The Writing Mamas Daily Blog
Each day on the Writing Mamas Daily Blog, a different member will write about mothering.If you're a mom then you've said these words, you've made these observations and you've lived these situations - 24/7.
And for that, you are a goddess.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Vacation for Mom -- Family Free with Friends Who Are Family
School is out for summer!
School is out forever!
Well, no, not really. But it is over for me for the next two and a half days! Woo-woo-hoo-hoo!!!
My husband usually takes the kids camping for approximately eighteen hours. Enough time for me to say, "I have the night to myself." In the wee hours of the a.m. I see them climbing down the front stairs. "And the morning for my family."
I am grateful for the free time however short it may be.
But this is long one. Roughly two days is equivalent to a week for me.
With the family gone, I read, write and lounge.
Tomorrow morning a friend is visiting from Palo Alto. About one p.m. she will leave so I can pick up at the airport my best friend, Amy, in from Seattle who is visiting for a week. Amy called last week to say she had an unexpected opening her her schedule and wondered if she could come and visit.
This was untrue. Unbeknown to me, her mother revealed that Amy's intentions for suddenly coming were, "Dawn's had a lot of deaths the last year. I know it's been hard. I have to come and be with her." A true BFF. Her mother is my second mother (pronounced muth-a). A New York Jewish mother if ever (pronounced ev-a) there was one. I am lucky to have this family in my life since I was eleven.
Amy enjoys her pot. Not my thing. So I've been trying to score some from a friend who lives life firmly on the edges. Her telephone is not accepting voice message, texts or anything that resembles communications. Oh, well. I have two great bottles of wine, an entire evening without children and we can have a gabfest.
This looks to be a wonderful beginning to what I feel certain will be a great summer.
By Dawn YunPublish Post
Labels: back to school, BFF, By Dawn Yun, children's reading choices, kids camping, lounge, Palo Alto, Seattle, summer vacation, write
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Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Story Time
It’s 7 p.m. — story time at our house — and as I wait for my daughter, Emi, to finish zipping up her fleece jammies, I quickly open Where the Wild Things Are. She runs over, grabs it, and tosses it aside.
“No.”
“How about Olivia?” I ask, as I always enjoy the antics of the little pig inspired by Jackson Pollock to splatter paint her bedroom.
“No.”
“Guess How Much I Love You?”
“No!”
I sigh as she pulls My Big Girl Potty off the shelf. I bought this when we began potty training and, from a literary perspective, it’s really not all that interesting. No imaginary adventures to far away lands, no sweet conversations about the infinite reach of love between Big and Little Nutbrown Hare. I guess I should be glad she’s interested in the whole potty idea, but do we have to read this book every night? Why doesn’t she love Max and The Wild Things as much as I do? It bugs me. Just like it bugs me when I pass a copy of a novel I’ve especially liked on to a friend and months later, I spot it stacked on a bookshelf, forgotten under a layer of dust.
I have always been a lover of reading and books. Some of my earliest memories are of snuggling up with my dad before bedtime with Mog the Forgetful Cat and Bread and Jam for Frances. Now I often trade hours of precious sleep to get in just one more chapter of the novel I’m reading or to tear through the latest issue of The New Yorker.
In my daughter’s case, I would like to say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but, frankly, it concerns me that she does not appreciate the obvious superiority of Where the Wild Things Are to My Big Girl Potty. Worse yet is when she doesn’t seem that interested in reading at all. We were in the middle of Madeline the other night and she just got up and walked away when the heater kicked on. Apparently, hot air coming out of a vent in the floor is more captivating than a tale of an emergency appendectomy set in freaking PARIS. I’ve begun to worry that someday in the future I will find my beloved copies of To Kill a Mockingbird and Pride and Prejudice stashed under her bed, untouched…
Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. She is only 2, after all. Even more important, this irritation with my daughter’s reading preferences brings up an uncomfortable question: Am I putting too much pressure on her already to like the things I like? To be like me? It’s one of those things we parents try to tell ourselves we won’t do — no one wants to turn into the cliché of the jock father forcing his son to try out for the football team ― and here I am, catching myself in the act before my poor kid is even out of diapers.
But it’s difficult not to have hopes and aspirations where our children are concerned. I know I will have opinions on clothes, boyfriends and choices of colleges and sometimes it will be hard to decide whether or not to share them. And if I do share, I must brace myself for the possibility of rejection. Someday she just might prefer math to reading (and I’ll be hopelessly inept at helping her with her homework), choose to live on the East coast instead of the West, or ―gasp!— vote Republican. And I will need to remember to keep my eye on the ‘big picture” goal of raising someone who thinks for herself.
But it is nice to hope that we will share some commonalities.
Yesterday, I got dinner started while Emi “sorted” the mail and when I peeked in to the living room to check on her, she had a magazine spread out on her lap. She looked at me and proudly announced, “I read The New Yorker!” It was upside down, but still… Maybe I’ll try and sneak in the latest David Sedaris essay tonight before the heater comes on.
By Shannon Matus-Takaoka Stumble This Post
“No.”
“How about Olivia?” I ask, as I always enjoy the antics of the little pig inspired by Jackson Pollock to splatter paint her bedroom.
“No.”
“Guess How Much I Love You?”
“No!”
I sigh as she pulls My Big Girl Potty off the shelf. I bought this when we began potty training and, from a literary perspective, it’s really not all that interesting. No imaginary adventures to far away lands, no sweet conversations about the infinite reach of love between Big and Little Nutbrown Hare. I guess I should be glad she’s interested in the whole potty idea, but do we have to read this book every night? Why doesn’t she love Max and The Wild Things as much as I do? It bugs me. Just like it bugs me when I pass a copy of a novel I’ve especially liked on to a friend and months later, I spot it stacked on a bookshelf, forgotten under a layer of dust.
I have always been a lover of reading and books. Some of my earliest memories are of snuggling up with my dad before bedtime with Mog the Forgetful Cat and Bread and Jam for Frances. Now I often trade hours of precious sleep to get in just one more chapter of the novel I’m reading or to tear through the latest issue of The New Yorker.
In my daughter’s case, I would like to say that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but, frankly, it concerns me that she does not appreciate the obvious superiority of Where the Wild Things Are to My Big Girl Potty. Worse yet is when she doesn’t seem that interested in reading at all. We were in the middle of Madeline the other night and she just got up and walked away when the heater kicked on. Apparently, hot air coming out of a vent in the floor is more captivating than a tale of an emergency appendectomy set in freaking PARIS. I’ve begun to worry that someday in the future I will find my beloved copies of To Kill a Mockingbird and Pride and Prejudice stashed under her bed, untouched…
Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself. She is only 2, after all. Even more important, this irritation with my daughter’s reading preferences brings up an uncomfortable question: Am I putting too much pressure on her already to like the things I like? To be like me? It’s one of those things we parents try to tell ourselves we won’t do — no one wants to turn into the cliché of the jock father forcing his son to try out for the football team ― and here I am, catching myself in the act before my poor kid is even out of diapers.
But it’s difficult not to have hopes and aspirations where our children are concerned. I know I will have opinions on clothes, boyfriends and choices of colleges and sometimes it will be hard to decide whether or not to share them. And if I do share, I must brace myself for the possibility of rejection. Someday she just might prefer math to reading (and I’ll be hopelessly inept at helping her with her homework), choose to live on the East coast instead of the West, or ―gasp!— vote Republican. And I will need to remember to keep my eye on the ‘big picture” goal of raising someone who thinks for herself.
But it is nice to hope that we will share some commonalities.
Yesterday, I got dinner started while Emi “sorted” the mail and when I peeked in to the living room to check on her, she had a magazine spread out on her lap. She looked at me and proudly announced, “I read The New Yorker!” It was upside down, but still… Maybe I’ll try and sneak in the latest David Sedaris essay tonight before the heater comes on.
By Shannon Matus-Takaoka
Labels: Children's Books, children's reading choices, reading
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