Posts Tagged Under mom blogs
A Bit of Magic
As the soon-to-be mother of twin girls, I joined a Twins Club a couple of months before their arrival. It was a great way to meet other moms of multiples. As a relatively new mom, I joined hoping I could learn from them the ins and outs of having twins, what to do, what not to do, plus members bring dinners to new moms and their families! Our adopted son was just eight months old when his sisters were born, so it was like having triplets. At least he was sleeping through the night, so I only had to do late night feedings for two, instead of three.
What I was not prepared for during initial Twins Club meetings was moms talking about their pregnancies. Three years prior I experienced the loss of our son due to premature birth at six months gestation. Because of health reasons, I was unable to carry the girls, but was fortunate to have an amazing sister who carried them for my husband and me. While I was extremely thankful for the gift my sister gave us, it was difficult to be around the group of moms when discussions turned to, “How many weeks did you go?” or “Did you have to go on bed rest?” Continue… »
By Teri StevensMy Husband Has a Crush on a Bald Frenchman
I’m not a jealous person by nature but sometimes at night when it’s time to go to bed, instead of following me into the boudoir, my husband, hypnotized by the glow of his laptop will murmur, “I’ll be there in a minute.”
And then I start to seethe.
He’s not coming to snuggle with me under the sheets because he’d rather watch videos on Youtube. Specifically, clips of French Algerian soccer star Zinedane Zidane. Most likely, my husband is watching the “best of” video of “Zizou” (as the superstar is known to his fans), a montage of the best career shots edited down to seven minutes against the backdrop of Coldplay’s “I Will Fix You.”
My husband loves watching Zidane zigzag across the field past other world-class soccer players. If I’m in the room, I get dragged to the computer.
Continue… »
Traveling Light
I have always loved travelling. It’s the packing I hate. What to take, what to leave behind? Will it be hot or cold, dry or rainy? Packing when I was single was bad enough, but when I had my first child it was horrific.
Looking back on my first trip abroad to Spain with my six month old daughter, I think I may possibly have been a little insane. (Okay, a lot.) Unable to persuade me that it really wasn’t sensible to pack everything but the kitchen sink, my husband had given up in a huff and gone to mow the garden, while I ran around the house like a mad thing, throwing one item after another into the five huge suitcases we were taking for a two week holiday. Yes, five cases! And the fifth bag, infamously known as ‘The Black Hole’, was massive. Not really a suitcase, more an extra-over-sized hold-all.
Continue… »
From California to Congo: A Mom on a Mission to Enact Change
Writing Mama Janine Kovac interviews fellow member Mindy Urhlaub in a profound and heart-rending piece.
“In the countryside, the air is very clean [but] the air outside my Goma hotel constantly smells acrid—like a cook fire. It makes your eyes feel like beef jerky.”
Mindy Uhrlaub, a Writing Mamas member is writing a novel about Congo, one of the most ravaged places on Earth. She writes about the devastation of a land, the oppression of a people, and the corruption within a country. It is a place where malaria is deadly instead of treatable, and where women are raped and mutilated and then ostracized for the crimes they’ve suffered. She writes about teen-aged mothers and the sick children who play in the dirt at their feet. She writes about the brave women who school the young mothers, feed the children and risk their lives by caring for their kin.
She isn’t writing a novel by choice; she writes a novel because anything but a fictionalized account of quotidian life in Congo will put the lives of these women in danger. Her research began 10 years ago after reading the book, King Léopold’s Ghost. What began as a passing interest has spawned two identities that feed off of each other: Mindy the writer who is inspired by activism in Congo and Mindy the activist who uses writing as her medium for change. Continue… »
By Janine KovacMidday Banana Brown
What color is your palette?
I have this dream, and in it I speak and people know what I’m talking about.
In real life I want to paint the dining room. I want a nice, warm beige but when I go to Home Depot to discuss color swatches the gum-smacker in the orange jacket shows me swatch after swatch that is neither warm nor beige. And all the colors have names such as “Tahiti Bark” or “Ozone.”
Finally I say, “You know, Midday Banana Brown.”
In real life I get a blank stare, but in my dream the woman behind the counter lights up and says, “Oh! You mean like the color of a banana after a toddler has smashed it on her plate and gone to take her morning nap, and since this is your one chance today to shower, you don’t discover it again until lunch. We’ve got that color but we call it “Nantucket Sand.” Continue… »
By Janine KovacThe Klog Mutar
Larry King: Master of Disaster
“Don’t call between nine and ten,” my mother intones on our answering machine. “I’m watching Larry King. He’s got that ghastly story about: [kidnapping] [school bus accident] or [celebrity cancer victim.]”
My grandma Lena, who spoke only Yiddish, had a word for people like this. She called them Klog Mutars, which roughly translates to ‘Disaster Mother.’ Klog Mutars trade calamitous tales like sick currency, thriving on the high drama brought on by other people’s bad decisions, desperate behavior or run-of-the-mill misfortune.
I want to tell my mom that our son lost a tooth and that he is student of the week. But I am preempted. Continue… »
By Alyson GellerPajamaJeans: A Mommy’s New BFF
PajamaJeans!
My friends and I like to regale each other with stories of our personal parenting disasters. Maybe the omnipresent pressure to play the cookie-cutter, Martha Stewart, soccer mom has us hitting the sauce too hard or taking it out on a bag of Pirate Booty. But, we find that the soothing, “Oxytocin-like” release to friends is clearly much healthier.
Yes, it’s fun to look an equally disheveled mommy friend in the eye and say: “Shiiiiiiit! I forgot to bring in 32 organic cupcakes today!” (With no flour, dairy or peanuts in them.)
But my favorite mommy humiliation moments have always been the different stories about getting busted for wearing our pajamas to drop the kids off at school. Because who HASN’T tucked their pajamas into their rain boots, thrown on a ski jacket, and driven the kids to school? Forgetting, of course, that once you get there, you actually have to get out of the car in your pilled-up, hideous, cardinal-red flannel pajamas, and help your kids get their “whirling tornado” science project from the car into the auditorium for the science fair that night―ooops! Continue… »
By Annie YearoutGrandpa’s Getting Chemo for Christmas
The holidays are here and this year for Christmas, Grandpa’s getting chemo. Our daughter Chiara is too young to be worried about it. She’s not quite four years old. We probably don’t even need to mention it, but that sets a bad precedent. At what point do we decide that she’s “old enough to know?”
Last year when Grandpa had surgery, she definitely wasn’t old enough to know. We just included Grandpa in our “special prayers” and left it at that. But in a couple of weeks she and her daddy are going to visit Grandpa. I want her to know that it’s important for her to be very good and very helpful. Three years old may be too young to talk about chemotherapy, but it certainly isn’t too young to talk about compassion.
A year and a half ago, I was pregnant and felt sick all the time. I had to explain to Chiara that I was too tired to play and too sick to read books. And so she took it upon herself—in her two-year-old way, of course—to read books to me. I guess she figured that that’s what you do to make people feel better. Our honesty and openness gave her an opportunity to be proactive. She was right; I did feel better, and touched, proud and amazed. Out of the hearts of babes. Continue… »
By Janine KovacTexting God
“Text God,” Maya blurted out the other day. “What would you say?” I asked.
“Text God,” she answered with an impish grin. “But what message would you say to God?”
“1,2,3,4,” she replied. “What message?” I asked again. I was really curious.
“1,1,1,1,” she said. “That’s God’s numbers.” She obviously has a firm understanding of the nature of monotheism, God’s oneness.
“But you can use words to talk to God,” I suggested.
“Give me a present,” she said. “Isn’t that what Santa does?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“What does Santa do?” I wondered. “I don’t know,” Maya said.
“I don’t either,” I agreed.
Maya had the final word on this topic: “God brings out the stars.” Continue… »
By StevenFThe Further Adventures of Safety Mom
Little Boy on Bus
That’s me, wedging my foot into the bottom rung of the spider man climbing structure while my five-year-old son clambers to the top. The tangle of metal bars and rope is not intended for people over four feet tall. But I am determined to catch him if he falls.
“Slow down! Driveway!” I bellow as Rudy sprints ahead of me down the sidewalk, waving a twig in the air. It was I who petitioned our town to reduce the speed limit and convinced the preschool to elevate its charming but dangerously low picket fence. I always cut grapes in half. I am Safety Mom, and I am on a mission.
“You have to pick your worries,” my husband tells me. But there are so many. It’s hard to choose.
Other mothers roll their eyes and smile gently. They think I’m nuts. Maybe they’re right. Or maybe I’m the sane one. Continue… »
By Alyson Geller
