Attachment parenting gurus have a lot of great ideas for parents. In an ideal world, the vast majority of those ideas make perfect sense. But I don't live in an ideal world. I live in my world, which runs amok with chaos, exhaustion, too little time and money, and too many obligations. I have read attachment parenting books, and having read them, I must admit that I found 20 percent of the information to be helpful. The remaining 80 percent of the information left me a twittering gob of self-loathing, guilty goo. In fact, I’ve got half a mind to go home to set that book on fire just to watch it burn.

The entire idea of attachment parenting is a good one. The basic rules are: Respond to your child’s cues in a sensitive and nurturing manner. Pay attention, and respond appropriately. I can not find a single thing wrong with those concepts. Things start to get tricky when a person delves into the specific methodologies of baby-wearing, co-sleeping, and breastfeeding on demand, and how one might or might not accommodate these things into their lifestyle.

Maybe I am overly sensitive, but I know it’s not all in my head….. I mean, come on. How would YOU complete the following phrases? Breast feeding is good, formula feeding is_______. Stay-at-home moms are best, mother who work outside the home are:________. Family bed is ideal, solitary crib sleeping is ______. Do you see where I am going?

Bad, worst, and sub-par. Thus went my own inner dialogue in relation to my mothering abilities. I started out with the best intentions, but soon after my daughter was born, things started to go awry. My breasts didn’t work properly and Maggie never latched on. I couldn’t hack it, and I threw in the towel on breastfeeding altogether. About the same time, I realized I wouldn’t sleep a wink if I continued to wake up every time my baby stirred, and I moved her to her crib in her room. I had to go back to work in order to pay the mortgage. I stopped pumping breast milk and started dropping her off at my in-laws every morning.

I was a failure, and my daughter was going to be permanently stunted because of it. She would never reach her full potential. And it was all because I was a selfish, selfish woman with broken boobs who chose to sleep when I could have been nurturing my infant. Boy howdy, there was a special place in Hell for me. Not only that, but if my moral fiber were stronger, I would be willing to sacrifice my worldly possessions and status symbols and make our household run on half the income we had previously required to keep the machine going. The common denominator in all these failures: Me myself and I.

It occurred to me that the drive to achieve the American dream and contribute to my family’s economic needs while maintaining some semblance of mental health, was directly at odds with the quest to be the ideal, perfectly responsive attachment-parenting mother. The only way to rectify the situation would be to live in poverty, or to win the lottery, and / or leave my husband for some kind of a sugar daddy so I could stay at home in relative economic comfort.

Americans are now in a place where two incomes are required to make ends meet for most middle class families. At the same time, mothers get the screws put to them for every single misstep. How the Hell does that jibe?

It seems that as mothers, sometimes our choices are reduced to the following: Shitty, and crappy. Pick your prize!

Where did we get so far off the mark? Why all the pressure? Are we confused about how much control we actually have over making our children intelligent and healthy? I suspect that’s part of it. A great interview with Angela Barron McBride over at mothers movement really got me thinking.

Here lies the issue of “Hyperparenting�. It is my belief that we give ourselves WAY too much credit for the success or failure of our children. And it’s not just my personal self-centeredness and laziness talking here. Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, uses the word- hyperparenting - to describe the seemingly American phenomenon of micromanagement in parenting. Parents are deluding themselves into overestimating their impact on their children’s development and success or failure in sports, academia and musical aptitude.

This hyperparenting phenomenon can be attributed to unmitigated denial. It’s not just a river in Egypt people. We want to believe we are special, and our children are special, and the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of us are hopelessly average. It’s hard to accept, but really, you either have it, or you don’t. It’s unlikely that Abraham Lincoln’s parents pushed him to join junior toastmasters. Do you think Bob Dylan’s mommy took him to early childhood education music class? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Genius is genius despite the circumstances. The same is true for mediocrity. There are varying degrees of mediocrity but all that leaves us with is a whole lot of light gray mediocrity or dark gray mediocrity. And a few geniuses that were born that way.

So what, may you ask, is my ever-loving point already? I am tired of feeling like a failure! I bet you are too! It is my opinion that mothers judge each other so harshly because we are all ashamed of our own parental shortcomings. That shame is intensified because we love our children so much that we can hardly bear the thought of them suffering because of our own inadequacies. And hey, at least I am not screwing up my kid as much as that lady who makes her three year old eat naked in the sink so they won’t make a mess, right? Right! I bet she didn’t breastfeed either!

I am NOT saying that it’s okay to stop trying. As people who chose to bring children into the world, it is our job to do our very best to give them a loving, safe platform from which to grow and thrive. We owe that to our children. Every child deserves to be loved and nurtured and supported physically and emotionally. Sadly, not every child gets those things, and I would love nothing more than to change that sad fact. At the same time, I want women to stop feeling so much pressure to be perfect. I want mothers to stop torturing themselves over their decisions and circumstances. I want mothers to stop torturing eachother.

When Maggie was tiny, I became depressed because I could not distinguish her cries. I wanted to be a good, attached parent. I wanted to be responsive, but sometimes I just couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. I was convinced my failure to figure out what ailed her was some kind of defect on my part. I was missing the good mother gene. Plus all that stuff I mentioned earlier about me being self-centered and materialistic and lazy. I was wrecking my baby with my own inadequacy.

A year and a half later I can sit in a room 20 feet away and know by her cry that she just dropped her pacifier over the side of her crib. I wasn’t always able to do that. I didn’t learn that in an ECFE class. I didn’t read it in a book. I learned it by being her mother for 18 months. I learned it by spending time with my daughter and getting to know her. I wish someone had told me that formula when Maggie was an infant. I might have relaxed a little more in those foggy newborn weeks, and actually enjoyed my infant instead of cowering in self doubt and insecurity. You become a good mother through time and experience and dedication. You become a good mother because you care. You don’t have to be perfect. You become a good-enough mother. And a good-enough mother is good enough for me. I am fairly certain it will be good enough for my daughter too.

Continue reading "The Good Enough Mother" »

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

When did you start blogging and why? Or Talk about your blog. What can I learn about you in under 5 minutes?

I started blogging in May of 2005. At the time, I was feeling a little bit lost in my new role as a mother, and I was looking for a form of expression to help me feel like my old self. Writing for for my personal blog My Dog Harriet, was perfect because it allowed a forum to write about things relating to motherhood and the millions of issues that go along with it. In addition, I had the freedom to write posts that didn't even mention motherhood. My blog is a big mix of personal tales, un-reconciled childhood issues (like having only one pair of pants for 2 years), the joys and tribulations of motherhood, and some alter-ego posts that allow me to let my freak flag fly.

Who do you read every day, rain or shine?

I work full time outside the home, so it's hard to keep up with everyone, although I would love to. I read my fellow mommybloggers Jenny and Jenn, Sweetney, Finslippy, Baleful Regards, Wanna-cookie, and of course Dooce, but I have to read her at home because she has been banned by the browser at work. Ha. She's a dangerous woman, that Heather.
I hate to name names because I am leaving people out who I love, and then blogging becomes horrifically like those 5th grade cliques which I hate. As someone who was usually chosen last for kickball, I am very sensitive to that kind of thing, and I am loathe to perpetuate it.

Why did you choose to share that piece of yourself in a photograph?

Because it's who I am on the inside, always. A homely kid with a bad haircut and one pair of pants, who was occasionally terrorized on the school-bus by the mean girls. I suppose every girl was terrorized to some degree by other girls. Unless of course, you WERE a mean girl, and if you were a mean girl, you probably suck and I don't even want to know you. Ha. Actually a couple of my closest friends are recovering mean-girls. But they are totally rehabilitated. So it's O.K. I have shown them the error of their ways.

How would you describe your writing style?

Run on sentences. Unpolished and occasionally irreverent.

What don't you write about? Anything considered a no-no in your book?

I don't discuss much about my marriage, or my family. I learned the hard way that it's unfair to air beefs with your loved ones on the internet. Particularly when you have not had the kahunas to deal directly with the person on your shit-list. I was also raised Catholic, so I really never write about sex. Fornication, even in marriage, is shameful and bad. VERY BAD. I have no idea how that child even GOT here!

So soon we're going to meet each other at BlogHer. Important question. How do you party?

Good question! I love to get into some nice red wine and some good conversation. I also like to smoke cigarettes when I have a have a few cocktails. (ducking) Don't judge me.

What is your favorite thing that you wrote? What got a strong reaction from readers?

There are two that come to mind immediately. One is an essay called "The good enough mother" and another is one called "Yeah, my baby wears a helmet, you got a problem with that?" I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 10:12 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

My mind is a dangerous thing to leave unattended. Some people enjoy a few hours of silence, but not I. I was raised in a small house with a large family. Total chaos is where I am comfortable. Excessive solitude sends my fragile mind right over the edge to koo-koo town. Any absence of external chaos and distraction tends to draw the crazy inward, right into the dank recesses of my brain. Too much introspection sends my mind swirling into an endless abyss of its own internal chaos and distraction.

Left alone to my own devices, I get trapped in the mazes of my own head, and the little gerbil that runs my brain starts to get confused and runs in all directions. It explores every possible reason and outcome of any given situation and turns around at each dead end of the maze to try a new path until it, like me, ends up exhausted, withered, and desperate.

Silence draws out my Id. My Id suffers from chronically low self-esteem and anger management issues. Once roused, my Id systematically clobbers my Ego and my Superego into submission. My Id is a mean-spirited dominatrix. My Id wears leather chaps and is one heartless bitch. She can wither my carefully cultivated garden of self-esteem with one glancing blow.

Case in point: Saturday afternoon.

I loathe the term Golf widow, because admitting that you are one indicates that you buy-in to the term. It’s like accepting the fact the you are left deserted multiple times weekly by your mate. Admitting that my husband prefers to hit a small white ball around an overly-fertilized, flat, developed former wetland over spending time with his family is not exactly something I want to shout from the rooftops.

Yet, there I was, all alone again on a beautiful sunny Saturday. My husband Jim mentioned on his way out the door to spend five hours chasing a small white ball with a stick, that we might want to barbeque that evening with friends. I love me some nice weather and an evening with friends. I eagerly hopped into the car and headed for Costo to gather up the accoutrements.

My get-togethers tend to grow exponentially. We have a lot of great friends who I adore, and more often than not, a small get-together turns into a large get together, which is fine by me. Chaos is my friend, and coming from a large family, “the more the merrier� is my motto. Planning for this possibility, I picked up enough food to feed a small army. I returned from Costco with a few pounds of chicken, potato salad, a fruit plate, 8 cans of baked beans, a wagonload of buns, and a small trampoline (damn you Costco, for exploiting my weakness for the impulse purchase).

I put Maggie down for her afternoon nap, and went out to enjoy some rare, coveted time with a magazine in the sun. As I settled into my lounge chair, a thought snuck up on me. I realized that no one had returned my calls from the morning to verify their attendance at our barbeque. Harumph. As someone who is not afraid to call and pester people, I decided to try a few people again. I soon learned that the couple we had planned to get together with had made other plans. It seems some wires had been crossed at some point along the way. That kind of thing just happens every once in a while. No big deal, right?

I made a few more phone calls to our friends and neighbors. It was a beautiful day, and I was done with my cursed detox diet, and wanted to enjoy a nice meal and some good conversation with my favorite people. I smiled and dialed, and got one “no� after another. Everyone I knew had plans or was heading out of town. Now, mind you, I am pretty good with handling rejection in small doses. But after the 5th phone call and subsequent “no�, my mind started to go to strange places.

Had I offended someone recently? Was it some kind of conspiracy? Had I committed some major social faux-pas that had turned me into a pariah? I recalled that when I had been informed of our friend’s change in plans, Jim and I had awkwardly not been invited along. Not only that, but we had not been invited to do anything by anyone. AT ALL. Everyone had made plans. Without us! Why had we been excluded? Was it because I suck? God, do I suck? Was it because work full time? Due to my over-packed schedule and my inability to make play dates with my friends who work inside the home, was I labeled a has-been? Had my friends who don’t have children yet labeled me a distracted bore?

I became gripped by anxiety. I was defeated and deflated. I grabbed one of the100 or so perrier waters I had purchased in bulk in anticipation for my imaginary Barbeque with my imaginary friends. I sat on the couch and sipped my water and stared.

My fearful thoughts rambled on. I wondered how I allowed myself to get to this place. Have I really changed that much? Had the stresses of motherhood eaten away what personality I had left? Had my unhappiness with my job seeped into other areas of my life? Was I an angry, miserable bore? Were my friends avoiding me because of my bad attitude and my tendency to express unsolicited opinions after a couple glasses of wine? Do I gossip too much? Am I really a mean-spirited person? Do I talk about my child too much? Do I ask enough questions? Had I taken my bad habit of taking people for granted too far, and actually burned bridges? OH MY GOD ALL I DO IS TALK ABOUT MYSELF! NO WONDER NO ONE WANTS TO COME OVER FOR A BARBECUE!!!!

Then the gerbil in my head tried a new route, with my leather-clad dominatrix “Id� snapping encouragement behind his scampering feet with her bullwhip. I began to berate myself for being disappointed. For the love of God, all this means is that a lot of people made plans this weekend. It has nothing to do with me. Not everything has something to do with me. What am I? The center of the universe for crying out loud? GOD I AM SO AFFECTED! WHY AM I SO EASILY AFFECTED? Then again, maybe it IS me… Oh God! I am so affected that no one wants to come over! How do I just start over? Do I need to go out and get new friends? How can I make amends? How had I let things get so bad? Why hadn’t I seen this coming?

Defeated, I wandered around the house and stopped to open the fridge to view its contents. Twelve pounds of potato salad sat on the shelf and mocked me, along with the 24 organic chicken sausages.

I was jolted out of my pity party and neurotic angst by the telephone. The phone. It was ringing. Holy crap the phone was ringing!

It was my neighbor Jill, returning my call to ask if we wanted to get together that evening. Thank GOD. She asked if I wanted to order pizza for the kids, and I was too embarrassed to tell her I had enough food to feed a small army at my house.

An hour later and still emotionally wobbly, I brought Maggie over to the neighbor’s house to play. We ordered pizza, and proceeded to have a wonderful time. Jim came home from golfing, wondering why I was at the neighbors, and why the neighbors weren’t over at our house along with the rest of our friends. I shrugged my shoulders and said “a lot of people had plans tonight…no big deal…..Oh, and YOU ARE NEVER GOLFING EVER, EVER AGAIN.�

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

My daughter Maggie is an Amazon. The child hasn’t been on the growth charts since she was a newborn. She is 19 months and she is the size of a three year old. I have to look no farther than my size eleven feet to figure out where she got it. If my feet don’t convince me, I can then look at my husband Jim’s size 12 longfellows for further evidence of the tall genes in her DNA. I am five feet nine inches, and my baby’s daddy is six feet four inches. We are not small people. And that’s okay, because really, only outhouses have small foundations.

I wonder if it’s easier for mothers of normal sized children to cope with the alarming rate at which toddlers shed their baby-ness. I feel her baby characteristics evaporating a little more every day. Her thighs no longer have those darling precious rolls of baby fat. Her pooh-belly is disappearing. She wears pigtails. I handed her a bottle of milk this morning and she looked at me and said “thank you!� as clear as day. I wonder if I would have an easier time of things if she didn’t grow quite so fast. If she were itty-bitty instead of absolutely ginormous.

Last night I got together with the women in my Bunco group (affectionately referred to as “drunko� by the neighborhood dads) and the hostess held her three month old baby girl in her lap most of the evening as she rolled the dice. Her little baby had on one of those fleece sleep sacks, just like the ones I used to put Maggie to sleep in. Later on, I peeked in her nursery. She was in her crib, zonked out on her back with her arms spread out and her head off to the side, just like my Maggie used to. Memories of my baby days came rushing back, and I found myself overcome with wistfulness. It just went by so FAST. I never got a chance to catch my breath. I want to do it over. I want to take my time. Pay closer attention.

When Maggie was a newborn I was a nervous wreck. I felt like the worlds biggest fake, because I had no clue what I was doing, and the adjustment to motherhood was a difficult one. I felt guilty for not feeling more of a connection with my daughter, and I wondered if I would ever feel like a good mother. Things are so much easier now. I have confidence. Maggie has helped me to learn how to be a good mother, and I would not change a single solitary hair on that child’s head. She is my sweet Amazon baby and I love her more than I ever realized was possible. I love her so much it startles me.

I read once that when you have children, the days are long and the years are short. That is as true a statement as I have ever heard. I know there are so many firsts in her future. Right now is tomorrow’s wistful memory, and I try so hard to pay attention… to not miss anything.

Seeing that baby girl in her little fleece sleep sack made me realize how far we have already come. Part victory, part painful goodbye. Looking on the bright side, I suppose I get more sleep now than I did then. I miss that little baby, but I look at my daughter as she runs across the lawn, and squeals as the dogs lick her face, and I know this is going to be the best summer ever. And anyways, she will always be my sweet little Amazon baby. Always and forever.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

My daughter Maggie is an Amazon. The child hasn’t been on the growth charts since she was a newborn. She is 19 months and she is the size of a three year old. I have to look no farther than my size eleven feet to figure out where she got it. If my feet don’t convince me, I can then look at my husband Jim’s size 12 longfellows for further evidence of the tall genes in her DNA. I am five feet nine inches, and my baby’s daddy is six feet four inches. We are not small people. And that’s okay, because really, only outhouses have small foundations.

I wonder if it’s easier for mothers of normal sized children to cope with the alarming rate at which toddlers shed their baby-ness. I feel her baby characteristics evaporating a little more every day. Her thighs no longer have those darling precious rolls of baby fat. Her pooh-belly is disappearing. She wears pigtails. I handed her a bottle of milk this morning and she looked at me and said “thank you!� as clear as day. I wonder if I would have an easier time of things if she didn’t grow quite so fast. If she were itty-bitty instead of absolutely ginormous.

Last night I got together with the women in my Bunco group (affectionately referred to as “drunko� by the neighborhood dads) and the hostess held her three month old baby girl in her lap most of the evening as she rolled the dice. Her little baby had on one of those fleece sleep sacks, just like the ones I used to put Maggie to sleep in. Later on, I peeked in her nursery. She was in her crib, zonked out on her back with her arms spread out and her head off to the side, just like my Maggie used to. Memories of my baby days came rushing back, and I found myself overcome with wistfulness. It just went by so FAST. I never got a chance to catch my breath. I want to do it over. I want to take my time. Pay closer attention.

When Maggie was a newborn I was a nervous wreck. I felt like the worlds biggest fake, because I had no clue what I was doing, and the adjustment to motherhood was a difficult one. I felt guilty for not feeling more of a connection with my daughter, and I wondered if I would ever feel like a good mother. Things are so much easier now. I have confidence. Maggie has helped me to learn how to be a good mother, and I would not change a single solitary hair on that child’s head. She is my sweet Amazon baby and I love her more than I ever realized was possible. I love her so much it startles me.

I read once that when you have children, the days are long and the years are short. That is as true a statement as I have ever heard. I know there are so many firsts in her future. Right now is tomorrow’s wistful memory, and I try so hard to pay attention… to not miss anything.

Seeing that baby girl in her little fleece sleep sack made me realize how far we have already come. Part victory, part painful goodbye. Looking on the bright side, I suppose I get more sleep now than I did then. I miss that little baby, but I look at my daughter as she runs across the lawn, and squeals as the dogs lick her face, and I know this is going to be the best summer ever. And anyways, she will always be my sweet little Amazon baby. Always and forever.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 4:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Mommybloggers: Asha, The mommybloggers are so pleased to have a chance to feature you. Thank you so much for sharing your talents with us.

One word comes to mind after having searched out your work. Busy. You seem to be very busy. And also very accomplished. To name a few of your credentials: You have published several books including, FrontPage 2003 for Dummies, Do It Yourself Web Publishing with Word, ABC’s of Pagemill 2, and Dummies 101: FrontPage 98. You’ve contributed to several print and online publications: Hip Mama (A personal favorite), Organic Family Magazine, Literary Mama, Mothers Movement Online, Mamazine and Imperfect Parent. You blog at Ashaland and Urban Mamas. The icing on the cake is the blog you created and edit: Parent Hacks. To quote my late grandmother, Eegads! Where do you find the time?

Asha: Where, indeed! First of all, my tech books were published before my kids were born (my son is 6 ½ and my daughter is almost 3). The only tech writing I’ve done post-kid has been to revise FrontPage for Dummies every couple of years. I didn’t start writing about motherhood in earnest until my son was in preschool. Before that I jotted down the odd essay or journal entry when I could find the time and brainpower (both were in short supply during the early years).

Now, I write in the evenings, on weekends while my husband hangs out with the kids and I’m off-duty at the café (free wifi!), or when the kids are visiting their grandparents. Blogging is ideal because it’s one of the few types of writing that lends itself to 3-15 minute chunks of time. My computer’s in the kitchen, so if I’m lucky I can dash out a few posts while dinner’s cooking, or first thing in the morning.

Mommybloggers: Asha, we want to learn a little more about you. Where did you grow up? What kind of a kid were you?

Asha:I grew up in the suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area. I was an innocent, happy kid – uncomplicated childhood, friends in the neighborhood, school down the street. I graduated high school in 1986 and went to college at UC Berkeley. The transition was tough – moving from a bland, conservative suburb into the intense, urban, intellectual environment at Cal forced me to develop a strong sense of myself, fast. Hard to believe I’d only moved 30 minutes away from my hometown.

Once I hit my stride at Berkeley, I loved it there. The stimulation, the conversations, the food! I majored in sociology, which appealed to my analytical nature. In part, my readings about social theory influenced my tendency to think about motherhood from an individual and a social perspective.

Mommybloggers: How long have you been writing? Where did this all start?

Asha:I’ve been writing since I was little. I was always scribbling little butterfly-embellished books of poetry and stories for my parents. My first published piece appeared in Children’s Digest in the late 70s: a poem called “The Night Before Hanukkah.�

Mommybloggers: You have written several technical guidebooks. Have you always had a talent for the technical? How did you break into the how-to for Dummies market?

Asha:Talent for the technical…hmmm. Funny you should ask about that! I have no formal technical background -- I’ve just been using computers long enough to feel comfortable with them.

My tech writing career was a happy accident. My husband introduced me to the Web before most people knew about it; Mosaic (the first graphical Web browser) had just been released, and Yahoo! was a page of simple text links. We learned HTML and decided to start a Web design business. I use the term “Web design� very loosely; few companies even knew what Web sites were, and those who did had no idea what one should look like. We figured we’d do ok as the only other “Web designer� listed at Yahoo! charged $5 per hyperlink, and we included hyperlinks for free!

We designed a couple of Web sites, and my husband, who knew I loved to write, suggested I contact some tech publishers and propose an HTML how-to book. In a stunning display of shortsightedness, I replied, “Honey, who besides your geeky friends would ever want to learn HTML?�

Fortunately I put together a book proposal anyway, which I sent out to five publishers. Two responded, and one eventually signed me to write a book. The result was Do It Yourself Web Publishing with Word, which sold almost nothing but established me as a writer. More importantly, my editor and I developed a great friendship, and we went on to work on other projects together. She later took a job with the publisher of the For Dummies series, and gave me the heads-up that they needed an author for FrontPage For Dummies. I jumped into the running for that title, and got it. It’s now in its fifth edition.

Mommybloggers: Can we expect to see more technical writing from you?

Asha:Not much. I’d like to concentrate on writing about parenting and domestic life.

Mommybloggers: You describe how your transformation to motherhood also transformed the way you write in your essay published in your essay “Exposure�. Tell us a little more about how becoming a mother changed the way you write?

Asha:My tales of motherhood are the first public bits of personal writing I’ve done. I’ve tried to be as honest as I can about my tumultuous journey into parenthood, while respecting my family’s privacy.

Also, writing – especially blogging – about motherhood has turned what was a solitary activity into a conversation. This, more than anything else, inspires me to keep it up. I have been overwhelmed by the compassion, intelligence and bravery of other mothers who are willing to speak up.

Mommybloggers:How do you balance your desire to write honestly with your desire to protect the privacy of your family? Does it get any easier with time and experience?

Asha:I try to keep the spotlight trained on myself. I also use pseudonyms for my kids, both in print and online.

I imagine the issue of privacy will only get more complicated as my kids get older, learn to read, and eventually go online. I’ll share my essays with them, and run future material by them to be sure they’re comfortable with it. It’s a tricky line to negotiate -- I don’t want my family to have veto power over my writing -- but I also think it’s only fair to get everyone’s side of the story.

Mommybloggers: Your essay "the Blogging Mom Clique received a lot of attention. What prompted you to write that?

Asha:The essay started as a post I wrote up for fun one night. I thought it would be fun to play around with the image of a clique as most women have dealt with cliques at one time or another. My post wasn’t a commentary on how a few people get most of the traffic (which is what many people are talking about when they refer to “blogging cliques�), but about how many of the new mom blogs I came across seemed slanted toward the “rougher� persona of some of the popular blogs. That persona didn’t fit me, so I wrote about what that felt like.

I ended up expanding on the post in an essay for Mothers Movement Online. I wanted to show that there really is no such thing as a blogging mom clique. Without a publishing establishment making market-driven decisions about what constitutes “good� or “successful� writing, blogging has created some of the most democratic writing there is.

Mommybloggers: Do you think the climate for mommybloggers has become any more diverse or welcoming since that essay was published?

Asha:It’s always been welcoming. Who’s keeping anyone from starting a blog? As long as you ignore the traffic numbers, and say what you want to say how you want to say it, there’s nothing to stop you.

Mommybloggers: By the way, the mommybloggers have a plan to transform you into a hard-drinking cussing mommyblogger at the BlogHer Conference. But don’t worry. You will be fully rehabilitated before returning home to your family. In all seriousness, though, of the three editors at mommybloggers only one of us (yours truly) swears with any regularity on her personal blog. We like to think that there will always be an audience for great writing, with or without cursing.

Asha:I’m partial to mojitos, margaritas and other fruity girl drinks, in case you’re buying, God damnit. See? I’m getting there, but any assistance you may be able to provide would be greatly appreciated.

Of course, I agree with you about the ever-present audience for great writing. There are so many strong voices out there. I’ve become such a blogging evangelist – I’m sure my friends are sick of hearing about it already.

Mommybloggers: You seem to have found a great medium in blogging with your personal site Ashaland, and your collaborative idea and advice website Parent Hacks. Tell us about the different approaches you take with your respective sites.

Asha:Ashaland is my own little queen-dom, where I stash away shiny bits of information I collect and want to keep or talk about. No big plan – Ashaland is like a shoebox into which I throw things I want to mull over or share.

Parent Hacks, on the other hand, was always intended to be a resource for people and a place to share experiences and generate conversation. It’s not about me so much as it’s about the common ground we all share as parents muddling our way through.

Mommybloggers: You seem to have found a niche with Parent Hacks. How did you come up with the concept? What has surprised you the most about that venture?

Asha:The “hacks� concept was inspired by the Hacks series of books by O’Reilly (http://hacks.oreilly.com), of which my husband, Rael, was the series editor. As such, we’d been talking about “hacks� in the tech sense for quite a while. The idea for Parent Hacks was born in a little café in Amsterdam last September. Thanks to frequent flyer miles, grandparents, and an alignment of the planets, I was able to tag along with Rael on a business trip there. As often happens when I have a day to myself and time to wander the streets, my mind starts racing. Rael and I were eating lunch and tossing around all sorts of random ideas, and I said: “You know, O’Reilly should publish a book of parenting hacks!� From there, it was but a short hop to imagine such a project as a blog, where people could comment on posts and suggest their own hacks.

Two things have surprised me about Parent Hacks:

First, I’m amazed by the response. People are so excited about the site and have jumped right in commenting and sharing ideas. I feel like I’ve stumbled onto this amazing group of thoughtful, smart, generous parents – people I respect and enjoy hanging out with.

Second, I’m surprised that my readers (from what I can tell) are pretty evenly split between moms and dads. Fathers want to talk about parenting, and something about the gender-neutral vibe at Parent Hacks makes both moms and dads feel comfortable speaking up.

Mommybloggers: Asha, what direction do you envision your writing taking in the next few years?

Asha:I have lots of ideas for expanding and deepening Parent Hacks. My daughter’s heading off to preschool this Fall, so I’m hoping the extra time will make that possible. I also want to continue writing longer essays and articles with an eye toward magazines and anthologies. Keep your fingers crossed!

Mommybloggers: And here are the questions we subject all of our featured bloggers to (With apologies to Bernard Pivot and Inside the Actors Studio):

1. What is your favorite parent related word?

Tushie. I think this Yiddish term meaning “little butt� qualifies as a parent-related word. Only kids have tushies, right? “Mommy’s gonna wipe your poopy tushie now!� Doesn’t work so well with adults. “Ignore Len. He’s a pompous tushie,� or, “Honey! Get your tushie over here and close the refrigerator!� doesn’t carry the proper authority.

2. What is your least favorite parent related word?

Can I choose a parenting-related phrase? That would have to be “Use your words.� I use this phrase myself because I haven’t come up with a better alternative, but I always feel like a doofus when I say it.

3. What is your favorite creative censored curse word used around children?

I don’t have one. But something my mom used to say still makes me laugh: “Jiminy Christmas!�

4. What is your favorite hiding place within your home when you need to get away from it all?

My back yard.

5. What hiding place have you been found in too often and can no longer use?

The bathroom (the classic unusable hiding place for a parent).

6. If Oprah exists, what would you like to hear her say when you arrive at the Oprah Winfrey show when she features the Mommybloggers?

“And now, I’d like to welcome back to the show my friends Jenn, Meghan and Jenny, and their interns Gwyneth Paltrow and Gwen Stefani. Ladies and Gentlemen, give a big Oprah welcome to…the Mommybloggers!�

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night I brought dinner to my friend Brooke, who has a broken foot. Brooke has an 11 month old son and has been chasing him around like a one-legged pirate, except she does in fact, have two legs. One of them is just covered in a huge clunky cast. Thus, the step-CLUNK, Step-CLUNK pirate effect. But without the eye patch.

So we brought Brooke dinner and stayed for a visit. Maggie has been talking up a storm lately. She parrots back darn near everything you say. Maggie has also become fairly willful, which toddlers are prone to do. Being in that strange twilight zone between willfulness and decipherable sentence structure, it is at times, difficult to determine what it is exactly, that she wants. Often she wants me to do something that the current circumstances prohibit, for example, picking her up and carrying to her room so she can view the items displayed on the top of her dresser for the infinitieth time in an hour. Like say, for example, when I am sautéing something on a hot stove, and she maneuvers her way between me and the hot stove, wailing frantically as she pushes me back with all of her freakishly strong toddler might. In addition, she expresses her utter despair by wailing at the top of her lungs while big fat tears spring from her eyes and her gaping mouth takes over two thirds of her face. When this happens, and I am unable to fulfill her demands, I typically pick her up, give her a hug and say “I’m Sorry! I’m sorry honey! I can’t do that right now. I know. I’m sorry.�

Last night while we were eating and trying to carry on a semblance of an adult conversation, Maggie began one of her wailing episodes. My lack of response to her demands was clearly not cutting the mustard. She began the meltdown dance, little feet stomping frantically. “I Sah-Weeeeee� she sobbed over and over again. “I SAH-WEEEEE!!!!� It was quite possibly the most heart wrenching display I had ever seen. “I SAH-WEEEEEEE!� she cried and stammered as I tried to calm her down.

My child, bereft, seemingly apologizing to me for her own wailing. She was not really apologizing to me, mind you. Just parroting back the empathetic response I typically give to her, but the end result gave a freaky, bereft, abused child effect. I am thinking of teaching her to add “mommy dearest� to the end.

Can you picture it?

Maggie falls off of her tricyle and is bleeding profusely. Me “NOT NOW! MOMMY’S WATCHING HER STORIES!!!!�

Maggie wailing: “I SAH-WEEEE!�

Maggie, scrubbing the floor with powder cleanser in a desperate frenzy as I screech and pummel her with a wire hanger. I snatch the can from her small hand, and beat her about the head with it, streams of cleanser fly through the air. “I SAH-WEEEEEEE MOMMY!!!!!�

Maggie handing me her report card with an A- while I tower over her, glaring. “I SAH-WEEEEE Mommy!�

Perhaps I should come up with a new way of expressing my empathy when she has a meltdown. Like “I rebuke thee, Mother!�. Or maybe I will just substitute “It’s okay� for “I’m sorry�. It’s not quite as entertaining, but it’s less likely to send child protective services to my house for a visit.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Why, oh why, for the love of all that is scared and holy, does the world insist on changing things that are perfectly good just as they are? I take is as a personal affront when the landscape around me changes without my categorical say-so. The burgeoning condo explosion in Minneapolis renders me positively unhinged. Someone decided it would be great to tear down my elementary school and build a new one, and I subsequently careened into a tizzy from which I have still not yet recovered. I yearn to find who is responsible for the offense and offer them a piece of my traumatized mind. How dare they alter the landscape of MY CHILDHOOD! How inconsiderate. I mean, really.

It’s the lack of warning I find so unsettling. If someone had told me my elementary school was being torn down, I could have taken pictures or something. I could have made a scrap-book (I have never in my life composed a scrap-book). But NOOOO. Now it’s too late. I discover these things after the fact. I drive down the street and come face to face with the new structure and the shock of a transformed landscape, and I am supposed to just shrug my shoulders and accept it. It’s not that easy for me. When I am left with only what memories remain in the not-so-reliable recesses of my brain, I worry that I won’t be able to conjure them up ever again. Memories like the smell of the old lunchroom (sour milk) or the monkey bars I used to do penny-drops from. They were painted green and badly chipped. I worry that those memories will disappear forever.

Last night Jim and I had a hankering for Ice Cream, so I made a run to the local DQ. I perused the menu and noticed that the Mister Misty is no more. Mr. Misty is DEAD with a capital “D�. Deader than a door nail. In its place is a totally extreme concoction called “Arctic Rush� which begs the question, what the Hell happened to Mister Misty, and why did no one consult me before knocking him off? Mr. Misty was perfect just the way he was.

When I was 9 or 10 years old I would scrounge change from my mother’s purse (sorry Mom – I had a short-lived stint as a delinquent that ended promptly when you said to all four of us in the back-seat of the car “someone has been taking money from my purse. I think I know who it is and I would like it to stop�. At the time I slouched and avoided eye contact, but 27 years later I can admit IT WAS ME!!!). I would take my pilfered coins and ride my bike to Dairy Queen where I would order a Mister Misty. Usually a red one. Then I would go down the street to Fanny Farmer and order a small bag of gummy bears, and sometimes some red licorice bits. Then I would eat my illegally acquired contraband treats in solitude and ride my bike home with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I attribute the nausea more to shame than to sugar. It was about that time that I learned that things taste much better when the acquisition of said things does not involve stealing from your mother. Shame really has a way of sucking enjoyment out of an experience. That lesson stuck with me.

So really, Mister Misty taught me that stealing is wrong, and that nothing good can come of dishonesty and general sneakiness. And Mister Misty is dead. You can see why I am so upset now can’t you!

Why does everything need to be “rush� or gush� or “huge� or “tiny� or otherwise totally insane and extreme? Some marketing executive somewhere figured out that as parents, we will accept nothing less than shockingly bright colored, reminiscently fruit-flavored, edible treats that go way beyond just tasting good. Those edible treats must be so totally extreme that they will make our children’s eyes roll back into their heads whilst catapulting their brains down the rabbit hole and into another dimension. All for an economical price that can be purchased in bulk. Now THAT’S extreme value.

Back in my day, we entertained ourselves by combining Two liters of Rondo, Sunkist, Dr. Pepper and Mountain Dew and calling it “suicide�. We felt quite riotous and rebellious drinking our brown-colored carbonated concoctions. And "suicide" was just a name. No one actually died. The negative outcome was limited to a nap-inducing sugar crash. At least we used a little creativity. Another game we played involved combining liquids found in the pantry (think liquid smoke, vanilla and peppermint extract) and daring each other to sip it. That was also pretty extreme. Extremely gross. And we were all GIRLS! I shudder to think what boys did for fun.

Arctic Rush. Fruit Gushers. X Treme Jello. So that’s what the kids are doing these days. Oh, my dear Mister Misty. If someone had the manners to ask my permission before they aced you, you’d still be around. Had I known Mister Misty was being laid to rest, I could have toasted his departure into the afterlife. Alas, it was not to be. Goodbye Mr. Misty. I miss you already.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 5:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

When my parents brought their second child home from the hospital (which happened to be me), they walked up the front steps of our home and found an irrefutably clear statement from my older sister Julie regarding her feelings about being the big sister. Julie pooped in the middle of the front porch. She was only two and a half years old, but had apparently mastered the concept of how to communicate metaphorically. She didn’t use the words “like or “as�, but rather, a giant pile of toddler doodie, to effectively communicate her feelings about sharing her parents. Using the power of fecal sculpture, she said “this is precisely what I think of you people and that ridiculous funny-looking creature you insist on bringing into my house.�

I think she felt a little jilted. I can’t blame her. I didn’t sign up for my place in the family order either. But hey, I am here, and that's a good thing. I think.

When I was young and stupid, as opposed to being grown-up and stupid, I was sure I would end up with a gaggle of kids. As I grew older, reality set in. I had a hard time juggling life before I became a parent. I currently have a hard time juggling life with one child. How on God's green earth am I going to throw another kid into the mix? Who do I think I am anyways? In addition, that whole childbirth thing was really a drag. I came home from the hospital with a third degree tear and crippling baby blues, and said “NEVER AGAIN. One is going to have to be enough.� As my daughter would say: “Aah-dun!� I was glad to be off of that scary ride, thank you very much.

I suspect that any woman who says she loves to be pregnant is lying through her teeth. Either that, or she possesses a gene that I just never got. I am the kind of person who would just as soon skip the pregnancy and childbirth part and start out of the gates with a 6 month-old.

I don’t want to go through it all again. It was exhausting the first time around, and I am 2 years older and more decrepit now.

But there, in the back of my mind, is a niggling that won’t go away. I grew up second in line out of four sisters. I like to say that I got so shortchanged, I even had to share the title of middle child.

However, for every pity-party I threw for having to share resources, money, clothes, and my parents attention (which happened on a near-daily basis), I have thanked heaven about 50 or 60 times for the sisters I have today. By the time I am an old woman, that ratio will likely have quintupled. I would not trade a single one of my sisters for anything. And I mean anything. Not all the tea in China, or all the riches in the world.

Having my three sisters is like having a lifelong membership in a club of mutually insane people. We grew up in the same crazy family, and share the same wacky sense of humor, rife with things like off-color “Little House on the Prairie� innuendos and a fascination with the weird. We are irreverent, off-the-wall, and we find ourselves and each-other endlessly entertaining. We tend to share similar neuroses, though the manifestations vary. They just make me laugh. With them, I always fit in.

My family would have been so different if my parents would have stopped at one. Who am I kidding? I wouldn’t be here if they stopped at one. I can’t speak for my older sister Julie, although I hope she agrees that the sacrifices were worth it. Each addition to our family brought another unique child into the mix. I read once that in families with more than one child, every kid essentially grows up in a different family. The family morphs into a new, crazy work of art with the addition of each unique personality. That always made sense to me. I don’t want to know what life would be like without a single one of them.

I am afraid though. I am afraid that I am not a good enough mother to one child. If my time and energy is divided further, how could I possibly keep it together? How can I give my kids their fair share of my time and attention? How can I distribute the love fairly? How could I love another child as much as I love my daughter? Can we afford it? Is it fair to Maggie to have another baby? Is it fair to any of us to risk stretching myself too thin?

I don’t have the answers. I do believe that life takes you where is it is supposed to, when it’s supposed to. It might be time to think about getting back on the scary ride. Perhaps fate will intervene and make the decision for me.

Only time will tell.

If we do have another child, and if Maggie chooses a form of expression similar to that of my older sister Julie, I will explain to her that she can poop on the floor all she wants. It’s okay to feel mad. That sibling is her team-mate for life, and she can make that relationship what she wants. I will tell her that if she is anything like her mother, when she is my age, she will thank her lucky stars for the gift of a sister or brother. Perhaps by then, she will want to save her doodie for other, more important statements.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night after I gave Maggie a bath and put her to bed, I met some friends out for a beer at a local dive bar. It is the best kind of dive bar, where shady characters mingle with twenty somethings, and the average age of the folks bellied-up to the bar is about 50. A real dive bar complete with the stink, and the smoke, and the sticky tables.

An acquaintance once told me that being in bars like that made her sad. This same person is also said to have the ability to see into people. She can often tell them surprisingly accurate things about their inner selves and their past lives, and about angels that follow them wherever they go. She has the ability to see all sorts of wild things that my concrete mind has a hard time grasping. She said there is too much darkness in places like that. I think I understand what she meant. Dive bars are fun in your twenties. When you are older (like me), they can be fun just for the novelty factor. However the thought of being a permanent fixture in a place like that is really quite depressing.

Bars like that are for people trapped in limbo. For people who have sad stories to tell, who can’t seem to climb out from under their own personal tragedies. People go there to numb themselves to pain. In doing so, they also numb themselves to life’s more remarkable offerings like unadulterated joy and peace. I think those barflies were the people my gifted acquaintance was talking about.

The conversation at the gunky table in the smelly bar somehow turned to James Frey’s book “A Million Little Pieces�. We are all probably aware of the controversy surrounding the book, and quite frankly, sick of hearing about it. I read the book long before it was featured on “Oprah� and long before anyone knew that a number of the details were shamelessly embellished. The story moved me, plain and simple. I have always been fascinated by the ways through which people struggle to accommodate their bad with their good. I believe that each of us has to acknowledge and accept our imperfections, and the dark, tarry, sticky things in our hearts in order to be at peace. The icky things we don’t like to acknowledge, because they frighten us and make us ashamed. In the book, James Frey (or his character, whichever you believe) came to terms with those demons. He learned to accept the insidious parts of himself, and in doing so, revealed the beauty of ugliness.

Steinbeck’s “East of Eden� is another one of my favorite books. I don’t think a person can be real until they acknowledge and accept those dank parts of themselves. When we embrace the pieces of ourselves that are decidedly un-beautiful, we give ourselves a chance to experience joy in its most real, imperfect form. I suspect that the true barflies in dive bars are stuck somewhere in that process. Mired in the fear phase of the journey, they seek out anesthetic because they feel overwhelmed and ashamed.

The conversation about addiction and recovery turned very personal when a good friend of mine admitted that she struggled with two particular people she loved very much, who were immersed in addiction. She admitted that she loved them even though doing so caused her pain. She couldn’t stop caring even though it was excruciating to witness their self-destruction. She had taken actions to separate herself from them, but still hurt for them. This friend of mine has been through life’s wringer several times, having survived the death of her fiancé and the drug addiction of another love she had to let go in the end. She let him go because she had to choose herself.

I thought of a time when Maggie was not even a week old. I was exhausted and immersed in post-partum blues and insecurity. I felt totally overwhelmed by motherhood and my responsibility for this beautiful tiny human who was my daughter. I sat on the couch and cried big fat tears that were propelled from somewhere deep in the recesses of my soul. I couldn’t stop them. They had a sad song of their own to sing and a life all their own. I was overcome with fear for my daughter. I was terrified of the things in her future that I couldn’t control. I understood that I was helpless to stop things that could hurt her and cause her pain. Things that would damn near kill me to witness. “What if she gets cancer?� I sobbed. “What if she becomes a drug addict and I can’t help her?�. It felt like my insides were being pulled out of me and exposed to the cold air of the world, inside-out. I felt more powerless and fearful than I have ever felt in my life.

Loving people can be awful sometimes.

It takes guts and massive bravery to love another human being. In loving we make ourselves vulnerable to having our delicate hearts ripped right out of our ribcages. We take enormous risk in loving. At the same time, we open ourselves up to massive unimaginable joy. When I was pregnant with my daughter I thought about the kind of person I hoped she would be. I realized all the things that could go wrong. As her mother, I have always understood that it’s my job to love and accept her regardless of what life brings our way. I promised myself I would never forget for a moment that bringing her into the world was my decision, and that she will be whoever she ends up to be. And I will love her unconditionally.

I hope my daughter doesn’t end up a barfly in a dank, sticky dive bar. Addiction runs in my family. So does depression. These are things I can only protect her from to a certain degree. I hope I can teach my daughter to be kind to herself. I hope she is better able to acknowledge and accept the things in her soul that make her imperfect and human than I have been. I hope she can see the beauty and brutal honesty in imperfection. I hope my daughter knows that regardless of what life brings our way, that I love her. Even if loving her breaks my heart, and I am certain that at some point it will, that my choice to love her has opened up doors of pure joy in my heart that I never knew existed. That even if my child ends up a barfly in a dive bar, she will be a barfly whose mother loves her. I will never regret opening myself up to that kind of risk. Ever.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Friday Evening, as I prepared my traditional St. Patty’s day Corned beef and Cabbage dinner, my 18 month-old daughter sauntered into the room holding two small teddy bears. They were the kind of itty-bitty teddy bears they sell in the dollar section at Target. I don’t think the child has left Target once without a dollar animal clutched in her hands. I have to beg the cashier to scan it as quickly as possible to minimize the shrieking she emits from the time I wrestle the critter from her grasp to get rung up to the time her little stuffed buddy is safely back in her sticky, dimpled little hands. She happily chirps whatever the appropriate animal noise is. “ROOOAR!�, “Woof!�, or “EEE-OW�. My daughter just loves her some little dollar Target creatures.

For all the bitching I do about the consumerism that Americans buy into, in the end I am a spineless hypocrite. I could, feasibly, walk by the dollar section without handing my child a small stuffed toy likely made by children in a third world country, and she wouldn’t even notice. But these little animals make her happy. I mean, she LOVES them. We have nine tiny stuffed dogs lined up on her dresser and the plays with them every day. She walks from room to room, clutching them to her chest. We also have 2 bears, a “Tih-tee�, a couple of bunnies, an elephant, and a giraffe. They were a dollar each. Meanwhile the expensive toys we carefully chose for her gather dust in the corner.

So, the lesson she learns is that buying crap at Target is really quite satisfying. That, plus Target has a mysterious diuretic impact on the bowels of our people. My sisters and I share the same affliction. We call it “The Target Affect�. We now have our own subtle vocabulary to describe desperate diarrhea moments. When one of my sisters tells me she is having a “Target moment� I need not look farther than the sweat beading on her forehead to know she needs to get to a bathroom, pronto. Give any of us ten minutes of wide-eyed browsing in the aisles at all the stuff we could feasibly buy and take home with us, and suddenly we are turning on our heel and sprinting to the bathroom. All the consumer-based excitement and browsing apparently has a stimulating, affect on the bowels. The week after I gave birth to Maggie I was terrified of pooping. The trauma of childbirth does really strange things to your system that way. I limped around the house for a few days and finally thought to myself: “Target!� One trip for baby supplies, and one sprint to the Target restroom, and I was smiling again. Problem solved.

So Target really is not such a bad place, I suppose.

Friday evening as I stood at the stove poking our large slab of boiled meat with a fork, Maggie walked in with her Target Bears clutched in her hands. She looked at me, lifted her ittle bears into the air like "Rocky" and exclaimed “One! Two!�. My mouth fell open. It was the first time I had heard her try to count. It appears there is another redeeming factor for Target that I had not considered. Strollling the aisles of Target is the best non-chemical laxative known to man, and the little dollar animals Target sells are also excellent learning tools. Plus she likes to make them kiss each other, which I think is sweet. And the two bears cost me all of two dollars. One could take that a step further and consider that Maggie also posesses a more sophisticated understanding of additional meanings of the numbers one and two. Cough. You know. “Number one� and “number two�…. The child is certainly a genius. She gets it from her mother.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 4:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Friday Evening, as I prepared my traditional St. Patty’s day Corned beef and Cabbage dinner, my 18 month-old daughter sauntered into the room holding two small teddy bears. They were the kind of itty-bitty teddy bears they sell in the dollar section at Target. I don’t think the child has left Target once without a dollar animal clutched in her hands. I have to beg the cashier to scan it as quickly as possible to minimize the shrieking she emits from the time I wrestle the critter from her grasp to get rung up to the time her little stuffed buddy is safely back in her sticky, dimpled little hands. She happily chirps whatever the appropriate animal noise is. “ROOOAR!�, “Woof!�, or “EEE-OW�. My daughter just loves her some little dollar Target creatures.

For all the bitching I do about the consumerism that Americans buy into, in the end I am a spineless hypocrite. I could, feasibly, walk by the dollar section without handing my child a small stuffed toy likely made by children in a third world country, and she wouldn’t even notice. But these little animals make her happy. I mean, she LOVES them. We have nine tiny stuffed dogs lined up on her dresser and the plays with them every day. She walks from room to room, clutching them to her chest. We also have 2 bears, a “Tih-tee�, a couple of bunnies, an elephant, and a giraffe. They were a dollar each. Meanwhile the expensive toys we carefully chose for her gather dust in the corner.

So, the lesson she learns is that buying crap at Target is really quite satisfying. That, plus Target has a mysterious diuretic impact on the bowels of our people. My sisters and I share the same affliction. We call it “The Target Affect�. We now have our own subtle vocabulary to describe desperate diarrhea moments. When one of my sisters tells me she is having a “Target moment� I need not look farther than the sweat beading on her forehead to know she needs to get to a bathroom, pronto. Give any of us ten minutes of wide-eyed browsing in the aisles at all the stuff we could feasibly buy and take home with us, and suddenly we are turning on our heel and sprinting to the bathroom. All the consumer-based excitement and browsing apparently has a stimulating, affect on the bowels. The week after I gave birth to Maggie I was terrified of pooping. The trauma of childbirth does really strange things to your system that way. I limped around the house for a few days and finally thought to myself: “Target!� One trip for baby supplies, and one sprint to the Target restroom, and I was smiling again. Problem solved.

So Target really is not such a bad place, I suppose.

Friday evening as I stood at the stove poking our large slab of boiled meat with a fork, Maggie walked in with her Target Bears clutched in her hands. She looked at me, lifted her ittle bears into the air like "Rocky" and exclaimed “One! Two!�. My mouth fell open. It was the first time I had heard her try to count. It appears there is another redeeming factor for Target that I had not considered. Strollling the aisles of Target is the best non-chemical laxative known to man, and the little dollar animals Target sells are also excellent learning tools. Plus she likes to make them kiss each other, which I think is sweet. And the two bears cost me all of two dollars. One could take that a step further and consider that Maggie also posesses a more sophisticated understanding of additional meanings of the numbers one and two. Cough. You know. “Number one� and “number two�…. The child is certainly a genius. She gets it from her mother.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 4:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Mommybloggers: Hi Julie, the mommybloggers love your site wanna-cookie.blogspot.com. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to us! Tell us about how long you have been writing and where the name of your blog came from.

Julie: I’ve been writing all my life. I journaled like a maniac from junior high through college. I never considered blogging until last summer, but it has proved to be a medium that works really well for me.

“I Want A Cookie� is the name of a song by a band called Evolution Control Committee. Basically it’s an audio sample from an anger management seminar set to very loud techno music, with a screaming voice in the background. The first words of the song are a woman’s voice asking, “Do you ever feel angry? Are you paralyzed by your anger?� At the time, my friend Liz, a.k.a. CombatGirl, and I were both dealing with troubled marriages. She played it for me because she knew I’d immediately understand why she found it so hilarious. She was right.

The original idea behind the blog was that she and I would do it together, as a back-and-forth sort of forum to vent about the insanity of dealing with our respective (by that time) ex-husbands. The title from that song seemed like the perfect name. For a variety of reasons, I ended up doing most of the posting, and now she’s in the process of developing her own blog. We’re totally still friends, though.

Mommybloggers:Julie, tell us a little bit about yourself. What kind of a kid were you? We mean, besides the kind of kid that cut off your sister Meghan’s Barbie-doll’s hair and then told her it would grow back? And we will definitely not talk about the time you rubbed her face into the sidewalk while she cried and cried. Or took all the cool stuff to collect (like horses) leaving Meghan with the lamest seashell collection imaginable. Those tidbits will DEFINITELY remain between us and you.

Julie: Well, I’ll tell you. I was the oldest of four girls in our family, and having to share a bedroom (and pretty much everything else) with a number two child who was very loud, very messy, and who demanded the majority of our harried parents’ attention, was often very, very lonely. Especially when that number two child was the sort of child would rip all the pages out of her older sister’s journals, and would allow her friend Janna to eat all of the Valentine’s Day candy that her elder sister had received as a gift from her boyfriend.

It was very trying, and I still have a few self esteem and rage issues to work out, but I think I’ve overcome a lot to become the highly-evolved human being I am today.

Mommybloggers:Thanks for the warning. The Mommybloggers will be sure to hide their candy from their fellow mommyblogger Meghan. And we will give her a very stern talking-to. Sheesh.
You are a single mother, and you handle single motherhood with grace, dignity, aplomb, and the occasional justified rant. What do you see as the biggest challenges of single parenthood today?

Julie: I think my kids would have something to say about whether or not I’ve handled anything with “grace,� “dignity� and “aplomb.�

But managing all the details is probably the biggest challenge right now. My kids are at an age when they’re involved in a lot of activities, and their social lives are becoming busier and more important to them. Trying to remember who needs to be where and when, and making sure everything happens on schedule, can be really overwhelming for a single parent.

Mommybloggers:What are the biggest rewards?

Julie: Just last night all three of us were in my bed, saying goodnight before the DemiGoddesses went to their own beds. My younger daughter (Demigoddess the Younger) said something like, “isn’t it cool that we’re friends?� And it’s really true. There have been times when it’s felt like the three of us against the world, and although there have been some real struggles, we have a bond now that I don’t think would have happened otherwise.

Mommybloggers:Your daughters are fantastic and wonderfully talented and well-adjusted. And smart and funny and beautiful. How did their Aunt Meghan have such a powerful impact on them?

Julie: Their who now?

All three of my sisters have been fantastic influences on my girls. They’re all incredibly smart, funny, independent women, each with her own unique sense of style and on her own path in life. I’m so proud that the DemiGoddesses have such solid role models.

Even though I am, technically speaking, a single parent, I always know that my sisters have my back. I’ve told my daughters on more than one occasion that if there is ever anything they need help with, but for whatever reason they don’t want to talk to me about it, they can go to any one of their aunts in confidence. And my sisters know they have my permission to not to tell me.

Mommybloggers:But seriously though, your daughters are phenomenal. What is your secret?

Julie: I don’t have a secret. Someone who didn’t have a lot of experience with kids once asked me for advice on how to interact with children. I said, “Listen when they talk. Look them in the eye when you talk to them. Be willing to act silly. Don’t make them do tricks or otherwise treat them like pets.� That’s pretty much been my parenting philosophy, and it seems to be working out so far.

Mommybloggers:Your writing is often very personal, and also very moving which we love. What kinds of things inspire you to write?

Julie: Usually it starts with a feeling. Something will impact me emotionally—by making me laugh, or pissing me off, or, sometimes, by making me cry. It might be something huge, but more often, it’s some little everyday thing that just hits me. I’ve learned that, when those things happen, it’s important to take a minute to enjoy the experience, and then to think about why that particular thing struck me the way it did. Most of my writing evolves out of those moments.

Mommybloggers:What is next for Julie the writer?

Who knows. For now, I’ll be happy if I can think of something halfway interesting to blog about tomorrow.

Mommybloggers:Back to the family. Julie, you have three sisters. Which one is your favorite and why?

Julie: Hah. Nice try, Meghan.

Mommybloggers:Julie, your daughters are in the teen and pre-teen years. How do you decide how much to reveal about them on your blog? How much say do they have in what gets published? Do the demigoddesses read your blog?

Julie: They do read it. I try to be respectful about what I put out there about them, and about the people they care about, too. But there have been times when they’ve been upset by things I’ve written. They’re not afraid to speak up when they think I’ve written something inappropriate, and we’ve talked about the things that upset them.

Lately when she’s done something that she thinks may have particularly annoyed me, DemiGoddess the younger has become fond of saying, “Blog about THAT!� To which I usually reply, “I already DID!� Sometimes it’s true.

I remember hearing Nora Ephron once talk about what a torment her writer parents were, because everything she said or did growing up became their material. So I try not to write anything that will be really embarrassing for them. But some things are just too good not to share.

Mommybloggers:Do you consider yourself a mommyblogger? What is your take on the term?

Julie: I myself went from being “Mommy� to “Mom� a while ago now. As I said before on my blog, I feel more like a “HeyMomINeedSomeMoneyAndI’mLateForGirlScoutsAndOhByTheWayIHave HeadliceBlogger.�

As far as the term itself, I don’t know. I think it’s very easy to pigeonhole a whole group of people by putting that kind of label on them. In reality, the “mommybloggers� I know of are a very diverse array of individuals, with widely differing writing styles and points of view. I guess my first instinct is to resist lumping them all into a single category, simply because they happen to have children AND sometimes write about them.

Mommybloggers:How has writing changed your life and the way you interact with the world?

Julie: Writing has always been a very important tool for me to work through things. The process of putting events and thoughts and feelings into words really forces me to look at them from all angles, which usually leads to a level of understanding that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

But it’s never easy. And trying to blog every day is a constant challenge. Every time I manage to put together something that I like, right after I hit that “publish post� button, I think, “Hah! Fooled ‘em again! But that is the absolute end of my abilities, and I will never have another interesting thing to say, ever again.�

Blogging has forced me to keep my eyes constantly open for those little moments to write about, which means I pay a lot more attention to everything now than I used to. And really, that is such a gift.

Mommybloggers: Julie, thank you for talking with us, and thank you for continuing to put out writing that moves us and makes us think and also makes us laugh.

Mommybloggers:And here are the questions we subject all of our featured bloggers to (With apologies to Bernard Pivot and Inside the Actors Studio):

1. What is your favorite parent related word?
Bedtime
2. What is your least favorite parent related word?
Headlice
3. What is your favorite creative censored curse word used around children?
Wait, you’re not supposed to curse in front of the children? Oh. Fuck.
4. What is your favorite hiding place within your home when you need to get away from it all?
I don’t really have to hide any more. They’ve been well trained to know that, when I’m in my bedroom and the door is closed, they risk life and limb if they come within three feet of that door.
5. What hiding place have you been found in too often and can no longer use?
In the basement, folding laundry.
6. If Oprah exists, what would you like to hear her say when you arrive at the Oprah Winfrey show when she features the Mommybloggers?
Enjoy your FREE CAR! WOOHOO!
Thanks Oprah!

Posted by mommybloggers at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Attachment parenting gurus have a lot of great ideas for parents. In an ideal world, the vast majority of those ideas make perfect sense. But I don't live in an ideal world. I live in my world, which runs amok with chaos, exhaustion, too little time and money, and too many obligations. I have read attachment parenting books, and having read them, I must admit that I found 20 percent of the information to be helpful. The remaining 80 percent of the information left me a twittering gob of self-loathing, guilty goo. In fact, I’ve got half a mind to go home to set that book on fire just to watch it burn.

The entire idea of attachment parenting is a good one. The basic rules are: Respond to your child’s cues in a sensitive and nurturing manner. Pay attention, and respond appropriately. I can not find a single thing wrong with those concepts. Things start to get tricky when a person delves into the specific methodologies of baby-wearing, co-sleeping, and breastfeeding on demand, and how one might or might not accommodate these things into their lifestyle.

Maybe I am overly sensitive, but I know it’s not all in my head….. I mean, come on. How would YOU complete the following phrases? Breast feeding is good, formula feeding is_______. Stay-at-home moms are best, mother who work outside the home are:________. Family bed is ideal, solitary crib sleeping is ______. Do you see where I am going?

Bad, worst, and sub-par. Thus went my own inner dialogue in relation to my mothering abilities. I started out with the best intentions, but soon after my daughter was born, things started to go awry. My breasts didn’t work properly and Maggie never latched on. I couldn’t hack it, and I threw in the towel on breastfeeding altogether. About the same time, I realized I wouldn’t sleep a wink if I continued to wake up every time my baby stirred, and I moved her to her crib in her room. I had to go back to work in order to pay the mortgage. I stopped pumping breast milk and started dropping her off at my in-laws every morning.

I was a failure, and my daughter was going to be permanently stunted because of it. She would never reach her full potential. And it was all because I was a selfish, selfish woman with broken boobs who chose to sleep when I could have been nurturing my infant. Boy howdy, there was a special place in Hell for me. Not only that, but if my moral fiber were stronger, I would be willing to sacrifice my worldly possessions and status symbols and make our household run on half the income we had previously required to keep the machine going. The common denominator in all these failures: Me myself and I.

It occurred to me that the drive to achieve the American dream and contribute to my family’s economic needs while maintaining some semblance of mental health, was directly at odds with the quest to be the ideal, perfectly responsive attachment-parenting mother. The only way to rectify the situation would be to live in poverty, or to win the lottery, and / or leave my husband for some kind of a sugar daddy so I could stay at home in relative economic comfort.

Americans are now in a place where two incomes are required to make ends meet for most middle class families. At the same time, mothers get the screws put to them for every single misstep. How the Hell does that jibe?

It seems that as mothers, sometimes our choices are reduced to the following: Shitty, and crappy. Pick your prize!

Where did we get so far off the mark? Why all the pressure? Are we confused about how much control we actually have over making our children intelligent and healthy? I suspect that’s part of it. A great interview with Angela Barron McBride over at mothers movement really got me thinking.

Here lies the issue of “Hyperparenting�. It is my belief that we give ourselves WAY too much credit for the success or failure of our children. And it’s not just my personal self-centeredness and laziness talking here. Dr. Alvin Rosenfeld, uses the word- hyperparenting - to describe the seemingly American phenomenon of micromanagement in parenting. Parents are deluding themselves into overestimating their impact on their children’s development and success or failure in sports, academia and musical aptitude.

This hyperparenting phenomenon can be attributed to unmitigated denial. It’s not just a river in Egypt people. We want to believe we are special, and our children are special, and the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of us are hopelessly average. It’s hard to accept, but really, you either have it, or you don’t. It’s unlikely that Abraham Lincoln’s parents pushed him to join junior toastmasters. Do you think Bob Dylan’s mommy took him to early childhood education music class? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Genius is genius despite the circumstances. The same is true for mediocrity. There are varying degrees of mediocrity but all that leaves us with is a whole lot of light gray mediocrity or dark gray mediocrity. And a few geniuses that were born that way.

So what, may you ask, is my ever-loving point already? I am tired of feeling like a failure! I bet you are too! It is my opinion that mothers judge each other so harshly because we are all ashamed of our own parental shortcomings. That shame is intensified because we love our children so much that we can hardly bear the thought of them suffering because of our own inadequacies. And hey, at least I am not screwing up my kid as much as that lady who makes her three year old eat naked in the sink so they won’t make a mess, right? Right! I bet she didn’t breastfeed either!

I am NOT saying that it’s okay to stop trying. As people who chose to bring children into the world, it is our job to do our very best to give them a loving, safe platform from which to grow and thrive. We owe that to our children. Every child deserves to be loved and nurtured and supported physically and emotionally. Sadly, not every child gets those things, and I would love nothing more than to change that sad fact. At the same time, I want women to stop feeling so much pressure to be perfect. I want mothers to stop torturing themselves over their decisions and circumstances. I want mothers to stop torturing eachother.

When Maggie was tiny, I became depressed because I could not distinguish her cries. I wanted to be a good, attached parent. I wanted to be responsive, but sometimes I just couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. I was convinced my failure to figure out what ailed her was some kind of defect on my part. I was missing the good mother gene. Plus all that stuff I mentioned earlier about me being self-centered and materialistic and lazy. I was wrecking my baby with my own inadequacy.

A year and a half later I can sit in a room 20 feet away and know by her cry that she just dropped her pacifier over the side of her crib. I wasn’t always able to do that. I didn’t learn that in an ECFE class. I didn’t read it in a book. I learned it by being her mother for 18 months. I learned it by spending time with my daughter and getting to know her. I wish someone had told me that formula when Maggie was an infant. I might have relaxed a little more in those foggy newborn weeks, and actually enjoyed my infant instead of cowering in self doubt and insecurity. You become a good mother through time and experience and dedication. You become a good mother because you care. You don’t have to be perfect. You become a good-enough mother. And a good-enough mother is good enough for me. I am fairly certain it will be good enough for my daughter too.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (44) | TrackBacks (0)

What clears out a swimming pool faster than screaming “SHARK!�? Anyone who has seen the movie “caddyshack� can tell you. A floating baby ruth clears out a pool in approximately a nanosecond. In fact, it doesn’t just clear out a pool. A baby ruth in the pool catalyzes a screaming, disgusted mass exodus.

On one hand, I can say that we have our daughter potty-trained at 18 months. Hooray! It’s a miracle! We have a genius on our hands. Clearly such an accomplishment means we are master parents. We are practically professionals. On the other hand, instead of going in a potty chair or “the big pot�, our daughter considers our bathtub to be her personal toilette. Like clockwork. Put the child in a warm tub for more than seven and a half minutes, and dollars to doughnuts, a floater will eventually gently bob to the surface. This is my cue to shout “all-done!�, grab her under the arms and unceremoniously heave her out of the funky water in short order.

I am not sure what it is about the warm water, but it works like a charm every time. Madge + warm water + seven and a half minutes = floating terdlets. Every single time.

This could be considered a good thing. I mean our failsafe recipe for poop is certainly a reliable homeopathic cure for constipation. Speaking from experience, it hurts to watch your child struggle in pain to evict their own feculence. As a caring parent I am more than willing to don rubber gloves, fish around for floating terdlets, and soak her tubby toys in Lysol, as long as the end result is a happy child with a lighter load.

In fact, if this warm water laxative phenomenon last into the teenage years, we can use it as an extra-credit exercise when she reads Dante’s Inferno. We can drop Barbie and Ken into Malebolge, the ditch of excrement, and watch them suffer for their sins of flattery. If she is a real academic go-getter, she can videotape and edit her own reenactment of the eighth circle of Hell. Perhaps we can hook up some kind of tubing so that offal spews forth from their mouths when they speak.

A pessimist might be saddened, disgusted and disappointed by their child’s penchant for pooping in the bathtub. Not me. I see it as an opportunity to show off some good parenting, a homeopathic cure for constipation, and a potential multi-media extra credit exercise to help her gain a fuller understanding of a timeless literary classic. Chalk one up for our family! Way to go Madge! Keep up the good work!

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

What is it about the time between Valentine's Day and the first day of spring that is just so terribly oppressive?

It's called cabin fever. It seems everyone we know is gritting their teeth and mustering up every ounce of strength just to keep their ever-loving head together. All one has to do is cruise a few of their favorite blogs to read about the battle many of us seem to be waging. The battle to keep from falling into the abyss of apathy, detachment and depression. The mind-numbing cold and gray, sans any distraction of a holiday makes a person want to crawl under the covers and stay there until the days are longer than they are short, and the weather is warmer than it is cold. This plan would be ideal if it were not for the small humans who rely on us for shelter, food, water, and responsive care giving. Those meddling kids are always tossing a wrench right through the window of the best laid plans, smashing it to pieces.

My mind seems to be fundamentally different in the winter months. It's slow. Lethargic. Small decisions are insurmountably difficult. I have thoughts in the winter that never occur to me in the summer. For example:

"Is it bad to let my 17 month old watch Sesame street three (okay, who am I kidding? Four) times in a day?"

"I love to cook, however that takes too much energy. That involves grocery shopping. And chopping. And then there is the cleaning. I want to lose a few pounds, but let's just order a pizza. Again."

"I knew that it was going to be unseasonably warm today, but it really didn't occur to me to actually go outside. I forgot all about outside. There is an untapped world beyond the oppressive walls of my rambler! Thank GOD I remembered!"

"I wonder if my friends remember what I look like. I wonder if they have forgotten my phone number. On purpose. Because I stopped answering my cell phone (okay who am I kidding? I never really answered my cell phone). I mean I stopped returning messages."

"I wonder if my friends will feel like re-sparking our friendship in the spring when I am feeling better. Here's to the hope that spring time weather is conducive to forgiveness and understanding."

Staring into space.

"I wonder if I could pay someone to take a shower and brush my teeth FOR me."

In the summertime, my internal dialogue is more like this:

"Hmmm. Who can I invite over for dinner tonight? I feel like grilling. Let's eat al fresco!"

"Should we go to the pool today? Or walk around Lake Harriet? I know! We'll do both! And then we can go for a bike ride after dinner! Who wants Ice cream?"

"Where did I put that corkscrew?"

"The HILLS ARE ALIVE! WITH THE SOUND OF MUSIC!!!!! AAAAH-AH-AH---AHHHHH!"

Getting through the final stretch of winter ironically feels like slogging through a desert with no water, or running the last 6 miles of a marathon. A person loses their sense of time. A day seems to stretch out for a week. Exhaustion is amplified.

Any ideas for passing the time until it starts to fly again? Because it's not flying. Time is currently belly crawling through 2 feet of chilled molasses. I am taking suggestions.

Posted by mommybloggers at 6:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

Nothing makes me want to burst into a fountain of sloppy tears more than seeing my daughter hurt. My heart gets pulled up into my throat and makes me choke, and I find myself wheezing for air. I get tunnel vision. All activity stops dead in its tracks. Seeing her injured just about kills me.

I don’t know how it happened, but Sunday at my parents, right after I managed to down half my weight in cheese and olives, but just before the Superbowl started, my daughter fell and hurt her leg. I didn’t see it happen. She was wearing her pink cowboy boots, and was surrounded by her doting cousins and aunts, who she especially likes to show off for. Apparently she got a little cheeky, and tried to defy the unforgiving laws of gravity. I was told she just kind of fell and her leg kind of went out, and she kind of landed on top of it.

You wouldn’t have known she was hurt by her expression. She was her usual kamikaze self, and too busy getting into three things at once to cry about a silly old malfunctioning leg. But she was limping badly, and every few steps her leg would buckle underneath her, and she would fall over. Watching her stuggle made every cell in my body grimace. I followed her around, grim-faced, observing carefully to see if I noticed any improvement. I didn’t. She continued her crazy cock-eyed walk. Then every few steps, her leg buckled again, and down she went. She looked up at me as though to say “What the heck is going on? I had this walking thing figured out just a minute ago..Help me!�

There have been a few occasions since having Maggie when I have wanted someone to tell me what to do. When my first instinct was to freeze up. Times when I wanted to flop to the floor and assume the fetal position. Times when I felt frightened and cowardly. Times when I desperately wanted someone else to take charge and tell me what to do. When your baby is sick or hurt, and you are scared and trying not to panic, a minute lasts an hour. That strange pocket of time when you know something is wrong, but haven't yet decided how severe it is, or what to do about it. It's easy to be overwhelmed because that sick or injured little human is the center of your universe. I don't think there is anything more frightening to a mother than the sight of her injured child. Then the realization sets in. I am the mommy. The buck stops at me. And you have to make a decision. You have to stay calm, take charge, and do the right thing.

There was the time she couldn’t keep fluids down and became sunken-eyed and lethargic. It was awful. I wasn't sure if I was making a mountain out of a molehill. Maybe she was fine, and I was a crazy overzealous mother. I agonized for a minute (although it felt like a year) and decided to err on the side of caution. We ended up taking her to the doctor who sent us right to the hospital so she could be treated for dehydration. There was the time we had to decide whether or not to fit her for a helmet for the worsening flat spot on the back of her head. Maggie had developed Plagiocephaly (flat-head) on the right side of her skull. One ear was crawling up higher and higher on one side and her forehead was starting to stick out. The doctor told us we could do it, or not do it. Again, I wanted someone to tell me what to do, but the decision was ours. We ended up deciding to have her fitted for a helmet which she wore for months, and her head rounded out eventually.

Here I was again, floundering between overreacting and taking her to the emergency room, or waiting it out to see if her leg got better on its own. I waffled back and forth, and finally decided I couldn’t take it another minute. The limping was tearing my heart to pieces. My perfect little girl just wasn’t walking right, and I had to find out if it was something big, or something little. My sister Betsy offered to come along, and off we went to go to Urgent care.

Maggie was not the least bit fazed by her injury. The waiting room had an enormous fish tank. Maggie’s idea of the heaven on earth is any place there is fish tank. Betsy parked the car while I got registered and tried to keep ahold of Maggie, who screamed and flailed in agony, wailing and extending her arms desperately towards the towering tank of her chosen creatures. Her fishies. Betsy arrived just as the child's head was about to explode, and took the sobbing toddler from my arms and mercifully, towards the tank where she smiled and stood, mouth agape. Mesmerized, she repeated “Shishee! Shishee!� Over and over again.

We were called in to a room where a rather stern nurse ordered us NOT to spin Maggie in the Doctors chair. By the way, any doctor or nurse who leaves you in a room for an extended period of time with a toddler, and then instructs you to not let said toddler play with something that is A. within their reach, and B. utterly irresistible to them, should be beaten within an inch of their life with a tongue depressor. And a rubber glove.

The doctor eventually walked in and checked out wee Madge. He pulled her legs this way and that, and observed her limp for himself. He bent her knees and rotated her hips, and finally pronounced her not broken or maimed. I was happy, if not slightly embarrassed by my apparent over-reaction to a twisted ankle. I could have a bone sticking out of my own leg, and I would refuse to go to the emergency room, but I am not taking any chances with that sweet girl. I needed to know that she was okay.

I know that wasn't the last time. There are many cuts and bruises in our future. I can handle cuts and bruises just fine on my own. I can handle the pedestrian fever or vomit like a seasoned veteran. I predict, though, that each time I find myself in that bizarre time warp of uncertainty, trying to decide how seriously to take the medical emergency at hand, I will err on the side of caution. I have no problem running the risk of being accused of having Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy. I am just fine with being crazy, as long as I know my baby girl is okay.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 6:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

Tunkie. Bottom. Butt-belly-button. Wee-wee. There are just no good euphemisms for female privates when trying to nonchalantly teach your toddler the appropriate word for her girl-parts.

My seventeen month old daughter’s language development is exploding. She averages at least one new word a day. She has learned the names of animals, foods, and body parts. She points to my eye and proudly utters “eye!� I ask here “Where are Maggie’s fingers?� and she wiggles them with gusto. I can tell she is happy to be an active participant in this whole language thing, which until recently she merely observed. She is pleased as punch to be a part of this new club. You can see it in her eyes when she says something, and I seem to magically understand what she meant. It's priceless.

As a parent, I want Maggie to have a healthy body image. I want her to feel comfortable in her own skin. I have daydreamed about how I will expertly handle discussions about puberty, development and sex. In my mind, I am able to calmly explain to my adolescent daughter how things work, and make suggestions for ways to cope with the general freakiness of pubescent body changes and sexual pressure. I visualize handling this all with aplomb, grace, and most importantly using the precise technical terms. I don’t bat an eye, and certainly don’t give my daughter the impression that her body is anything to be ashamed of. I certainly don’t give her the impression I am the least bit embarrassed.

One word sent all my bravado tumbling down like a flimsy house of cards. During her bath, Maggie discovered her privates, and set forth exploring this new territory with the utmost enthusiasm. I FORCED myself to stammer the correct anatomical noun for her female genitalia and made a very conscious effort to remain matter-of-fact. It’s just another body part, right? Like an arm or a foot. I heard my voice take on a false sing-songy quality. I was talking to a toddler with a limited vocabulary. A toddler who can not yet link words together, and I felt like an idiot. I sat next to the bathtub and cringed at myself. I hoped my husband didn’t hear me stumbling, because if he had, I needed to brace myself for the inevitable impending mockery.

I considered using the term the Home-Visit Nurse used after I had Maggie when she asked if I wanted her to check the healing progress of my third-degree tear. “Would you like me to take a look at your bottom?� she asked.
“Um. No. That’s okay.� I said awkwardly, as I limped and hobbled her towards the door. “I’m sure it’s healing quite nicely, thank you.�

I considered my other options for words to use as a substitute. My nieces used to refer to theirs as “butt bellybuttons�. I will give that one a 4 out of 10. I thought of my my friend’s grandma who used to call it a “tunkie�. When she got her pj’s on her Grandma would tell her “Don’t forget to take off your underpants so your tunkie can breathe!�. I just about fell over laughing when she told me that one. “Wee-wee� sounds too much like a euphemism for boy parts. Nothing seemed to fit. I was stuck using THE WORD.

I ultimately decided to keep trying to utter the correct biological term without shuddering. I hope that if I muddle through the word enough times, it will become a non-event, and I will stop cringing as I say it. Clearly I am not as free from body issues as I had hoped, and clearly this is mommy's issue and not Maggie's. The sweet child had not yet learned to be embarassed by nakedness, and that's a good thing. She has nothing to be ashamed of, and neither should I. And yet.... there it is. THE WORD. I will get through this. I have to. I am suddenly terrified of the prospect of the teenage years. Perhaps when the time comes, I can call in a consultant or coach to help me explain the ins and outs of adolescence and sex. Because clearly, Momma’s gonna have some trouble with THAT one. Oy. Vey.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 5:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday I got the “Ding!�. It happens about once a week. The annoying noise my car makes when it’s nearly out of gas. Driving along, searching for a good song on the radio, deep in thought, and suddenly I am jolted from my stream of random thoughts by a ding from my dashboard. This announcement, indicative of a near-empty gas tank, typically happens when I am late getting to an appointment for work, or eager to get home to see my family. It’s annoying. Can I just say how irritating it is when inanimate objects make demands on your extremely limited time via “the ding� or “the beep�?

“Please take the ticket.� Oh? Is that what I do when I park in a garage? Take the ticket? Thank goodness you told me! I was thinking of putting the car in park right here in the ramp entrance, setting my car keys on top of you, Mr. Machine, and walking away! That instruction may be helpful for someone who, say, hasn’t left the house in fifteen years, or perhaps a visiting aborigine (assuming they had learned to drive a car during their stay), but really, how often does that really happen? Why do we all have to listen to it? Who doesn’t know what to do when they enter a parking garage and a machine spits a ticket at them?

Or how about when its 2 degrees outside with a wind chill of 15 below, and you are at the pump trying to maneuver your back to the wind to keep your face from freezing while pumping some Godforsaken gas in your car? And the pump starts making all these aggressive beeping sounds? “Beep!� Would you like a car wash? “Beep!� Flip the lever stupid! “Beep!� You put the card in the wrong way. Moron. “Beep!� How about some beef jerky? It’s on special! “Beep!� Are you sure you don’t want a car wash? “Beep!� Are you really, positively sure you don’t want a car wash? Because you can have one! For only $4.99! And I want to raise my middle finger and say “Beep you Mr. machine! It’s cold out here, you heartless bastard! Stop asking me insipid questions! I just want to get some gas and go home! I just want to go HHOOMMEE! �. I am not a violent person, but by about this time, I want to punch the machine in the digital display with my frozen, throbbing exposed knuckles.

And I jump through hoops and try to press all the appropriate buttons as the flesh on my fingers begins to freeze to the metal gas pump handle, and my ears begin to develop frostbite. I finally get the gas pumping, return to the protection of my car and heave a sigh of relief while the gas tank slowly fills.

Then it starts again. “Beep!� your tank is full! “Beep� do you want a receipt? “Beep!� Last chance for beef jerky! And I begin to kick the gas pump with my frozen toes.

One might ask, what kind of person allows an inanimate object to draw such deeply rooted ire? And then writes about it on the internet? Me, that’s who. I am not sure what that says about me. It can’t be good. But there it is none the less.

Is detailing for you my hatred for gas pumps the point of this exercise? No, believe it or not. That was just the warm-up. I have yet to have a point.

Yesterday, as I battled the cold and lamented the drill sergeant-esque beeping demands of the gas pump, I looked around me and observed the people filling up their cars at the station.

There was a man in a funky leather jacket gassing up his blue Subaru, and another man scraping the ice of the back window of his Hyundai. Protected from the wind inside my car, I tried to discreetly size each person up based on their physical appearance. Then, I tried to determine how their choice of car fit in to the overall image.

The guy with the cool leather jacket was wearing slouchy, worn Levi’s and was pretty cute. Perhaps he was a musician. At least I wanted to think so. His car, though, was a bright blue Subaru. The color just didn’t quite jibe. It was a bit girly, really. I thought to myself, “maybe it was his mother’s, and he is a struggling musician, and the only reason he drives it is because it was free?� Satisfied with my imagined justification for his choice of car, I looked the other direction. There, I observed the man driving the Hyundai. He was young and also cute. He donned a big parka, and had a 5 O’clock shadow. He looked like a poet, or a writer. But he was driving a Hyundai. Perhaps he was another starving artist. The Hyundai was a little disappointing though. A more fitting car would be an ’82 Cutlass Sierra or something. Something different and un-pedestrian. Again, the car didn’t match the image. “Maybe he won it in a contest� I thought. Yes. That’s it. Satisfied with my conclusion, I glanced at the gas pump to see if my tank was full yet.

And then it hit me. I was observing these people around me, sizing them up by their cars and judging their choices from the safety of my MINIVAN. Yes. My MINIVAN. I DRIVE A FREAKING MINIVAN. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I mean, I practically had to be dragged kicking and screaming to get to the point of minivan owner. In fact, the entire story about how exactly I went to South Carolina for a funeral, flooded the bathroom, and came home with a minivan can be read here. But my point, if I have one, and your opinion regarding that matter is clearly subjective, is that while out there gleefully throwing stones for my own entertainment, I live in a big old glass house. A glass house in the form of a silver Town & Country minivan.

I would hate for anyone to look no farther than my minivan to size me up, regardless of the fact that my license plate reads “M-L-F� (no lie. And it’s not a vanity plate, but an infinitely amusing coincidence).

I never thought of myself as a minivan type person. I gaze longingly at Mini Coopers and red convertible Cadillacs from the 70’s. THOSE are the kind of cars I would choose for myself. I would hate to be sized up by my car alone. Just like I would hate to have anyone judge me or my abilities based on any one single facet of my life. Motherhood for example. Or Mommyblogging. Or running marathons, or my political affiliation, or the fact that I have an irrational hatred for beeping gas pumps.

But there I was, committing the crime myself against unsuspecting people at the gas pump. Glass minivan indeed. I am guilty as charged.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

My daughter whines because I am a sucker. Plain and simple. She is bright, and I am not, and when she whines I give her what she wants. Because she is intelligent, she has learned that is whining a really neat and effective way to go from wanting something to getting something. And I have to say, it’s really working for her.

I give in, to stop the insufferable banshee wailing. I can’t help it. I can’t tolerate her lamentations. They turn my brain to liverwurst and whatever thought I had, at the particular moment in time when the whining starts, is killed dead in its tracks by the shrieking. The whine floats from her mouth into the air and then into my eardrums where it permeates my skull and stops my neurons from firing. It’s like “raid� for brain waves. It kills them dead.

The only problem solving I am then capable of during a whining episode is “What does child want? Does child want water? No. Does child want food? No. Does child want to be held? No. Does child want to look at the fish in the tank? No. Does Child want to look at the snow globe? No. Does child want to sit on a pile of shoes in the closet and stick her face in an Aveda candle and say “NAM!� over and over again? YES! YES! Hallelujah! I found what child the wants! I have stopped the whining! Now where was I... And I do hope that candle is non-toxic..."

I realize that I feed the beast by responding to the awful racket she makes. When she was a baby, I followed the rule “you can’t spoil them in the first year�. I did whatever I could to keep the baby happy. But now she is almost 17 months old, and I’m afraid I am creating a monster. I also realize that it’s possible that I harbor a little working mother’s guilt. That guilt may be perpetuating the problem. When I get home, I want to play. I want to have fun. I want to laugh and giggle and read stories. I don’t want to be a hard-ass. So I may be a little lax on the discipline some days. I admit it. I also understand that being a toddler can be very frustrating. She has desires but no means to express them beyond a few uttered syllables, some gestures, and a whole lot of screaming and foot stomping.

I have also noticed that she is getting good at the “show�. For example, the other day when I refused to let her watch Sesame Street for the third time in a day, she ran into the kitchen like a diminutive, frenzied, whirling dervish. Her fists were clenched, her feet stomped, and her face looked to be on the verge of exploding. She even did that thing with her down-turned mouth and her “signature look�: An accusing grimace of sheer and utter despair. It says "How could you?? How could you do this to me? My world is falling apart! And you STAND THERE and say no! To Sesame Street! My world has collapsed into a miserable pile of ashes! No Sesame Street? I am dying inside. I am in pain. How could you DO THIS???"

I started to panic. Then I paused. Instead of frantically seeking out some kind of kiddie contraband to hand over as salve for her injured soul, I just paused and looked at her. I called her bluff. She met my gaze for a moment, and her expression gradually transformed from righteous indignation to resignation. She can’t talk yet, but her body language said “Eh. I had to at least give it a shot. I guess you can’t win them all� and she turned on her heel and trotted into her room to play with books. CONTENTEDLY.

Sticking to my guns is challenging. Especially when I only get to spend about two and a half hours with her each night before she goes to bed. When I try to cook dinner and she gets between me and the stove and pushes me back from it because she wants me to pick her up, it is hard to say no and make her wait until I am done. Her desperation for my attention breaks my heart a little, frankly. My immediate instinct is to get down to her level and pick her up in my arms. I hate to make her wait until I'm done.

I realize that in the long run, it's best to start implementing some kind of anti-whining plan. And it could be painful in the begninning. I hate making her wait for my attention, and it seems cruel to flat out IGNORE her. But like I said, I am afraid I am creating a monster. I have a sneaking suspicion that discipline only gets more challenging as these resourceful, intelligent little people grow older.

When I start feeling inscure about my own child's behavior, I like to watch "supernanny". Then I can smugly say to my husband "WHOAH. Those kids are God-awful! Their parents have no clue!" Because the kids on that show are usually a hundred times worse than any child I know of. I think that is the key to the sucess of the show. Allowing parents to see that someone else's children are children WAY worse that theirs, and their parents tremendously more inept. Justifying mediocre parenting everywhere! Hooray! At least we're not THAT bad! And if there comes a day when I see my own child in the behavior of the small delinquents on the television, I can always pick up the phone and call Jo, aka the supernanny, and beg her to get me in line on national television. Sanity is more important than pride after all. At least that is what I like to tell myself. I'll jot down the number and keep in handy, just in case.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 6:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

I always thought I would be the kind of mother who would not allow Barbie dolls as toys. I believe they perpetuate the pressures girls and women feel to attain an unrealistic and unattainably perfect physical appearance. The oversized eyes and vacant expression never did much for me either. Barbie definitely does not look like anyone I would want to hang out and have a beer with. First of all, I am not sure if the jointless elbow would allow her to get the actual beer to her mouth, and that would lead to a real spectacle with all the spilling and missing, not to mention a waste of perfectly good beer. Second of all, that doe-eyed stare is really pretty creepy. It just doesn’t look like Barbie has much going on in a cerebral sense. She doesn’t seem very witty or bright. And I like having beer with people who are witty and bright.

The “happy to be me� doll always seemed like a good idea. She was the doll with a reasonable waist to hip ratio, normal sized breasts, and big flat feet. I have big feet, and I would bet a large sum of money that my daughter will have big feet. She carries the genes of her size 11 shoe donning mother and her size 12 shoe wearing father. Sorry Madge! You might have to special order your shoes from the Bigfoot store. This is just one reason why I prefer that her toys resembling the human figure (however loose the translation) not make her feel like a flat-chested Amazon freak in comparison.

The recent reports about Barbie mutilation have changed my mind about the entire subject of the busty doll. Why deny my daughter the opportunity to use her budding creativity to concoct new and unusual ways to mutilate an unrealistic fashion icon? I mean, there is SCIENCE involved! Don’t girls need more science? What happens when plastic is microwaved and set on fire? Is she flammable or does she just melt? How high does the flame need to be? When Barbie is scalped, girls can examine the way the plastic hair is manufactured to fit into the tiny holes on her head! These are great, thought provoking experiments, people! What happens when Barbie is submerged in acid? Alkalaine solution? How long does it take for a golden retriever to chew up and ingest her? How does a journey through the digestive system of a Canine affect Barbie’s hair-do?

I learned firsthand about the flammability of the bionic woman’s plastic breasts when, at the age of 9 or 10, I held her chest over the flame of my parent’s gas range. Okay, she was the Bionic woman, not Barbie. But the whole reason I was melting of her bosoms was because I had no Ken doll. The bionic woman was a little taller and a little bigger than Barbie, so when I managed to melt off her plastic lady lumps she made an odd-looking sort of man who reeked of melted plastic char. So really if you think about it, she might have been the very first transgender Barbie. In stores soon. Remind me to contact someone about my fair share of royalties for that one.

The bionic woman’s transformation might not be considered true Barbie mutilation. It was not gratuitous in that I had a purpose in mind. I needed a male doll for all the love scenes I played out as a manifestation of my budding curiosity of human sexuality. I watched WAY to much love boat as a child. Barbie mutilation did come later though.

In a recent Christmas eve white elephant gift game with my family, one of the most coveted prizes was a severed Barbie doll head. Her hair had been shaved in front, and she had been defaced with permanent markers. That was just her head. I can only imagine what terrible fate her plastic torso and appendages has succombed to. She was one artifact that remained from the childhood of eight grown women (my three sisters and I, and our four cousins who are all women).

My Nieces, who are now 13 and 14 have had their own fun with Barbies. They threw them in the street to see what happened with buses ran over them. Their surviving Barbies are used as models for their own version of project runway (head trauma Barbie is still able to model in spite of her injury).

Looking at the Barbie phenomena this way, in which Barbie mutilation is a rite of passage I would never want to deprive my daughter of, I can now feel free to shower my sweet daughter with them. I would be doing her a disservice by not providing her with the materials with which to explore her budding creativity, experiment with plastics in varying environments and manifest her disgust for things disposable and commercialized. She can get in touch with her inner degenerate. I will empower her to reject Barbie’s inanimate blank stare by giving her the opportunity to deface and maim if she so chooses. And if she asks me for assistance and ideas, I am here to serve. As far as I’m concerned as long as she doesn’t move on to mutilate living creatures, it’s all harmless exploration and expression.

And the final score is: Kids: 1, Barbie: 0, Mattel: $6 Billion in annual revenues

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 5:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (20) | TrackBacks (0)

If there is anyone reading this who does not feel a tiny bit strange stomping their feet, singing happy birthday and shouting “hooray!� along with a poor soul in a mouse costume, a handful of three-year-olds, and a group of men and women you have seen put more beer away than you can count, please raise your hand. Because I was recently right there, and it struck me as just about the oddest thing I have ever experienced.

Last night my husband and I attended the birthday party of our friends three year old daughter. The party took place at a local pizza parlor, marketed to children. An establishment not only marketed to children, but also to the parents of children who see the clear and obvious value of throwing a birthday party for 8 kids at someone else’s place. Where the cake, food, and paper party-ware are included, and someone else cleans up. It was the kind of place where the kids are given fistfuls of tokens and are sent off to busy themselves with video games and seizure-inducing flashing lights. What in the world is not to like about that? I, for one, can certainly see the appeal.

In attendance were several men and women I have known since long before they were married and had children. Men and women I have traveled with, played with and partied with for years. And there we all were, laden with baby bjorns, donning diaper bags, wearing silly expressions and dancing with giant cartoon characters.

So, when did this happen to us? I wonder if, a decade ago, I would have ever thought I would be sitting at a table with a toddler in my lap, looking at my good friend dancing enthusiastically with her daughter and an enormous mouse. This is the very same friend whose grandmother once dragged her out of a keg party in front of our entire high school. My good friend who one day after school, snuck her grandma’s car silently down the alley in neutral, and drove me home from her house a solid 2 years before she was old enough to get her drivers license. She was fearless, and she was either always in trouble, or avoiding trouble by sheer luck and the skin of her teeth. And there she was, beaming and dancing away with her pre-school daughter who was also beaming and dancing. And it was a beautiful sight to behold.

As I looked around the room at my friends, I wanted to laugh. Not because of the sillyness of it all (and it is really kind of silly), but because of how funny it is the way life changes when you have children. My friends and I might have looked at a group of people like us years ago, looked at each other, and mouthed the word “LOSERS!� My GOD would that have looked lame to us back then. We would have mocked us mercilessly.

But the fact of the matter is that when you have children, you do things that feel silly simply because it makes them happy. Seeing them smile is worth making a fool of yourself. You do it because you love them. And you really don’t care if the barely twenty-somethings are pointing and laughing at you. Because you know how much they have to learn about life, and you remember the days when you were the one doing the pointing and laughing.

When I was pregnant with my daughter, a client of mine, who is the father of twins, told me that life does not end when you become a parent. You just have what he eloquently called “a different kind of fun�. So the keg stands have morphed into jitterbugging with a giant mouse named Chuck. The beer is often times replaced with fruit punch, and we no longer have to sneak our parent’s cars out of the driveway. The thrill is not so much in getting away with things we might get into trouble for. The thrill lies in things that are yet to be. The firsts for our children, and the proud smiles that beam from their faces like white light become the thrilling moments. First steps, first words, first day of school, first ride on the bike without training wheels, first day of college, and maybe someday, our children’s first moments as parents.

So there we all were, having a “different kind of fun� with our children and, presumably, a teenager making minimum wage in a large mouse costume. And I was happy because the three-year-old birthday girl was happy, and my daughter Maggie was happy. Besides, we can still get our grooves on, as veterans, in our own right. We just have to make sure we have sitters lined up.

But we don’t ever point and laugh, because we know an infinitely greater amount of humility now than we did then. Children have a way of teaching you that.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 5:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

When I was six years old, I tried to mess with Santa, and I lost. Badly.

Being a true believer, I was electrified with anticipation the night before Christmas. I could never get to sleep, I was so excited. That, and the grown-ups downstairs were usually well into the wine, and tended to speak over each other, loudly, until the wee hours of the morning. I was a jangled nerve ending of anticipation.

The excitement nearly caused me to implode. After finally falling asleep in spite of myself, I awoke before the sun. It must have been 5:00 a.m. Maybe earlier. It was so dark, I could barely see. I held my breath, careful to be quiet as I slipped out of bed and tiptoed down the stairs. I don't know what I was more afraid of. The dark, or each and every creak of the stairs as I stealthly made my way down the the living room. My three sisters and I each got our own chair on which Santa placed our gifts. I made my way to the chair that was tagged "Meghan". MY CHAIR! THERE WERE PRESENTS ALL OVER IT!!! SANTA HAD BROUGHT OUR PRESENTS WHILE WE WERE SLEEPING!!! It was too much to wrap my young brain around!. I was awestruck. I crept over to the plate of cookies we had left for him, and sure enough, he had taken a few bites. Holy cow.

My plan was to get a sneak preview of the bounty, and slyly make my way back upstairs to bed with no one the wiser. I took my time looking at each gift, delivered just for me by the big guy himself. When I had documented it all, I decided to creep back up to my bed. As I moved toward the staircase, I passed the chair holding my older sister Julie's gifts. Something caught my eye. A plastic red calulator in the shape of a school house. I picked it up in the dark. I pushed a button. It lit up. I couldn't add. I could barely read. But I wanted it. I wanted it because it was red and shiny and it lit up. It was spectacular.

Without a second thought, I plucked it from Julie's chair and placed it on mine. I was certain I was the first one to see the gifts Santa had left us, and what Julie didn't know wouldn't hurt her, right? Right! It was going to work! I knew it! Satisfied with my ingenious plan, I snuck back upstairs and into my bed.

I rose with the rest of my family an hour or two later. I did my best to act surprised. I "ooh"'d and "aah"'d like a pro. Happy as a carp in muck, I played with my toys. That is, until I realized something was a little off. My parents. They were whispering to eachother and looking at me from across the room. I was certain it must have been my expression that had aroused suspicion. I busied myself with my new goods and concentrated on looking excited and angelic and most importantly, nonchalant.

"Uh.....Meghan?" my mother cleared her throat.

"Yes mom?" I replied, as innocently as I could act.

"Daddy and I think Santa wanted Julie to have that red calculator."

"No. I think Santa wanted me to have it. He put it on my chair."

I racked my brain, trying to figure out where I had gone wrong. There was NO WAY they could know that. NO WAY.

"Meghan, Daddy and I are pretty sure that calculator was supposed to go on Julie's chair."

"Why would Santa put it on my chair if he wanted Julie to have it?" I tried in vain to up the ante.

"Meghan. Daddy and I think Santa DID put that on Julie's chair."

Uh-oh. How in the sam hill had they figured me out? I was completely baffled.

"Meghan, you didn't put that on your chair, did you?"

"No." I lied.

"Well, Daddy and I happen to know that Santa wanted to give that calculator to Julie."

"How do you know that?" I was grasping at straws. And I knew it.

"We just know. Now give Julie the red calculator."

I sullenly walked to Julie's chair and set it down. It had been mine but for a moment, and it had slipped right through my fingers. I was totally counfounded as to how my parents had figured me out. It was as though they had eyes in the backs of their heads. Santa DID see me when I was sleeping, and he knew when I was awake. And he had told my parents! Santa had totally turned me in. I had been left high and dry. In the back of my mind I started worrying about next year. I figured this was the end of the line. I would forever be on the bad kid list. No more Santa presents for this lying kid. And it was all my fault for trying to pull a fast one. Why? Why had I done it?

Fortunately for me, I found out the following year that Santa was either very forgiving, or had a very short memory, because I miraculously ended up on the good list AGAIN. It must have been by the skin of my teeth. I tell you what, though. I never EVER messed with Santa again.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

What’s that? What’s happening, you ask? Oh. The red and khaki clad Target employees running towards the toy aisle with mops and pails! No, no one’s precious progeny piddled on the floor. What happened to my head, you ask? Why are you speaking to a bloody stump of a neck where my head used to be? OH! That. Don’t mind me. Christmas shopping for my toddler just caused my head to explode. Oh, and where are my manners? Here, let me get you a tissue. Pardon me AND my skull fragments for two weeks.

Elmo and Big Bird. Baby Einstein DVD’s. Developmental toys. Fingerpaints and Flashcards. Things to push and things to pull. Do I buy her Crayons? Play-doh? What about a goldfish?

Will my child even remember any of this?

Good heavens I have to buy her SOMETHING! Something to put under the tree! Something to develop her Brain! Something to develop her talents! I start sweeping toys off the shelf and into my cart with wild abandon. If I don’t buy her these things, what kind of parent am I?

I am the kind of parent who feels like a total sucker. I buy into this stuff hook, line and sinker. I am sure I will spend at least $200 on the child before all is said and done. Meanwhile, her favorite toy is a duct-taped dilapidated shoe box we pull her around in on the carpet of her bedroom. That, and a tennis ball. She is not even old enough to produce a Christmas list, yet I am out scouring the toy section to buy the perfect toy. The perfect toy that will likely sit deserted in a pile of a hundred other perfect toys while she intently examines a tube of my concealer for 45 minutes.

The truth is, I could slap on her cowboy boots, hand her a bowl of strawberries and plop her in her favorite shoebox for a few pulls across the floor, and she’d be as happy as a dingety-danged pig in slop.

So why do companies market to children? Children have no money! They are lucky to have a regular supply of food and shelter! Mine has not earned a single red cent in her 15 months outside the womb. She has never even taken out the garbage, yet we toil away day in and day out, and the kid gets a free ride. Sheesh.

You want to know why companies market to kids? Take a look in the mirror at the sucker who hands over their hard-earned dough. That person is precisely why companies market to kids. Their marketing allows us to fulfill the fantasy. The question is, whose fantasy is it, really? Is it the child’s fantasy? Sometimes. Is it the parent’s fantasy of providing a blissful toy-filled childhood? Likely, often the case. But the fantasy truly belongs the guy making a 60% profit on the hunk of plastic manufactured in China he just unloaded on you. The hunk of crap you bought because you are convinced that it’s going to stimulate your child’s intellectual development, hand-eye coordination, artistic capability, whathaveyou. The hunk of crap you will unload at a garage sale in the near future for one tenth what you paid for it. THAT GUY is precisely who is fulfilling their fantasy here. One hundred percent. Fantasy. Fulfilled. Cha-ching.

Sometimes I am convinced that the great American pastime has become fighting in vain to prevent someone from separating you from your money. It’s a difficult game to win.

This is the time of year when the dogged pursuit of our dollars is truly relentless. I mean, the health of the American Economy is depending on our holiday spending, right? FOR PETE'S SAKE.

I admit, I am a skeptic when it comes to these things. On a certain level I am aware of the sickness of materialism. How it distracts us from what is truly important. We derive great satisfaction from filling our homes with vast collections of stuff while we avoid thoughts of human suffering and abject poverty.

I am aware of all of this, and it disgusts me. Yet, I still went out shopping last weekend and came home with a stuffed elephant toddler chair, finger paints that my daughter can’t use for a year and a half, an Elmo doll that sings “Shout�, neon pink Duplo blocks, a 100 piece plastic pretend food set, and a frigging pink leotard and tutu. I was drunk on Christmas spirit. Smack-addled by visions of my daughters beaming face on Christmas morning. I had lost all control. I failed miserably at fending off the spending. I hit rock bottom, baby. I didn't even know what hit me.

In other words, I am a sucker who knows she is a sucker. Is that better than being a sucker who doesn’t know she’s sucker? I would like to think so. I suppose it’s optimal to not be a sucker, and to know that you are not a sucker. Although that might be a bit boring, really.

Maybe someday I will get there. But I doubt it. For now I think I am allright with being a sucker who knows she's a sucker. I sold my soul for a moment of parental bliss in which I get to watch my beaming toddler grow rapidly and inevitably more materialistic while simultaneously modeling to her that stuff, and giving stuff to people that you love, is extremely fulfilling. Oh? You want to separate me from my hard earned money? By all means! Just give me a shopping cart-o-crap for it and everyone's happy! In the mean time, I will be sure to let you know when I plan to hold my next garage sale. Because odds are there will be a crap load of barely-used children’s toys for sale at one tenth what I paid for them.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 5:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Picture a dim, candlelit dining room stuffed to the gills with people, and practically exploding with noise, movement, and quasi-organized chaos. People are crammed around the table elbow to elbow, like sardines. The air throbs with a life it’s own. Like a cross between the warm heart of a mammal, and a pulsing wound. Although hard to distinguish in all the chaos, if you listen carefully, you can pick out the noises of clinking glasses, people talking over each other, the crunch of a nutcracker, requests to please pass the salt, please pass the wine. Cackles of laughter. You might hear a faint choir singing in the background.

You look up just in time to see a discarded, jagged lobster claw fly just past the end of your nose as it’s tossed onto a bowl with the rest of the pieces of exoskeleton. Part of you wants to lock yourself in the bathroom to steal a silent moment and shake the noise from your ears, but if you do that, you might miss something, and you desperately don’t want to miss anything. Someone is pressing against the back of your chair, trying to wedge and shimmy through to the kitchen, and under the table, an animal is stepping on your foot. Your left knee is being jammed into the leg of the table. You are trapped. Wedged in like the plastic cubes of the game “Don’t Break the Ice�. You pray that you can hold your bladder until the end of dinner. You make an offhand comment that is met with peals of laughter, and your face warms with pride and unexpected self-consciousness.

Have you been transported in time to some medieval feast? Surrounded by hungry heathens, bumped by people rushing to the vomitorium? No. You are having Christmas Eve dinner with my family, thank you very much.

My Methodist grandmother on my mother’s side married my grandfather, who was (gasp) Catholic. At the time, it was considered quite the scandal. Her own mother refused to attend the wedding. A decision she later regretted deeply. I imagine my grandmother found the traditions and rules of Catholicism to be a little foreign and odd. She was an amazing cook, and had a taste for the finer things in life. When she learned she that it was not acceptable to prepare meat before Christmas day because of lent, she may have been disappointed. She loved a good roast beef. Chicken was apparently considered gauche at the time. My grandmother loved an excuse to put on a fancy dinner. The strange no-beef rule left her no option for dinner on Christmas Eve other than lobster. The tradition stuck, because… well.. who doesn’t like lobster?

So every December 24th, twenty or so people congregate at my parent’s house in the middle of the coldest, most landlocked state in the country. The state of Minnesota, practically smack dab in the middle of the entire continent. On what is close to the darkest day of the year, we order fresh lobster from a thousand miles away, and sacrifice them in the name of Christmas and by default, Catholicism. We squash ourselves around the table and try to talk over one another. The decibel level in the room is directly proportionate with the amount of wine consumed.

At a certain point your mind starts to shut down from over stimulation. It gives me a small amount of insight into what it might be like to be autistic. To sense so much going on all the time, that it becomes too much for the brain to process. Your mind becomes fragmented and your sentences are blurted out randomly. Much like a conversation between children. “My dad’s a Fireman!� to which the other party replies “I like cookies!� and the first person responds “My goldfish is named Freddie!�

This is what Christmas Eve dinners are like in my family.

My husband is one hundred percent Dutch. His family is even larger than ours. When we have dinner at their house, the scene is much different. People take turns speaking. There are silent moments in between conversations. Pauses. People pass things around the table in an orderly fashion. People don’t crack jokes during the blessing. The only thing tossed at the table is the salad. For some reason, things aren’t typically spilled. It’s all quite civilized. And it’s a nice way of doing things.

I am glad that my daughter Madge gets to experience the best of both worlds. When I spend time in one atmosphere, I tend to long for the other. The pendulum swings from unrestrained chaos and joviality to peaceful celebration and reverence and back again. Two lovely variations of the theme of family at Christmas.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Are you hungry? Want to take a look in the pantry for a snack?
Here. Put on a protective helmet. And take this flashlight and machete. You are going to need them. It’s a risky venture, opening that cupboard door. There are cans and boxes stacked precariously from top to bottom. Careful there. If you move that can of chicken broth, it could all come crashing down on your head. Just like “jenga� but with cans and boxes of non-perishables instead of small rectangles of wood.

When it comes to food, I am a hoarder. Plain and simple. There are two adults and one toddler in our family. Based on the contents of my pantry, one might think we are parents to at least 5 ravenous teenagers. We are not. One might think we live in a bomb shelter and are preparing for the big one. We do not. My name is Meghan. I am 33 year old food hoarder, and I am not afraid to admit it.

We went to Costco on Saturday. I spent three hundred dollars. I came home with two flank steaks, two large pot roasts, 5 pounds of boneless short ribs, two whole chickens, 6 pounds of boneless chicken breasts and a five pound package or chicken sausage. And that was just the meat section. There are two adults in our household. Two.

So why the scarcity mentality? I wish I knew. I was fed as a child. Every day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. My mother cooked for us every single day.

My sisters and I did have to improvise every once in a while. We made our own bag lunches for school. When the cupboard got a little bare, we had to get creative. Like the times we made “Doritos� out of stale taco shells and table salt. Not so good. My younger sisters once made a seven layer cake of wheat bread, margarine and cinnamon sugar. Visually, it was a masterpiece. Their excitement turned to disappointment when they took a few bites and went into nauseated margarine overload. It looked like cake, but really, it was just heavily buttered bread piled up with cinnamon sugar. Hic. Excuse me. I just threw up a little in my mouth.

I used to make my own “mounds� candy bars after school. While watching “Inspector Gadget� in the kitchen on our black and white television, I would pile coconut and chocolate chips on a piece of saran wrap and cook it in the microwave until it became a bubbling, smoking, rock-hard lump. Then I ate it. Happily. I can only imagine what ingesting melted saran wrap fumes has done to my insides.

The good stuff went fast at our house. When my mother came home from the grocery store, we would make a mad rush to “help her with the bags�. The kind of help we offered was not altruistic. Oh no. We helped with the groceries so that we could take a silent inventory of the treats, and then stash the fruit roll ups and oreos away. We could then return to gorge on them with no one being the wiser. Our hungry, beady little eyes scanned the brown paper sacks. Bag of oranges… broccoli… cheerios….BINGO! CHOCOLATE CHIP GRANOLA BARS! There are eight, so I need to make sure I get at least four of them before Molly, Betsy and Julie spot them! If I act fast, I can do it!

Everyone was out for themselves. It was dog eat dog.

One time, I managed to be the first one to get to a box of Twinkies our grandma brought over. I stuffed my pockets and snuck out of the house. “I’m going for a bike ride!� I said as I slyly slid six twinkies into the basket on my banana seat bike. I ate all of them during my covert bicycle mission. I pedaled home weakly, and retired to my bedroom in a nauseated stupor. That was the end of my love affair with alll things Hostess.

Our father used to try to beat us at our own game. He hid cookies in the upstairs hall closet, behind a pile of musty sleeping bags. We always found them. It we were lucky, we got to them before the dank closet smell permeated the box and made them taste funny. If we got there too late, we typically ate the foul, stinky cookies anyways. It wasn’t about taste, it was about WINNING!

I suppose my food hoarding did have some historical rooting in the family culture that we all helped create. The scarcity mentality continues today. I just like to eat exactly what I want, when I want. My husband Jim loves leftovers. I let him eat them all. I have no interest in dining on food that was cooked yesterday. That is so, well… yesterday. I like to ponder what exactly it is that I want to eat, and then make it and eat it. This requires a well-stocked pantry and freezer.

If we are ever faced with Armageddon, and my family survives the initial attack, we could easily hole up and subsist on the contents of the pantry for at least 3 months. All we need is a can opener.

Let me think……hmmmm……Tonight…. I want……. pasta with pine nuts and brasied short ribs. Now hand me that helmet and flashlight. I’m going in. If I’m not back in ten minutes, call the fire department. I've likely been concussed by a can of garbanzo beans.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Mommybloggers: Grace, Thank you for being our first very first guest blogger! We met you at the BlogHer conference, and have held you in highest regard ever since. You are funny, snarky and sharp. You are a compassionate humanitarian. Now answer our questions young lady, or you're grounded.

Grace, have you always been as irreverent, witty, sassy and funny as you are today? In other words, have you always had your voice? Did you spend some time looking for it? If so, how did you find it (your voice, that is)? Because Grace, you have a voice. WHOO-EEE, do you have a voice.

Grace: When you’re one of six kids from a working class, industrial strength Catholic family, somewhere along the line you must develop a keen sense of snark. It’s a survival tool and a preventive measure, useful in keeping one from a slow death by boredom or turning into one of those stoned teenagers slamming against the high school corridor walls.

I can hardly compare myself with the genius of David Sedaris and the deadpan humor of Bill Murray, but they hail from backgrounds similar to mine. Like them, I am spellbound by the absurdities of every day life and can’t resist hauling the weirdness out of the closet to ask whoever is interested, “What the fuck is with the FLOWBEE, people?�

Indeed, I’ve always been a smartass, and I think that’s what you mean by ‘voice’.

Just for the record, the kid says I’m “hella� more sarcastic than all of her friends combined, and they’re fourteen. I like to think of this as a compliment.

Mommybloggers: Yeah, we did mean smart-ass, but we made you say it! What are the ages of your kids?

Grace: "Molly is 14 and I have five grown step kids, ages 34, 33, 31, 30 and 24."

Mommybloggers: So Ms. Grace Davis, we hear you are Dr. Laura's worst nightmare. And we believe that. We don't want to mess with you, but we do want to know more about you. Tell us a little about yourself. Where did you grow up, and how did your childhood experiences shape who you are today?

Grace: "I grew up in the bleak sameness of suburban Northern California. My hometown of Fremont was, in the late 1950s and through the 60s, severely white bread, car oriented, and consumerist in the extreme. It was also an incubator for the 60s drug culture, producing bored teenagers slamming against the school lockers high on hash, and, when we were feeling ambitious, zipping down the corridors on revved up on speed.

Mommybloggers: So Grace, you are from the 'burbs! The burbs of California no less! A budding suburban rebel from Fremont. Tell us more about the community that shaped the enigma otherwise known as Grace.

Grace: "I cannot say enough about the delusion of safety in the suburbs. My parents, bless their yearning, immigrant hearts, were thrilled to have a piece of the rock in the form of our modest tract home. Like everyone else, they wanted to spare their children the ravages of inner city life. They saw the solution was in planned communities, with shopping malls serving as contrived city centers. Everything perfect, everything in its place.

My response to all of this was to hide and read. I’m second of six kids and hiding in our household was no mean feat. But I nestled in little corners read everything I could get my grimy mitts on. I think if I were a teenager today, I would be a goth bookworm, spending my allowance on Doc Marten lace ups and obscure fiction at used book stores."

Mommybloggers: Two of the three mommybloggers are middle children. We feel your pain. Really we do. We are a special breed, middle kids. Batteries and neuroses included!

Grace: "To this day, I continue nurturing my inner goth bookworm, always choosing alternative pathways to mainstream culture. I will forever be drawn to the unique, the weird, and the quirky. I’m certain I’m not the only one raised in the suburbs who has devoted their life to exorcising its demons. In fact, I would bet serious money that the entire population at Burning Man share this world view."

Mommybloggers: So tell us Grace, truthfully. If you had Dr. Laura alone in a room, what would you say to her?

Grace: "Hopefully, the spirit of Mother Teresa would take over my body, compelling me to extend sweetness, pink light and compassion towards Dr. Laura Schlessinger. However, I have a feeling that the wise and righteous Mother Teresa would want to totally kick Dr. Laura’s ass. So, no matter what, Dr. Laura would go down, either by getting her butt walloped or getting killed by liberal kindness. And I’ll just bet she’d prefer the ass kicking."

Mommybloggers: I think you're right. I bet Dr. Laura loves nothing more than a good whupping. A real sick puppy, that one.

Grace, you have been blogging for a couple of years now. What inspired you to start blogging?

Grace: "Actually, I’ve only been blogging for a year as of September 23. That’s all. And now I’m uneasy and paranoid as your assumption that I’ve been blogging for longer has triggered a wave of insecurity and self doubt - “Hmmm, Meghan, Jenn and Jenny are thinking ‘a few years’? Does that mean I come off as jaded and world weary? No longer fresh? Should I do more memes? Post more pictures of my dog?�

Mommybloggers: Yes Grace, we want more pictures of the dog, and we want more fresh-e-fresh. Like, enough of this making the world a better place through grassroots philanthropy. That might get you an interview with the New York Times and all, but you could really liven things up with a new twist. Like limericks. You should definitely add limericks to your blog format.

Grace: "Yeah, I'll get right on that. All of my many neuroses aside, I deployed a blog for two reasons. The first is that personal websites are part of a big conversation I was eager to join. I caught the bug in the late 90s as an ardent fan of webjournals, particularly Steve Amaya’s Evaporation , Beth Reinstein Atkins’ Stitches in Time and Chuck Atkins’ ChuckStake. Compelling stuff these webjournals, personal memoirs of every day life published on the World Wide Web for all to see. Imagine that!

Webjournals and the blogosphere was seductive on many levels.

Mommybloggers: Seductive! Sounds scandalous. Do tell!

Grace: "It’s part peasant revolution, whereupon a non-techy, soccer mom like me can access and participate in a fat media venue. It’s part village square, though on a global basis, across geopolitical and cultural boundaries. And, of course, it’s part therapeutic. We may reveal our heart, soul and psyche in this public milieu and, with interactive features of blog tools, we are rewarded with feedback and genuine support from like minds."

Mommybloggers: You are possibly the worlds coolest soccer mom. You took your 14 year old daughter and her friends to Hawaii for spring break for crying out loud. Is 33 years too old to be adopted? Grace, will you adopt me? All of us? Please?

Grace: "Sure! Can you cook? Really though, Maybe you could just work things out with your mom and dad, okay? Back to the blog. The other reason why I hurled my laptop into the blogosphere is that group emails I used to send to my friends were not unlike busy blog posts. As my friends began to fear my spam (Egads! Another three part email from Grace!), I thought I should consign my pithy observations, political rants and petty thoughts about celebrities on to a blog. Then, friends could elect to click onto my blog for my current dark musings on Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Once I unfurled my words via the miracle of TypePad, I was delighted to find that others outside my circle of pals were interested in discussing the Cheney/Rumsfeld cabal.

So, everybody wins – my friends are spared Grace Spam, I created my own bully pulpit of a blog, complete with pics of my kiddo Molly and my Jack Russell Terrier, Malcolm, and I became friends with a bunch of smart, witty, tender, kindly bloggers and readers."

Mommyblogggers: Grace, Have you always written? What did you do with your snark before the blog? Did you write recreationally or professionally before you became a blogger?

Grace: "My endeavors in creative writing were limited to the aforementioned lengthy, spammy emails to friends. I did write several short stories when I was younger and really full of myself. Such is the hubris of the English Literature major, and I was a particularly insufferable one at that.

Professionally, I was a scientific/medical editor earlier in my career. I believe one can hunt down my stuff on Medline but it would be a hell of a scavenger hunt as the editors are usually sixth in a line-up of seven authors.

Yes, I suppose I sound a little bitter about that."

Mommybloggers: You have really changed lives with the hurricane relief blog. You are our idol. Did you ever dream the philanthropic blog you started would be as sucessful as it has been?

Grace: "Certainly not! I thought I would simply rally my blogroll and folks who read our posts about the blog on Craigslist. However, I’m ecstatic we have been able to help in such a significant way. Though the Hurricane Katrina Direct Relief and Family to Family blogs sprang out of pure serendipity, I also think our appearance was timely. People were disturbed and furious with our government’s ineffective responses to Katrina victims. Thus, our humble sites were well received as sincere, grassroots efforts. We were perceived as more trustworthy than the traditional resources for relief."

Mommybloggers: Have you thought about promoting a Grace Davis bobblehead doll?

Grace: "....Yeah. Ummm.. No....Maybe?"

Mommybloggers: You have poured blood sweat and tears into the hurricaine relief blog. You even worked through the night and showed up for a television interview with (gasp) UNWASHED HAIR!!! Your dedication is admirable. You might even spark the newest look in hair! Forget "the Rachel"! This year it's "The Grace"! But Seriously, What can average Joes like us do to help people at this stage of the hurricane recovery?

Grace: The Katrina disaster continues to dominate the lives of folks on the Gulf Coast. Donations of food, supplies and equipment have decreased significantly now that ‘compassion fatigue’ has taken over the national consciousness. As far as the mainstream media is concerned, we have met the end of the Katrina ‘story arc’. We’re not seeing coverage on CNN and Fox of the communities continuing to live in suboptimal conditions, with whole families in tents and dining in soup kitchens. This is abysmal. This is the bad news.

The good news is that more and more families have moved out of the evacuee shelters and have been provided with modest apartments, small houses and mobile homes. However, as these families lost everything in the hurricane, they’re moving into empty living rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchens.

So, we’re looking to meet the basic needs – non-perishable food, underwear, hooded sweatshirts, baby items - for the struggling communities and ‘housewarming gifts’ for families moving into their new homes.

Obviously, this is the part where the overeager, do-gooder, disaster relief blogger urges everyone to take a look at the posts on her Hurricane Katrina relief blogs and see what you can do to help our friends!"

Mommybloggers: It's to be expected! You are passsionate about helping the people who need it. We encourage everyone to take a look at the relief site and do what they can to help.

Grace, What do you REALLY think of the term "mommyblogger"?

Grace: I think it sounds upbeat and cheerful. ‘Mommy’ softens the mucosal sounding ‘blogger’. It describes exactly what we do - getting the mommy story out into the blogosphere. I identify with the term completely and claim my blog accordingly, though my version includes menopausal symptoms, left of center politics and the occasional fantasy of George Clooney in bondage.

Mommybloggers: Who doesn't like the thought of George in bondage? Bondage at his Italian Villa no less!
Grace, What do you see as the socio-cultural impact of the mommyblog now and in the future? Where do you think this is all headed?

Grace: Any phenomenon or movement involving truth telling by women will blow the lid off the culture. Myth busting is what we’re talking about here and the best mommy blogs are all over this. You have to admire the sheer chutzpah of those mommy bloggers who toss sentimentality out the window and fearlessly give us the real deal on cradle cap (gross!), projectile vomiting (The kid hurled all over me!), and needing to get laid, (my GOD, when will it HAPPEN?).

We must also honor those mommy bloggers who reveal their pain and helplessness. It’s an act of courage for mothers to portray anything other than noble, selfless parenting. It’s a service to all mothers when we announce we’re not longer buying into the great palace lie that all is gingham and teddy bears with our children and homes. Caring for kids, particularly infants and young children, can be dangerously draining. When we say or write – This is hard! This is nuts! I’m completely lost! – we affirm ourselves and others and this allows us to take the necessary steps to regaining our sanity and wholeness. If we don’t, we continue to lie to ourselves, and the cost of that is huge.

In the future we will see the emergence of 12 Step groups for adult children whose mothers were mommybloggers. In case I’m not around to witness this, I’ve been putting aside a small nest egg for my kid’s shrink fund. In either case, consider yourselves warned.

Mommybloggers: We shudder to think of the psychological repercussions. Start saving for therapy now, mommybloggers.
So, forget the kids! What about blogs in general?

Grace: Now that we have the tools to wield our very own media outlets, there’s no going back. Blogs are here to stay and will evolve with the technology. I want to play with all of the new fancy stuff – the video blogs, the podcasting - but I’ll be thinking twice when the smell-a-blog appears on the scene. You simply don’t want a whiff of a blogger like me who spends way too much time pounding away on the laptop in old sweats, breathing out deadly coffee breath and is in desperate need of a shower.

Mommybloggers: And now for our gratuitous ripoff of the questions form "Inside the Actors Studio", Bloggy style! * (With apologies to the great Bernard Pivot)

What is your favorite parent related word?

"Sippy cup. Makes me grin from ear to ear. Happy, happy sippy cup!"

What is your least favorite parent related word?

Ferberizing. I know that’s all about getting your kid to sleep on their own, but it sounds like a dry cleaning process, not unlike 'Martinizing'.

What is your favorite creative censored curse word used around children?

"'Cabron!' which means male goat in Spanish. Especially effective when you roll the 'r' in that second syllable.

What is your favorite hiding place within your home when you need to get away from it all?

I use the kitchen table. Nobody messes with me at the kitchen table. after all, I'm just a lunge away from grabbing one of the carving knives.

Second is my bed, but I have to duke it out with the dog to get a prime place there. My own bed! Where's the justice?

What hiding place have you been found in too often and can no longer use?

The bed. The last sanctuary. Gone! Oh, the inhumanity!

If Oprah exists, what would you like to hear her say when you arrive at the Oprah Show when she features the Mommybloggers?

"Today we're going to take the Mommybloggers out for make overs!"

Sigh, such music to my ears. Besides a new do and a nifty wardrobe, I could go for a medically administered chemical peel. But please, no botox. I like my frown lines, thank you very much. Besides, these creases are essential for my patented Look of DoomTM, a powerful parenting tool I have honed to perfection over the years. Take that away, and it would be pure anarchy at my house.

By the way, Oprah exists. That girlfriend ain’t no Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy. Don’t mess wid me on dat.

Mommybloggers: Oh. Don't worry Grace. We won't. We love you, but we are a sometimes a little scared of you at the same time! Believe us. We will not mess wid you.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

"It’s the new Meghan Townsend!" I proclaimed as I donned a new, huge afro wig and strutted my stuff all the way into the school dance. My High School peers jaws gaped down to their polo oxfords, which were tucked neatly into their tapered Girbaud jeans. They all fell silent. The only noise to be heard was Cris Cross’s “Jump!� blasting through the gym. They began whispering to one another and pointing. Oh no. Not again. In my effort to distinguish myself from my siblings I had made a mockery of myself AGAIN. Why were people always laughing AT me and not WITH me? Why wouldn’t anyone sit next to me on the School bus? Why did I feel compelled to eat my school lunch burrito sitting alone in a stall in the girls restroom? Why did that social service worker keep calling to ask about the cats gone missing from the neighborhood?

I guess it wasn’t THAT bad. But I was a middle child. Technically the second of four girls. I like to say that my sister Molly and I got shafted so badly that we even had to share the title of middle child. Just like we had to share everything else we ever got, from fruit roll-ups to chicken pox and head lice.

Middle Child Syndrome. The words conjure up images of a desperate, needy, neurotic Jan Brady-type. A clingy “me-too! Hey! Remember me? Hey! Wait up guys! Come on! Wait up!� kind of a kid. In a way, I suppose that is part of who I am. A person hates to admit that. But yeah, I am an annoying pesky middle child at heart. I feel it in my center. The need to be included. The desire for approval. Loathe the thought of being left out of anything. Like a dagger through my heart.

I have a distinct memory of asking my mother for ketchup on my bologna sandwich. I was about 4 years old. I did this because my sister Julie had asked for mustard on hers. What’s the opposite of mustard? Ketchup! I shall have ketchup on my bologna sandwich! My mother must have thought I was nuts, or at least lacked any sense of taste. But that is the way I thought it was supposed to be. My choices, even then, were dictated by someone else’s. I thought I had to be the exact opposite of my older sister. Not that any one ever told me that, mind you. It was an underlying assumption on my part. Four years old and already making an ass of u and me.

For much of my life, I had an underdeveloped sense of identity. If asked the question “So, who IS Meghan?� I probably would have stammered a bit and responded with “ummm... I don’t know. What do you think?�. This lack of self-definement is characteristic of middle children. I measured myself through the eyes of others. I watched for clues and gauged how I was doing by carefully monitoring the facial expressions and body language of the people around me.

I had a couple of “jail break� boyfriends. Guys I went out with because they had cars and could drive me places. They could drive me away from my house and my family. I also belonged to a gang of girls. We weren't a “Gang� like the kind that wear bandanas and flash signs. But we were a gang of girls in a sense. We were so close back then, we really kind of raised each other. At least through the teenage years. Most of those girls are my closest friends to this day.

I read on the Dr. Spock website that “Middle children...often learn non-aggressive strategies to get what they want, such as negotiation, cooperation, or seeking parental intervention�. I don’t remember beating my younger sisters up per se, but I do remember implementing tactics of full-on psychological torture. I would hide my sisters security blanket just to watch her sob in bereft agony. I would literally sit and watch my parents, exhausted from long days at work, as they searched high and low for her beloved dingy piece of fabric so they could put Molly to bed once and for all. I watched them frantically tearing the house apart, and envisioned her blanket, folded and hidden carefully under the cushion of my father’s favorite armchair. I watched them and chuckled demonically.

Deviant and sick? Why yes! That’s me! Deep rooted feelings of anger for not getting enough attention? Yes! And that is why I derived pleasure from watching my little sister shudder and weep in her suffering. MAN that is twisted. Molly, if you are reading this: I AM SORRY!!!! You were an innocent victim. My middle child comrade. I had Jan Brady syndrome, but with more sociopathic tendencies thrown in. I always ended up giving the darn blanket back, though. And surprising as it may be, I seem to have an overdeveloped sense of empathy as an adult. You might not have predicted that back then.

But I guess it’s not all bad. Apparently most middle children possess a well developed sense of empathy (aforementioned story of sibling torture clearly an anomaly, perhaps I will donate my brain to research). We make great diplomats. We are used to getting a bit lost in the shuffle. I also read on www.DrSpock.com that “Middle children take a general interest in getting to know other people...Middle children are often quiet about their needs; they may be more likely to withdraw than to make a fuss� (or perhaps resort to deviant behavior, which apparently was the case with me). So if I had learned to clearly express my needs (NEED LOTS OF ATTENTION!) I may not have had to work out my feelings of juvenile rage through insensitive sibling torture. I was doing the best I could with the resources I had at the time. So was everyone in my family.

Being our only child so far, Maggie will be spared the title of "middle child". If we are lucky enough to have another child, or even two or three more, Maggie will be the oldest. According to Dr. Spock, eldest children have their own unique neuroses. Overzealous parents, without other siblings to tend to in the early years, tend to focus more attention on the oldest child. Oldest children learn how to please their parents, and they do it well (subsequent children apparently learn to not give a hoot what their frazzled parents think). "Ironically, their very success often leads to anxiety: If being special hinges on performing up to high standards, what happens if they fail? To protect against this disaster, many firstborn children set even higher standards for themselves than their parents do, and, as a result, are rarely satisfied."

I do hope that Maggie grows up to be okay with who she is. I hate to think of her berating herself for not measuring up to some unattainable standard. To offer Maggie the best of both worlds (as a parent with only one child to focus my crazy on) I think I will introduce Maggie to her imaginary older sister. That way she can be both an oldest and a middle. Maggie, meet you sister Sara. She's real bossy, and she might beat on you every now and then, but she will take all the pressure off. Maggie, my love, you are now free to go through life as an empathetic, diplomatic middle child slacker.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0)

My biggest fear in life used to be that I would die before I became a mother. I was terrified I would be diagnosed with terminal cancer, or hit by a bus, or eaten by a shark before I ever got down to the business of getting married and having babies. I was afraid I would never find the right man to marry. I worried I would miss "the window" for getting pregnant. I worried that I would have to figure out a way to have a child on my own if I didn't meet someone I wanted to spend my life with. It seemed like I wanted to be a mother so badly that it was bound to get bungled up somehow.

I look back on that time and I laugh. How funny it is to me now. I thought I knew what fear was back then. I know now that you really can't grasp the true potential of terror until you become a parent.

Back then I thought I would be really good at this whole motherhood shtick. I was certain I would just glide into my new role as a parent, cooing, soothing, and burping all the way. Like a pro. Overconfidence and obliviousness made me shortsighted. I laugh at that now too.

I was 31 years old when Jim and I got married. We got pregnant about 2 months later. It happened that fast. I secretly enjoyed watching people doing the math in their heads when they first learned that I was pregnant. I would coach them. "She will be born two weeks before our first anniversary". Twelve months minus one month is eleven months. Eleven. Not eight. Eleven.

I looked forward to meeting my daughter. I wanted to be done with the whole pregnancy thing and just get on with it already. My fears about missing the opportunity to have a child disappeared into the breeze as I neared my due date.

Then Maggie was born, and "the fear" came back. But it was different. It had grown teeth and claws. It was bigger and scarier than before. It had morphed into something else entirely.

My visceral reaction to the new title of mother surprised me. Those were the "deer in the headlights" days. I thought I would be a natural with an infant. I wasn’t. At all. I was awkward and jumpy and nervous as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. It felt like everyone could tell how clueless I was. I had created an imaginary audience and they didn’t think much of my performance. I was about to be booed off stage. They were on the verge of lobbing rotten vegetables at me. It felt like I was being judged by everyone. I didn't have a frigging clue what I was doing. I was a fraud and they knew it.

I didn’t feel ready for the responsibility of another human. Not just any human but an itty bitty human who could poop and cry and eat and breathe but couldn’t do much else. A little human whose mother was ME. ME. I was responsible for the physical and emotional development of a baby who would grow to be an adult. And I was doing a terrible job. T here was no turning back. I was in it, and I was in it deep.

It felt like Maggie and I weren’t connected the way mothers and newborns are supposed to be . I was going through the motions of feeding and holding and burping, but she didn’t know me from Adam. It creeped me out when I would go to her bassinet and find her trying to nurse the side of it. She didn't know me from her bassinet. What the Hell was wrong with me? I was an abysmal failure. I was failing my daughter. I was afraid I would never be a good mother. I was afraid Maggie would suffer because if it.

I was in bad shape. Toss in sleep depravation, a whole lot of stitches, a body that I no longer recognized and jacked up hormones and I was a mess. I practiced what you might call "fake it ‘til you make it" (a very useful coping strategy), we got into a routine, and things eventually started feeling a little better. Closer to normal at least.

And then the fear. It came back. And this time it was bigger than I ever imagined.

I fell in love with my daughter. I was swept away in absolute adoration. And that scared the motherloving crap out of me. When you love a child that much, they become more that mere flesh and blood. That baby is so much more than brain synapses and dendrite connections. More than their collective parts and movements and noises and expressions. That little person becomes the center of your world. They change you. They alter your body chemistry and your brain. They become part of who you are. They move right on into your heart and they never ever leave. When I felt the magnitude of that, fear gripped me like a vice. It crushed my lungs so I couldn't breathe. It buckled my knees getting out of the tub. It made me so cold my stomach turned.

My thoughts went all panicky and herky-jerky.

"What if something happens to her? What if she gets cancer? What if she becomes addicted to drugs and I can't help her? What if we get raided by terrorists and Jim and I are killed and can't be here to protect her? How would she survive? How can I prepare her now for possibilities like that?"

The world. It had me by the balls. I kept thinking to myself "I am so screwed".

I found myself obsessing about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. I wanted to set up camp next to her bassinet and monitor every breath. I wanted to check on her every 5 minutes every night. I would startle awake if she slept too long and think to myself "She could be dead right now. Please don't let her be dead." And I would hurry to her room to find her sleeping peacefully. I actually considered the pros and cons of staying up all night every night staring at her, just to make sure she was okay. It was about then that I realized that in addition to needing more sleep, I needed to let go a little and have some faith. I am not the worlds most trusting person, so just having faith was no small feat.

I found myself making deals with God.

"Okay God. I officially surrender. You've got me. Remember all that time when I wasn't sure if you existed or not? I am sorry. All those times I have used your name in vain? Sorry about that too. You know this baby I have wanted for basically my entire life? Her existence is all the proof I need that you are for real. I didn't really get it before. I do now. I require no further education, so if you were thinking of teaching me a lesson you don't need to. I have learned my lesson. Really. In case you didn't know (oh that's right , you're omniscient) if anything happens to her I don't think I would ever recover. Ever. My soul would be decimated. You've got me, and you've got me big time. You are one hundred percent in charge. No kidding. I finally get it. So please, please, please, have mercy on my heathen soul and keep this child safe from harm. I will do my best as an earth-dwelling human to keep her out of danger. If you could take care of the fate, disaster, apocalypse part of the equation I will be forever grateful. Thanks."

Maggie is fourteen months now, and still alive (Thanks, God). I don't worry as much as I used to. "the fear" doesn't grip me as often as it used to. Perhaps I have learned not to turn my brain to that station. Perhaps I get wrapped up in the day-to-day tasks and routines of parenthood. Perhaps I just take things for granted. It does creep up on me once in a while though, and the fear is just as overpowering and as menacing as I remember.

A friend of mine e-mailed me a quote from the book "Operating Instructions" by Anne Lamott. It reads : "one of the worst things about being a parent is being face to face with one's secret insanity". That pretty well sums it up. Although my insanity doesn't seem to be a secret anymore . I am one crazy momma.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 11:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

I left for the infamous Blogher conference on a Friday. Jim was out of town and getting ready to leave for my trip whilst chasing Madge around proved to be a taxing endeavor indeed. I got her ready for her weekend of adoration, first by one grandmother and then the other. At the airport, I said goodbye to my daughter in her car seat. She was wiggling and whining and looked at me like she didn’t know me from the mailman. She was cranky. I got no love at all. Walking through the double automatic doors towards my flight check in and 3 days of freedom, I was surprised by the unexpected pang in my heart.

I had anticipated a gleeful rush of “Halle-freaking-lujah! I’m Free!!!! No diaper bag to lug! No atomic poopy butts to wipe! Woohoo! �

Instead, I found it hard to breathe and my eyes stung with tears.

What if she was confused by her new surroundings? What if the teeth she was cutting bothered her? What if her runny nose turned into a full fledged cold? What if she cried and cried and I wasn’t there to calm her down?

I was one of those people that just didn’t quite take to motherhood right out of the gates. I was awkward and I felt not-right and off balance. I didn’t know this baby girl at all, and every time I went to retrieve her from her bassinette, and found her trying to nurse the side of it I felt nauseated. What did she want from me? What did she need from me? I was ashamed that I didn’t have a white-light experience the moment I became a mother. I didn’t hear a choir singing the hallelujah chorus the moment I first laid eyes on her. Frankly, I felt panicky and anxious. I didn’t know what to do.

I remember a morning about a week after Maggie was born. She was not able to latch on to breastfeed, and I was trying to pump milk for her. I was living in a stranger's body. I was attached to this milking machine and it felt more foreign and awkward than anything I have expereinced. I sat, pumping and stared wistfully out the window at my neighbors. I watched them doing normal things like mowing the lawn and bringing groceries in. I thought to myself “How nice for them, doing normal things like normal people.� I wasn’t sure what I was feeling but I was certain it was not normal. I had a machine attached to my boobs and Maggie laid, tiny in her crib like some Romanian orphan. It felt like my life was over.

I tried in earnest to see to all of my motherly duties with care and thoroughness. I made sure I did everything I was supposed to. In the back of my mind though, I was terrified. I was scared out of my everloving mind that things would never feel right. I was afraid I would forever be some crazy, detached mom who was always forced and awkward with Maggie. What if I could never distinguish a hungry cry from a cranky cry? What if my inability to feel in sync with her scarred for life? Would her relationship with her father be enough? I felt like everyone could tell I was struggling. I felt like a fraud. I felt like a horrible mother.

It didn’t change in a day. It actually took a few months to feel connected to my daughter. To fall in love with her. I don’t know if that’s bad, or if it comes as a shock to anyone, but it is the truth.

So, Friday morning I sat on the plane and cried real, surprising tears because I missed my daughter. I missed her so much it hurt. I was taken aback by the open floodgate of my own sadness, and by the overwhelming anxiety I had leaving her. It was oddly very reassuring. I am normal! Perhaps overly attached! Hooray! I am miserable!

Late afternoon at the Blogher conference I saw a man holding a baby girl. I blinked and shook my head. It looked like my daughter. I STARED. I wanted to run across the room and get a closer look. No… It couldn’t possibly be….. It was the spitting image of Maggie. Hair, eyes, everything. It was surreal. I was afraid the man holding her would notice I was gaping and think I was some kind of mommystalker. I had to go over and see her close up after the final comments at the Blogher wrap up. No, it was not my daughter, but she DID look a lot like Maggie.

I got home Sunday night and crept into Maggie’s room to look at her as she slept. I stopped breathing for a moment and my stomach jumped. OH MY GOD WHO REPLACED MY LITTLE BABY WITH A 27 POUND ELEVEN MONTH OLD Who WALKS?? She looked HUGE. She was lying on her back with her arms sprawled out. She filled up half the crib. It was alarming how big she looked to me. I accidentally-on-purpose woke her up so I could hold her and rock her. My little amazon baby. I can’t remember anything ever feeling so good. Or right. Or perfect. EVER.

Originally posted on I'm Ablogging on August 2, 2005

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

This post is about poop, but not just regular poop. Giant FLOATING poop. It's also about ice cream, cigarettes, coffee, and prune juice. Oh, and Scalding. This post is also about scalding.

Maggie and I met my family for ice cream yesterday. We shared a small scoop of blueberry yogurt and Maggie sampled the wares of everyone else at the table who couldn't resist her hopeful gaze and gaping little-bird mouth.

We followed up the ice cream with a visit to a small toy store that carries all sorts of fun things for kids. This should have been a happy experience, filled with wonder and giggles, but alas, it was not to be. Something was wrong. Maggie stood red faced, with tears straming down her cheeks. Her nose started to run. She screamed and screamed. She crouched and winced. She was trying to work out a poop that was just not working out. It was not working out and it was wreaking havoc on her little insides. It's very distressing to see your child in pain and not be able to help. This disruptive terd had taken on five adults and a child, and it was winning. We were helpless.

In desperation, we tossed some ideas around.

Feed her fruit? No. That would take too long. Coffee and a cigarette? No. Not until she is at LEAST 8 years old. Liquids! Prune juice! That's it! Prune juice!

We walked to to the local co-op to find some magical prune elixer for my little backed up baby.

I gave her the juice. Nothing happened. On the ride home in th car she seemed to calm down. I fed her a dinner of fruit, fruit and more fruit. More prune juice, more fruit. Then it started up again. The screaming in pain. It hurt just to look at her. In desperation, I started a warm bath.

She sat in the tub and instead of her usual larky splashing about, she stared at me as though to say "THIS is what you came up with? A BATH? Will you just help me already? This giant terd is about to kill me and you start a BATH???? THIS HURTS! YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO FIX IT. DON'T YOU GET IT?"

Perhaps that was more my own inner dialogue.

Maggie started wiggling and wailing in the tub. Helpless, I could see her pain was escalating. She stood up, screeching in agony. She gripped the side of the tub with both chubby hands, pressed her head to it, crouched over, and out it came. Emerging from sheer toddler willpower and the mouting pressure from within her tiny little colon.

This poop had absolutely no business coming out of the bum of a one year old. It was the meanest, hardest, biggest, ugliest poop ever created by a butt that small. So compacted, I thought the pressure must have formed a diamond inside. I was SHOCKED by the sheer size of this monster. Tommy two-tone. A marbled combination of three days worth of toddler meals. I nearly cried with relief for her. Having seen the sheer size of it, I wanted to buy her a toy or a sticker just for getting the damn thing OUT. My daughter, the bravest strongest, most determined pooper in the world. The diminutive queen of extreme danger-pooping.

I was feeling rather proud of myself for figuring out that a warm bath would help relax those muscles and move the poopy beast along. Jim donned rubber gloves and victoriously searched through the bubbles to fish the massive logs of excrement from the tub. We were quite pleased with ourselves. Giddy, in fact.

My pride turned to horror as I pulled Maggie from the tub and saw her red little legs. Overzealous in my efforts to work the fecal frankenstein out, the warm bath I had drawn was TOO WARM. I may have coaxed the culprit out, but seemed to have scalded my daughter's lower half in the process. "Is there no end to this madness Dear God?" I wailed, "WHY? WHY??"

Why? Do you know why? I think I do. It happened because, as a parent, you can't get too cocky. You think for one moment, you have it figured out. You and your co-parent are high-fiving eachother, oblivious in your pride and self-congratulations for emerging, victorious, from battle. And out of nowhere, you get knocked with a left uppercut you NEVER saw coming. This is to keep us on our toes. Ever vigilant of the next totally stupid moronic thing we, as parents, are about to do.

I carefully pulled Maggies Pajama bottoms over her chubby red legs. Mercifully, Her red legs slowly turned to pink and eventually back to their lovely normal flesh color. We let her play while we ate dinner. I picked her up for her bedtime bottle and story and she laid her head on me as if to say "Please. Just put me to bed already. This day. Let it be over. The poop. The burning hot water. enough already." She struggled to keep her eyes open through "Goodnight Moon" and I put her to bed, exhausted. She was out cold within seconds.

Another day of well-intentioned but grossly mediocre parental blundering behind us.

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 1:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBacks (0)

There is something so utterly ironic and frustrating about being sleep deprived on a regular basis due to your four toothed cheese eating crawling roving smiling 10-month old, only to have your husband thrash around at 3:00 a.m., get up to go to the bathroom, heave his 200 pound frame back into bed so hard that your 5 foot 9 inch frame literally BOUNCES off the bed. Then he pulls all the covers off you, leaving you awake and shivering. You spend the next 60 minutes thinking about evey person you ever slighted, every shameful thing you have done, every decision you regret, and you analyze all of these events and wonder if you were just truly manifesting your own shameful dysfunction, or if all of this was just part of what led you on the path you are on. Who the Hell knows? The path may just end up leading to elightenment. Hell if I know.

I have cut people out of my life because they disappointed me. Because they made me feel small and ahsamed. I have cut people out of my life for my own self-serving purposes. My load was lighter without them. I am thinking back on a particular time when I was careening through life, gooning wine like I was being chased by someone who was going to take it away. Trying so hard to make things feel right. And Failing. I was doing things that were damaging to me, and to other people and feeling terrible and ashamed.

I wonder where that all came from. How long it built up in me. I wonder if I am really done with that dark stuff. I sat in bed for an hour, staring at the clock and feeling the shame over me like a pall. Now that it's written into actual words, I see that perhaps it's not as huge and crushing as it felt an hour ago. I think maybe I can roll that huge boulder a little to the left and pull my squashed, pulpy mangled soul out from underneath it. I would really like to put my pulpy soul back to bed where it can go back to sleep and let go of this horrendous guilt and self-inflicted angst.

While I am at it, I hope to take that little voice in my head that tells me "you are a goddamned idiot" behind the house, put it out of its everlasting misery and bury it for good.

My therapist told me the reason I was feeling more keenly emotional about things was because I am writing more. I suppose that can't be a bad thing. I am just afraid of what rotting carcasses I might find as I clean my mental house and clear away the newspapers, take-out boxes and beer cans that have been cluttering my landscape and hiding all the monsters that I can't see, but can hear. They make creepy rustling noises. I am scared to see what they look like. It makes me think of the time I was babysitting my younger sisters and Betsy, the youngest and probably six years old at the time, came upstairs from the basement TV room looking pale and scared out of her mind. She told me there was something moving aound under her chair and she didn't know what it was. I went downstairs and there WAS something under there, making a huge racket. I didn't know what kind of scary creature was lurking there, but I just squeezed my eyes shut and pulled the chair away. A blackbird flew out from under it. We started shrieking and laughing and running around. After it flew upstairs, we closed all the drapes and opened the front door to guide it out. It flew right out the front door to freedom, never to be seen again.

Originally posted on I'm Ablogging on June 28, 2005

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 12:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, another report came out about the topic of mothers who work vs. mothers who stay at home and the impact it has on their children’s development. Another report that left me reeling with insecurity and guilt. Another report that made me question the choices I have made. Another report that made me feel like I am failing my daughter. I sat in tears as I watched the news and felt so incredibly trapped by my financial situation.

This is such a touchy subject. I am certain that every mother wants to do what is best for their child. I also believe that every mother worries that they are failing their children in some manner. I think this fear contributes to the judgments we pass on one another as mothers. We want so badly to convince ourselves that we are doing things the right way that sometimes we say things that imply other people are doing things the wrong way. Because it’s not our way.

I have never felt so blessed and so terribly guilty as I have since I became a mother. There are so many choices parents make every single day. Difficult choices. Some parents make a choice between paying being able to pay the mortgage on a house in a good school district, or staying at home. For some parents it’s a choice between going on welfare to stay at home or working.

The topic of stay at home moms vs. working moms evokes passionate opinions from women on all sides of the equation. I do know we all want what is best for our children and for our families. I know there is no one “best� way to do things. Every child is different, every family is different, every family’s financial situation is different.

I am a working mother, and I am fortunate enough to have in-laws who are retired and spend every weekday taking care of Maggie. Every day from 8:00 a.m. to the time her dad picks her up at 1:00, Maggie gets a 2 to one adult to child ratio. She is read to, and she is played with, and she is sung to, and she is hugged about a hundred times in those hours.

I am so incredibly fortunate to have been given this choice by my in-laws.

At 1:00 every day, Jim picks Maggie up and brings her home, and from 1:00 to 5:15 it’s Daddy and Maggie time. I get home at 5:15 and that is when I get to spend time with her.

From 5:15 to 7:30 I play with Maggie, feed her, feed Jim and I, try to clean up the kitchen, and field phone calls and random people knocking on the door. Sometimes I take Maggie with me for a walk or a run. Every other night I give her a bath. I have two and a half hours a day from Monday to Friday to spend with Maggie and to get all of this in. Meanwhile, I go through the typical working mother self-torture.

Here is a sample of my Inner dialogue on any given evening:

“Am I talking to her enough? Am I developing her language skills appropriately? Am I enunciating properly? Do I give her enough hugs? Am I setting limits? Is it better to use this time playing the piano or reading a story? If I get sucked into watching “the biggest loser� on television between 7:00 and 7:30 and reading to her during the commercials, does that make me “the biggest loser� as a parent? I think the answer is yes. Damn. Failed again. I don’t know if she had a nap today! I don’t even know what she had for lunch! Did she poop? I don’t even know if she pooped today! I am a horrible horrible mother. My mother in law has a bigger influence on her than I do! Do I even know what words she is being taught? Do I even know what games and songs she is being taught every day? No! I am allowing someone else to raise my child. What if the next time she falls down and hurts herself, she reaches for grandma instead of me? What if she does that and it hurts me so much that I get insecure and close up? What if that makes me start detaching myself from her? Am I mature enough emotionally to handle that? On a conscious level, yes, but what about my unconscious? What could I do better? Can I even recognize where I am failing�?

And right about NOW my head explodes and brains and skull fragments slide slowly down the walls of the kitchen leaving red trails of blood.

The dialogue above was ONE NIGHT’S WORTH. Yeah, Mothers really need more to question.

Factor in efforts to have a life of my own, work on my marriage, be a good friend, and take care of myself and exercise, and it’s no wonder I feel like I am doing a half assed job in everything. INCLUDING MOTHERHOOD. The guilt in that statement? ENORMOUS. Just enormous. I have no idea how single mothers handle all this on their own. I think every single mother out there deserves a freaking medal for just getting it done, day after day. It’s HARD.

The report I mentioned concluded that children with stay at home mothers had significantly higher developmental skills than children who were in day care.

The report concluded that best scenario for kids goes like this:

1. stay at home with mom
2. stay at home with nanny
3. grandparents
4. day care center

My problems with this “study� are numerous. There is so much variation in the quality of child care available, and there was no mention of this in the blurb that I saw. There was no mention of how parenting style factors in. No mention of what working parents can do to minimize the negative impact that day care might have on their kids.

I live in the state of Minnesota. We have the HIGHEST percentage of working mothers in the country. Our children also typically have the HIGHEST test scores in the nation. How does that jibe?

Is anyone talking about how incredibly hard it is to raise a family and own home with one income? How it keeps getting HARDER? Is anyone talking about how we can help families with limited financial means stay home with their kids? Is anyone talking about women who earn more than their husbands? How these women can handle the incredible amount of guilt they carry for not being the one who has the biggest influence on their children’s day to day activities? For not knowing what their kids had for lunch and how many times they have pooped that day?

I know so many dedicated, loving mothers who work outside the home. Great mothers. I know these women struggle to come to terms with the choices they make. I know that it hurts to be informed that the choice you made might limit your child’s developmental potential

I know many dedicated, loving mothers who have chosen to stay at home with their children. They have sacrificed careers to be with their kids every day. It’s hard to stay at home. It’s hard to deal with people who judge you for being a stay at home mom. It’s hard to deal with the lack of adult interaction. It’s mentally and emotionally draining to work with kids all day long. It’s hard to survive on one income.

I think my point, if I have one, is this: Yes, I want to have access to as much information as possible to help me make the best choices. But not so much information that I live in a constant state of self-torture, angst, regret, resentment and insecurity.

No, I don’t need any more reason to question myself. I do that plenty. Sometimes it does seem like motherhood is an uphill battle. Feeling like a GOOD mother is darn near impossible. Especially if you listen to the opinions of every Tom Dick and Harry out there. And if you are one of the people spouting off statistics and instilling fear, perhaps ask yourself if you are really doing it for the benefit of another mother and their child, or if you are doing it to reassure yourself that you have made better choices than someone else. Do you need to compare yourself to someone else to feel like a good mother?

I need to remind myself that the ultimately, it’s me who needs to be okay with my decisions. I need to feel like I am doing as much as I can with the resources I have. I need to give myself a break once in a while and accept the fact that I won’t always be perfect, but that does not mean I am not a good mother. It does not mean that I can not be a good friend, or wife, or employee. I just means my choices might be more difficult, and that I have to listen to my own heart more than I listen to sensationalized news reports with limited contextual information. I think I can do that. I hope I can.

Originally posted on I'm Ablogging on October 5, 2005

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 12:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (1)

Dear Mrs. Bevans,

I am not sure if you remember me after all this time, but I hope you do. I have meant to write this letter for years. It's embarrassing that it has taken me this long, but here it is.

I was in your 5th Grade class at Lyndale Elementary. I was the one with a bad haircut who wore the same pair of jeans every day. I got in trouble for reading in class. I read in class most of the time.

I was very into Betsy Byers books, and "Where the Red Fern Grows", and "Summer of the Monkeys" and about a million other books. It must have driven you batty, but you were always certain to let me know you supported my READING, just not when I was supposed to be listening to how to add fractions. You made it seem like my pretty darn near obsessive compulsion for reading was a GOOD thing. You would suggest books for me and I usually loved them. You checked my eyes for tears when I finished "Where the Red Fern Grows" in class. When I got to that ending that tore your heart out. That was so bittersweet. It makes me sigh to this very day, thinking of those hound dogs, and the boy who saved his pennies in a coffee can in his barn, and the love that Dan and little Ann had for each other and for their boy master.

I have lovely warm memories of your classroom that year. The rest of my life at the time, not so warm and lovely. The 5th grade was a difficult time for me. My mom had gone back to work, and I was pretty much saddled with the child care responsibilities which meant I had to be home every day after school to watch my sisters. No play dates. Not that I had many. My best friends were my cousin Tiffany and Jenny, and Tiffany went to private Catholic school and that was the year Jenny decided she liked Amy Kibler better. I was friendless. And NO ONE wants to be friendless in the 5th grade. NO ONE.

Amy Kibler and my former best friend Jenny would terrorize me on the school bus. One afternoon they went up and down every aisle, whispering behind a "Fame" l.p. record. They would look at me and whisper presumably mean awful things about me to every single kid on the entire bus, all the way down the aisle. They probably said that I wore the same pair of jeans every day because they were the only pair I had. I tried so hard not to cry. SO HARD. But my tears betrayed me and let them know they had done it. They had hurt me. They had humiliated me and made me cry. There was a boy named Matt who was popular. He sat down next to me and said "Don't pay any attention to them. They're just being mean."

I still think of the kindness of that boy, and the compassion and bravery he displayed risking that. It could have been his social death. It could have made him the pariah of the school bus, sitting next to the dork that was getting her 5th grade ass handed to her in the popular wars on the school bus. God I hated that bus ride. Straight home on the bus every afternoon. 30 minutes of being on the losing end of 5th grade class warfare with that God Awful nasty Nancy Parsons, who along with Amy Kibler, seemed to have taken my friend to the other side.

I was so alone, and every day I had to face that bus ride home to take care of my sisters who didn't even care about my stupid bus nightmares. THEY had pants. Ungrateful brats. They got pants and they never had to ever DO anything but eat oreos and watch Little House on the Prairie in the dark of our basement. If my parents had paid me for my hours of latch-key services I may have been able to buy some fucking pants so I could stop being teased, but the needs of my siblings always seemed to trump mine. Someone always needed some fucking dumb-ass glasses or something. Stupid sisters. I wished so many times that I was an only child (and yes, I now realize that my sisters are the greatest asset I have in this life but at the time, hey, we were working for the same limited resources).

I was on the losing end of our own household trickle-down economics. Trickle my ass. There may have been a fine mist, but all I know is I never got my fucking new pants, which in turn led to the social impalement I received on a daily basis.

My bus torture continued. So did my long afternoons with my sisters. I tended to take out my frustration on them, and tortured them in turn. Then my mom would get home and yell about the mess I had made and something about how sick of kids she was after teaching the ungrateful urchins herself all day (she was a teacher too) and she was tired and yada yada yada.... There was not a whole lotta love in the afternoons at my house.

But that was the bus, that was at home, not your classroom, Mrs. Bevans. You didn't allow that bullshit in your classroom, and you called the ringleaders of social torture on their crap and I loved you for it. I am not sure how you cracked the code. But what you did was create an environment where I could actually learn. They should implement a special Maslow's Pyramid for 5th graders. Somewhere between self actualization and basic physical needs there should be a "not being tortured for having only one pair of pants" and that would be just under "learning fractions".

You met with my parents and came up with a set schedule of times when it was acceptable for me to bury my head in a book. You sat me down and pulled out my test scores (high) and laid it next to me homework scores (low and spotty) and pointed out the disparity. I wasn't stupid! I was just lazy! And you called me on it. You were one of the first people I recall telling me that I was smart. I so needed to hear that. I needed someone to notice me. And you did Mrs. Bevans. Thank you for noticing me. Thank you for encouraging my love of books and for convincing me that not only was I not dumb, but I was actually smarter than most of the kids in my class.

That was the year I started developing just a wee tiny little bit of self esteem. YOU seemed to like me after all. You were everybody's favorite teacher and you LIKED me. You made me feel like you even liked me a little better than Nancy Parsons and her minions, the instruments of pre-adolescent social impalement.

Thank you Mrs. Bevans. That spark you gave me lit a little fire that I still have burning today. I was in such desperate need of that little spark. Of all the teachers I have had, you had the largest impact on me. Thank you for caring. Thank you for being so good at your job. Thank you for not allowing social torture in your classroom. You are truly the best teacher I ever had. I know you lost your husband years ago and I was so sorry for your loss. I hope you have a lovely life because you deserve to have a lovely life. You made a difference in my life and I will always be grateful for that. You are a gifted teacher. I was lucky to be your student. My life is better because I was your student. Thank you.

Meghan

p.s. I have lots of pants now.

Originally posted on I'm Ablogging on September 5, 2005

Posted by Meghan Townsend at 12:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)