I have a ton I want to write, but since time is scarce, I’ll at least post a few photos from The Time Before the Winds, when colors abounded. Now, unless you are looking at a pear tree, life looks more bare.
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The pregnancy test, one year later
It was exactly a year ago that I found out I was pregnant. I tested two weeks after I’d ovulated and was ambivalent. On one hand, I had been told I was glowing, and I seriously felt buzzy electricity where those cells were dividing. It’s like there was a frequency, and every once in a…
More on healthy food in schools!
My visit to Barcroft Elementary school’s Farm to Table celebration (referenced here last week) is now described in more detail on my column at the Washington Times Communities Family Today. Read “Authors, chefs encourage local, healthy food in schools” and tell me what your school is doing — or not doing — to promote healthy…
Trying to “celebrate calm”
When I first took Rene Hackney’s Positive Discipline class as part of a play and workshop series at Parenting Playgroups, my son wasn’t even two, and he was too cute for words. Just coming off of some intense separation anxiety and just starting to string together sentences, he could do no wrong. It was easy…
Grades are not the thing — musings on (Waldorf) education
There it was in this morning’s Washington Post: the same argument against GPAs and SAT scores as a predictor of success that longtime Waldorf educator Jack Petrash had discussed last week at a talk at Potomac Crescent Waldorf School. In his piece in the Outlook section, “To get the real star students, colleges should look…
Book reading as therapy: Monica Lemoine of Knocked Up, Knocked Down
I had the pleasure two weeks ago of hearing Monica Murphy Lemoine read from her book Knocked Up, Knocked Down: Postcards from the Brink of Parenthood while she was in town for a conference on perinatal and infant death. Let me tell you, Monica is no less engaging in person. Her book was already funny…
Sleeping like a baby?
My poor daughter. She gets schlepped everywhere. Plucked out of bed some mornings for preschool drop-off, with nary a nursing or a diaper change. Then either some appointment I have or preschool pick-up interferes with a nap in the afternoon. I haven’t even tried a mommy and me yoga class or anything for fear of…
(Good?) Food in schools
I was so disappointed to miss last weekend’s Wise Traditions conference sponsored by the Weston A. Price Foundation. The topic was “The Politics of Food;” I looked forward to hearing about “The Politics of School Lunches” and in participating in the food activism panel with WAPF publicist and food blogger extraordinaire, Kimberly Harkte of Hartke…
NWSA panel addresses pregnant women and feminism
I was thrilled to learn that my friend Jessica Clements, birth artist and organizer of last October’s “Perinatal” symposium on birth practices and reproductive rights, was part of a panel this past weekend on “Pregnant Women: The Outsiders in the Women’s Rights Discourse” in Denver at the Annual Conference of the National Women’s Studies Association: …
More sad news about anti-gay bullying
Although I mostly think Erica Jong was wrong-headed in her Wall Street Journal piece last week where she said attachment parenting keeps women in a prison and out of politics (see my response and other links here), I do have to admit that, in choosing to stay home with my children, I am not out…
This IS my activism: response to Erica Jong’s attack on Attachment Parenting
I go away for one weekend to introduce my baby to her grandmother, and the internet explodes with responses to author Erica Jong’s diatribe against attachment parenting in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal. I mostly appreciate the comments of Madeleine Holler on Babble’s Strollerderby in response to Jong’s piece. But a few things strike me as…
Farm to School Week underway!
As I wrote about last week, November 8-12 is Virginia Farm to School week, as made official by the Virginia General Assembly. Today I share more about the efforts in Alexandria and Arlington public schools in my column at the Washington Times Communities Family Today. Click here for my previous post about Alexandria’s George Mason…
Virginia celebrates Farm to School Week — spotlight on Alexandria’s George Mason Elementary
With my son in currently attending a Waldorf preschool that makes all its own food from scratch (from organic ingredients), it’s been too easy for me to ignore what’s going on in public school cafeterias. Next week, November 8-12, 2010 Virginia will celebrate its second Virginia Farm to School Week, part of the greater Farm…
Author to read on miscarriage, stillbirth, and beyond
Monica Murphy Lemoine earlier this year published a “darkly humorous memoir of miscarriage and stillbirth” called Knocked Up, Knocked Down: Postcards of Miscarriage and Misadventure from the Brink of Parenthood. She’ll be reading from and discussing her book at two local Northern Virginia venues later this week. This woman has such a way with words….
Healing the c-section scar
I knew when I went in for my c-section in 2006 that the effects would be lasting, but I only recently realized to what extent. I tend to hold on to emotion through my body, and since the need for a surgical delivery was profoundly disappointing to me, I expected that it would take my…
Walking the talk (to slow down)
There’s so much to report on from the Freedom for Family Wellness Summit. But I have hardly had the time to go through my the messy, sketchy notes I took while my baby girl slept in the sling. And as it turns out, I missed a lot of the conference because it was just too…
Peggy O’Mara at Family Wellness Summit
I promised myself I would not stay up late since I have to get up before sunrise to make it back to Reston for the birth panel at the Freedom for Family Wellness summit. But I also will focus better if I can at least share some pearls of wisdom from Mothering magazine editor Peggy…
Freedom for Family Wellness Summit
Reporting here on this exciting event I’m attending tonight and this weekend! Wellness Summit to Address “Vitalism” and “Conscious Choice” Parents are up against a lot of choices these days. Whether the question is about vaccinations or breastfeeding, co-sleeping or where and how to give birth, today’s buzzword is “informed choice.” As International Chiropractic Pediatric…
Priorities, values, and goals… oh my!
“Priorities” pops up as one of my most used tags because this blog is essentially about my trying to figure out what my priorities are and how to accommodate them when they seem to contradict one another. Or when one supposed priority gets bumped off its seat for something I don’t claim to care about…
Blog Action Day: Water!
This Blog Action Day post addresses flouride, plastic bottles, and other issues of safety and environmental awareness related to water.