Not A Hipster Mom

Today was my first day out of the house after spending the last three days at home with my daughter, who was sick with what turned out to be a sinus infection. And, well, let’s just say that it was nice to converse with other adults again. I’ve had many challenges since I became a single mom, but by far the greatest challenge has been my daughter’s health. Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely fortunate to have a healthy child (my Jewish upbringing dictates that I ward off the evil eye here, pupu), and I can’t even imagine what it must be like for the parents of chronically ill children. But out of necessity, my daughter started going to daycare full-time when she was fourteen months old, and since then I have been playing a game called, “How long can we go before she gets sick again?” No parent likes to see their child feeling ill, and it is even worse when the child is still very young, and can’t really tell you what hurts. But as much as this experience is universal to all par...

If you want to see a real cross section of parents, look no further than your local park. Since moving up to the Bay Area (the land of beautiful weather and impressive playgrounds), I have taken my daughter to the park almost every weekend, and I have seen a wide array of parenting styles. I always say that there is more than one way to be a good parent, and that you have to find a parenting style that works for you, yada yada yada. That said, at almost every park, I have encountered three types of parents  whom I actively seek to avoid, whenever possible, because they affect my ability to safely play with my daughter (plus they’re annoying). They are: The Neglectful Parent The neglectful parent is probably the worst of all the parents that you’ll see at the park. Why? Because they aren’t even there. Forget about different parenting styles--their style is to not parent at all. That means that their children play freely in the park, without supervision, and without conseq...

Continued from the previous post, "How Doing Yoga is Making Me a Better Mother" 2. It is Making My Body Look and Feel Better I started doing yoga more for the mental/spiritual benefits, but it has been amazing for my body, too. When I was 22, I backpacked through Eastern Europe with a very heavy backpack, and I pulled the muscle that stretches from the neck down to the right shoulder. Then when I was 27, I was rear-ended, which made the injury even worse. I still deal with nearly constant neck and shoulder pain years later, and carrying my daughter around for the last couple years has definitely added to the strain. Sometimes it’s hard for me to pick her up, or get down on the floor and play with her, because my neck and back are throbbing, and I’ve had to explain to her a few times that Mommy has an “owie in her neck.” But what I didn’t know when I started attending yoga classes again, is that yoga is amazing for injuries like mine, as long as the poses are ...

I started doing yoga again about a month ago.   A coworker of mine told me that she took lunchtime classes three times a week at the gym down the block from our office, and she asked me if I wanted to join. For me, the idea of consistently doing anything three times a week is daunting, so I knew that while I might be diligent for the first week, I would soon slack off to once, maybe twice a week. But the fees were so low--$29/month for a gym membership that included unlimited classes--that I figured even if I only went once a week, it would still be well worth the money. I tried yoga about a year and a half ago, when I was married and living in Las Vegas. I enjoyed it, but I only went once a week for a couple of months, so I never really got into the groove or progressed with my poses. The class was also at 6:30pm, and the after-work time slot meant I lost out on valuable time with my daughter, which left me feeling guilty. I remember a coworker at the time told me that in o...