Mother Shock

Emi is ambivalent. She is five years old, losing her baby-fat and gaining the responsibilities of a kindergartener. At school she loves the thrill of being in “K,” though she…

I am thirty-eight weeks pregnant. It is 98 degrees out, claustrophobically hot, and I am sweating as I cajole my three-year-old daughter up the steps to the building where my…

People ask me all the time, when’s the third? My parents, my husband’s parents, parents of my children’s classmates. The third: the third baby, the person who would officially tip…

At 5 a.m., I woke up to a horrible sound. It was like your most annoying roommate’s most annoying alarm clock on one of those mornings where your annoying roommate…

I’m going to confess something that might sound shocking coming from a writer who often takes as her subject the complex and sometimes dark experience of mothering young children: Today…

The first time I was pregnant, I had no idea what was going on. I was weepy over commercials, shaky and dizzy if I skipped breakfast, prone to sobbing over…

It’s bedtime, and Emi’s asking for a drink before she goes to sleep. But tonight her usual request is accompanied by a more ominous directive. “Mommy,” she says, her face…

Empathy is a hard thing for a preschooler to understand. “Emi!” I snap as she deliberately shoves her baby brother to the floor while he walks by. “Nate was in…

Mr. Rogers is on television. My daughter seems more interested in her blocks at the moment, but I have turned on the TV anyway, a bad habit, I’m sure. I…

Every night when I put Emi to bed, she asks me questions in the dark. She asks things like, “How do turtles eat if they don’t have teeth?” “How do…

I happened to read a while back, in some book called Your Four-Year-Old: Wild and Wonderful (a follow-up to Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy), that the imaginary play of four-year-old…