The Happiest Mother on the Block

The Happiest Mother on the Block

by lorriNo Comments
Last week, my foot got one of those awful cramps they say can come from not enough water (guilty) or potassium so I figured I'd give it a stretch, and I went two doors down to return some notecards I'd borrowed to my neighbor Jenn and to see if she wanted some leftover milk I had. We chatted a bit and as I headed out the door she said, "Oh, wait. I need to return this to you." She handed me a book I must've lent her in 2008, Harvey Karp's The Happiest Toddler on the Block. I laughed. Hard. Seriously?! That's definitely the longest anyone has taken to return a borrowed book. But beyond that, my son, with his arms hanging almost to his knees  and half an inch taller than I am at five foot five, well,  it just struck me as comical to get it back now. On the long walk back home, two houses down, I began to...
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Anne Lamott is a Better Mother Than Me

by lorriNo Comments
Yes, yes. Than I. WhatEVER. Yesterday, I read to my son excerpts from an Anne Lamott post on Mother's Day: "I did not raise my son, Sam, to celebrate Mother’s Day. I didn’t want him to feel some obligation to buy me pricey lunches or flowers, some annual display of gratitude that you have to grit your teeth and endure. Perhaps Mother’s Day will come to mean something to me as I grow even dottier in my dotage, and I will find myself bitter and distressed when Sam dutifully ignores the holiday." I shared with my son how I really didn't want him to ever feel guilt-ed into a Mother's Day either. (I remember one year when I had nothing for my mother and she didn't let me off the hook. I felt so awful and went to 7-11 and bought her some book. It wasn't born from within me. Just guilt and obligation). The first painful irony was that literally, as...
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