The MotherVerse Blog: mothering out loud

The dictionary says that “girl” means: (1) a female child, (2) a young, immature woman, (3) a daughter, or (4) girlfriend/sweetheart. Under “sometimes or usually offensive” it says, “a grown woman” or “a female employee.”
I mention all of this because I have a new freelance client who is close to fifty. And every time I […]

If I could design the perfect one-trip-up-the-stairs suit, it would look something like this:
1. Handy clothes rack harnesses to shoulders. Available in single or double tiered
2. Strung clipboard keeps reminders where you need them: by your brain
3. Flirty burp-rag bracelet means you don’t have to use your shirtsleeve to wipe away spit-up and drool
4. Playboy […]

Summer picnic #398.
This time, my 92-year-old grandmother sat across from us and taught my 11 month son—my husband and I have taken to calling him “Junior”—to stick out his tongue, then tried to feed him a Freezie Pop. My step-sister ridiculed me for feeding Junior “specks” of hamburg (she has four kids so she knows). […]

Someone (I’m talking about the someone with a capital S) has a sense of humor.
This afternoon my 11-month-old son, Xavier, was in a fit of giggles watching our neighbor’s Golden Lab run through the hose and shake himself dry. The harder the dog shook, the harder my son laughed.
Fast forward a few hours. I decided […]

The Mother’s Day card arrived today. It says, “You are a mother now, and you know what it’s like to look into a little face and see a trust so complete your heart aches with the responsibility.”
It’s from my mother. It’s the second Mother’s Day card she sent. The first was lighter, more playful. This […]

The doctor called my injury “the bed incident,” which sounds far more titillating than it was.
What happened is I pinched a nerve as I was rolling over in the middle of the night. I haven’t been able to turn my head for a few days. Or bend over. Or pick up my 21-pound linebacker son.
All […]

It’s all I think about.
I’ve been on leave from work for one year. I’m one of the lucky ones. Every time I bemoan the fact that I have to return in July, another mother trumps me.
“I had to go back after four months.”
“Two months.”
“Six weeks.”
On Friday I visited a daycare people in town had raved […]

My friend Anna and I had barely sat down to lunch before I moaned, “I think I hate my husband.”
(Anna is single right now. No kids. Nice shoe budget.)
I continued: “I’m tired of his dirty socks on the floor, wet towels on chairs, empty milk cartons in the fridge, dusting, vacuuming, washing bottles. He actually […]

Now that I am a mother it’s time to honor the promise I made to myself as a child which was to never, ever get divorced. The promise is just as important as it was when it was just me and my husband but now it’s morphed a bit. Like, now instead of being a […]

Every year for Christmas my husband, friends, and I pick out a tree and trim it at my father’s house. My darling Bob-Villa-wannabe father has been in the midst of home repair projects since the early ’80s and enjoys the bachelor lifestyle. So while the tree may be picturesque, the accoutrements of the backdrop (a […]