http://www.everydaymomblog.com/index.php This is my weblog #1 and its powered by boastMachine! en http://backend.userland.com/rss092 http://www.everydaymomblog.com/post/index/125/Great-News http://www.everydaymomblog.com/post/index/123/Teenage-Cellphones http://www.everydaymomblog.com/post/index/122/Shrek Dangerous Book for Boys whether because of all the cool stuff in it, the neat non-fiction tidbits and the way it makes us wonder for those early 70's childhoods of reading through the colorful Child Book series, or musing over what a Dangerous Book for Girls might be. We organized several events for the book over at MotherTalk, so it's been on our minds there too.

In the meantime, I've noticed my 8 1/2 year venturing into the world, and my responses.

1. Last weekend, nay, two weekends ago, she and one of the kids from the backyard (remember, we've joined backyards with several neighbors and the kids roam freely between them) pulled up at the backdoor and asked for a hammer and nails. They'd found in the shed a bucket of wood pieces, and they had a project in mind. I said yes, sure, then stopped, and said, yes, but later when I can help you, then saw the sour look on their faces, then stopped myself, realized that the worst that could happen is one of them ends up with a hurt finger, and sent them off, hammer and large-headed nails in tow.

Result: they weren't terribly successful at whatever they planned to make, but that's because they kept moving venues (should we play in this side-house-alley, or the other side-house-alley, and dragging the bucket of wood, hammer and nails between them. Then they realized they needed longer stretches of wood.) On the upside, though, were no smashed fingers, no emergency room visits, no violin prodigy careers destroyed (not that this is in any of their futures, anyway). And I learned something about pulling back. Next weekend I want to carve some time to explain how to use a hammer, mention some safety tips, and perhaps come up with a small project.

2. Saturday around 5.30 we were preparing for a small party when the phone rang and it wa ..]]> http://www.everydaymomblog.com/post/index/121/Danger http://www.everydaymomblog.com/post/index/118/Fridays-Pulls http://www.everydaymomblog.com/post/index/115/Mean-Dog-Owners
Which is where I am right now. And I'm the mechanical one in my family.

I need the baby gate fairy godmother, the one who swoops down on your home, measuring tape and drill in hand, get those gates to behave, yes, the ones that come in the box with 5000 screws, and yes, the ones that come in hard plastic that doesn't bend to the whims of this aged house, to the walls that don't quite line up, and makes it all go away.

That's one. We're back to lists.

Two: today, my dear friend, whom I won't name in case her boss reads my blog, which is very unlikely, came over at 9.30, with a coffee and two pastries in hand, and didn't leave till 2.30.

Exactly: we played hooky, did no work, and more amazingly, spent five hours talking. Can I tell you how revived I feel? Can I tell you I haven't spent this long catching up with a friend, enough hours to really get into stuff, to circle back, to cry, to laugh, in I-can't-remember-how-long?

Can I tell you I feel like the luckiest woman in the world?

Three: people I know are chatting about Katie Allison Granju's Babble.com article, The Overparenting Crisis, in which in her trademark voice of Tennessee bombast, Katie reminds us of what many of us know: not to get sucked in to the culture of competition. Not to worry too much. Not to keep comparing our kids to others.

Resisting competition isn't just a politically progressive stance. That would make it out to be too external, although it's a worthy cause to critique the crazy levels of competition out there, and the article has its share of moms who admit they went into debt to buy a high-end stroller (although I often wonder where th ..]]> http://www.everydaymomblog.com/post/index/113/Baby-Gate-Hell MomsRising. So glad I squeezed in a moment to scan the NY Times Op-Ed page this morning, in between puring cereal, warming up soup for Samira's lunchbox and handing the baby a sippy-cup of milk (and let me tell you, if the NYT were based on mothers' reading it over busy morning routines, they would not publish on those hug oversized pages).

Lucky me, because I got to start my day by reading Gwen Ifill's response to Don Imus's racist and sexist remark about the Rutgers women's basketball team (which for anyone who doesn't follow the NCAA, rose from near obscurity and a roster of younger players to play the championship game and claim the #2 spot).

Here's the link, for as long it holds.

I'm posting it here because I believe in the need for vision, big vision, humane vision. We're doing political work as mothers. We're seeking policy change to help those who care for women, men, families, workplaces, and children, and from that, we end up reaching though the breadth of social and human issues. Part of what happens when you take parenting, caretaking, and mothering seriously is that literally, you start to care. The 'care' in caretaking jumps out at you, whether you are male or female. You start to care about how you fit into our society, how society fits together, how society cares (or doesn't care) for all it's members.

And that's where Ifill's article comes in. She's offered up the most breathtakingly, humanely sublime example of caring I've read in a quite a while.

After discussing just what's wrong with Don Imus' shock radio pronouncement (and I will not repeat it here), she talks about the way he referred to her as "the cleaning lady." Yes, as in "the cleaning lady who gets to tell the news." It's beyond horrid. By mid-article, though, she tells us this is not just about her. She ..]]> http://www.everydaymomblog.com/post/index/109/Gwen-Ifill-for-President A Running Start: How Play, Physical Activity and Free Time Create a Successful Child, whom I've never met, of course, but whose book I adore.

I struggle with the rigor vs play conundrum. I do. If there were a 12-step program for parents whose instincts to hyper-train and hyper-educate their parents constantly conflict with their purer values of letting kids grow up without anxiety and stress, I'd be there. Hell, I'd be leading the damn thing.

I constantly keep at bay that voice that says, "If you don't do all the right things now, your child will not be successful, ever, at anything, and it will all be your fault" and then lists all the classes and resources I am ignoring. I admit it, it's a constant battle. Some people battle drugs, alcohol, or eating disorders, and I, a Juilliard trained classical musician and holder of a PhD, battle the anxiety of rigor.

And I resist, with the help of book's like this A Running Start, that helps my value voice. I'm sure that if Rae came down to Philadelphia and saw all the kids running through our linked and open backyards, screaming about going to China, or yelling directions about how to accomplish the latest spy mission, or (my recent favorite), figuring out how to set up a home-made zipline from the tree house, she would pat me on the back and say, Miriam, it's really okay that your daughter isn't a violin prodigy. And I would laugh, because all of this sounds so petty and ridiculous when put to words.

So many stresses about competition and achievement haunt our generation, especially those of us who have made alternate choices about what success means (by the way, I just saw an add for this book,