Here Lies Hope

by Seattle Mamacita at Mama Mia No Sabia
Posted on October 26, 2007

Just before I slipped into the operating room for my D & C, my Mama caught my arm and whispered, If you're scared chiquita sing a song. Think of your song right now and sing it loudly.

Under a fiery Autumn sun, I couldn't get that song out of my head as we planted the tree that my dear hermana Bgirl gave us in memoriam, a plant she chose especially because it blooms in the dead of winter even when the ground is hard, cold and unforgiving.

There is something beautiful about this kind of resilience, the notion that this tender creature can thrive under the harshest of conditions. Read more...

Dear ten year old me,

by Phoenix at Phoenix Says
Posted on October 26, 2007

Today is your tenth birthday. Happy Birthday. I'm your 27 year old self. I'll tell you how you can believe me. For you birthday, you are having a sleepover with 10 girls. You'll have a blast doing the scavenger hunt that Mommy made up. You'll get some great loot too. I don't remember it all, but I do remember the American Girl series and the Molly doll you got. You didn't think Mommy would get it, because it was pricey, but ten years old is an important birthday and she knew that. See, I am you. :)

I saw an ad yesterday that made me want to write to you. It may seem a bit late, you know, seventeen years or so, but I still think it's important. You know that boy, the one named Matthew who told you that you were ugly last week? The one that made you feel ugly for the first time in your life? That day is the day you started worrying about things that you shouldn't have. You started spending way too much time looking in the mirror, thinking your eyes weren't pretty enough and your nose was too big and you had been given the unfortunate butt chin from your daddy. You started spending a half hour picking out your clothes, hoping to at least look cool, instead of the ugly duckling you now believe you are. Instead, you should be playing outside with your friends, reading in your living room, or skating with your baby brother. These are the important things. Read More...

I realize Phoenix isn't technically a "mommy blogger," but dammit, what a great reminder to those of us raising little girls that they need to believe in their beauty. --Ed.

light a penny candle

by bon at cribchronicles
Posted on October 15, 2007

i don’t do ritual very well. i do not know how seriously to take it, whether it requires of me a solemnity and focus i can seldom sustain. i long for it, for the way it imbues acts with meaning, with signification, but i skitter from it too…unable to trust myself to do it justice.

but at 7 pm tonight, while i was in the midst of running out for circuit training class (a passing fancy, i fear), and Dave was giving Oscar his bath, i lit a candle.

we stopped for a minute in the noise and the haste and the splashing, and lit a candle in the bathroom and turned out the lights. we watched the flame flicker across the porcelain and cast long shadows on the wall, and we watched Oscar’s eyes grow big and black and full of magic. and we told him about his brother, spoke him by name. and we laughed a bit, and tears spashed in O’s bathwater, and duck silhouettes were cast on the tub wall. it was…kinda nice. to not split myself, on any level. to be there in the most mundane of circumstances, present at bathtime to both my children, the living and the dead. Read more...

March 22, 1978

by Slouching Mom at Slouching Past 40
Posted on October 8, 2007

We'd spent the morning at El Morro, the citadel in Old San Juan. My brother and I chased one another by the ramparts and into the damp and dark tunnels. The wind whipped our shirts into billowy sails. It's a magical place, El Morro. My brother had a new camera, and he took some shots of the fort, and then of me against the sea, my hand brushing back the hair that kept blowing about my face. When after our trip he developed them himself during photography class at school and took them home to my mother, she gasped but wouldn't say why. She framed one of them. One day much later she told me that they showed me exactly as I was, on the cusp of adolescence, one foot in planted in childhood, the other stretched out toward a darker and more troubling time.

As my brother and I waged pretend battles on El Morro that day, Karl Wallenda of The Flying Wallendas, one of a family of high-wire artists, prepared to walk on a wire between the towers of the Condado Plaza, not far from where we stood gazing first at the roiling sea and then at the sweeping view the citadel afforded of the city. Today I wonder if Wallenda felt that this was his last hurrah, because he was 73, or whether the risk-taker in him was ageless. Read more...

To the guy with the wife with the baby

by Kate at Sweet | Salty
Posted on September 28, 2007

She’s a natural, you know. She is competent to a fault, emitting a swift, cheery self-sufficiency that makes people think she’s not in need of anything. But there is something she does need, especially now: you.

She needs you to come home asking for her, for the baby, dropping your stuff in a pile at the door and calling to her I’m just washing my hands! in that way that tells her without seeing your face that you're smiling, like you’ve spent the day at the office willing the time to pass so you can get back to your girls.

She needs you to trust her, to follow her lead. By virtue of time logged this child is her domain. It won’t be like that forever but it is, now. Even if she’s at a loss, pretend she’s not — for however long it takes for her to find her feet. Read more...

Frances Friday: Faith

by Andrea at a garden of nna mmoy
Posted on September 7, 2007

World, please be kind to my little girl.

She is perfect as she is at this very moment. She is thoughtful and prudent, generous and kind, polite and sociable, clever and sweet, resilient and sensitive. I spend every day awed at how unlikely it all seems. How did I produce her? How did she learn to make friends so easily when I still stumble over small talk, at 32? When I was three I threw temper tantrums all day long. How is it she so easily follows directions? How did she learn to watch her step so carefully without ever seeming to lose out on any fun? How does such a tiny ribcage hold such a large heart? How is it that the smallest unkind word to herself or others moves her to tears, yet she bounces back from trauma without missing a step?

It's incredible. It's not just me, is it? She is an amazing person, the best person I have ever met. She knows what loss is, but she still throws her heart wide open every day. She is as sensitive as gossamer and yet tougher than old boot leather.

You and I both know, world, that you need a lot more people like Frances.

Today she is starting school. Read more...

by Betsy at Gray Matters Matter
Posted on September 4, 2007


Tomorrow will be my son’s last first day of second grade.

It got me thinking about the bittersweet feelings that accompany every new chapter of our children’s lives.

The last first word they’ll every say.

The last first step they’ll ever take.

Usually these moments fill us with such unimaginable pride that we don’t realize until later, sometimes much much later, that there’s also a little sadness in the finality of those moments.

Tomorrow my son starts second grade.

Last night I laid in bed restless, anxious and sad.

I played my “movie montage” of his life, our lives as a family, in my head, from his first breath to him dominating my husband at video games last night.

I needed to feel close to him, like I wasn’t losing him. So I did something I haven’t done in a very long time, I went into his bed and snuggled him while he was sound asleep. Read more...

Intelligence Quotient Quotient

by Blog Antagonist at Blogs are Stupid
Posted on August 30, 2007

Yesterday was Diminutive One's weekly therapist appointment. We took a bit of a break over the summer, which was nice, but it was good to be back in her cheerfully serene waiting room once again. Though getting there and back during rush hour is an exercise in insanity, I have come to look upon that hour as a welcome respite from life's chaos and calamity.

They have good magazines there. Current ones. InStyle, Redbook, Entertainment Weekly, Time, Newsweek. Each month I work my way through the new editions, reveling in the indulgence of being completely inert for a full hour. There are no distractions to prick my conscience and prod me into productivity. There are no children demanding my time or attention. I can't multitask or network or interface.

So I sip my coffee or soft drink, settle into the commodious sofa and read to my heart's content.

To be quite honest, I usually start with the girly mags. They are a pleasure I don't often afford myself. But this week, an article in Newsweek caught my attention. I have a close friend whose six year old son is Autistic, so when I saw the article titled "The Puzzle of Hidden Ability" by Sharon Begley, I was intrigued. The article discusses the enigmatic issue of IQ and intelligence in autistic children, and challenges conventional testing protocols. Read more...

Attention all mothers:

by Stephanie at NieNie
Posted on August 28, 2007

Is this what your life
looks like at 7:56 pm?

Read more...

Grown in the Heart

by Anonymous at Her Bad Mother's Basement
Posted on Thursday, August 30, 2007

I’m crying tonight. I’m sad tonight. I’m angry tonight.

It wouldn’t be so bad if those facts somehow distinguished tonight from the last and the one before that, but it doesn’t.

I want to rewind a bit, that for you the basement dwellers to know who I am.

I grew up in a small town, with 4 older brothers, two adoring parents who have been married 38 years now, two special grandmothers, and many friends. I did not dream anything that I wasn’t given the opportunity to accomplish. That said, life was never easy. I was adopted, and while my adopted parents were fantastic, I had a rough start in life, my fetal hood, and tiny baby hood (taken away by state at 2 months old) caused some nutritional issues that hold me still today. Depression has also followed me all the days of my life.

I got through school and chose to pursue a career in animal science, using it to breed horses, the kind I’ve ridden since I was almost 5, in horse shows. At the time I’d already been an assistant at my show barn and helped my coach in all the aspects of her job. I was hired there while attending school, I loved it. I thanked God everyday for giving me a job I’d always love.

Then it happened, one of my best friends up until that point and time had strayed a bit into drugs and alcohol and one day in 2002, when I was 20, she told me she was pregnant. Read more...

Lights Out

by Amywojo at Binkytown
Posted on August 23, 2007

I walked into the house, toddler whining "I wanna watch Thomas..". The (big) dog was underfoot (and legs). The wind was howling and the thunder was booming. The house was dark.

Okay, OKAY. Yes, Oliver, I see you. I'll feed you in a minute. YES little man, Thomas, I know. Just a second. Walking over to the light switch I turned the kitchen light on. YES, I know you want your binkys. One second please.

Flicker, flicker. Oh no. Don't you dare.

The lights came back on. Phew.

Then a flash of lightening. Lights out. Shit.

I call my husband. We have no power. Yeah, well, he says, I'm dodging trees as I'm driving home. Stop talking to me then, I say, just get home.

The trees are bent over. The thunder is growing louder and stronger. My son is becoming more afraid. Soon he is under a blanket, cover my head mama, he says. It's 90 degrees above the blanket and the air is literally dripping with humidity but it makes him feel safe, so I do it. I smash up next to him on the couch, letting him know I'm close. I pet his sweaty head through the blanket, telling him, shh. Everything is fine, you are safe, but I'm watching. Listening. I hear police sirens. Are those tornado sirens? I'm calculating how many steps it would take us to reach the basement. Read more...

Party At My House!

by Sheri at My Minivan is Faster Than Yours
Posted on August 15, 2007



I am currently in the throws of planning Bam Bam and Crusher’s second and third birthday parties. The invitation reads as follows:

Bam Bam's turning two,
Crusher's turning three,
Their parents are too cheap
To celebrate separately

I have no interest in overindulging my kids with an exclusive birthday party for their young selves. I intend to steer clear of expensive celebrations for any and all people who have the attention span of a fleeting thought.

Alternatively, we will be throwing a party that will perfectly reflect our children's current interests.

Please join Crusher and Bam Bam as they spend the afternoon chasing their tired, old mother around the house relentlessly inquiring, "Why? Why? Why?" Any child who is satisfied with any answer given, loses. If you lose you go to the loser bracket and have to pee in an actual toilet. Losers. Winners pee in their pants. Crusher and Bam Bam are winners. Read More...

Invisibility

by Andrea at a garden of nna mmoy
Posted on August 13, 2007

There is a really cute guy who works in my building. Tall, sandy ginger hair, nice features, broad shoulders, slim. And he doesn't have arms. He has hands, but his arms are about eight inches long, maybe a bit shorter. I see him around, normally buying muffins from the muffin shop in the underground mall.

I imagine if one day we struck up a conversation, he would want neither for his obvious difference to be ignored ("Can you pass me a napkin, please?") nor would he want it to be front and centre ("and look at you! How do you cope? You poor thing, I could never do it"). It would just be there, a part of him, but not all of him. He's probably proud of some of the adjustments he's made and how he's sorted his life: born without arms, at a not insignificant natural disadvantage, but there he is, eating a muffin at his desk just like everybody else. Read More...

chasing waterfalls

by Jen at one plus two
Posted on August 13, 2007

We took M to a place full of gardens and flowers and kid friendly natureish things yesterday. There was a gigantic manmade (although very natural looking) waterfall with a path that went around and behind the waterfall and during one section it allowed for much wetness. M and I went along the path and when we got to that part we ran through it quickly with heads down to avoid the water hitting us directly in our faces. As I looked back I noticed everyone else running through that part too, heads down. I turned to M and said you know, that's the part when we should be looking up instead of down because I bet the view is amazing. M agreed and so we went back around and when we got to the brink of the falls I picked her up and said ok, now look up into the water. i bet everyone misses this part. And we stood in the middle of the downpour with people running around us in a hurry to move through and we looked through the falls into the sky with water crashing down on our faces and M laughing hysterically. She loved it so much we did it two more times and were completely soaked.

And it struck me then that I spend a lot of time looking down when I should be looking up and I wonder how many waterfalls I am missing. And while it was a very small thing it made me want to try harder with M in those moments, to show her the other way around. It's easier to avoid the wet parts out of a desire to stay neat and clean and dry and I've decided I've missed so much beauty. And if it's taken me 37 years to unlearn this then I have to get my shit together now so M can learn to be free. Visit one plus two...

Are You Still in Love?

By Bub and Pie
Posted on August 13, 2007

Because I’m not.

I ask this question every time I see a certain friend of mine who got married two years ago. She always happily affirms that she is, indeed, still in love, and I roll my eyes. At our most recent coffee-date, however, we got down to brass tacks. What exactly do we mean when we say that we are – or are not – in love?

When I am in love, I experience the following symptoms:

• Loss of appetite. I can eat if I have to, but I never want to. This symptom lasts anywhere from three to six months, and is my favourite weight-loss plan. (The Divorce Diet is equally effective, but not nearly as fun.)
  
  
• Inability to be away from the loved one. Circumstances usually dictate that separations must occur, but these feel unnatural and wrong, as if I’m walking around with a bloody stump where my arm used to be, and bystanders are getting dripped on.
  
  
• Waves of euphoria when I am with the loved one. Better than chocolate. (This symptom applies only to requited love.)
  
  
• Instant, effortless memorization of every word that passes the loved one’s lips. (This symptom is especially true for unrequited love.)
  

Read More

His Mountain

by Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer
Posted on August 9, 2007

I received special permission to blog this story.

Last week my oldest son learned the hard lesson that where a group of 10-year-old boys is gathered, someone gets chosen as the odd man out. In this case, it was Adam.

He was at a summer day camp, his first year to go. A certain group of boys, led by a ringleader we'll call Chuck, bullied him all week. It wasn't serious physical bullying--it was the kind that arguably hurts even worse. Adam was taunted and teased and excluded in ways that cut deeply. The camp counselors tried to intervene, but they're all a bunch of college kids not trained to deal with the dynamics of a bullying situation. They weren't a lot of help.

After the first day, we sat down with Adam and went through the list of how to handle a bully: standing up for yourself, teaming up with a friend, talking with the adults. We offered to get involved; he was insistent that he wanted to handle this himself. Though the Mama Bear in me was ready to lash out, instinct told me I should trust him on this one. Read more...

The things that bind

by Aliki2006 at World of One Thousands Different Things
posted on August 8, 2007

Yesterday, pulling away from the college where I teach, I drove past a homeless man pushing one of those old-fashioned baby carriages. It was, somewhat stereotypically, filled with all sorts of random things and probably also personal belongings. I wondered where he was headed, so purposefully, in the 99 degree heat, with that rusty old baby carriage filled with remnants from his life. I always have an incredible desire, at moments like that, to see the story to its end, so to speak. I wanted to follow that man, watch where he went with that carriage, but even then I wouldn't have had all the answers, only more questions; perhaps that same voyeuristic desire to get at someone's life through their things--their artifacts--is what drives some of us (myself included) to wander through estate sales, thinking about the stories behind a silver spoon, or a glass bowl, or a collection of books.

But I drove off and he soldiered on, purposefully, pushing that carriage up the hill, one foot after the other, headed who knows where, in a heat that must have weighed on him like many bricks. Read more...

Songs of Innocence and Experience

by Her Bad Mother at Her Bad Mother
Posted on August 7, 2007

One of the most difficult things about pregnancy, for me, was that it forced me to confront myself as a biological creature. It forced me to experience myself as a body, as a being put entirely into the service of nature. My every wakeful - and not so wakeful - moment was spent in a state of hyper-consciousness about my physicality: I was nurturing a life, and that life depended upon my physical being, and no force of intellect or imagination could alter or facilitate or intercede in that dependency. And as a person who had spent all of her conscious years in her head - and someone who was well-trained in a school of philosophical thought that emphasizes the absolute primacy of mind over body, reason over appetite and base sense - this was very, very hard for me.

So I was anxious - anxious beyond measure - about birth and new motherhood, which I perceived as a broadening and deepening of this experience. I didn't fear it, exactly: I wanted the experience. Every fibre of my physical being strained toward this experience, and demanded that my mind follow - this, in itself, was disconcerting. The thing of it was, rather, that I doubted my ability to stay the course: how would I ever, ever find my way through this dense thicket, this overwhelming jungle, without maps, without books, without the compass of my intellect? How would I survive, if I had only the thrum of my senses to guide me? Read More...

Almost

by Carrien at She Laughs at the Days
Posted on August 3, 2007

We almost didn’t go to the beach today. Even though we decided that for the summer Thursdays would be beach days, even though we usually meet friends and make a day of it, we almost didn’t make it. Our friends didn’t come, for one reason or another, and I was ready to cancel because the Baby didn’t go back to sleep until 5am, and she had woken up just as I was going to bed. I just wanted to stay in bed. The Boy also didn’t want to go. For whatever reason he began announcing that he just wanted to stay home. We almost didn’t go.

We almost didn’t spend a lazy afternoon near the waves in the perfect weather, hot sun, cool breeze, and just a touch chilly if we sat too long in the shade. The girl almost missed out on sitting in a sand throne, made just for her near her princess castle, by her aunt, uncle, and brother. She almost didn’t recline regally watching the waves and surveying her faithful and devoted subjects. Read More...

birthright

by bon at cribchronicles.com
Posted on August 4, 2007

i have been watching Oscar play with little boys these past few weeks. the majority of the babies he’s known and interacted with on any regular basis since his birth - among friends, at the sitter’s - have been girls, and most are within a month or two of his own age. but the summer and all the visitors have brought boys. slightly older boys, born in late 2004 or 2005, most of them. just slimming out past the toddler stage, words beginning to tumble from their mouths in complexities my own boy watches with wonder, and puzzlement.

Oscar seems to like these older creatures, these running, laughing, jumping, talking boys. he tries to emulate them, ranging further afield across the lawn as they do…studying their toys and their movements, trying to take some for his own. he is open and friendly, if sometimes oblivious to their rights of possession, but he’s surprised me with how willing he’s been to share with them, to offer them his treasures, his favourite books and bath squishies, to court their favour. Read more...

Bees and Dying

by Deb at Tired Mummy
Posted on August 1, 2007


I was working out in my garden this afternoon, cutting off the dead flowers, pulling weeds, watering. It's only August first but it feels late in the year already. Last night was cold here and it was a reminder that fall isn't that far away. We have a beehive in our garage. We generally tend to ignore each other, the bees and the people but it's hard to do that sometimes. As the days start to get shorter and the nights get cooler the bees start dying. There was a bee walking in circles on the driveway today, unable to fly but still trying to get home. Eventually there will be a line of their dead bodies leading out from the hive, scattered across the sidewalk and lawn, all of them heading home in a line, dying in mid flight. It makes me sad to see so many of them dead and yet I know it is the way, all things die. Read More...

WikiHow Did I Ever Get Along Without You?

by Betsy at Gray Matter Matters
posted on Monday , July 23, 2007

If there’s one thing I’ve been wondering it’s “How to Survive a Freestyle Rap Battle.”

You have no idea how many occasions arise when I need to throw down with another mom and give her a good “schooling.”

Thank God for WikiHow. This site offers advice on how to do just about everything.

Here are some real (and oddly specific) examples of information you now have at your fingertips:

How to make a citizen’s arrest

Read More...

Vacation

I'm off to the beach today. Back next week! Email me any great posts you find while I'm gone.

Something about your daddy

by Shawn L. at Letters to my Daughters
Posted on July 19, 2007

Once a night, the last two weeks in a row, your wonderful daddy has fallen asleep on the floor between both of your cribs.

There is no carpet on that floor. Just hard wood. Just goldfish crumbs. Just chewable blocks.

After nearly an hour of crying at bedtime, he’s laid down on that cold floor, and waited for you two to fall asleep. He’s done it to help you, and to help me finally get a break after a long day of no breaks.

He’s done it after being gone nearly 12 hours, leaving often before you wake and arriving home just before you go to sleep. He’s done it after struggling with commuting to work so that we need only one car, and ultimately, can avoid putting you in day care. He’s done it for us. Read more...

Doors, Shut and Open

by andrea at a garden of nna mmoy
Posted on July 18, 2007

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Too true.

Toys, for instance. The baby carrot hasn't been seen since April, and the baby bunny is getting hungry. The little doll girl's skirt. The green shovel. All will be uncovered no doubt when we pack up the house.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

The hours badly spent are accumulating--mostly on the computer, writing emails when I have a million other things to do.

Or books. Magazine subscription forms. Email addresses. Telephone numbers. Deadlines and promises. Minor losses, slipping away; putting things down, forgetting to pick them up again. Apologies piling up in summer snowdrifts. "Sorry, sorry; overwhelmed, busy, forgetful, stressed. I forgot." Losing peace and losing sleep. Read more...

An open letter to the crack whore who marries Boy, from a grateful mother-in-law

by RachelW from Diary of a mad, mad housewife
Posted on July 16, 2007

July 16, 2033

Dear Madam:

Oh. I'm sorry - is "Madam" rude? A little too ... um, relevant? I wasn't sure exactly sure how to address you. Crack whore seemed a bit strong, really. A tad, um... harsh. Would CW be OK? I do apologize. Man and I just aren't too familiar with these kinds of things, and had never really envisioned becoming so, either, when our sweet little Boy was placed in our arms for the first time all those years ago. You know - it's the same for everyone really. You count the fingers, toes, and when they're OK, it jumps right to dreaming of him as a captain of industry, doctor, maybe even lawyer, all because of your many strenuous efforts to secure the best preschool and baseball camp in town. And read a lot of the good doctors Seuss and Brazelton.

Well, that's what we, in our innocence, thought, CW. Read more...

In Search of a Smile

by Liz at Mom-101
Posted on July 16, 2007

Sage's birth announcements have finally arrived, two months to the day after the actual birth that the cards are designed to announce. You know, since they are called birth announcements and all. Now who in our circle hasn't yet heard about my youngest daughter, I don't know, but here I am in any case, applying ugly 41 cent Liberty Bell stamps (it was that or Star Wars) to the top right corner of a hundred envelopes. Etiquette dictates that This is What You Do and who am I to argue with etiquette. Besides, I need one for the page of the baby book that says "attach announcement here."

Never mind that I don't have a baby book. Minor detail. Read more...

time

by bon at cribchronicles.com
Posted on July 13, 2007



the days at work slip faster than days at home did
my deepest resources
of patience

mines of
tunneling to
sustain self

and small one too

less taxed now, if
lonelier
for touch

but we are both
content
so far as i can tell
so far as he can
tell

my arms more
patient

greedy now when
he is in them

still time for
playing blocks
and touching
noses

and i exhale
relieved

i can forgive that
this skin fits

these work clothes
please me, yes.

but the wheel of
time spins by me

careening almost greasy

it has been four weeks already

i wonder will i come home tomorrow and find him grown into a rockstar overnight…?

Back in Business

My computer had the flu for a couple of days, apparently, but I think it's healed now (completely on it's own by the way--I had nothing to do with the recovery) and I'm back reading blogs and posting the best of what I find here!

Don't forget to send me links to posts you find that are particularly moving, funny, heartfelt, true, or any other brand of wonderful.

My Mother is Beautiful

by canape at Don't Take the Repeats
Posted July 10, 2007

I don't remember what my mother looked like before her mastectomy. I do remember what the
swimsuit that she wore to Destin the summer before her surgery looked like. It was green and blue. A floral print. It had white trim. I thought it was beautiful. I thought she was beautiful.

Our neighborhood had a pool. There was a big red barn that had been converted into a clubhouse, and they had added a pool and tennis courts. The pool had a bridge over it that you could hide under, hang on, and if no grownups were watching, you could jump off of it. We loved to go to that pool in the summer, and Momma would take us whenever she could. Read more...

The Street of Misfit Toys

by Her Bad Mother at Her Bad Mother
Posted July 9, 2007

There's an old man who spends a lot of time on our street. Across the street, actually, at house in which he does not live. He has a friend there, another elderly gentleman, the father of the fellow who actually owns the house. Last summer, they spent the entire summer, the two of them, on the verandah, old and gnarled and batshit crazy, singing loudly along to songs playing on their transistor AM radio, pausing in the choruses to drink coffee and beer and growl at each other like old, toothless pirates.

The second gentleman, the one who lives there, doesn't come out much anymore; he recently
spent some time in the hospital and now just sits at his window, looking out at the street,
watching the children and the squirrels and the birds. And his friend, the old man that comes to
visit.

The old man still comes every day. Read more...

RIP, Minty Bear

by Alice at finslippy
Posted on July 9, 2007

We have returned from Montauk, full of sandy, lobster-rolly memories, but missing a beloved member of our family: Minty Bear.

I bought Minty Bear--so named for her pastel-green hue—when I was five months pregnant. When I didn't yet understand that when you have a baby, the world dumps truckloads of stuffed animals over your head. When I couldn't have predicted that within months we would be cramming animals into industrial-sized plastic bags and hauling them to the Salvation Army, where they would join their bereft, plushy brethren.

Anyway, when Henry was an infant we kept Minty Bear in his crib, because it didn't have any pull-out eyes or pop-'em-off buttons or related chokeables. He liked it fine, but then again he was also smitten with the ceiling fan, and would spend hours chuckling at it. There you go again, ceiling fan. Whirling and whirling. Oh, ceiling fan, you are a minx. But as the months passed he developed a decided preference for Minty over the ten or so stuffed animals that we had room for. Sure, he had the occasional fling with Black Bear or Teensy the Elephant. There was that weird jag with Tup Tup, the hard-bodied, scratchy-furred Siamese Cat Steiff. But in the end, he always came back to Minty. Read more and see a picture of Minty Bear

Fireworks, Circus Clowns, and Things That Go Bump in the Night

by Slouching Mom at Slouching Towards 40
Posted on July 7, 2007

At our hotel last week we slept the peculiar and stuporous sleep made possible by relentless air conditioning and heavy, double curtains. Sleep so drugged that when it finally releases you from its grip you have no idea where you are or what time it is. So when we awoke on Independence Day, cocooned in our room, we were unaware for some time that the threat of severe thunderstorms had left fireworks organizers concerned and dithering. They had not officially cancelled the evening's festivities, but we learned that they might do so at any moment.

All week Jack had been asking pointed questions about these now-iffy fireworks. Could they come close enough to people to burn them? How loud would they be? Would there be an actual fire? No? But then why are they called fireworks? We had suspected that he might be anxious about the fireworks. (Last year he had hated them so much that we ended up fitting him with a pair of headphones, enabling him to tune them out altogether.) But along with these suspicions we had hoped that a year might make a difference, that Ben's enthusiasm for them might prove infectious. Read more...

Finding a Moment for Myself

by Lisa at Niihaus
Posted on July 6, 2007

Yesterday it rained. It rained all day. But, not the usual Texas rain with thunder and lightning and high winds. It just rained. Straight down, falling drops of rain.

The Foreigner had gone, The Boy was gone, both The Girl and The Baby were gone. I was alone. In my own home. ALONE! Like that ever happens. And I stood there looking out at the rain falling. It fell into the pool and it looked inviting.

I still had my white nightgown on. I walked away from the window and I made myself some waffles, played a round of tanks on the Wii, but I found myself continuing to be drawn to the window. I thought to myself, “If it stops soon I won’t go out there.” But it didn’t stop. The soft rain just continued to come down in blinding sheets of wetness. Read more...

What I Got, Mama?

by Amanda at Tumble Dry
Posted on July 4, 2007

Today is the 4th of July, which means that I have been actively playing the role of mom for close to three years, more if you include the following-every-rule-and-heeding-every-piece-of advice-received-from-strangers-and-read-in-magazines 40 weeks of pregnancy. I am not ashamed to admit that some of the more subtle cues offered by Briar were lost on me,

"She's a little night owl, just doesn't want to go to bed until 11." This said cheerfully after she writhed in our arms howling beginning at seven each night and ending as she passed out from exhaustion four hours later.

Neither of us really understood what she was saying until she was nearly two, now her sister at one declares, "Poop" and "diaper" with perfect clarity. "Wow! So much better at communicating." This from Briar about us. Read more...

Past and Future July 4th

by Kelly at a child is born
Posted July 5, 2007

July 4th's past, my family would drive to the fairgrounds in our upstate NY town, find a parking spot and unload, getting out the blankets and towels and finding a patch of grass on which to perch. The sun had just about said goodnight, leaving behind dusky purple and pink and orange, and in that dying light, hard-shelled June bugs would fly around, thwapping unsuspecting patriotic revelers in the noggin.

It was a coarse kind of beauty, this waiting and wondering amongst creepy-crawlers and discarded cigarette butts, the anticipation of the visual and aural sensation of fireworks, the noise of which would drown out the sounds of us gathered humans, vulgar and ungracious. Read more...

Little Bear and the Big River

by Wendi at Wendi Aarons
Posted on July 5, 2007

LITTLE BEAR
Oh, Duck! This river is so wide! How will we ever cross it?

DUCK
I don't know, Little Bear!

LITTLE BEAR
Maybe we could try to walk across on that log!

DUCK
Oh, we could certainly try!

LITTLE BEAR
Or maybe we should walk across these stepping stones!

DUCK
We must be very brave, Little Bear!

LITTLE BEAR
Yes, we must get across this river without falling in the water!

MY HUSBAND
You're a frickin' Duck and a Bear. Swim, you morons.
Read more Wendi Aarons...

Be Still

by Carrien at She Laughs at the Days
Posted July 4, 2007

I had no idea until I had small children how much time is spent just waiting for them. Have you ever tried to hurry a two year old along on a walk, through an area he's never seen before? They stop to examine every single bug and leaf and blade of grass. They pick up every piece of trash on the sidewalk and show it to you. They speak in paragraphs instead of sentences, very repetitive paragraphs that they start all over again from the very beginning if they are interrupted halfway through. It's enough to drive a grown-up in a hurry mad. Read more...

Blood

by Beck at Frog and Toad are Still Friends
Posted on July 4, 2007

This morning has been a busy one already, this suddenly hectic day. Later this morning - in about an hour - I am taking The Girl to visit the doctor where she will have some blood drawn to test, I mention casually, her white blood cell count.

Yeah, nothing scary there.

Most likely she has allergies. Or she's anemic - she certainly doesn't EAT and I'm prone to anemia, too. But there's that other scary thing that they're testing for and let us not even name it right now. Read more...

Ovagirl’s Tips for Helping You and Your Baby Sleep.

by Ovagirl at L'eggs Up And Laughing
Posted on July 4, 2007

#32 Try Putting A Toy In Baby’s Cot For Him To Find In The Morning.

Somewhere near the crack of dawn when you are desperate for just ten minutes more sleep and you can hear that your baby is starting to wake, it may occur to you to sneak into baby’s room and lob a couple of toys over the side of the cot without being seen, thus cunningly distracting him and providing potentially even half an hour of quiet amusement while you sneak back to bed.

This is not a good idea. Read more...

Plain Truths and Phallacy

by Kate at Sweet/Salty
Posted on June 29, 2007

I am not good enough for him, and I don't say this fishing to be convinced otherwise. It's the plain truth.

He is a living Old Spice commercial, all impeccable goodness. He kills bugs on-demand and airplanes our son until his legs ache and smells like woodsmoke and knows how to whistle grass and stays out until he collapses building rock walls, restoring clapboard, painting, pruning the roses, refinishing the tiller of a neighbour’s sailboat. Read more...

What's Behind Door Number 3?

by Betsy at Gray Matter Matters
Posted on June 30, 2007


Jumping into the world of blogging is like walking down a long corridor with doors on either side. You’re free to open any door you choose and take a peek in.

Sometimes it feels like the old gag in a comedy when one of the characters keeps opening and closing the same door and what’s inside changes each time. First it’s a Western scene with cowboys thundering down the plains on horseback shooting their guns, then it’s cannibals preparing to cook a blonde virgin in a huge caldron, followed by a lady in the French Court leaning in to kiss a suitor only to be startled by the intrusion and hide herself behind her frilly parasol. Read more...

What This Blog is For

I only recently entered the blogging world--very recently. As in 2 months ago. But I quickly learned that 1. There are a WHOLE lot o' blogs out there and 2. A WHOLE lot of them are "mommy" blogs.

While browsing these sites, I've noticed that some bloggers feel, well, sheepish about being mommy bloggers. Maybe it's because they are joining a club that is already very, very full and they're not sure they have anything worthy to add, or maybe they are feeling that insidious "motherhood is stealing my identity" anxiety. But I also discovered that I love reading mommy blogs. There are thousands of voices out there telling witty, poignant, honest, and insightful stories about their lives and families, and their work is nothing to feel sheepish about.

Over the past few weeks, I have felt inspired to showcase the best of these stories. I created this blog as place to do that. I hope to post daily, but we all know how life (and those damn pesky children) tend to get in the way of such aspirations.

You can help by submitting, via comments or email, mommy blogs that you love--even your own. And if you come across posts that stand out, send those my way, too!

I'm off to scour the internet. I'll be back soon with some good reading for you.