My nephew Jack is very enthusiastic.

Even when those…

around him…

Are not.

Sometimes I think we could all stand to learn a little from Jack.

Updates have been scarce here, I know. The kids are back in school, which means I’ve been running pretty much nonstop from 6:30 AM on. Homework, permission slips, back-to-school events, and policing those shiny new bedtimes is exhausting, but we seem to be getting back into a pretty good routine. I’ve been busy writing, too:

I wrote the feature story–Family Affairs–for the current issue of Brain, Child. Can I pause here and say how happy I am to still be writing for Brain, Child? They were the very first magazine that ever published my work–a huge confidence booster that fueled my career in no small way back in 2002. I’m happy to report the magazine is as compelling as it ever was. I’m heading over to subscribe right now; I hope you’ll do the same.

Check in with me at the Mott’s More To The Core blog, where I’ll be posting about family day trips and outings for the next couple months.

Over at The Happiest Mom, I wrote about my conventional life

And introducing a new project, Lake Michigan Family , where I’ll be writing about the region I live in–Southwest Michigan–and other places along the Lake Michigan shoreline.

Having babies isn’t addictive in the way that alcohol and narcotics can be. But bumpaholics feel compelled to procreate for many of the same reasons that substance abusers turn to booze or drugs….

This article was written by an online writer acquaintance of mine, so I probably shouldn’t go into the many ways I disagree with its premise…

Actually, you know what? Friend or not, I would like to express publicly how offensive I think this particular passage is:

Given all the psychological, physical, and social rewards associated with pregnancy, it’s no surprise that so many women like it. But plenty of couples stop at one or two children, despite the fundamental drive to reproduce. This is because we can use our higher brain functions to keep those instincts in check, reminding ourselves that children cost money — about $950 a month until they’re 18 — and require an extraordinary amount of time and energy.

But I’m going to use the higher brain function that I’m not using to restrict my wanton fertility, and use it to assume that she didn’t mean it quite the way it came out.

I don’t, of course, expect the rest of you to be quite as forgiving. Go ahead…tell me what you think.

We just returned from a five-day trip to Wisconsin–four nights in Door County, and a night at the Blue Harbor Resort in Sheboygan on our way back home.

Fun times were had. Pictures were taken. Unfortunately, all those pictures reside on my husband’s computer at the moment. But I do have some videos I took with our Flip cam to share:

One of my favorite stops on our trip was The Farm, just outside of Sturgeon Bay, WI. What could be funnier than baby goats and lambs that run up to eagerly suck from a bottle of milk as your three-year-old tries to run away? How about enormous cows that open their mouths and curl back their tongues in anticipation of a handful of corn being tossed their way:

Hungry Cow

This is how your food arrives at the PC Junction restaurant near Egg Harbor:

PC Junction

And last but not least, a gratuitous cute-baby vid. As you can see, Clara found the waterpark at Blue Harbor to be quite…stimulating. Watch her bottom gums closely and you just might catch sight of two little teeth (yes–three months old and the girl has TEETH already!) It’s a longish video, but if you’ve got nothing to do for the next minute, watch until the end–I love how by that time she’s practically having spasms of excitement:

Clara Laughs

If you knew that I had all five of my babies with midwives (three underwater, two in a freestanding birth center and two at home); that I breastfed them on demand, or that they have all slept in my bed along the way, you might draw certain conclusions about my parenting style.

And you might be right. Or you might not. Either way, I’m not putting a label on it.

In a recent post I mentioned an alternative parenting community I used to hang out with when I first went online, and the cruelty and judgment that went on there. I think that behavior was outside the norm: I don’t see this kind of blatant meanness and cult-like behavior going on much on the web anymore (though it’s possible I’m just not looking in the right places).

But being both on the giving and receiving ends of judgment, I’m savvy enough to recognize it even when it’s subtle. And one of the ways I think judging gets perpetuated is through this need to define ourselves with neat little labels that sum up our beliefs, parenting practices, or whatever we are into these days. Because you know what? Once you’ve stuck that label firmly it place, it can be pretty hard to shrug off when it no longer fits.

I really do understand the urge. When I was a newer mom especially, I tried so hard to make some sense of this motherhood thing. One way to do that was by figuring out what kind of mom I was going to be, and then throwing myself into it, heart and soul. Labeling myself was a way of fitting in and exploring who I was. Giving myself a label (“natural”, “attachment parent”, etc) was comforting in a way.

Of course, there was the rotten downside:

* By labeling myself, I limited my options. If you go around calling yourself this or that and then you want to change things up a bit, it’s easy to start worrying about whether it fits with the label, rather than whether it’s the right option for you at the moment. What happens when something on the laundry list no longer works for you?

* By labeling myself, I allowed other people to make assumptions about me. If another mom had had a bad run-in with a rabid “crunchy” group online, they would sometimes assume that I was like that too. Based on experiences they’d had with other people who wore the attachment parent label, they might also assume I a) was extremely permissive b) never left my kids—ever—even to go to the bathroom c) extremely judgmental d) pathologically obsessed with everything my kids e) had given birth alone in the mountains with only a cat as my midwife, and then the cat and I shared the placenta with fava beans on the side.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a problem with labeling techniques or approaches. I think that attachment parenting is a legitimate and lovely parenting style and one that I identify with more often than not (though I really believe it was meant to be a parenting style for babies and very young children, and has become in some cases, twisted and mis-applied by well-meaning folk…but that’s another post for another day). And of course, this isn’t just an attachment parenting thing—I just use that as an example because that’s where my personal experience lies. On the other side of the fence, you could, say, use Ferber methods without being a “Ferberizer”. See the distinction? One word describes a technique. The other slaps a label on a PERSON.

At the end of the day, not that much has changed about the way I parent now and the way I did when my first child was a baby. I still believe strongly in birth choices and favor out-of-hospital birth and midwives for myself. I am very supportive of breastfeeding. I like carrying my babies around. I avoid over-using medications.

But I no longer define MYSELF by the kind of mom I am, or the kind of mom I want to become. And you know what? I’m way better off for it. More flexible, more compassionate, more confident. Definitely a whole lot happier. And maybe even a better mom.

(But not better than the rest of you, of course. )

This entry was inspired by a recent post by Caitlin at Chicago Moms Blog. It’s an edited version of a post I put up about a year and a half ago.

In honor of Mother’s Day–and because reading all the Mother’s Day posts in the blogosphere this week has gotten me thinking about her–I’ll be posting about my mother all week.

This essay was originally published in Skirt! magazine.

When I was a girl of about 11, probably just having gotten my hands on a beauty magazine, I decided to ask my mother one of those womanly questions that I just knew had to be weighing on her mind.

“Mom,” I said, “If you had to change one thing about your figure, what would it be?”

“Change?” she asked, looking at me blankly as though the thought had never crossed her mind before, her hands resting on her normal-woman-sized hips as they often did.

“Well…hmm.” She twisted her lips, deep in thought, mulling over the question. “I guess it would have to be my saddlebags,” she finally said without much conviction.

“Saddlebags? What are those?” I asked, picturing a leather parcel slung across a horse’s back.

“Oh, you know,” Mom said, patting the space under her behind. “When you are young, everything in this area stays pretty tight, but when you get older it starts to sag a little. I guess if I had to change something, I’d tighten it back up again. ”

“Oh.” I said, wandering away. I vaguely remember being disappointed that she didn’t choose something more glamorous, like a boob job.

My mother did not identify as a feminist. She had never been a hippie or burned a bra. She wore makeup, in shades of Avon black eyeliner that had been rolling around in her makeup case since the late ‘60s and rose rouge that swirled up on a thick, creamy stick. Mom wore dresses and high heels to church; at home she was jeans and sweaters. She dyed her hair and shaved her legs. But she never obsessed about clothing, hair or makeup, never commented on the shapes of other women, and never, ever made a big deal about anything having to do with her own body image.

I try to picture my mother’s shape when I was a girl. Was she average, thin, heavy? I can remember her feel during a hug—soft in all the right places, definitely not skinny. I try to peg her size in my head. 10? 12? I think. 14?

And then it occurs to me that I’ve always had this “problem” noticing weight on other people. I’m always the last to notice when a friend has dropped a few sizes; always the one saying “huh?” when an acquaintance complains about how overweight she is. I lost 20 pounds in a matter of months from nursing my constantly-hungry infant, and didn’t notice until my pants literally fell off my hips. Likewise, I never seemed to notice that I’d gained weight until nothing fit and I was making an emergency trip to Target with my jeans held together by a diaper pin.

For most of my life, there were three kinds of women: extremely large, extremely thin, and everybody else. The vast majority of people, “regular” people, soft, curvy, flawed people, fell into the “everybody else” category.

When watching the movie “Chicago” on the big screen over five years ago, I had a revelation when Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellweger appeared on screen next to each other.

“Wait a second,” I thought to myself. “Catherine Zeta-Jones isn’t skinny!”

Later, I mentioned my discovery to a friend. “Yeah,” she said. “Haven’t you noticed that before?”

Oh. I guess I didn’t, until I saw the way she dwarfed the waifish Zellweger on screen. She’s a movie star, and she’s gorgeous—I guess I just assumed she was also 100 pounds. And sadly, now each time I see Zeta-Jones, a part of me thinks “Wow, she’s gorgeous even if she IS bigger than the average star!”–as though ravishing beauty and normal weight are usually mutually exclusive traits, with her being the exception to the rule.

As much as I’d like to think I exist on some plane where media images don’t affect my psyche, I’ve begun to realize that Mom’s influence is fading. Assaulted by the constant onslaught of tight, thin bodies in magazines, movies and videos, I find myself starting to notice things I never did before—a few inches of meat on a woman’s thighs, softness in her belly, a roll of flesh under her bra strap. I can look at a friend or acquaintance and within seconds mentally judge her size, whereas before, an 8, 10 and 12 all looked essentially the same. Now I differentiate, sort, classify.

At least this awareness didn’t come as a young teen, while my body was being christened into adulthood with pimples, flat hair, a flat chest, and big feet. I eventually realized that my thighs are different from the thighs of a supermodel, but the realization didn’t come on the same day that I didn’t get my hoped-for date for the Prom.

I didn’t keep my innocence forever, but it was good while it lasted. Thanks, Mom.

Today’s Mother’s Day, and I’ve been thinking a lot about my own mother, who died going on ten years ago, when I was still far too young to appreciate her. Mom and I had a complicated relationship, but the older I get–and the further I get away from the more dysfunctional aspects of her life (time has a great way of sanding away the bad and leaving the good) the more I see the many gifts she gave me. Here are a few.

Gift: The knowledge that people are more important than money or things, and that family is everything. My mother’s greatest wish for my siblings and I was that we would stay close as we grew up. We all get along very well today, which I think she’d be happy to know.

Gift: Making do. No, better than making do–being truly content with what you have. My mom re-used everything, but not in a sloppy pack-rat kind of way (when she died, her home had remarkably little clutter for us to go through). She simply used everything within an inch of its life, and felt no need to rush out and buy knick-knacks or a new sofa or curtains in the latest style. I don’t ever remember feeling deprived, even though I was acutely aware that friends of mine had more toys and new clothes than I did. Sure, I would have loved a few more pair of acid-wash jeans in Junior High, but not always getting what I wanted did a lot to help me be more appreciative and content with whatever straws I draw in life now. And it’s the memory of her resourcefulness that makes me feel a huge twinge of conscience whenever I’m being wasteful or lose perspective on how very materially blessed I am.

Gift: She wasn’t small-minded. My mom wasn’t college-educated, and she didn’t hang out with an artsy or intellectual bunch. Yet I grew up on a media diet of classical music, Harry Chapin and Fiddler on the Roof, NOVA and Masterpiece Theatre, Sesame Street and Peter and the Wolf in addition to the piles of books we brought home from the library. Mom didn’t read celebrity magazines or tabloids or watch vapid morning shows…ever. We had conversations about history, music, religion. I think my mom recognized that life was too short–and the possibilities for learning important things too endless–to spend much time indulging in petty entertainment, a lesson I would do well to remember more often.

Gift: Body-un-consciousness. My mom never dieted. She never commented on the size of her thighs or butt. More important, she didn’t comment on the way other women dressed or did their hair, or make remarks about my friends’ looks. She didn’t force me to clean my plate or hover over me to make sure I didn’t eat too much junk. She kept the house fairly free of unhealthy food (we weren’t allowed to have sugar cereal, for example) but wasn’t about to tell me how to spend my own money if I wanted to go to the corner store for Little Debbies. As a result I grew up with a remarkable absence of body-image issues. I’m not going to say I never moaned over my flat chest when I was a teen, or that nowadays I don’t notice that everything’s heading southward, but I feel like I’m able to notice these things without letting them take over my life. In fact, I wrote an essay about her comfort in her own skin, which I’ll put up in a separate post.

What gifts did your mother pass on that helped make you who you are today?