View more posts about Real Food at Kelly the Kitchen Kop’s Real Food Wednesdays blog carnival! The new “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids” Act signed on December 13 is getting a lot of positive feedback for the changes it will make to the federal school lunch program, but there are some reasons to hold back praise. I’m…
Solstice celebration — we did it!
I’m so excited that I managed to pull together a solstice celebration this year. At noon on the day of, I talked to my friend and let her know another mom from our Holistic Moms chapter was maybe going to make it. Usually I can’t stand last-minute things, but this time is was great to…
Study says kids don’t want sweet cereals
I just learned from Nancy Piho’s My Two-Year-Old Eats Octopus blog about the results of a new study on children and cereal. In a study published in Pediatrics, Yale researchers found that children will eat low-sugar options if they are offered. The gist is “If you serve it, they will eat it,” suggesting that offering…
Gluten-free, dairy-free black bean brownies
On December 13, President Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 to “improve” the school lunch program. Some “Real Food” enthusiasts raise questions about the fact that the school lunch program is even tied to the Agriculture Department, a point Sally Fallon made in her address, “The Politics of School Lunch” at the…
On the bunny slope of tradition-making – Carnival of Natural Parenting
At age 37, I still haven’t learned to ski, and almost five years and two children into parenthood, I can’t quite believe in myself as a real mom of a real family with real traditions of its own. Although a few years of experience in Waldorf education tells me that children thrive on daily rhythms…
Like this: Christmas tree in the house!
It’s been a week since we put up the Christmas tree we cut down at Ticonderoga Farms. It was the first time we’d bought a tree as a married couple (I think) and for sure the first time as parents. But it was something I did yearly as a kid, and I always enjoyed it….
Advent Garden: focusing on beauty
When I walked into the Advent Garden room holding my son’s hand, I felt a rush of senses. The smell of fresh evergreens instantly transported me into a magical wintertime. I felt the profound calm of the darkened room, lit only by one candle in the middle of the spiral of greens and a few candles…
At the pump: credit or debit?
On the night my daughter turns just four months old, why did I just spend 15 minutes to pump three ounces of breastmilk? On one hand, I know this is a full month later than most working moms have already gone back to the office. By now, they are pros, with freezers stocked with milk…
Gluten-free, Dairy-free Pumpkin Quick Bread
“Gluten-free food at Waldorf school” is something of an oxymoron; those places love their wheat! My son brings his own bread and muffins for snack to replace the homemade, whole wheat organic snacks the students and teachers make in the classroom. Last night my husband said to some friends of the boy’s school and his…
Fall leaves
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.
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…