To whichever one of you bought that book after linking to Amazon from here: Be careful, okay?
Gratuitous cat/partner photograph.
Did I ever link to this piece over at Brain, Child? If not, there it is. Also, I believe I have something in the November O magazine. I keep meaning to tell you that, but then I forget to check and make sure it's true.
Dear Catherine, Your Brain, Child piece really hit home. This past weekend we had a few families over to carve pumpkins (yes, after Halloween, but whatever) and at one point I realized that all the kids were sitting at the table carving, while the parents were sitting around the couch talking and having a great time. Not one parent was supervising the knives, and it was OK! No one got hurt! It was a completely shocking realization - our kids are now old enough to carve pumpkins by themselves. Wow. Thanks, as always, for your fabulous writing. I especially like the phase "I swear on a stack of attachment parenting books." Awesome.
I saw this today on Pinterest brain child page (by the way I now subscribe to brain child internationally only down to you!) and emailed it to my husband :) we both loved it & you might just have saved our marriage this week (2 babies 18 months apart were slowly driving us quieter & quieter with exhaustion) thanks for yet more amazing writing - oh yes & please write more books!!
Love that piece. Farther down the parenting road with one child- my 24 year old is living proof that even the drama-filled angsty teen years all blend away too- now we chat over coffee and catch up on the lastest episode of whatever we both watch. No one argues, no one yells, no one glares or sighs. It's lovely.
Well, you've done it. I read the piece after dinner, with my three kids (4, 9 and 11 years old) created total chaos around me, throwing pillows at each other, jumping on the couch, all happyily and loudly, but nerve-wrecking-ly. While I wept. I read your piece, and tears are still flowing. My eleven-year-old is sneaking glances at me, although I'm trying to hide my tears. Now, my four-year-old is yelling at me to help her turn the light off. Oh, life with kids. Just when I'm about to have a nervous breakdown with all the relentless chaos, I run across people like you who remind me...
Oh my gosh, I cried reading your Brain, Child piece! I teared up once but was able to choke the tears back, then I laughed out loud around the asparagus paragraph, but by the end I was wiping away real tears. My kids are 6 and just-turned-2, so I'm out of the tiny baby stage, but still in a mind-numbing frustrating stage sometimes. But even now I've started to notice moments when my babies are playing together and not requiring my assistance. It's all so bittersweet. Thanks for summing it up with grace and humor. I love your writing.
It really does get better. Sometimes I can hardly believe my good luck to be living with the wonderful people my "tween" children are becoming. And as always, you captured this bittersweet time perfectly.
Lovely. Really lovely. It is so hard, sometimes, when you are going through it. And you hear people say you will miss it, and you can't believe it. And then it's (sometimes) true. I loved this piece so much, I posted it on my Facebook. (-:
Also, I made your Perfect Pasta for a crowd for a gathering of pre-trick-or-treaters, and everybody loved it, so thanks for that, too. I've even frozen some of the leftovers, so hopefully it will defrost OK, and that will be even awesome-er.
Thanks a lot for the link. Here I am laughing and crying again. Apparently I didn't get it all out the first four hundred times I read Its get better the two months it sat on my desk, with extra copies to hand out when people asked " are you laughing or crying?" Your writing and insight astound me. Thank you.
Love it, love it! Everything, from nursing the baby in her carseat to hunching up in a crib- this is my life! And people threaten me that one day the kids won't want to get up and I keep wondering- why is this a problem? Won't it mean I won't have to get up either? And you say it does! Hooray!!
This is my first visit here, but I have a request: Please read this post from a good egg who worships the earth upon which you travel. http://shelburbia.com/help-help/ Hopefully you'll see fit to thank me rather than scream my name in a fit of 1980s action film rage....
Laughing and crying...you sum it up perfectly. My twin babies are now 7, and you've been with me since I was pregnant. Thank you your writing is a comfort and a gift.
Oh my goodness, struggling to hold back tears. It's been a while since I've "visited," but for some reason you popped into my mind today and here I am. Crying.
Truer words have never been written (Brain Child piece). I'm in that sweet spot, to a degree, though with four kids and the youngest being four years old, we're still straddling both worlds. Still, just today I was marveling at how beautifully they played together for HOURS, starting first thing this morning, inside: wrapping their toys up in newspaper to put under their bedroom mini Christmas trees to play "holidays" since it is now officially December, listening to the Christian station on their alarm clock radio (God only knows how they landed on that) until I just couldn't take it anymore and walked in to turn it to the alternative station ("Mom, why'd you change it?"), followed by homemade Mad Libs and making up hybrid super heroes (such as "Flash Flood," a combination of Flash and Aquaman) and designing their symbols; outside: with their sketched and cut out emblems taped to their chests, flying through the yard with capes from the dress up box, followed by four-man, free-for-all tennis on the driveway, without a single disagreement for me to referee. And I struggled towards the end of the run today with whether I should interrupt to make the boys sit down and do homework. Ultimately, I decided NO. Surely they were doing more for their brains with all of that play, teamwork, creativity, love, brother/sisterhood than their schoolwork could ever do. *sigh* Who knows.
In any event, thank you. I guess I needed this. Like so many others, your writing has been with me through my entire mothering journey, since I was pregnant with my first almost 11 years ago. I was in Amherst this summer, visiting from Colorado, and it occurred to me, "What if I cross paths with Catherine Newman? Could I ever possibly express to her how much I LOVE her writing? How I feel like we know each other, or at least would be SUCH great friends if we lived in the same town? And if I did manage to tell her all that, would she recoil? Call the police?" Probably good to just play it safe and visit here more often to see what you're up to. :)
Every word of that Brain, Child piece is not only wonderfully funny but so completely true.
ReplyDeleteDear Catherine, Your Brain, Child piece really hit home. This past weekend we had a few families over to carve pumpkins (yes, after Halloween, but whatever) and at one point I realized that all the kids were sitting at the table carving, while the parents were sitting around the couch talking and having a great time. Not one parent was supervising the knives, and it was OK! No one got hurt! It was a completely shocking realization - our kids are now old enough to carve pumpkins by themselves. Wow. Thanks, as always, for your fabulous writing. I especially like the phase "I swear on a stack of attachment parenting books." Awesome.
ReplyDeleteughhhh I love that one, Catherine! So good, really.
ReplyDeleteKeryn
I saw this today on Pinterest brain child page (by the way I now subscribe to brain child internationally only down to you!) and emailed it to my husband :) we both loved it & you might just have saved our marriage this week (2 babies 18 months apart were slowly driving us quieter & quieter with exhaustion) thanks for yet more amazing writing - oh yes & please write more books!!
ReplyDeleteLove that piece. Farther down the parenting road with one child- my 24 year old is living proof that even the drama-filled angsty teen years all blend away too- now we chat over coffee and catch up on the lastest episode of whatever we both watch. No one argues, no one yells, no one glares or sighs. It's lovely.
ReplyDeleteWell, you've done it. I read the piece after dinner, with my three kids (4, 9 and 11 years old) created total chaos around me, throwing pillows at each other, jumping on the couch, all happyily and loudly, but nerve-wrecking-ly.
ReplyDeleteWhile I wept. I read your piece, and tears are still flowing. My eleven-year-old is sneaking glances at me, although I'm trying to hide my tears. Now, my four-year-old is yelling at me to help her turn the light off. Oh, life with kids. Just when I'm about to have a nervous breakdown with all the relentless chaos, I run across people like you who remind me...
Oh my gosh, I cried reading your Brain, Child piece! I teared up once but was able to choke the tears back, then I laughed out loud around the asparagus paragraph, but by the end I was wiping away real tears. My kids are 6 and just-turned-2, so I'm out of the tiny baby stage, but still in a mind-numbing frustrating stage sometimes. But even now I've started to notice moments when my babies are playing together and not requiring my assistance. It's all so bittersweet. Thanks for summing it up with grace and humor. I love your writing.
ReplyDeleteThis was my favorite of all your writings. True, beautiful and compassionate. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteIt really does get better. Sometimes I can hardly believe my good luck to be living with the wonderful people my "tween" children are becoming. And as always, you captured this bittersweet time perfectly.
ReplyDeleteLovely. Really lovely. It is so hard, sometimes, when you are going through it. And you hear people say you will miss it, and you can't believe it. And then it's (sometimes) true. I loved this piece so much, I posted it on my Facebook. (-:
ReplyDeleteAlso, I made your Perfect Pasta for a crowd for a gathering of pre-trick-or-treaters, and everybody loved it, so thanks for that, too. I've even frozen some of the leftovers, so hopefully it will defrost OK, and that will be even awesome-er.
Loren
Thanks a lot for the link. Here I am laughing and crying again. Apparently I didn't get it all out the first four hundred times I read Its get better the two months it sat on my desk, with extra copies to hand out when people asked " are you laughing or crying?" Your writing and insight astound me. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteLove it, love it! Everything, from nursing the baby in her carseat to hunching up in a crib- this is my life! And people threaten me that one day the kids won't want to get up and I keep wondering- why is this a problem? Won't it mean I won't have to get up either? And you say it does! Hooray!!
ReplyDeleteThis is my first visit here, but I have a request: Please read this post from a good egg who worships the earth upon which you travel.
ReplyDeletehttp://shelburbia.com/help-help/
Hopefully you'll see fit to thank me rather than scream my name in a fit of 1980s action film rage....
Laughing and crying...you sum it up perfectly. My twin babies are now 7, and you've been with me since I was pregnant. Thank you your writing is a comfort and a gift.
ReplyDeleteLOVE that picture of that handsome guy up there! Michael's not bad, either.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful and so true. I think of you often when I experience these moments: Catherine said it would be like this, and it is.
ReplyDeleteOh my goodness, struggling to hold back tears. It's been a while since I've "visited," but for some reason you popped into my mind today and here I am. Crying.
ReplyDeleteTruer words have never been written (Brain Child piece). I'm in that sweet spot, to a degree, though with four kids and the youngest being four years old, we're still straddling both worlds. Still, just today I was marveling at how beautifully they played together for HOURS, starting first thing this morning, inside: wrapping their toys up in newspaper to put under their bedroom mini Christmas trees to play "holidays" since it is now officially December, listening to the Christian station on their alarm clock radio (God only knows how they landed on that) until I just couldn't take it anymore and walked in to turn it to the alternative station ("Mom, why'd you change it?"), followed by homemade Mad Libs and making up hybrid super heroes (such as "Flash Flood," a combination of Flash and Aquaman) and designing their symbols; outside: with their sketched and cut out emblems taped to their chests, flying through the yard with capes from the dress up box, followed by four-man, free-for-all tennis on the driveway, without a single disagreement for me to referee. And I struggled towards the end of the run today with whether I should interrupt to make the boys sit down and do homework. Ultimately, I decided NO. Surely they were doing more for their brains with all of that play, teamwork, creativity, love, brother/sisterhood than their schoolwork could ever do. *sigh* Who knows.
In any event, thank you. I guess I needed this. Like so many others, your writing has been with me through my entire mothering journey, since I was pregnant with my first almost 11 years ago. I was in Amherst this summer, visiting from Colorado, and it occurred to me, "What if I cross paths with Catherine Newman? Could I ever possibly express to her how much I LOVE her writing? How I feel like we know each other, or at least would be SUCH great friends if we lived in the same town? And if I did manage to tell her all that, would she recoil? Call the police?" Probably good to just play it safe and visit here more often to see what you're up to. :)
Thank you,
Hadley