We’ve been making an effort to drive less lately. As it is, I go through less than a tank of gas every other week–I simply don’t go anywhere outside of a 10- or 15- block radius of our home more than once a week or so, and even then we’re usually talking a 10-15 minute drive, max. So the sky-high gas prices aren’t pinching us too much yet.

But since you never know what could happen ($10/gallon gas? Sudden complete breakdown of the family minivan with no room in the budget for a new one? Both entirely possible) driving less seems like a good thing to get used to. And that means tweaking my own personal definition of “within walking distance”. When we moved here, I mentally wrote off the train, grocery store and many restaurants (besides the strip on Devon Ave, which is fantastic if you’re in the mood for Indian, Pakistani, or other South Asian food, but doesn’t really seem like the place to find a club sandwich or croissant) as “too far to walk”. Many of those things were ten or twenty blocks away, which just seemed really…far.

But then I took a few minutes to Google-map the distances, and learned that Target and Jewel are exactly one mile away, while the Metra is 1.3 miles. Should I need to get somewhere not on the Metra line, the EL station is just .5 miles further, or 1.8 miles total. Not a hop, skip, and a jump, but about a 35-40 minute walk…not torture. Especially considering that it doubles as exercise.

So lately I’ve been walking a lot more. To the Metra when I need to get up to Evanston (it’s a 5-minute ride); to Target, to the grocery store. Jon and I went out to dinner last week, and we walked 1.4 miles each way to this fantastic Mexican restaurant on Clark street–with a cheap bottle of BYOB wine and $7 entrees, it was a cheap night–and as we chatted while we walked on a beautiful early-summer evening, it didn’t seem like a long walk at all.

I’m finding myself stretching my idea of walkable distances further and further as I think of places outside of the radius I’ve become comfortable with, and realize that driving is often more of a hassle than a convenience. After all, it would probably take me about 7-10 minutes to drive to the same places I can walk in 20-25, but I have to find a place to park, watch out for pedestrians, and feel the da-DUMP of a hundred speed bumps. Where else can I get on foot? To the beach? Exactly 2.0 miles–easy. To the yoga studio? “Only” 3 miles. What about the indie bookstore? Just 3.7!

The biggest obstacle right now is that my kids are all relatively young. I love a weekly or so outing sans kids, but on the whole, it’s not really practical or desirable for me to spend hours away from them running errands. And two of them still have to be carted around at least some of the time on longer trips after their little legs give out, and pushing two kids in a stroller can make a nice stroll downright exhausting. The bus ceases to be a cheap option when you take four kids on it with you, and it’s not exactly quick, either.

Maybe when all the kids are big enough that taking two hours away from them just to get to and from where I’m going isn’t a huge issue, I’ll walk, train, or bus it everywhere I go. For now, I’m just doing what I can and doing my best to toughen up. For instance, today I walked the two-mile round trip to Target and Jewel for groceries and a few odds and ends. My double stroller is fabulous, but when I’ve got both the little guys loaded in there, the thing easily weighs 75 lbs. And before I left, I forgot to factor in that adding:

a gallon of milk
a 16-oz container of yogurt
a 10-oz container of sour cream
two bags of dense granola
Applesauce
And various bags ‘o carbs

would mean I’d be pushing 100 pounds for a mile. As we left the store in the 2:30 sun and I struggled to steer the stroller, stopping every few minutes to refill Owen’s pretzel ‘tup’ and take a swig of water, I cursed my silly notion, but after a few blocks we steered onto a shady street, a breeze picked up, and I got into a groove. Twenty-five minutes later I was home: sweaty, but triumphant, and I think I may even have beefed up my triceps a bit. Sure, what might have been a quick run to the store took about an hour more time and a lot more effort. But hey, my pants have been fitting a little tight lately, and I’d rather walk to the store than hit the gym.

Going by this calorie burn calculator, I probably walked off 250 or so calories today, and I figure that earns me an extra glass of wine with dinner tonight. And if that’s not an incentive to hoof it, I don’t know what is.

When I was ten years old, I chased a grown woman six blocks (she on bike, me on foot), then demanded she give me back my (stolen) bicycle. I did this not because I was a particularly brave or confrontational or athletic kid (nope, nope, and NOPE) but because there was no way my parents were going to get me a new bike just because I’d been dumb enough to leave mine laying in the driveway. I don’t see a lot of similar appreciation for things in my own kids, and it bugs me. Read my post at Chicago Moms Blog for the whole story!

I’ve been reading a lot about going car-free–partly in response to the painful gas prices, and partly for environmental reasons–and am wondering how people with multiple children, particularly those who don’t live right on a train line, pull it off. I stumbled across this post, for example, talking about how hard it can be to get a taxi to pick you up when you have a baby–and the blogger only has ONE child.

Anyway, I’m not turning our car in tomorrow or anything, but I’ve been thinking about ways to cut wayy back on our driving and keep running up against theoretical obstacles. I posted about them over at the Chicago Moms Blog. What do you think? Are you planning on cutting back on how much you drive, or finding alternative methods of transportation? Are you a car-free family already? If you have kids–particularly more than one–how do you manage it (or plan on managing it?)

Here’s my most recent column. (If you’re bored and looking for a laugh, check out some of the kooky comments it got over on Greenville Online!)

As most parents with half a brain understand, children need to be spoken to in order to learn how to speak. And the more words a child hears in his early years, the better he is likely to read and perform in school.

Research has even pinpointed an ideal number of words children should hear before the age of 4: 25 million, or 17,000 per day.

Of course, numbers like this have been largely useless to parents, most of whom don’t exactly have a lot of spare time for tracking how much language they’ve exposed their children to on any given day.

It would take a pretty fast hand and a large sheet of paper to tally up all the words you utter. Especially if your household is like mine, punctuated with a steady stream of Mom-ese: “William, please keep your fingers out of there. Hey, who put peanut butter in my pen cap? Owen, markers are for drawing on paper, not your tongue.”

So how’s a busy mom supposed to find the time to add up those words to make sure she’s providing an optimal environment for verbal and social development?

Enter the Lena system. Short for Language ENvironment Analysis, LENA is a device you plant in your child’s chest pocket — the system comes with specially designed overalls — which then monitors conversation between parent and child.

At the end of the day, parents analyze the data using LENA software to find out just how they measure up.

According to the LENA Web site (LENAbaby.com), “Research shows that parents overestimate how much they talk to their children. By using the LENA system, you know exactly how much language experience your child is receiving. LENA provides peace of mind that your child is developing at an optimal level.”

I’m all for talking to my kids (as evidenced by the fact that they all seem unable to shut up). But do we really need a $700 device (sale price is $400 if you act now!) to give us a basic idea of how we’re doing?

Isn’t this just one more example in the long line of “enrichment” products that we suckers — er, parents — are being pressured into purchasing using tactics like fear, guilt and anxiety over providing our children with that elusive “optimal development environment?”

Pamela Paul, mother of two and author of the new book Parenting, Inc., took a hard look at the “parenting industry” and found that not only are the companies creating and marketing these products actively play on parental fears, but we parents have readily bought into the hype.

“In the last 15 years, but particularly in the past five years, parenting has become professionalized and industrialized,” Paul says. “It’s led to the commercialization of child-rearing.”

Fear over economic instability and the desire to give our own children every possible edge has led to a high-pressure, high-stakes parenting culture, Paul says. “We are supposed to optimize and maximize every moment we have with our kids.” Paul stresses that she’s not critical of all products and services. For example, “Hiring a sleep consultant makes a lot more sense than buying a $1,000 designer crib that your baby screams in all night.”

Paying somebody else to teach your child to ride a bike? Not such a great investment, she points out. And overall, the number of products and services we seek out has ballooned out of control.

The result? Stressed-out parents who buy and do too much for their kids in order to give them as much opportunity as possible; and the nurturing of an ever-more materialistic consumer culture as kids get showered with expensive gear and playthings (the average American child, she reports, gets 70 new toys each year) as Mom and Dad seek out spendy services that will make them better, “more optimal” parents.

And though we all like to think we have more common sense than that, Paul points out that parents have bought into the idea that we can purchase our child’s health, happiness and well-being more than we’d like to admit.

She may be right. Even as I scoffed at the LENA system, somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered if I should take advantage of its 30-day money-back guarantee.just to see if our household’s “language environment” is as “optimal” as I’d like to believe.

Since I don’t have an extra $400 lying around, though, I think I’ll just throw out a few extra three-syllable words and call it a day.

Perhaps we’re not optimal, but I figure we’re at least above-average. And most days, that’s good enough for me.

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.