An incomplete list of things I fear as the mother of a 21-month old boy: // cancer; drowning; dying in a fire; dying in a Trump-related nuclear conflagration; getting hit by a car; growing up and going to university and …
parenting Tag Archives
“I’m a Punk!”: Toddler Time
Tonight, my no-longer-a-baby baby, clad only in a diaper, climbed on top of me and bellowed “I’m a punk!” the way a wolf would howl gleefully at a moon. He’s 20 months old. In baby terms, he’s a teenager—funny, wise, …
Maternal Energy
When I was a kid, my mom favoured the kind of art that you might thing of as “boring museum:” gauzy and romantic, featuring lots of children in straw hats, mothers in white lace dresses, lazy days on a skiff, …
Portraits of a Mother I Could Be
I have a bike trailer and the kid, inside the trailer, has one fist inside a stainless steel container filled with organic dried apricots. We are riding along the lakeshore, me in a pair of performance sport sunglasses, the kid …
To the Women on the Fence
To the undecided woman: You may now be getting to the point where making a decision about kids—yes or no—feels like an imperative. It might be a decision you have to reckon with in order to take your relationship to …
Get On My Wave(length)
Wavelengths. It all comes down to wavelengths. When you fall in love at first sight—that electricity up and down your arms, into the pit of your stomach, and out through a grin you can’t control—it’s not because you’re ka-blammo’ed by …
Trauma: A Love Story in Three Parts
Birth The birth is a disaster, as births often are. It begins slowly and stretches for days. When I tell people this later, other new mothers make a hissing sound, a sharp inhale between bared teeth, the international sound of …
Dividing Lines
My mom, having raised three kids, understands most of my parenting challenges. She knows that breastfeeding can be an emotional roller coaster, that sleeping can be a real bitch, that the baby garbage can threaten to overwhelm your previously minimalist—or …
Sleep Training: A Love/Hate Story
What: Sleep training. Fuuuuuck. Like vaccines and introducing solid foods, there are schools of thought on this one. Some people think it’s damaging to the baby, or to the parent-child relationship; some people think it’s just another milestone in infancy, …