The cute school pictures I refuse to buy

I'm a sucker for school pictures. The blue background. The gap-toothed smiles. The cowlicks and stray hairs Mom's not there to smooth out. I'm not the type to spring for the super package with the 8X10 print and keychain, but I'm good for a sheet of wallets (not that anyone keeps photographs in their wallets anymore; that's what smart phones are for).

So imagine my surprise when we received Ada's proofs from Shutterbug Studios, the company serving her Montessori school. All the poses were in front of a snowy forest scene. With evergreens. At first glance, my reaction was "Wow, these are really Christmassy." Not that the gentiles have a monopoly on snowy forests, but she is leaning up against a pile of wrapped gifts in the shot on the upper right.

And my second thought: "Gee, she looks awfully underdressed for a stroll in the wintery woods." I mean the girl's wearing a dress and leggings (which I fully did not anticipate making it into the portrait session). Where are her coat, hat and boots? Wouldn't her hands be cold as she lies facedown on the "snow?"

As darling as Ada looks, these pictures are dumb. I won't be ordering any.

On the other hand, I'm tempted to get a print of this roller derby action shot by Oak Park sports photographer DT Kindler.

The whiny post

It's a cliche to complain that my life is busy, I know. But the last month has been such an overwhelming blur that I'm (almost) savoring 2+ hours of alone time. Even if it is with a glass of mediocre Merlot at the Cincinnati airport bar.

What's been keeping me go-go-going? It's not one thing. It's the pace of my job. We're working on more projects and at a faster pace than before and the boss I've loved working for just moved up and off the business. The good news is that he isn't being replaced and I'm getting to fill his role. The flip side is that I feel enormous pressure to not only do my job perfectly, but to keep my team, my account counterparts and my clients happy.

Add to that my position at our local Montessori school. I'm winding down after nearly 2 years of service as co-president of the board, but every time I feel like things are going really well, another fire flares up. It's emotionally exhausting to deal with so many personalities and issues and try to do the right thing all the time. And thing is, I care. I really do. Even when my term ends in the late summer, I can't wash my hands of the school. I love the community and I'm committed to sending A there for another 2 years.

There's the change in the seasons, too. While I love spring and summer and my mood thanks the sun for every moment of light and warmth, with the warmer weather comes more commitments: soccer games, gardening, picnics, yard sales, festivals and impromptu gatherings with friends and neighbors tempt the minute I leave work and all weekend long. And longer days make it harder to wind down the kids after dinner. Because who wants to take a bath and read a book when there's a basketball game outside your window?

Speaking of the kids, A is fully in the throws of the terrible 3 and three-quarters (to borrow a phrase from Whitney, who's daughter Scarlett is the same age). She can throw a temper tantrum like nobody's business, and there's no "hey, look at this fun toy!" distraction possibility like there was a year or so ago when she could be "redirected."

If you've been reading my blog for long or know me personally, you know I'm not usually such a Debbie Downer. So I'm going to end this post and try to cheer myself up with 3 2 Things to Look Forward to this Weekend.

1. I'm skating 10 miles in the American Cancer Society Walk and Roll on Sunday. It's still not too late to sponsor me! I've raised $742 and my team as a whole is up to $30,000+.
2. Friends are coming over for dinner on Saturday evening.

Are no reservations policies anti-parent?

Saturday morning around 11am we arrived at Hot Chocolate, $10 A la Card coupon in hand, for a much-anticipated pre-Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus brunch with our girls.

"It's going to be a 45 minute wait," said the hostess. We looked at the packed lounge area and tried to envision keeping our children occupied and happy for 45 minutes before our meal even started. They're well-behaved kids, but they are still kids. We'd actually tried calling Hot Chocolate the day before to make a reservation, but the restaurant has a no-reservations policy for smaller parties.

We knew better than to risk it, so we walked down Damen to Silver Cloud Bar & Grill, a step down cuisine-wise, but a solid lunch and perfectly kid-friendly.

Which got us to thinking: are no reservations policies inherently anti-parent? Being awakened at 6am by young children has certainly enabled us to beat the rush to other breakfast hot spots, but we avoid places that don't honor reservations when lunching or dining at popular (read: normal) hours. We also avoid no reservations restaurants for date night. If we're paying a babysitter by the hour, it simply isn't worth it to spend half our evening in the bar, waiting for a table.

So why is it some trendy/foodie places take reservations and some don't? It doesn't seem to any way correlate with how popular the place is or how highly rated their food is. If all of the tables are full of paying customers, does it matter how many hungry people are hanging out in the entryway or freezing their butts off outside? Or does management figure they are better off scaring those pesky parents and their crayon-toting children away.

No wonder everyone hates the dentist

Yes, I was live-tweeting my dental work yesterday. I was in pretty significant pain all last night (which wasn't helped by A's 2 1/2 hour middle-of-the-night freakout), but my jaw is starting to feel more normal now and my dentist promises me I'll be comfortable by tomorrow morning. I've got to eat carefully for a few weeks so that I don't jar loose my temporary crown and expose my rotten wisdom tooth to more decay.

The only good news here is that while waiting for me to emerge from the chair, Z got to watch some dental propaganda that featured needles large enough to scare her off candy for a week.

I don't care if you're cute after midnight

Last night was a giant ball of suck.

I am too wiped out to tell you why neither Josh nor I got more than 4 hours of sleep. But, if you were to guess it had something to do with the pumpkin pictured here waking up wiggly and feverish at 1am and not going back to sleep until 8:45, well, you'd be right.

Still stuck

It probably bears mentioning that I am still at O'Hare at 8:25pm and United has neither canceled this flight nor given us a new takeoff time. This. Is. Hell.

Thursday update: At 9:20pm, United Airlines officially threw in the towel and canceled our 12pm flight. There were no seats on early morning flights to New York, so in addition to losing a day of my life, my business trip is a bust.

Autism's snake-oil salesmen make me mad

I do not have a child with autism, but I know a number of families (mostly virtually) who have children "on the spectrum."

While some of these parents embrace their children's differences, raising a child who regularly acts out and doesn't connect with you emotionally can be heartbreaking, and a lot of people are desperate for a cure--something that will bring their kid back and allow them to move into the mainstream.

Unfortunately, where there is desperation, there are shamans and snake-oil salesmen ready to take advantage and profit from someone else's misery.

This weekend, the Autism One conference comes to Chicago. The keynote address will be delivered by Jenny McCarthy, a celebrity-turned-author who has made it her mission to cast doubt upon vaccine safety and promote autism "cures" backed largely by her own anecdotal evidence. Also on the schedule are Dr. Mayer Eisenstein and Dr. Mark Geier, promoting their "Lupron protocol," an unproven regimen of dosing autistic kids with a castration drug. The therapy is based on a theory, unsupported by mainstream medicine, that autism is caused by a harmful link between mercury and testosterone. Children with autism have too much of the hormone, according to the theory, and a drug called Lupron can fix that.

Now I understand that stressed-out parents are ready to hear--and try--anything. But the Lupron protocol is baseless; "more than two dozen prominent endocrinologists dismissed the treatment earlier this year in a paper published online by the journal Pediatrics." But what's the harm? Well, experts in childhood hormones warn that Lupron can disrupt normal development, interfering with natural puberty and potentially putting children's heart and bones at risk. The treatment also means subjecting children to daily injections, including painful shots deep into muscle every other week.

What will it take for the autism community to partner with scientists and work to find a cause (a genetic link has already been discovered) and a real cure--the kind backed by rigorous, double-blind studies? All the chatter over vaccines, diet, chelation and other quack theories and cures is drowning out the real information, guidance and support these families surely need.

My no good very bad day

My daughter's beloved preschool teacher resigned, the weather is cold and rainy and I can't turn my head to the left. Yeah, it's not exactly been a fun-filled couple of days.

So please excuse me for the neglecting my blog this week. I just need to get to Friday. I've got a free 15 minute massage tomorrow that I hope will work out the kinks in my neck. (If it doesn't, I've got good friends who can spot me a muscle relaxer.) And the weather forecast is calling for 72 degrees and sunny skies on Friday.

Best yet, Franny arrives Friday night with her 11 month old son in tow.

Feeling like a sourpuss too? See if this doesn't make you cry happy tears and this doesn't make milk come out of your nose.

Oh, and my kiddos, they're pretty adorable too.

Sleeplessness is a bitch

Have you read Hellhole in this week's New Yorker? Its a compelling, if awfully depressing article about how even short term stays in solitary isolation damage our brains. We're such social creatures that, if denied any human contact, we lose the ability to relate to others. POWs say solitary is just as torturous as bone-breaking physical torment.

At the risk of trivializing the subject, I want to talk for a minute about a different kind of torture: sleep deprivation. Our darling 20 month old has been moving her wake-up hour ever earlier, standing in her crib and calling "Mama" at 5, even 4am. We've been completely unsuccessful at soothing her back to sleep, and figuring that wretched rest is better than lying in bed listening to her scream bloody murder, we've brought her to bed with us for the last week or so.

But A does not curl up next to me and fall back asleep like a little angel. She climbs over me, tugs on and identifies my body parts, nestles her hard-plastic paci-mouth into my trachea and generally bugs the shit out of me until demanding "Down!" At which point Josh (bless his heart) takes her downstairs and rewards her bad behavior with an early-morning screening of Sesame Street. "Elmo!" I hear her exclaiming with delight.

Thanks to A, we're fried. Something's got to change, and I'm steeling myself for tomorrow morning, when I will be instituting "solitary confinement" in A's well-appointed baby jail. I will be strong. I will be ruthless. I will be buying earplugs.

Has mommyblogging jumped the shark?

Last week I almost disconnected my Twitter feed. I even, for a moment, considered shutting down my blog. I couldn't bear reading another "I've got a giveaway," "I'm on a trip to Brand X headquarters" or "pleaseDigg my latest post" tweet. I was saddened every time I turned to one of my favorite blogs and saw the personal, heartfelt content that had made me a loyal reader displaced by posts about Campbell's soup or how much fun it was to go to a blogger conference and shill for the sponsor who paid for the trip.

Far be it from me to begrudge another mother the chance to do something fun for free (particularly in this economic climate), but I worry that mommyblogging is evolving from its warm, wonderful beginnings as a sort of hybrid online diary-support group into a crowded, commercial enterprise withtoo many bloggers competing for share of voice and corporate hand-outs.

Don't get me wrong, I don't see marketing and blogging as mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite: I've worked both sides and been instrumental in bringing brands and bloggers together for mutual benefit. Mothers who blog are connected people both online and off and their recommendations can be a powerful source of trusted word of mouth. But the key word here is trusted. And a mommyblogger who spends more time marketing her blog, promoting products and chasing corporate sponsorships than she does writing about the ups and downs of being a mommy is going to lose that trust. Quickly. When trust goes, so does readership. And if you're in it for the money, well, you're not going to get any from a blog with no traffic.

I'm not in it for money or fame; I maintain my blog as a digital scrapbook of my life as a working mother of two, but if I were, I'd take a cue from the best brand marketers and keep it real. Successful brands, be they Coca-Cola, Apple or Tide, have one thing in common, and that's a sense of authenticity. Mommybloggers, of course, don't need to seem authentic. They are authentic, real people. Pleas stay that way.

I'd lose my head if it wasn't screwed on

Today I set a record for things lost or forgotten in 8 hours.

My hat. I'd only just bought this hat to replace the hat I'd left on the El train 2 weeks ago. And if you guessed I left it on the train, well, you'd be right. Bonus points if you also know that I managed to lose the hat a friend had so kindly loaned me while I was hatless. Which basically means I'll have spent $32 + $32 + whatever it costs to reimburse my friend and I'm still without a hat. In Chicago. In February.

What else did I forget? My workout clothes. I made it to my favorite weight-training class at noon and grabbed a spot only to discover my shorts and shirt weren't in my locker. Did I take them home or leave them in the changing room last week? Honestly, I have no idea.

So I decided to use my lunch hour to look for a dress to wear to a NYC wedding I'm attending next month. I didn't find a dress, but I did leave my necklace in the changing room. (I've since returned to claim it.)

I also forgot my period starts today. Which means I forgot to bring Tampax.

So I can't keep track of my clothes, accessories or monthly cycle, but I did reach into my coat pocket to discover that, in addition to remembering my house keys, I brought a pacifier to work.

Damn, it's cold

It was -10 with a windchill of -25 during this morning's commute. So cold my toes stiffened under tights, socks and winter boots and it hurt to breathe. So cold I put A in a snowsuit, scarf and hat to walk 2 doors north to daycare. Z was similarly bundled for her trip to the car for preschool drop-off.

I'm so tired of this weather.

She's lucky she's cute

There is no better recipe for family discord than two irritated, sleep-deprived parents and an overtired, overwrought toddler.

Josh thought keeping A up a little later might encourage her to sleep in a little later. Seems logical, right? Well, his experiment backfired massively. Now, instead of hearing her call out at 5:50, she's screaming her head off at 4am. Nothing soothes her except joining us (read: my boobs) in bed. And frankly, I'd like to quit the early wakings and wean the kid in one fell swoop.

I'm tired.

I'm done.

So, per Dr Weissbluth, we're reversing course and moving her bedtime up tonight. And again when we turn our clocks back this weekend. If she can sleep until a halfway decent hour, Josh and I will be happy to get up with her and keep her from obsessing about what's under my shirt.

Methinks she's not a morning person

Z's taken to waking up with a growl. The kind of whiny growl you might expect to hear from an unfed lion cub. This guttural noise is accompanied by squinty glares, put-upon flops from one side of her bed to the next and pointy grunts that I'm supposed to translate to "I'm cold. Get me something with long sleeves. Nooooo, not a sweater!!! A long-sleeved pajama top. Not that one!!! Now put it on me because I've lost the ability to move my limbs overnight."

Demanding that she frame her requests in clear English (preferably preceded by "please") transforms the angry lion cub into something far worse: an incoherent, inconsolable pillow-soaker. If I close the door so that my eardrums don't split and I don't lose my temper, she ratchets it up a notch, hyperventilating and hiccuping her misery. Over what, exactly? That never becomes clear. Perhaps waking up to the sounds of me dressing her sister in the next room awakens the green-eyed monster within ("Mommy's spending time with my little sister instead of me. And it's not fair!!!)

After 5 minutes of howling (and a sharp rebuke from Josh that only accelerates her tantrum) I go back in, give her a hug and help her into a long-sleeved pajama top. She skulks around upstairs while I shower (baby sister and Daddy are downstairs having breakfast), and by the time we come down she's totally fine.

If this is what wake-up time's like for an almost 4-year-old, I can't wait to see what the morning rush will bring when she's 14.

Do I look like a football mom?

I got this in my email box this morning.

Hello Alma,

Football season is here. Your kids are excited. They have their equipment, they've been practicing and now it's game time. One problem: you're kind of fuzzy on the rules of the game. What's the difference between a punt and a kick? Who does what on the field?...

Hello, Shelby! Thanks for reaching out to me. My 14 month old is a real football nut and wow, I'd love to be able to keep up with her on the gridiron, but I have so much trouble remembering the rules of the game! There's just not room for complicated sports rules when I can barely remember how many minutes to bake the Tollhouse cookies.

Now to fair, there are a lot of competent PR folks out there who send me nice, friendly emails about products I happen to have zero interest in (a wearable sleeping bag for adults?); and there are lovely people who set me up with free stuff that my kids and I enjoy and I sing about right here on my blog (which is what they're hoping for). But what's with the lazy agency folks who haven't figured out from--oh, the photos and stories all over my blog--that I'm the mother of little girls.

So I don't want a copy of the football mom's handbook (or, G-d forbid, the hockey mom's). I'm too busy enjoying our free K'NEX Cookie Monster Building Set, Mrs. Goodbee Dollhouse and Aquadoodle (which, incidentally, has been my 1st birthday gift of choice for 3 years running).

Where's the good news?

I know our retirement investments are tanking, but I've been saved from knowing exactly how much we've lost because we're in the process of moving our accounts from Merrill Lynch to a new company.

I was dumbfounded for a second (before my blood hit the boiling point) when I read that AIG executives treated themselves to a $440,000 spa retreat after the government floated them $85 billion in taxpayer dollars. That's $200,000 on rooms, more than $150,000 on meals, $23,000 in spa charges and $7,000 on golf. It might seem like tiddlywinks when we're talking about a multi-billion dollar bailout, but that total could buy a lot of gas and groceries for hurting Americans.


The election is less than a month away, and in spite of the economic crisis, a pointless and very expensive war and the rising costs of food, gas, utilities and health insurance, right-wing nutjobs and closet racists are still trying to smear Barack Obama. Who, by the way, struck me as downright Presidential in last night's debate.

And closer to home, Oak Park is in the midst of a crime wave, with armed robberies way up.

Welcome to Whine Fest

Today at Marketing Mommy we're sampling whines. Red (faced) whines, why whines, everyday whines and the rare corporate whine.

Is it cool to drink at 5:25 am? Because that is when the whining (for dining) began. Fortunately I'm still nursing, so Baby A was able to sip as I slept--in bed. As I showered and dressed, I could tell the kids were dishing out whine with breakfast (not a happy combination), and by the time I'd come downstairs and scrambled my egg, the whining had been drowned out by Josh's 80 proof yell. Like wine and shots, whine and shouts don't mix, and everyone at Whine Fest was cranky and worn out by 8am.

You'd think work would be a welcome respite, but there's plenty of whine to go around here at the office.

I need a beer. And a cupcake.

Feeding time at the monkey house

Dinner this evening. I give Baby A a handful of bite-sized pieces of chicken and some roasted carrot. She shovels three pieces in her mouth and flings the rest onto the floor. I pick up the pieces and return them to her tray. She eats another bite and sweeps the rest off her tray and across the room. None land on the splat mat. I try giving her fresh chicken from my plate and she pushes it away.

I offer her bread with butter. She spends five minutes greasing her palms and hurls the bread across the dining room table before howling to be released.

Welcome to feeding time at the zoo.

While the smaller monkey flings food and communicates her needs through a series of grunts, the slightly-less-small monkey refuses chicken and carrots and pushes her sweet potatoes around for 10 minutes after having her plea for a spoonful of butter denied.

Feeding time was followed by indoor exercise for the animals. This consisted of taking all toys out of their places, disassembling them, and abandoning them to climb the furniture.

Before the zoo closed for the evening, visitors got to see the monkeys perform tricks. Tricks like shaking milk out of a supposedly leak-proof sippy cup onto the carpet, upending a bowl of Cheerios and unzipping Mommy's purse, removing her mobile phone and dialing the last number called.

This post is inspired by the Parent Bloggers Network's "I Live in a Zoo" Blog Blast, sponsored by iKnow Letters, Animals and Sounds.

Dining out with 4 small children, what were we thinking?

Last night I was reminded for the 1023rd time why eating out with small children is no fun at all. We arrived at the Country Cat at 5:30 with reservations for 7: four adults, two 3-year olds, one 1-year old and a 3-month old baby.

The fight over crayons and water cups commenced immediately. The 3-year olds were separated. My kids, hungry and tired (it seems the time change caught up with them a day late) whined and cried and grabbed. Baby A stood up in her high chair, ripped off her bib and caught my wine glass, spilling half of Mommy's magic stay-calm juice over the table.

We were just about to flag down our server and get everything to go when our food arrived. I had the cast iron pan fried chicken and collard greens, which featured a tasty, fluffy honey biscuit that my kids stole from me. Baby A put away chicken, smoked pork, grits, carrots and green beans. Z had my biscuit and a few bites of chicken.

Everything was delicious, and while we ate a sort of peace prevailed. But then the kids got antsy again so we cleaned our plates, split the bill (all the kids meals were free!) and did a preliminary courtesy sweep of the area under Baby A's high chair.

I hate health insurance

After seeing that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois hadn't paid dime one of our last three doctor's appointments (the kids' well child visits and Josh's laceration follow-up), I called them to ask what was up.

After 15 minutes of hold music, this is the answer I'm given:

"Do you have any other health insurance policies? Okay then. We're withholding payment in case you had another policy. But since you don't we'll take care of those bills now."

WTF? I have to prove once a year that I haven't bought an additional policy?!? I can't think of any reason I would want to shell out more for coverage when the good-enough BCBS EPO policy that I have through my company is already costing me $300 a month.