Axel had his first camping experience this weekend, when he and Sean went on a father-kid camping trip. While he and his father had outdoor adventures, I cleaned out closets that couldn’t be cleaned with the assistance of a toddler, washed baby clothes, bought a new diaper pail, hemmed and hung new drapes, and generally, MORE »
There are six weeks left until my due date. Six weeks and three days. Forty-five days. Ten thousand eighty hours. Yes, I’m done with pregnancy. I’m hoping that the baby will decided that he’s ready to arrive at 39 weeks, or 38 weeks, when he’ll be full term, and save me from a week MORE »
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The internet is chock full of information for expectant mothers. You can find lots of remedies to soothe an itching belly, hundreds of explanations of the powers of the doula, thousands of posts about Braxton-Hicks contractions. Bookstores offer dozens of books targeted to first time moms and dads. What there’s not enough of, in my opinion, is hands-on, MORE »
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Early springtime conjures up images of happy baby bunnies and chicks. Foxes have their cubs in March or April. Tulips bloom and get it all over with by the hot summer. Mother Nature has the right idea. Springtime is the time for birth, not mid-summer. Springtime birth means that the internal furnace of late pregnancy MORE »
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When you spend hours with someone under three, you start to aquire a new way of seeing the world. A new pair of sparkling, red cat-eyed sunglasses. A special radar that beeps when you’ve made audio or visual contact with one of the more exciting things in life – dogs, swings, bubbles, trains, raisins, anything that relies on MORE »
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The phases of pregnancy can all be compared to a member of the animal kingdom. There’s the Hummingbird Phase – that jittery pre-positive pee test vibration of nerves and anticipation. Then, the Lazy Mutt Phase, in which you feel sick as a dog and want to do nothing but sprawl on the couch and have someone MORE »
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After our Mother’s Day Brunch, the big Greek ex-boxer who’s the host at a local restaurant, and who loves to carry around babies and deliver bowls of ice chips to distract antsy toddlers, asked me what I’m having. “Another boy.” “Ohhh,” he sighed. “Maybe a girl the next time, eh?” I laughed. Alex seemed disappointed that MORE »
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My mother likes to say she was pregnant in the dark ages. By that, she means that it was pre-kick count, pre-standard 20 week ultrasound, pre-first trimester screen, pre-prenatal vitamins. I’m no Luddite. I love my laptop; I am a little too fond of online shopping. But there are certainly times that I wonder if MORE »
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This has not been a good pregnancy week. Contractions, a sluggish baby who refuses to kick on command, an anxious freak out at the doctor’s office… It started on Sunday afternoon. There were contractions. I rested. They went away. They came back. I drank water and rested. They went away. They came back. I MORE »
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This morning, Axel had his eighteen month check up. He’s one and a half and a handful of days; he’s closer to two than he is to one. He’s no longer a baby. And, since he’s no longer a baby, he’s doing independent, grown up things, like engaging in a shirt-a-mano wrestling match, slithering his MORE »
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