Celebrating mama sneaker fiends
So what exactly are the highs and lows of combining an obsession for kicks with the responsibilities of parenthood? One of the sweetest highlights is sharing a passion with your kids. As Annie explains it, “It’s great to see my girls find their own love and joy for sneakers. Their reactions to new sneakers are really the true embodiment of how happy I feel with a dope pair of sneakers, and they don’t hold back!”
No, that’s not my daughter: how being a sister prepared me for motherhood
Sometime in 8th grade I went to the store with my mom and my youngest sister, AJ. I remember people watching the three of us walking through the store with quizzical looks. They would look first at my mom, then to me, then to AJ, then back to me. Finally, as we made our way through the checkout, the cashier looked at me and said “Your daughter is so cute,” then back to my mother and finished “You are a lucky grandma!” I stared, my 14-year-old self feeling completely embarrassed and horrified, as my mom calmly answered, “Actually, I’m the mom. They are both mine.”
My partner and I suffered from baby-name remorse
Apparently the need to rename your child is called “baby-name remorse.” Considerably more common than one suspects. I came upon a few stories on the internet about baby-name remorse and even a few personal stories by parents who went through with the out of the box renaming of their child.
I didn’t know if I wanted to be “Mama”
I just held out the test going, “OhmygodLOOKohmygodLOOK” at which point we both burst into tears. He hugged me tightly and said, “Congratulations, Mama!” Mama? No. Call me anything, I thought, but not mama.
Writing a book helped me grow
I found myself in a post-baby slump and realized exactly what activity I needed to do: NaNoWriMo. The month of November is National Novel Writing Month. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) book in 30 days. This comes out to 1667 words a day. The novel can be on anything you want. No one needs to read it. It’s a writing exercise. I have participated in NaNoWriMo a total of five times.
Leaving motherhood out of conversations
Why do I hurl myself into a defensive monologue about why I don’t want to work with kids? Why does the defensive part of my brain override every other avenue the conversation might have taken? Why don’t I focus on what I DO want to do instead of focusing on what I don’t want?
Loving the mother I am
My daughter will be who she is. That is the most exquisite thing I could ever want for her. Any push from me to be the perfect mama is all fallow work.
How I explain race to my mixed-race children
Being mixed has shaped my identity, made me who I am. I’ve always felt different, but in a good way. Sure, I’ve had my share of racist insults and rejection hurled at me, but nothing that I wasn’t able to shake off. Now, I’m raising mixed-race kids and I have the challenge of helping them discover and embrace their unique identity.