Halloween is tomorrow. Our house is ready, the pumpkins, not yet carved, sit in a pair on our front stoop. We've dragged the box of decorations down from the top shelf over the laundry machines and picked some to air for a week. Faux cobwebs greet visitors to our home. A two-foot spider perches over our front door light. Frankenstein leers from a plastic sheet covering our only window to face the street.

We like Halloween at our house. It's fun. There are parties ahead of time. Trick-or-treating with neighbors. A local parade. It's among our few national traditions that bring people out of the house, and together in public space. My daughter Samira looks forward to Halloween all year. On Wednesday, you can bet that she'll start planning next year's costume.

I like it all the more because Halloween is now such a bugbear to conservative religionists in our country. When I grew up, our Christian friends trick-or-treated. Our Jewish friends trick-or-treated. Even the bad boys down the street trick-or-treated. No one's pastor or rabbi admonished them to stay home. Never.

What has happened in the intervening years? Halloween has been re-paganized. Not by actual pagans, who have gone on with their quiet ways, but by people who've been intent on moving our nation's religious traditions to the right. Now, it's become more common for religious American to demonize Halloween. For the first time, my daughter came home and reported that two Christian kids in her class aren't allowed to do Halloween. Friends whose kids go to conservative Jewish schools, too, report that Halloween's a non-entity, and tell me about letters from the head of school that explain why children shouldn't go door to door, or dress up as witches and vampires and ghouls. The move to make religion more religious, to detach religious life from the shared secular sphere, and to shore up the boundaries between religious practice and the secular, public world means that Halloween is no longer a shared American tradition.

So celebrate Halloween. It's a celebration I now see as political: a celebration of American childhood, of families getting together. It's a celebration of the traditions that connect us, and on happy terms. Yes, the commercialism is over the top. Yes, the stores stock costumes starting on Labor Day and it's ridiculous. Yes, the outfits offered for girls are horridly slutty. Make a decent candy policy so our kids' teeth don't rot, absolutely. But don't get hung up on the negatives. Slide around them, laugh. Find your own ways, enjoy what's "pagan" and secular and American and good.

See it from my daughter's bright-eyed perspective: the one night a year when you can stay out late with your friends, knock on everyone's door, and get a big hello and some candy.

With all that's going wrong these days, what can be better than that? I say, if anyone should stay home on Halloween, it's the mean ole bad boys (and girls) with their teasing, mischief and eggs. Get the Christians and Jews, and anyone else who's been in retreat, to come back to the Halloween street. It's about nothing less than saving our American spirit of sharing.

I haven't yet read Momfidence! and with others, find myself cringing at the title, but I've been following our Mothertalk blog tour of the book this week. One after the other, bloggers are loving the book. It's so refreshingly, it seems, not about being hip and avant-garde. On her web site, the author refers to her (decidedly unhip) black stretch pants, and in one photo her daughter wears a smocked dress, imagine that! The book reminds us to focus on happiness. There's more to life with kids than getting all the rules right. Toss out the rules, don't fuss if your child doesn't eat veggies (that's what vitamin chewies are for), and just don't worry. Just half a generation ago, the author notes, milk and cookies were a nurturing combo, and a normal after school snack. What happened? Are cookies so terrible?

The MotherTalk blog tour for Momfidence! made me think, especially in light of today's NYTimes Op-Ed on the insanity of snacks at the soccer field. Why do we link soccer games with increasingly elaborate snacks, bags of chips, sugary drinks. Shouldn't a bottle of water be enough? Isn't there something wrong with the way kids look forward to the snack at game's end even more than to the practice and the game? I read it and totally agreed. Last week after her soccer practice and game, the kids were given: capri suns; a bag of doritos, or some such snack; and a dunkin donut. It seemed like an awful lot to me. I wondered what the other parents were thinking.

So are these contradictions? Is it sweating the small stuff to worry about soccer snacks, or an important worry (and in the Times, no less)? That's what I'm thinking about tonight. I too, grumble about the snack excess, and at the same time, find myself very attracted to a message that says, hey, the kids are having fun, no one's getting hurt, it's a gorgeous blue sun day, put on a smile and above all, don't fret.

Thursday's my working mom day. I mean, I work throughout the week. I parent. I write. I consult. I edit. I work on MotherTalk. Thursday, though, I have to get up, get dressed, look good (well, decent will do), make sure my notes are in order and my books are in my bookbag, and head out the door and make it class on time. A few minutes ahead of time, actually, so I can make sure that the complicated laptop-smart board-projector set up is happy and ready to go. I'm of the sort that believes anyone who gets to work on time with matching socks each day should be congratulated profusely and specially rewarded, since I know it's not an easy set of tasks. But I run off course, apologies.

Here's what's on my mind today:

1. My post on Tracy Thompson's poignant story and question: why are women's talents being wasted? was picked up by the wonderful Kim Moldofsky, who is now writing at the AustinMama blog as well as her own blog Hormone Colored Days, tag line: Musings on parenting, education/gifted children, stay-at-home moms returning to the world of paid work, and chick stuff, and promises: Guest bloggers and cool links will keep it fresh and interesting.

2. Still musing over the report on NPR a few evenings back about the President of Iran's comment that mothers should be paid for full time work, but allowed to work only part time so they can be with their kids. Now that's a man after my own heart! Iranian feminists and womens' groups were skeptical. "What companies will pay double the price for a female worker?" they asked, questioning the financial viability, and the predictable discrimination against women in the workplace. The president was clear to say he was not against women working, but thought that home life should be attended to. I say: there's something here. Let's make it applicable to moms and dads both. Let's all get paid for fulltime work and spend half our time at home. I like this. And they say the Iranian revolution is dead. Clearly not. This is a very revolutionary idea, with some tweaking, and I like it. Would I wear a veil in return? Not so sure about that, but glad someone's thinking in economic terms about the real work of parenting.

3. Did anyone else shed some tears this morning reading about New Jersey's decision, handed down from their Supreme Court, to allow gay marriage, though to be fair and accurate, they're not calling it marriage yet, the Court is asking the legislature to decide what to call it. I fell apart at the pictures of several lesbian couples, including the plaintiffs as they heard the news. All were women in their 40's and 50's, and I kept thinking about how long they've waited, and with such ups and downs, for some legal recognition of their love and their families. My family and my marriage, and the state protection each receives, are so important to me. If I were a lesbian, I'd want that too, and I thank the women, Alicia and Saundra, who let their lives be made public, and political, and took on this challenge, which in these times, couldn't have been easy.

And as someone living just across the river from New Jersey, I say, I'm moving. Let's support states like this, instead of backwards ones like my own. New Jersey gets no respect, and let me tell you, that day is over. Go Jersey!

Have a great day!

I read Tracy Thompson's "How did I get here?" post the other day, a thoughtful run through her career as a journalist and a mom, and how underused she is, how she has so many talents, and how the workforce as is hasn't let her move in and out to be with her kids. As a result, she's a mature woman and a good journalist whose talents our society isn't using, and that's a shame.

I've been thinking about how we have the politics of work and family (or as some are now using, work with family), and then about how it all feels day-to-day. For me, having had eight years between children, and thus eight years inbetween that intense period where I've been home, I do feel some changes. First, I work some, from home mostly, and I have a babysitter. I don't struggle as much with that radical sense of "where did my life go?" Second, at 42 and having done this before, I'm more aware of the pressure to be ambitious, to work, to achieve recognition. I'm a far cry from the up-and-coming college professor I was at 34 when my first child was born. Third, I know that this lasts but a few years, and I let myself enjoy it. I feel less of the pull to meet other people's deadlines, and I really feel very little of those imagined characters who we think are looking over our shoulders and calling us to account for what we've done, not done, and plan to do.

Second time around, I can keep more of the external pressure at bay. And that's a good thing.

The poignancy I can't keep at bay, though, is the Monday Morning lonelies. That's the pit-in-the-stomach that sets in after I've said goodbye to my husband, and hugged my daughter onto the schoolbus, when it's just me on the corner with the baby in the backpack, and I really miss all of them.

I miss our weekends. Yes, I like my weeks, I've learned their rhythms, the hours for work, the hours for school pick-up, the hours for being in the kitchen, preparing meals and sweeping Cheerios off the floor. And I never used to like weekends, honestly. I liked working. I liked structure. I hated all the free time and the pressure to have a good time, dammit, so you can tell everyone about it on Monday! Now, though, I've come to terms with my weekends, no longer succumbing to the impulse to check e-mail (I try not to and not trying to rack up fun points. It's time, afterall, long expanses, 48 hours, just time, and what I like best is just being with Rob and the girls. And puttering in my backyard. Walking in the neighborhood. Sometimes seeing friends. Yes, I'm reclaiming nerdy mom, easy-going mom. Dare I say it, in the wake of our culture which seems to prefer missives about motherhood that preferably have drugs and drinks in the story: Boring Mom. Normal Mom. Everyday Mom, and you can add your own adjectives right here!

Monday morning lonelies testify to how fun the weekend was. It's a different feeling than the politics and work link that I started this post with, it's more interior, it's about love and sweetness and all the things that are out of place and out of step with life outside our homes. Still, I'm trying to figure out the connection. Will we have to live forever with that social division that puts feelings at home, and tough policies in the public sphere and never the twain shall meet?

A few days ago ten-month-old Amelia stopped sleeping so well. She fussed. She woke at 4 am after lulling us into the complacency of 6-7 am wake-ups. She moved about in her crib. Cried and fussed and arched her back in disgust when facing sleep.

All very normal, I know. Babies get off their rhythms. And sure enough, she's starting to remember how to sleep again. This morning it's 8.30, and she's down for an early morning nap. It all works out, but slowly, and leaving very tired parents in the wake.

This short episode brought back the panic of the early months, as well as the years-long frustration of our older daughter's sleep patterns. When the baby was little, and her sleep at weeks 10,11 and 12 seemed to be getting worse, I emailed Ann Douglas, a parenting writer I've only met online, but whom I feel lucky enough to call a friend.

"What do I do?" I typed. "How do I make my baby sleep. Can you help?

Ann's response: An advance copy of Sleep Solutions is in the mail to you. But, she warned, there's no magic bullet.

How frustrating, I thought, in new mother angst. Just when you need some magic, it seems there's none forthcoming. But also, how correct. How nurturing and loving and supportive an answer. The best, really, that there is. Better than how-to guides that pose one answer, one regime, and you're left failing if it doesn't work. Ann Douglas is the author of the series of parenting books known as the The Mother of ALL Solutions series. She's very well known in Canada. In the United States, she's just beginning to be the parenting author of choice for those of us who are very tired of the What to Expect When You're Expecting books that provoke more fear than support. (And on that topic, check out the salon.com's TV critic Heather Havrilesky's recent LA Times Op-Ed, "Expect the Worst While You're Expecting".)

Last night, I pulled Ann's book from my bedside to leaf through it. I gleaned some ideas to help Amelia get her sleep groove back. "Sleep Solution #8" on page 110 was clearly written just for me: "Remain as Calm and Relaxed as Possible About the Sleep Issue." That's just the thing, Ann is concerned about us as parents, and about us, just plain. Stay calm, she reassures. It's all going to be okay. The book is filled with stories and advice from mothers, too, so it feels like going to the playground and getting mom wisdom just when you need it, as well as the friendship of other mothers. When so many parents feel judged as good or bad depending on whether their children sleep well, Ann Douglas offers an entirely different sensibility, totally outside the screed of American parenting competition.

So: Ann Douglas's Sleep Solutions for Your Baby, Toddler, and Preschooler, for those who need it. The antidote to the fear-mongering parenting guides that are bestsellers in our country, from a friend up north.

(ps: Sleep Solutions is in the midst of a MotherTalk blog tour, though Everyday Mom is not an official stop. You can check another, with author Q and A at Mothershock.)

Last night a friend sent me her proposal for a new book on dads and parenting. Like a good friend and writing comrade, I read quickly and sent her emailed chapter headings back with some thoughts and suggestions. After, I resolved to check in with my favorite dad blogs in the morning.

Here's what's up with the dads, aka in my world as the good dads, the blogger dads I like the best.

Jeremy at Daddy Dialectic has gone back to work, a move that's poignant and exciting at the same time. He writes so well and so honestly about the love of staying home with his son, about the economics of his family life, and about the politics of our nation at large. Whoever doesn't already think the public and the domestic are linked needs to spend some time on Daddy Dialectic (which has become a group blog, all to the better). As always, Jeremy finds the most trenchant links on politics, too. Thanks, Jeremy, for all the writing you do, for your decision to go public ala blog, and please, please keep writing to us.

Rebel Dad has promised to post everyday this week. He too has returned to paid work, and I empathize, it can be awfully hard to blog everyday when life is so full. The current post (sorry, no working trackback yet), is about how at home dad groups tend to be ephemeral: dads meet when they have tots and preschoolers, are tight, post a webpage, and time moves on, the kids start elementary school, PTA takes over, or they return to paid work. Life moves on. His iso wonderfully describes how fluid our lives are, and I always enjoy seeing the life I live narrated on screen.

Let's see. Chip at DaddyChip has been away for several weeks (though I happily received a message from him this morning at Playground Revolution so I know he's back (or at any rate, has email access wherever he is). He has a marvelous, must-read post called Raising Kids and Social Change that is so honest, so right-on and so inspiring I resolved to link to it from everywhere I blog. An excerpt:

"The direct way [to bring about social change] involves a number of discrete elements. The first is that by spending time with our kids we show them through our actions that we are commited to them, that they are important to us. This gives them the confidence and psychological health to act on their principles in the face of a society that is hostile to those principles and values.

If we let our kids be raised by societal norms, we are doing the opposite of progressive, positive activism. Raising progressive kids requires being very proactive, being very involved in our kids' lives, talking to them from the earliest days about the values that we believe are important, about the changes that need to happen in our society, and living those values.

For me, the foundation or prerequisite to doing that was to be an involved father. First and maybe most directly, in the area of gender relations: if we want to bring about change in that area, we have to not only talk the talk, but walk the walk.

As a guy, I can thinking of nothing more subversive of "traditional" conservative values than the fact that I chose to stay home full-time with my daughter for the first two years of her life; that I chose to downsize career ambitions to spend time with my kids and to be more involved in their lives than I could have if I had followed my earlier ambitions. I understand that in many ways my ability to do this is related to my class privilege and educational background. Nevertheless, I think that exactly because of those factors, and the resultant fact that I had many other options, it is important for me to take steps to undermine gender hierarchies in the eyes of my kids as well as in my wider community.... (click here to read more)

Chip, thanks for the inspiration. The definitions of politics these days have reverted back to that which is big, media-saturated, and backed by huge money. We forget that other things matter, that individual decisions about life still matter, and that gender roles--especially the very intimate ones of family life--need challenging every day, and every way.

It's Friday evening, there's a delicious cool in the air, and at 8.30, we're all, yes, in bed, in various stages of

a) reading books--Samira turning the pages in Daniel Pinkwater's The Artsy Smartsy Club;

b) peacefully rejuvenating (at 6.30, the baby gave in after a relatively napless day and after a few whimpers closed her eyes);

c) taking a rest, fully clothed, managing to get out the phrase, "Wake me so we can watch a video..." before drifting into sleep (that'd be my husband; he'll wake up in a few hours); and

d) me, typing away, at this entry, yes, and typing up some notes for a new book. Next up as I type: the week's to-do list, crafted with best intentions last Sunday evening, though we'd all agree that being just one week behind on email and to-do's is actually pretty good. And after that, I'll be entering changes to last Sunday's finding-organization-in-life innovation: the grocery list. Basic, yes, but I've rarely used one. After a rejuvenating walk in the woods with my friend Mary, she left me with yet another of her working-mom household tips: keep an actual shopping list. The tip was two-part: list in hand, use online grocery delivery, in our case, Genuardi's.com, which for a mere $9.95 will show up at your home, truck your groceries up seven steps, long haul it from the front door all the way down the hall to your kitchen table, smile, apologize for unintentionally waking the baby by ringing the door bell, make small talk, and refuse all attempts to tip. There's a learning curve, definitely, and I still needed to step in to the local coop for fruits and vegetables, but I do say, Internet food delivery is once again saving my life. As a British friend once wryly replied when I congratulated him on a spinach lasagna he prepared and served us for dinner at his home in Brighton, "Good cooking is all about shopping." And for shopping, apparently, I'm learning at age 42, a list can be indispensable.

It's as cozy as pie. We used to wonder about this early-to-bed on Friday habit. Until two weeks ago. I had picked Samira up at school. The day was warm, and I got to talking with one of the dads at the playground. He was there with his two daughters. I looked at Samira, who was at that moment on the rainbow climber with her friend Jackie, not climbing, not hanging by one knee. No, the two friends were lounging on the top, with body languages that spoke of nothing but languid exhaustion.

Friday tired, I explained to the new dad, who, it turned out, had quit a corporate job to become a writer. My daughter's Friday tired, the sort of tired you get just because it's week's end and you can finally let yourself feel it. He liked the phrase, as did I.

Now when we all crash before 9 pm, when eyelids slip despite our best intentions to watch DVD's or be cultural, read a book or even settle in to a nice marital conversation, I understand it. We're not losers. We're not nerdy (well, perhaps a tad). We're just Friday tired, and taking good care of ourselves.

Here's an interesting post about mommybloggers using their actual names when they post, from BlogHer blogger Mary Tsao. The comments on the post caught my attention, too. Everyone's concerned about blogging and the question of protecting children. Many of us, including me, have husbands who prefer not to have their intimacies and foibles broadcast on the internet. Most bloggers blog anonymously, with fabulous front names. Because I blog with my full name, I definitely face real boundary issues. Sometimes I feel I can't be as revealing as I'd like about everyday life as a mom. Sometimes I wish I had an anonymous blog and could say whatever I wish, about anyone in my world. For me though, using my name keeps me honest. Check out the conversation and see what you think.

I'm loving Stuntmother's blog, big time. Here's her spot on description of Cookie Magazine, which left me laughing in my seat and whistling under my breath. This woman should be added to blogrolls everywhere, she's the newest entry here at Everyday Mom.

Everyday Mom herself, aka me, has been engaged in major yardwork. What began as a simple, single project--hey, let's move the playscape from the middle of the backyard to the corner, so there's more room to kick a ball around--spawned other projects, as in Oh, there's a slate patio to be pulled up in that corner. Oh, what shall we do with all that slate, I know, we can set a pathway. Oh, there's a bare spot of dirt where the playscape used to be, let's grow grass. Oh, next to that barespot of grass is a weedy patch, let's find a tool to dig that up and plant grass there too! Let's find the grass seed spreader, oh, its at the back of a very messy shed, must clean a pathway to get there. . .

You get the idea, and it didn't end till late last night, I was pruning a wisteria arbor for the first time in several years (I was pregnant last fall, remember? and sick) when my husband came out, reminded me gently of the time, and eased the extension pruner from my outstretched arms and guided it back to its home in the shed.

Why do we write of the details of our lives? Why do I love hearing these trivia that are not trivia from the lives of others? Yesterday on a hike with a friend, I was entranced by her descriptions of how she organizes laundry and grocery shopping for her family, the book she read that helped, and the system that keeps domestic life from falling apart. It's that we're tired of having so much of daily existence be ignored, or made fun of. At the reading I did a few weeks back with artist Sara Steele, she reminded us that if women really took care of ourselves with the same attention we lavish on others, our world would be revolutionized. if we stopped playing other people's games on their terms, contorting our lives to fit, things would really change. Really. And it starts with the details, with making the details of all the work we do public.

This week's goal: finding a blog-photo-sharing system that works for Everyday Mom. Let's spice it up with some pictures!

I wrote in my book The Truth Behind the Mommy Wars that one amazing piece of the parenting experience for me was that wrapped up in the most mundane acts--teaching kids manners at the playground, keeping one's temper cool, engaging other parents--were the largest philosophical issues we ever face. Ethics of relation, of psychology, of language, it's all there in the tedium of everyday life with children, and part of what so fascinated me about being a parent.

I find that the current political discourse on mothers and parenting (as in the entry just below this one) deadens the ease of feeling at one with parenting. It's an alternate universe of scathe and snark. It's quite toxic.

Which is why sometimes I must tread back to the nursery where the baby laughs while her older sister tickles her tummy, where they both giggle till the elder leaves the room and I'm left with a nursing baby and a few quiet moments to sink into the pages in <i>A Secret Garden</i> where Mary is befriended by the red-breasted robin and savor the beauty of the words. Our shared political life would sure be different if for a second, joy and desire and love could enter into the conversation.

I'm reminded of that again. Most of my days take on a very predictable rhythm for me. Morning rush, schoolbus, morning walk. Three days a week, babysitter arrives and I work. Lunch. Baby time. Baby nap. School pick-up. Play with two children. Forage dinner. Greet husband returning from work. We put children to bed, wash them first. Climb the stairs to my office and do some work.

Today Samira was off from school, and it was rainy out, so apart from a single errand to the hardware store, we stayed home. I felt once again the pull of loving to be with my kids, and being quite exhausted by day's end, exhausted even by two children who were very well behaved. My hat's off to any parent anywhere home with their children fulltime, because it is not easy. Still, that sense of filling time, passing time, and the rich texture of just being together--even when at times I'd rather be working, and still, we are together--so compels me. Life felt different today, and even with all those hours we didn't get to all the projects. We didn't get to figure out the third page of the origami book. We didn't get to the faux stained glass project received as a birthday present. And at 5 pm, I still hadn't had my morning tea. 5.05: I sent my chatterbox eight-year-old into another room. I poured my tea and sat at the kitchen table and fed the baby. I needed, as they say, a moment of silence. Perhaps a whole silent meeting.

It's so important that mothers and all women are telling each other about the intimacies and ordinariness of our lives. Our language is still unhearable by the mainstream media, which has its own ax to grind about our lives. Still, we must be brave and trade stories and insights, in these new ways, with our new media, believing in ourselves and our values and our journeys.