The Kiddo is in the Let's Bring Mom Things stage. It started with the white flowers that grow on the clover in the neighbor's yard. When we would go outside in the afternoons to play, my son would become endlessly interested in something simple, like a throwing a hickory nut fallen from a tree or rolling half-empty water bottles down the driveway to see how far they'd go. I'd be left with little to do besides throw an occasional "good job, sweetheart" his way (Mom of the Year candidate, right here), so I started pulling weeds in the yard. This served the dual purpose of keeping me occupied and keeping the yard nice, since we gave up the yard service when I stayed home with the kid. On those long afternoons he would watch me pulling up weeds and followed suit, indiscriminately pulling up grass and weeds alike. Then one day he plucked a single white clover flower, toddled over to me, and offered it up. I was so overcome with pride and love that I made a big deal...

My uterus has a polyp. It's not getting any bigger, but it's not going away either. It's just hanging out there, doing polyp stuff. Maybe reading a book and eating an apple. Or maybe jamming to the new U2 album. (As an aside, I really hope my uterus doesn't listen to U2. I don't have anything against the band per se, but I would prefer my internal organs' musical tastes lean more toward singer/songwriter than pop idol-turned-philanthropist-turned-corporate sell out.) If your uterus needs a hug like mine does, this pillow is available on Etsy. For real. The good news is the polyp probably isn't harmful to my health in any way. It isn't cancerous or anything scary like that. The bad news is it may temporarily derail our plans to have Baby #2 . We had a tremendous struggle getting pregnant the first time -- one diagnosis of testicular cancer followed by an orchiectomy (google it, I dare you), one diagnosis of low egg count (which meant my ovaries ...

Lately we've been throwing around the wacky idea of having a second child. The truth is I haven't really figured out this parenting thing with the first one yet, but long before he came I made the (perhaps rash and bold) decision that I wanted two children. Double the pleasure, double the rum. Family is a tricky thing. I know better than most that simply being raised in the same household as another kid doesn't necessarily mean you're anything more than relatives. There's no guarantee Kiddo #1 (should I call him Piglet? Bacon? Pork Rind?) would like Kiddo #2, much less be close to him or her. In fact, they might be so not-close that he finds out major family events, like weddings, from facebook. I've been there. There are worse fates. However, I know for sure he wouldn't be close to a sibling if we never had one. In the interest of trying to convince myself that having a second child is a good idea, I've come up with a handy-dandy list of several way...

We've just returned from the kiddo's first multi-day out-of-town trip. It was more challenging than I thought it would be, but I think we all learned a little something about ourselves. I, for example, learned that I do not want to take any more multi-day out-of-town trips with a toddler. Here are a few other nuggets of knowledge I collected along the way: 1. The Golden Age of air travel is over. Welcome to the Brown Age. The flight did not start out great. At our airport gate, the gate associate flatly told me that they no longer let families with young children pre-board unless you're carrying a car seat for them to ride in. That is to say: unless you have purchased a seat for your child, your child's safety and your convenience on the jetway are worth less than a bag of stale peanuts. I was left trying to collapse my stroller with one hand and wrangle my child with the other so he did could not (A) wander into the plane unaccompanied, enter the cockpit, and push a...

I'm a nervous traveler. I arrive at my airport two hours early and make a beeline for my gate. Then I sit at the gate and check the gate number, the gate display info, my ticket, my watch, the gate number, my watch, the gate display info, my ticket, my ticket again just to make sure, my back pocket to make sure I haven't dropped my driver's license somewhere between security and the gate, and my gate number again. My hubs, on the other hand, is rarely rattled. He doesn't get nervous traveling, even that time he was almost arrested on a train in Germany. That's why my husband and I are good travel partners. He is in charge of getting me where I need to go with the least amount of anxiety possible, and I am in charge of making sure all of his underwear fits into his carry-on. It's win-win (especially for the other vacationers who don't have to see his Frank and Beans all week). However, our nice set-up is about to get blown to smithereens when I board a plan...

I am a world-class complainer. I could fill Olympic-sized swimming pools with words of dislike. And you'd need something that could hold 660,000 gallons, too, because the more upset I get the more verbose I become. I wonder how many words per gallon I could get when "he woke up early" becomes "he got me up at the ass-crack of dawn" and "he wouldn't eat lunch" morphs into "he utterly refused to eat a single morsel of the meal I slaved to make him." Apparently I am not alone: the internet is brimming with books, blogs and columnists who openly and ironically start a sentence with "Motherhood sucks because..." and finish it with "...don't get me wrong, I love my kids." It seems the fashionable trend right now is to complain, often humorously, about your family -- especially your children. On one hand, I get it. Man, do I get it. There is a wealth of negative things about motherhood from which it is easy to draw, b...

The more I thought about it, the more I felt that this post needed a follow up. See, I had intended to finish it with some gloriously introspective bit about how forgiving yourself is so important, and how it all happens for a reason. Except I haven't forgiven myself, and I generally don't think everything happens for a reason. (And I didn't have any profound revelations during the kid's nap time while I wrote it.) Regarding the former, I took to google and was pleased and confused to find a Wikihow entry on how to forgive yourself . Whether you're trying to hang a picture or seeking self-help to soothe the soul, Wikihow is there for you! This one came with a particularly helpful clip-art drawing of a blissful woman hugging a heart-shaped pillow bearing the word "ME." If only I could get my resentful little hands on one of those pillows, I'd be THIS MUCH closer to figuring out how to let it go. About the latter, however, I have good news. In my ca...