My essay is up over at Sekund. I chickened out and didn’t use that photo though. Instead, we chose a lovely image that had to be altered by my husband using his lame Paint program to blot out the huge crease on the front of my PAJAMA shirt, the MULTIPLE ketchup stains on Sam’s shirt, and oh, the fact that we are sitting in front of a bunch of CINDER blocks on our patio (have I mentioned I can’t wait until we move?). Poor man sat there and drew over the lines of those blocks for like an hour and a half - must be love.

Click on over there though. Some of it may sound a little familiar to a few of you because it did start out as a blog post. But there are other very cool essays, and it’s a free online magazine . . . and you should go check it out.

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I also wanted to follow up and thank all of you who expressed interest in doing the Total Mom Bookclub. I think we could get a great group going over here, and I’m very excited about it. To be realistic though, I’m not going to start until after we move next month. Nothing lamer than hosting a book club when you haven’t done the reading. We’re piled in boxes and packing paper, so I just don’t think now is the time for me to get it going. A month from now though, I’m in. Details to follow.

Labels: Bloggy Stuff - Memes/Links/Business, Books, Writing

The dining room. 12:30pm. Thursday. Late October.

SAM is sitting at the table eating his lunch. MOM is hovering by him, occasionally sitting down at the table until ROBBY, a 2 month old baby strapped to her in a front pack begins to whimper and wake, to which she responds by periodically standing and swaying back and forth while gently bouncing up and down.

SAM has just started dropping small bites of hot dog into his cup of milk.

MOM: Sam, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. Isn’t it kind of yucky?
SAM: Mmmm…no. Just right. Yummy. (takes 2 sips of the milk) See? Yummy. (adds 3 more pieces of hot dog to milk, dips one piece and eats it) Out, Mommy. Hot gog out.
MOM: You want me to get the hot dog out with a fork?
SAM: Yes.
(MOM picks up fork and proceeds to retrieve hot dog pieces from the milk and deposit them on the plate)
SAM: No! No! Eat, Mommy, eat!
MOM: You want to eat these bites?
SAM: Yes! Yummy! (MOM proceeds to feed SAM 7 bites of milky hot dog with a fork) Try it! Try it!
MOM: Um, no, Honey. Thank you for sharing, but no thank you…

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Yes, occasionally I feed my son a turkey dog. I’m not proud of it, but sometimes, for example when one is still negotiating how to handle having two kids, one needs to skip a lunch time battle every so often.We’ll be having Mac and Cheese with hidden cauliflower tonight. Love this new book!

Labels: Books, Toddler

I love it when things fall into place. Today was hard in that hard on yourself as a mother sort of way. But you never know when or where you’ll find an encouraging word.

One of my new favorite authors is Barbara Kingsolver (I know, I’m way late and totally missed the boat on this one). I’m currently reading my second novel of hers, “The Bean Trees”, and came across this passage. It’s funny and inspiring to find fictional characters dealing with issues I feel I’ve been addressing for quite some time now, ever since becoming a mom.

Just so you know I’m editing this to get down to the part that really spoke to me. Hope I’m not breaking any sort of copyright laws here.

“When you told me about babies getting dehydrated it scared the living daylights out of me. I realized I had no business just assuming I could take the responsibility for a child’s life.”

“There’s not a decent mother in the world that hasn’t realized that.”

“So how does a person make a decision that important?”

“If you don’t mind me saying so I think you’re asking the wrong question. You’re asking yourself, Can I give this child the best possible upbringing and keep her out of harm’s way her whole life long? The answer is no, you can’t.”

“So what’s the right thing to ask?”

“Do I want to try?”
We’re none of us perfect - we can only do our best and try not to berate ourselves for our shortcomings. Our best will be good enough; it has to be. And I already know I want to try, there’s not been a question about that.

Now I just hope I can really hear this.

Labels: Books, Mommyhood