Out too late last night, up too early this morning, and a total of about four hours in the car did me in. The Writing meets Motherhood event at the Read Between the Lynes bookstore in Woodstock was very fun: (edited to add: for a great description of the store and a reminder of why we should support these institutions in our communities, check out Jennifer’s blog.)

(left to right…me, Jennifer Margulis, Toni Klym McLellan, picture courtesy of Lonna)

Topics covered: Motherhood (of course), helping dads bond with babies, the publisher/author relationship, how to write about your kids without saying too much…and why writing about your kids isn’t, in and of itself, exploitative; traveling with kids, writing about traveling with kids. And much more.

And now to bed, so that I can be somewhat functional tomorrow. Hope everyone else had a busy, productive, and sunny weekend!

With food prices rising worldwide, keeping the family fed–without breaking the bank–is on the minds of many parents I know. During the month of April we’ve been talking about food–budgeting, meal planning, satisfying picky eaters, etc–over at largerfamilies.com. Head over and check it out, and plan to spend some time reading…there are some great ideas over there and plenty of, ahem, food for thought.

There’s been some interesting discussion around the internet about whether it’s better to let kids have some freedom or keep them safely (and often, sedentarily) indoors and within sight.

Regular readers of mine already know how I feel about the issue–but it made national headlines in April when New York Post columnist Lenore Sknazy wrote about letting her 9-year-old take the subway alone. Subsequently she started a blog promoting “free-range kids”, and the issue was covered in Newsweek by pitting “free-rangers” versus “helicopter moms”, a move that annoyed some thoughtful parents.

One comment on the Free Range blog caught my attention: Amber pointed out that there is safety in numbers, so the more we keep kids out of sight, the less safe it is for all of them (and the less accepting the public is of kids in general). Very good point. One solution would be to focus on making every neighborhood a Playborhood.

What do you think?

This Sunday, two fantastic fellow writers (Jennifer Margulis and Toni Klym McLellan) and I will be talking about motherhood and writing (and signing books to boot) at Read Between the Lynes bookstore in beautiful downtown Woodstock, IL. Check out their website for more details. I hope to see you there!

What a weekend. The first one this spring that’s really hinted at the idea that summer might. just. actually. happen. I spent many hours outside. I took not one, but two long walks–fast, heart-pumping walks, even with the two littles, courtesy of my Graco Quattro Tour Duo stroller, with which I am so enamored that I will devote a whole post to its praises soon.)

Today I meandered over to Micki’s house to help her put in her first plants of the season (okay, I mostly sat on the sidelines and cracked jokes, though I may also have dug a hole or two), and then when she realized that no, she actually did not have room for an entire flat of broccoli in her garden (in addition to the cauliflower, collard greens, kale, lettuce, arugula, and brussels sprouts) we hauled half of it over to my place and planted it here. My first garden in our new place in Chicago. In fact, my first garden in several years. See, the last time I gardened was when my sister and I got ambitious…(very ambitious…okay, ridiculously ambitious for two people with very little gardening experience), “leased” a 25 foot by 25 foot community garden plot from the city we lived in, and tried to start a small organic farm complete with three different varieties of lettuce, zucchini, two different types of tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, herbs, and so on. From seed. Soon after that experience I wrote this short play in honor of our attempts:

(We see a 25’ X 25’ garden plot, surrounded by six or so of the same. The plot is full of some sort of vegetation, coming up in odd spurts. Our heroines MEAGAN, a spritely, spunky young woman and her equally spunky and spritely sister KATHREEN are standing in the dirt)

MEAGAN: OK!

KATHREEN: OK….

MEAGAN: OK, so it looks like we’ve got some plants here.

KATHREEN: Yep. Those are definitely some plants.

MEAGAN: Some of these are weeds. Right?

KATHREEN: Yeah. Some have gotta be weeds.

MEAGAN: Do you remember what we planted over here?

KATHREEN: No. I guess we should have marked it off, huh?

MEAGAN: Yeah, but it’s OK. It will just be a surprise when it comes up. Oh…

KATHREEN: What?

MEAGAN: Well, I just realized that we have to pull the weeds but I can’t tell which are weeds and which are plants.

KATHREEN: (pointing) That looks like a weed.

MEAGAN: Yeah, it does, but it looks like it’s coming up in rows.

KATHREEN: What are those people over there doing? Their garden looks pretty good.

MEAGAN: They appear to be hoeing.

KATHREEN: We need a hoe.

MEAGAN: What would we do with a hoe?

KATHREEN: We would hoe with it.

MEAGAN: No, I mean what’s the purpose of hoeing? What does it accomplish?

KATHREEN: Um…I don’t know. Go ask those people.

MEAGAN: No way!

KATHREEN: I think it aerates the soil or something.

MEAGAN: Oh crap, I just pulled out a weed but it has a lima bean seed on the end

KATHREEN: It’s probably not a weed then.

MEAGAN: Why did we plant lima beans? Nobody likes them.

KATHREEN: Well, I think you just pulled them all out anyway.

MEAGAN: Oh, those other people are looking at us—quick! Act like you know what you’re doing.

KATHREEN: We should go buy some plants. This starting from seed thing isn’t really working so well.

MEAGAN: Good idea. Let me finish yanking up all the lima beans first though. I’m on a roll.

KATHREEN: OK.

But that was years ago, and I’ve managed to accomplish a few things since then, including bringing two more children into the world…so maybe successful gardening really is not beyond me. Looking at those little green sprouts, I feel hopeful. I may not be quite up to the task of urban homesteading just yet, but at the very least I’m expecting my kids will be able to watch a few little broccoli plants grow and get the satisfaction of eating something they helped (okay, sorta) plant and harvest. Baby steps, people. Baby steps.

For a class project, Jacob and two of his classmates filmed, acted in, and edited this movie (though the instructor added the “special effects” later). He’s the one in red. isn’t he cute–and a good actor?

Following our move to Chicago from small-town Michigan almost a year ago, I admit there have been a few things that have dampened my urban enthusiasm just a tad. Things like sharing a teeny (teeny in my experience, anyway–for the city it’s quite spacious) backyard with several families. Trying to figure out an intimidating and huge school system. Street parking and the necessity of learning to parallel park. The fact that my window got smashed in in front of the Lincoln Park Zoo within two weeks of our moving here, and then the police caught a kid breaking into my minivan in front of my friend’s house in a very nice residential neighborhood just a few blocks from my home. (As I told the officer, there was nothing of value in the van, and the old-french-fries-and-musty-shoe smell the kid had to endure as he searched in vain for cash and valuables was punishment enough). And the much, much higher cost of living (mostly housing, oh, and sales taxes. And did I hear that Chicago’s sales tax just got raised AGAIN?) Sometimes it all gets to me a bit and I fantasize about running for the ‘burbs.

But I can’t deny that there are a lot of things I just love about living in the city, and since today was a really great, warm, summery day and put me in a fantastic mood, I’m feeling moved to share a few:

The diversity. In our local park, we see every imaginable skin color and hear the sounds of many different languages. We live in an area with many Orthodox Jewish families–so many that I’d say we are definitely in the religious minority. My boys’ best friends are Indian, Pakistani and Greek. I love that in less than a year the fact that many of the faces they see look different from themselves has all become totally normal and commonplace to my kids.

The architecture. At first the fact that I lived on a street where most of the buildings looked almost exactly the same was a bit unnerving to me. But now I love looking up and down the blocks and seeing row after row of brick two- and three-flats and bungalows. They are similar, which gives the neighborhood a really neat, uniform look, but they’ve all got their own special charm.

The people I meet. There are more people here, so maybe there’s just a bigger pool to draw from; but I have met more interesting new people in the past ten months than I probably had in the last five years. I made some great friends in Michigan, but I often went weeks without meeting anyone new. Now, I meet somebody new almost every day.

I’m the kind of person who tends to get restless after living anywhere for a little while, and I have a bad case of “grass is greener” syndrome–so it can be easy to overlook the stuff I love while pining away for what I wish I had. But everything is a tradeoff…and even though I’m definitely missing a few things about small-town life, for right now I’m feeling content and happy with my lot in life. Even if my “lot” is, by rural Michigan standards, barely the size of a respectable bedroom.

City girl or country girl? I may never decide once and for all, but at least I can learn to slow down and enjoy the stops I make along the way.

A non-parent reader recently asked me why some moms seem to leave the job of parenting to perfect strangers when they’re out in public. Read my response, then tell me what you think–if a kid’s misbehaving and the parent doesn’t seem to notice, what should the other adult in the room do?

“Mom,” my 10-year-old son said to me the other day, “When are you going to tell me about the birds and the Bee Gees?”

After I was done laughing, I felt a twinge of guilt about the fact that my son, who is decidedly a “tween” and moving ever-closer to puberty, is so in the dark about the birds and the bees that he confused the facts of life with a feathered-hair disco trio.

When it comes to sex education, most parents I know fall into one of four basic camps:

read the rest over at the Lansing Noise.

You just never know what will push some people’s buttons. In my rather innocuous (I thought anyway) column about potty-training, a reader called me not just lazy, but a lazy SOW (scroll to the bottom of the column to read the rant against my lazy…sow-i-ness). I have to say, that is the first time I have been compared to livestock. At least, in the context of one of my columns.

Writers, have you ever gotten a really nasty comment from a reader (or maybe editor?) in response to something you’ve published or submitted? If so, how did you respond?

It can be really hard not to lash back, but I’ve found when a complaint is as nonsensical and ranty as this one is, it makes more sense to simply consider the source and move on. And there’s a bright side…Toni has promised to have a T-shirt printed that says “LAZY SOW” on it, just for me.