bad mother

Love Is A Many-Splendored And Sometimes Sort Of Exhausting And Anxiety-Provoking Thing

June 7, 2010

A few weeks after I gave birth to Jasper, I wrote this: I do it every night now. When it’s dark, when the rest of the house is asleep, or almost, I untangle my tiny newborn bundle from my arms and lay him down in his nest and ease my birth-battered body from our bed. I make [...]

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Rage, Rage Against The Whining Of The Child

June 2, 2010

Emilia is not a morning person. I am also not a morning person, but as an adult I recognize that I don’t have any choice in the matter of whether or not I get out of bed, and also I have coffee. Emilia is a child, and she doesn’t drink coffee, so she’s oftentimes – [...]

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She Likes Bread And Butter

May 25, 2010

Emilia is the world’s pickiest eater. You probably think that I’m exaggerating. I’m not. There might be a child somewhere in Germany who will only eat bratwurst and cherries, but I’d be willing to bet that that child would eat a whole chocolate chip muffin if coaxed. Not Emilia. She’d remove the muffin top and [...]

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A Rose By Any Another Name… Well, Almost Any Other Name

May 10, 2010

I suppose that the following conversation with Emilia was inevitable. I just didn’t expect to have it when she was four. Emilia, having spilled some juice down her shirt: “oh, f***.” Me: “Emilia Elizabeth Ann! What did you just say?” Emilia: “I said, oh f***.”

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Love Means Never Having To Say You’re Sorry For Taking Lots And Lots Of Benadryl

April 22, 2010

I’ve been meaning to post a list of the ten things that I love about motherhood. Having posted about the things that I hate – albeit with a corny post-script about loving the love, in spite of it all – and having read all the wonderful comments about the silly and sublime things that other [...]

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10 Things I Hate About Motherhood (And One That I Love)

April 20, 2010

A writer at Newsweek wrote last week about how her son – and the general state of being that is motherhood – is torturing her. Then a writer at Jezebel responded to the story with something very close to exasperation: “I was left, as I often am by pieces on parenting, at sea. Nowadays, there [...]

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A Spanking A Day Keeps Failure Away?

January 5, 2010

I’ve spanked my daughter. I wrote about it earlier this year. It was just once, and under very specific circumstances – she was putting herself and her baby brother in danger and she needed to be stopped, quickly – circumstances that don’t excuse the spanking but do, I think, explain it. I didn’t spank out [...]

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How Have I Been Bad Or Good? Let Me Count The Ways…

December 18, 2009

This was the week that I let my Bad Mother flag really fly, I think. I mean, sure, I have, in the past, covered such established bad ground as spanking my preschooler and nursing another woman’s child and dressing my kid up as a Droog, but that ground is pretty well-trodden – doesn’t everybody use [...]

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Sometimes It Feels Like, Santa Is Watching Me

December 14, 2009

You never really appreciate Santa until you have children. Sure, Santa is great when you’re a kid and he’s just that big guy in the snowsuit who flies reindeer and brings presents and eats a lot of cookies – which, let’s face it, basically boils everything that is great about childhood – presents, cookies, flying [...]

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To Sleep, Perchance To Have Some Small Person Yank The Hairs Out Of Your Head

December 1, 2009

I have a confession to make: when I said that I was giving up on any kind of sleep training, I meant it, but I was also kind of hoping in, some small dark corner of my heart, that ‘giving up’ would be the magic bullet and that by ‘giving up’ I would be making [...]

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