We did a wedding yesterday, and brought Nicholas with us instead of having the babysitter keep him with the other kids. A few weeks ago I tried this when I did a wedding by myself, and he did beautifully—nursed half an hour beforehand and slept all the way through the wedding. Yesterday, he wasn’t quite…
Read MoreAll articles filed in May 2009
All right! I give in!
All right! I capitulate! So they look like each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Alex, May 05 (1 month)………………….Nicholas, May 09 (2 months)
Read MoreWell, it seemed like a good idea at the time
It was a perfect morning—70 degrees beneath a flawless blue sky, washed clean by four days of rain, and fanned by a gentle breeze. But I woke up unable to move because of a muscle knot in my shoulder, which kept me from doing my Pilates. This made two days without exercise, since I got…
Read MoreA Journal Entry
It’s been six or seven weeks since I last wrote in my Journal. Blogging and scrapbooking really is taking over the handwritten Journal, which now only exists for rants and funnies that just don’t belong online. But that means that every so often I just have to record things for the benefit of family history.…
Read MoreIt’s getting easier
It’s definitely getting easier to get submissions sent out. Now, instead of agonizing for ten days, I agonize for four, and instead of attaching and reattaching four times, I only do it twice. I’m also learning that it’s not necessary to fiddle with every word choice for too long, since editors are going to take my “perfect”…
Read MoreBaby Magic
They say there’s no such thing as magic, but they’re wrong. There’s microscopic magic, in the way two cells suddenly, miraculously, become one. The way that those cells gobble up invisible energy to specialize and mature and grow, until suddenly, something that began as a single cell, made up of two, has developed doe eyes…
Read MoreUnplugged
Once in a while, it’s nice to go somewhere without internet access for a few days, even though it feels disorienting to be offline. But it’s not a state of being I’d want to spend too much time in. We spent the long weekend in Southern Illinois. Two weeks ago, a storm came barreling through…
Read MoreLiving In the Moment
It was the end of an afternoon that had been devoured by haste and busy-ness. I had put aside the housecleaning and trash collection to sit down on the floor and nurse Nicholas,who was uncharacteristically insistent. As I sat there staring off into space, Julianna crawled over to me with a huge grin on her…
Read MoreYou Are How You Eat?
Last week, I parked myself on the floor with a boppy and started cajoling Nicholas to eat while my mom sat nearby, leaning on her wrist and watching. (Mom was a La Leche League leader when we were little, and I think she really misses nursing.) “Come on, baby,” I said, pulling his mouth open…
Read MoreCultivating an Attitude of Gratitude
Crises tend to bring out the best in us. We rise to the occasion; we set our teeth, hunker down and lean into the wind, knowing that complaining won’t help—we just have to get through it. It’s not the big stuff that brings out the pessimist in us. It’s the everyday Murphy. And so it…
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Kathleen M. Basi 