This is what I want you to remember about February 7th, 2012:
Something very important happened in California.
This Could Be Carl Jung's Century (The Guardian) →
psychotherapy:
excerpt:
“…Yet if the last century has been called “the Freudian century”, there are reasons for thinking that this one could be Jung’s. His time does seem to have come.
For a start he invented the term “complex”, meaning combinations or clusters of emotional issues and dynamics, drawn from past, present and even the future. This idea rescues clinicians from having to make...
20 Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone... →
restlessruminations:
(via lizlemon: peterwknox)
I needed a refresher on some of these.
I never knew that saying “I’m nauseous” is grammatically incorrect.
It's 4:30 a.m.
and a hard, hard rain is keeping me awake. I am remembering a time when Mister and I were in Costa Rica during rainy season. We went with only a car reservation and a map, the latter of which, in Costa Rica, tells only a fraction of the story if you go without a destination. One night we drove on a muddy road in the blackest black and our headlights caught a blue sign for lodging, which ended up...
Oops
I dropped the ball yesterday with the photo challenge, and just realized that I missed 10 a.m. today.
Back in the game tomorrow!
(Speaking of The Game, I’d like to throw out a little love for New England, because they’re my first home’s team, even though I’m not interested in football.)
What's a great outing for a one year-old who's...
DSW!
Baby wins. Mami wins.
It’s all about seizing the phase.
January 2012
42 posts
My fashionable boy
Recently Mini began to express an opinion about his clothes. He has certain shirts, in particular, that he prefers. If one of those shirts is in sight when we’re dressing him (or when we’re folding laundry), he grabs it and presses it against us and jabbers his I-want jabber, and he doesn’t give up until it’s on his body. Then, and I’m not even kidding, he walks to...
Why didn’t I know that feeding your child raw spinach is as easy as tossing a handful, along with some frozen fruits and milk, into a blender?
Why isn’t anyone talking about this?!
“When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They...”
– Jonathan Safran Foer; ‘Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close’
I am baking cookies and fish at the same time, and the smell that just hit my nose when I opened the oven was so bizarre.
Now that I'm on the subject of responsible food...
The other day mamaguru told me about a report she saw on CNN about a documentary focused on child slaves in West Africa harvesting cocoa for chocolate production.
The filmmaker says this about which chocolate are brands are linked to child slavery: “All the major companies globally source cocoa from West Africa. So pretty much any famous brand you can think of uses cocoa from Ivory Coast....