Conscious Mom

What a difference a year makes!

I hadn't intended to go so long without posting anything. But writing about what I've been doing would involve writing about work, which I tend to avoid doing these days. I've been very vague about my employment on this blog. Some of you may know that I am, or was, or might be in the future, a Biology teacher. But I'm not teaching much at the moment, and in case a former student or future employer reads this, the less said about why, the better. (Note to future employer: I'm deeply devoted to caring for my daughter, thus I cannot leave the house for 50 hours a week. That's the only reason I haven't taught full time in 16 months. ...

This time, our fist ambulance ride. (Before you read this, we're all fine now.) After a relatively normal morning yesterday Maia went down for her nap early and slept a long, long time. She woke up crying and vomiting, with a high fever, then immediately fell back to sleep. Fast onset fever, vomiting, lethargy and sleepiness. Not good. Not good at all. In fact, red flagged every baby book as 'CALL DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY'. I tried the doctor... busy... tried again... busy. After about ten tries, the operator informed me that phone lines were down throughout the area and there was no possible way to get in touch with the doctor. I hesitated.... was I over reacting, kids do get sick... am I ...

Yesterday Maia and I saw a caterpillar on the road. She picked it up, and fearing she would pinch it too hard, or put it in her mouth, I gently returned it to the ground. We watched it for a while, admiring its coloring and the way it moved so gracefully. A wonderful mother-daughter moment in nature, I stopped to think, just long enough to miss the opportunity to prevent disaster. I screamed 'no' and reached to move her away from the caterpillar, just a split second too late to prevent her foot from crashing down on it. She screamed when saw the remains of the caterpillar, complete with colorful fluid leaking out, and frantically said "more, more, more", while ...

At first we thought it was mosquito bites. Maia scratched and squirmed and cried, and was more miserable than I've ever seen her. It was like she knew in her young brain the significance mosquito bites have had on her homeland and was lamenting all that loss and suffering. But they itched too much, for too long, and we decided it must be flea bites. We have no cats or dogs, but maybe a visitor dragged them in the house, we hypothesized. Then they got big, red, raised, and even more itchy, which an hour earlier I didn't think was possible. Poison ivy? Poison oak? Some other contact dermatitis? On the soles of her feet? Unlikely. An allergic reaction to ...

A Wordless Holiday (We did speak to one another, it's wordless because I am only posting photos.) The photo from the beach is the one on the mug Bodhipaksa and Maia gave to me as a present.

Maia had her first haircut today. I took her to Diversity Hair, where she sat quietly on my lap as James skillfully and quickly gave her a trim. It is all one length now, except were she's still bald, and looks remarkably sophisticated. Her transition from baby to toddler is now complete. I'm about to go put the curls into her baby book, and yeah I'm a little sad. Here she is with her new haircut making happy and sad faces:

A few weeks ago I saw Living on the Fault Line: Where Race and Family Meet, a documentary about interracial adoptive families in racially homogeneous (white) Vermont. I promised a review, but I was VERY TIRED the night I saw this documentary, so tired my poor little neurons were misfiring, ceasefiring, and backfiring, and as a result the details are very fuzzy in my mind. So rather than give the details, I'm just going to encourage you to see it, whether or not you have children, whether or not your children are adopted, whether or not they are same race as you, because it is a frank, accessible, thoughtful look at race in American society. Despite my exhaustion, ...

My husband is very busy with a work project, so I am 99.9% certain he won't be reading this. I think it is safe to ask you for input on his Father's Day gift. (Hey, people have posted weirder polls on their blogs!) I'm getting him a mug, as tradition dictates, but am torn between these pictures, and a black or a white mug. (This is last year's 'mug shot'.) (And in the unlikely event you are reading this, dear husband, feel free to vote!) 1. 2. 3. If you are willing to help, please leave a comment indicating which number you ...

I once heard a quote, 'sex is like oxygen, you don't think about it unless you aren't getting any.' This post is about neither sex nor oxygen, but two other resources I used to take for granted and am now obsessing over. 1. Sleep: I am still not getting much. Maia is actually a good sleeper for her age. She sleeps for at least 11 hours a night, usually in a row. But she's an early riser and will wake up by 5 AM no matter what time she goes to bed. So when she goes through a teething phase and gets less sleep, I never get to catch up on my own. I am now suffering from a sleep debt ...