Posts by Kate
there is always something
Zoe’s hair and eyelashes are coming in. Her hair, a lovely auburn red, stands on end after a bath, and there are five or six long strands (each about an inch and half long) sprouting from the crown of her head. I admire their tenacity, hanging on they way do. It’s odd to think back…
Read More8 weeks old
It’s hard to believe that Zoe is already 8 weeks old. I’m not sure exactly how big she is, but it’s somewhere around 11 pounds. She seems huge, wearing clothes that Stella wore when she was five months old! As hard as these infants months are for me, I feel myself grasping, trying to hold…
Read Moreon narrative urgency and single parenting
I’ve been thinking a lot about narrative urgency the last couple of weeks because I recently went to see Charles Baxter talk about and read from his new novel, The Soul Thief. (I dragged both Stella and Zoe out in the cold so I could get my literary fix.) He used the term narrative urgency,…
Read Morewhen the escape might not be worth it
My darling Zoe is getting progressively fussier. It’s the must-be-bounced-and-carried-or-nursed-to-fall-and-stay-asleep kind of fussy. Yesterday I desperately needed a nap, but she wouldn’t stay asleep, so finally I gave up and strapped her in the bouncy chair so at least I could shower. Then, I wanted so badly to check e-mail and maybe even write a…
Read MoreKnopf poetry and Sharon Olds
As you all know, it’s National Poetry Month. And I hope you all know that Knopf will e-mail you one poem every day for the whole month! Yesterday, what was sitting in my inbox? The wonderful “Looking At Them Asleep” by Sharon Olds. So perfect for me right now. It ends: oh my Lord how…
Read Morereading again
D will be home tonight. He’s been gone for ten days with his new job. I doubt the timing, with Zoe just four weeks old when he left, could have been any worse, but there was nothing we could do about it, so he went. Stella missed him a ton. Yesterday morning, she was watching…
Read Morewhat happens
when your lovely change of scene gets buried under 19 inches of snow? You stare out the window for hours cursing at the snow that will not stop falling. You become very crabby. Finally, you decide the only way to not go crazy is to actually go out into the blizzard. You try to pull…
Read Morefresh air
I’m up north with my mom and the girls, and the change of scene helps, though getting ready to leave the house yesterday felt like flying to hell in a very tiny hand basket. I cursed up a storm as I struggled–for forty five minutes–to fold Zoe’s co-sleeper into its carrier bag. Meanwhile, Zoe, who…
Read Morea kinder, gentler version
Zoe is 4 weeks old today, which seems impossible. How have four weeks already passed? How have four weeks of me doing nothing but nursing and bouncing a baby just disappeared? These are hard times for me. I started to feel more like myself at the end of last week—the scary hormone visions (more on…
Read Moredaily dose
D and I need to get wireless at home. We have DSL on our home computer, but that computer is so old it crashes regularly, and it’s in our basement, which is cold and full of radon. There’s no point in eating organic food if I’m going to sit down there are breathe radon, so…
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