About This Blog

Hello and welcome! My name is Cali and I live with my husband, two small children, one cat and one dog in upstate NY. People ask me if I work, meaning if I work outside the home, and I do not, though the answer in my head is that I work my ass off every day. It's a funny world, a funny life, this being human, and being a mother here in middle class america.

In my previous life I taught English to petulant and charming college kids. These days I teach manners and earthbound facts to two preschoolers. It's more or less the same thing, without all the essays.

Why I started this blog: 
When my daughter was born in September of 2006 I found myself in a state of shock, and also depressed. I had wanted a baby for a long time, and we had endured several rounds of fertility treatments to make it happen. I thought I knew what I was going to feel, since I'd been rehearsing this moment since I was about 8, and what I in fact felt was something wholly different. Becoming a parent, for me, was like waking up on another planet - something akin to culture shock. I needed a place to vent, to search, to be heard. Also, I learned quickly that no one talks about how incredibly draining it is to care for an infant. I needed to talk about it, and I needed a community of folks who were experiencing the same thing.

My son was born in March of 2008, and in May we moved from North Carolina to Upstate New York. I left behind my old work life to stay home with the kids, and at the time we moved I had a two month old and a 19 month old, and I knew not one person within a day's drive. My husband was very involved with his new job when we first arrived, and I found myself without family or friends to help or keep me company. I was on my own. The blog became a tether for me then.

And now? Now we've been in NY several years and I've adjusted; we have friends, support, structure; I have our life. I see why people say it goes so fast. This is my place to record it, to process it, to share it. Being a parent is a universal experience, but it's also unique to each child, each parent, each situation, because people are different. It's this duality of similarity and difference that interests me, how our unique experiences inform each other's unique experiences. What does it mean to me to be a mom? What does it mean to you? How do we do this thing with grace? When is it we fall and how do we go on? I don't know that I come to any answers here in this blog, but I try to at least ask the right questions, and hopefully record the charm of childhood in between.

Thanks for visiting.