2009 October

Your oxygen mask comes first

October 30, 2009

I was three when I took my first international flight. I was 18 when I did my first international trip solo. I don’t know about you, but that was the last time I paid attention to the in-flight safety instructions. Since then I have lost count of the number of times I have played leap [...]

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Prince Charming's Not a Fairytale; He's a Myth

October 28, 2009

When my husband grabs our sons amidst shrieks of delight and tackles them with love and outlandish wrestling maneuvers en route to bed my heart wants to jump out of my body and do the happy dance. He is their hero. I love that they get that. But he was mine first, even if it [...]

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Surfacing

October 25, 2009

Sometimes I forget that inside this skin lives a woman who was not always a mom. And she needs to breathe too. This weekend three old friends visited and they helped me catch my breath. I didn’t even realize how long I’d been holding it until I exhaled with them – at dinner, over memories, [...]

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The toothpaste dilemma

October 23, 2009

I am South African. My husband is American. We have spent quite a bit of time in both places. Enough to have a child born in each country during our respective stays. To complicate matters further we spent a priceless nearly two and a half years in Ukraine where we found friendships that are still [...]

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Attack of the Killer What-Ifs!

October 21, 2009

I sit in the late afternoon sun and watch my son load leaves onto his tractor. The same son who told me in no uncertain twenty-two month-old terms last night “Ear, Hurt. Docka.” It was late. The local pediatrician’s office was closing. We would have to drive to the on-call office 40 minutes away. My [...]

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Sabbath is for kids too

October 19, 2009

Rest. Sabbath. From the Middle English sabat, from Latin sabbatum, from Greek sabbaton, from Hebrew shabb?th, from God: “And God blessed the seventh day and set it apart as/made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.” Genesis 2:3; NIV, GWT versions. These days rest can [...]

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Your People will be My People

October 17, 2009

In 1999 I got married twice. To the same guy. Once in the States and once in South Africa. Believe me, if you want to feel well and truly married, do it with back-to-back events four months apart. Because when you are picking out cakes for the second time around to the same person and [...]

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Open arms

October 14, 2009

Some days life comes at you in a fast, blurry, haze. You have to take a step back before it knocks you down. You adjust your focus and still can’t quite see things clearly. All you know for sure is that motherhood is a series of meals half eaten but never while they are still [...]

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A thousand miles

October 12, 2009

When I came into work on Monday morning my hair still smelled of Sunday night’s campfire. I had washed it, but the smokey smell clung. Tucked into the back woods of Virginia we had cooked up a storm of hotdogs, burgers, boys at their battle stations, and s’mores. Fellowship by firelight with a bunch of [...]

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Tough guys wear pink

October 10, 2009

When you can’t find a single one of the hundreds of pacifiers you know must be somewhere in your house and your kid is reenacting that scene at the end of The Incredibles where Jack-Jack takes crazy to a super-sonic, fireball of fury level and there is only one pacifier left in the store in [...]