My 7 rules for being a responsible stoner parent
Candyland is so much more fun baked when you’re an adult. In fact, marijuana makes a lot of things more bearable and even fun. Pot can make you patient and relaxed. I get it, and so does a sizable portion of society. That being said, there are some rules I choose to follow as a pot-smoking parent….
I’m living the freelancing work-from-home parent dream… sort of
Apparently Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, and Deepak Chopra were all in Harvard Square on February 29th for the launch of Lady Gaga’s Born This Way foundation. I was in Harvard Square, too, but I didn’t catch a glimpse of them. I was there just for the fifteen minutes it took me to FedEx a book back to a client. Then I got home and discovered that a chunk of the proofread I had just mailed was still sitting on my desk. My desk isn’t even very crowded (for me, anyway), but I had cleverly separated out the last section of the book to cross-check against the earlier sections, and that turned out to be a bad plan because no one wants their proofread back with the last 20 pages missing. I couldn’t believe it. I had never done anything like this before. How could it have happened?
Losing my maternal drive: maybe I really don’t want children
I have no idea what happened. One minute, I was boiling with the need to have a baby, staring melty-eyed at little ones in the street. The next, I was cold and empty. The desire had extinguished itself, leaving hollow indifference in its place. I riddled over what force possessed the power to do this. Perhaps it was a particularly difficult babysitting session with a screamy, parent-missing girl. Or maybe a heartfelt conversation about parenting with my partner.
Losing a sibling as a teen changed my feelings about parenthood
My thoughts about parenting have generally existed in a continuum that ranges from, “I definitely don’t want kids” to “Kids seem like this fantasy thing” all the way to “If I have kids, I’ll do this …” But no where in those ricocheting and often short-lived conceptions of potential parenting has there ever been a moment where I’ve thought, “Yes, I’ll have kids.” Mostly, I’ve been wading about in the gray for a long time. And for the most part, the question-and-answer game of my parenting or non-parenting future exists in a way that is anxious, but non-pressing. And a great deal of it, I now realize, stems from my most well-known observations of parenting, a lifetime spent watching my own amazing, instinctive, and infinitely nurturing mother raise her two children, and then watching her lose and grieve one.
What to expect when you’re the first of your friends to have kids
Throughout my pregnancy I’d sit with my friends, often at a bar, sipping Orange Juice and Seven-Up and suspiciously eyeing my other female friends who weren’t drinking. I hopefully watched drinking patterns to see whether or not I could “score” a maternity leave buddy for at least part of my year as a stay at home mom. Although I have many close friends who often act as designated driver no one was pregnant while I was, and at this point no one will have more than a few weeks of overlap time at home with me unless they are very cleverly hiding five months of pregnancy. I have a handful of mom friends who are at home right now, but they all live outside of the city and on average are a fifty-three minute drive away.
When will breastfeeding stop interfering with my sex life?
I have always enjoyed a really great sex life with my husband — pretty much right up until the birth of our daughter in August. After she was born, it took a while to get back into the swing of things. The problem now is that it hurts every time we try to have sex. I talked to my midwife about it and she said that it is going to hurt more than normal because I’m breastfeeding her. I do have an IUD but she assured me that it wasn’t the problem and once I stop breastfeeding, it will go back to “normal.”
Banishing guilt to be better: let’s chill out and trust ourselves
You may have seen the Wall Street Journal article that’s now circulating called Why French Parents Are Superior. If you haven’t, I’m sure it will pop up on your Facebook feed sooner or later. In it, Pamela Druckerman, an American ex-pat living in France, talks about how French children seem better behaved than American children and French parents seemed much more relaxed.
You’re not invited: navigating kids’ parties and Facebook
Offbeat Bride ran a piece last month that touched on an interesting phenomenon: with social media usage so prevalent, we now have to deal with how our friends will discuss out parties online. More specifically, how people who were invited to an event or party will talk about it after it happens, and how people who weren’t invited will react. This can either be awesome, and people don’t really think it’s a big deal that they weren’t invited, or… it can suck.