Every parent was once a child. Sometimes it feels so long ago, as though it couldn’t have happened. Other times, it’s like it was just yesterday. Today, I am a mother. But, once, I was a child, a child with a mother. Not every child has a mother, and not every child has a mother they love and adore. I was lucky. I am lucky. I still have the mother I absolutely adore. The mother who raised me to be the mother I am today. All because she let me be a child. She let me live my childhood to its fullest. She encouraged me to explore what childhood is so I…
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Memories by Catherine Burkett
Title: Memories Author: Catherine Burkett Publisher: Self-published Publication date: December 10, 2015 Genre: Fantasy Summary: Vincent can heal people – physically and mentally. But for a price. For every healing he does, he must give up a memory of equal size. And then go on the run again. Armed with a black book and precious few belongings, he leaves, this time forced to take a young, battered woman he healed. He shares with her his strange abilities and his search for his mother, who healed him and then vanished. Amazingly, she knows where his mother was last living, unwittingly leading them into a trap set by those who would exploit…
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Baby Tantrums
I wasn’t expecting this. I was completely caught off guard. I didn’t even think babies could throw tantrums! I look at my son and remember what he was like as a baby. Sweet, curious, and happy, and entirely too attached to me. Not much seemed to bother him. He only complained when I tried to feed him anything he didn’t want (he still does). Even when he knocked a toy to the floor, he didn’t complain; he just found something else. My daughter is different. She’s super attached to me, more than her brother. She’s curious and independent and so incredibly stubborn. She tries and tries and tries and cries…
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Breastfeeding and Nausea
When my son was born, I started breastfeeding right away. Not doing so wasn’t an option in my mind. I was well aware of all the benefits for my child. Besides, my mom breastfed me and I promised her I would do the same. My mom also told me to expect to feel hungry or thirsty or both while feeding my baby. She told me I might need to go to the bathroom, but that feeling just might vanish after the baby was done eating. I would need to increase my calorie intake and make sure I took in more calcium. I listened, and anticipated all this and more when…
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Motherhood: Hearing his cries
There’s one question that haunts me every single day. Am I hearing, really hearing, my son’s cries? I guess there’s no way of hiding it. I was a psychology student, in a primarily psychodynamic program (think along the lines of Freud, but modernized). As such, I ended up taking some psychodynamically focused classes, one of which focused on children. There are these case studies that revolve around in my mind all the time. They haunted me while I took the class this past spring. I kept trying to focus on what I would do with a child client, but, as an expecting mother the whole semester, I always found myself…
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Motherhood: Baby’s first trip
Technically, second trip, but first airplane ride. That being said, I’ll be out of town for a few days, so no posts this week, and likely none next week considering it’s Thanksgiving here in the States. If I survive the next couple of weeks, I’ll be back in December with more of Gates to Asphodel. Fingers crossed baby doesn’t start teething just yet.
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Mother
I saw an ornament recently. It said: Mother is another word for love. I disagree. It should read: Mother is another word for EXHAUSTED.
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Motherhood: I don’t mind waking in the middle of the night
Four month old babies don’t always sleep through the night, especially when they’re breastfed. There goes my bubble. But that’s okay. I call those middle of the night wakings my reading time. Since I’m trying so hard to get my baby back to sleep by keeping quiet and offering no interaction so he gets bored, it’s the only uninterrupted reading time I get. It’s the one time where it’s okay for me to ignore my world and focus on me. I love to read, and it helps that I still have 70+ plus sitting on my kindle, patiently waiting for me. Of course, I have often found lately that I…
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Motherhood: Mastering the one handed peck
It’s not easy being a writer when there’s a three month old baby demanding attention. Every day he insists the only place he can sleep is lodged firmly on my chest. Attempts at doing anything other than quietly reading a book or gazing adoringly at his sleeping figure are met with squirming and cries and demands for food or comfort. Needless to say, this is actually the most I’ve written since he was born. On rare occasions, like at six thirty in the morning when he’s noisily sleeping, I get a little bit of time on my computer to write. That’s my writing time. Otherwise, I’m mastering the one handed…
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Motherhood: Mother and writer?
I’ll never be the same writer I was just a few months ago. I’ll never get to sit and just write for a few hours. I’ll never get some quality time with a word document. I’ll never get to ignore the world while I type out my next great idea. I think I’ve come to terms with that. Even though my kid is still very young and very demanding, I have a feeling that, even as he grows older, I’ll still never get any peace. There will be pleas to play with him or take him somewhere. There will, one day, be sibling squabbles I’ll have to deal with. Then…