Chicago Moms Blog

A very soggy 4th of July

Can you remember a soggier 4th of July weekend?

It drizzled as my daughter and I marched with her preschool in the Oak Park 4th of July parade.

A steady rain fell on a neighborhood block party. Swimsuit-clad kids trembled, blue-lipped and goose-fleshed, as they waited in line for their turn down an inflatable water slide. Adults took shelter on front porches, sipping margaritas and shoveling guacamole onto soggy tortilla chips.

By the time we headed--windshield wipers squeaking--to a barbecue at our friends' house, it was pouring. Buckets and buckets of rain. They'd erected tents in their backyard, but for a couple of hours the rain came down so fast and furious only the children ventured outside.

The tyranny of stuff

Two or three weekly trips to the grocery store. A monthly Target run. A birthday party goodie bag. A McDonald's Happy Meal toy. Drawings and craft projects brought home from preschool and daycare. Cool rocks and pine cones collected from a nature walk. A toy borrowed from a playmate. Every day more stuff walks into my small house than walks out, and pretty soon we're going to run out of room!

Compared to most Americans, I don't think we buy a lot of things. We recycle. We we even reuse things--putting nuts, dried fruit and leftovers in washed-out glass jars and making caterpillars out of old egg cartons.

But still the stuff piles up. Relentlessly. New books, DVDs, and clothes come in faster than I can get rid of their predecessors. I'm grateful for all we have, but I find myself wishing we didn't have so much.

Preying on families with "junk science" autism cures

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

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

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

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

I am a Twitter Quitter

I'm a lot of things: wife, mother, employee and blogger. I'm also an early adopter when it comes to social networking and technology. I was the first among my friends and colleagues to join LinkedIn, Facebook, even Friendster (remember them?).

I logged onto Twitter last September and threw myself into the fray, but keeping up with it was overwhelming. I felt pressure to follow back my followers, but I was being followed by people I didn't know. Do I care that these random tweeps are stuck in the security line at LAX or fretting over whether it's okay to wear white pants before Memorial Day? No!

I don't care to read @replies to tweets that don't interest me, and don't get me started on the flood of hash-tagged conversations (some sponsored!) that don't concern me. I sensed a sort of competition to get more followers with tweets like "I'm almost to 500! Pls RT." Even with my lackluster participation, I was collecting Twitter followers at an impressive rate. But most of my followers were following hundreds--if not thousands--of others. I was sure anything I said to them would be drowned out by the flood. And I got proof. I would frequently post links to my blog posts on Facebook and Twitter, and while 20-30 friends would click through from Facebook, I averaged 5-10 from Twitter. On a good day.

The smell of piss on the CTA

Thursday was Take Your Kids to Work Day, and the big advertising agency where I work really pulls out all the stops. With dozens of creative workshops, a free lunch and a chance to sing and dance with Miss Lori, there's no way I wasn't going to bring my two girls downtown for the day.

We came in on the Blue Line, and saddled as I was with the stroller, I headed for the elevator instead of the escalator. In the first of two elevators, my 4 year old observed, quite righty, "This elevator is stinky."

The second elevator wasn't just stinky, it was home to a large yellow pool of piss. "Don't step in the puddle, Z," I warned her, "That's pee!"

"Why is there pee-pee in the elevator, Mommy?" she asked.

Crap, I haven't practiced an answer to this one. "Well, honey, somebody went potty in the elevator."

"A grown-up? That's not okay! They're supposed to use a bathroom," she responded, indignantly.

Always the baby, never an only (until now)

My 20 month old daughter A has always lived in the shadow of her 4-year-old sister, Z. But with Z accompanying her father on a week-long trip to England, I'm getting to know my second-born a little better. It's different, relating to her one-on-one. Of course, we've always had an hour alone together, here or there. She gets up earlier than her sister and she hangs out with me and her dad when big sis is out at a playdate or birthday party, but she's never experienced a whole day as an only child.

Now she's enjoying whole days without fighting to eat exactly what her sister's eating (preferably from the same plate). Without fighting over toys, over the front of the bath, over Mom. She's obviously reveling in my full, undivided attention--as well as that of her grandparents, who've been visiting for the weekend.

Has mommy blogging jumped the shark?

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

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

Excuse me neighbor, your dog doo is a don't!

As any Chicagoan knows, there's a dark side to any thaw in the weather: dog poop. As the snow melts, it reveals piles of piles that unscrupulous dog owners have "buried" beneath the white stuff. I don't appreciate having to navigate all the newly-exposed crap on my walk home from the train station, but keeping my small children and their strollers, bikes and small feet away from it, that really gets under my skin.

So imagine how delighted I was as I took my kids for a walk yesterday to watch a dog take a dump--not on the frozen tundra--but on my neighbor's newly exposed grass. And the woman walking the dog just walked away.

"Excuse me," I called after her, "aren't you going to pick up after your dog?"

"Not with my bare hands," she replied.

"You don't have a bag with you?" I asked, incredulously.

"No."

Truth is Stranger than Fiction

Turns out the 33-year-old California mother of octuplets already has six children under 8 at home. Home, by the way, is her parents' house. She doesn't have a husband--or even a father for her enormous brood, all of whom were reportedly conceived via a sperm donor.

Just when I think the news can't get any weirder, it does. Rich people from New York to Miami lose their fortunes in a Ponzi scheme. Illinois finally punishes a corrupt politician, impeaching Rod Blagojevich. Chicago's cold winter weather is really, really cold.

But seriously, where does a unmarried, unpartnered mother of six (including 2-year-old twins) get off signing up for fertility treatments? If she loves being pregnant so much, perhaps she should have signed up to be a surrogate. At least she'd net 20 grand and plenty of warm fuzzies for loaning out her womb.

Winter has lost its luster

We're barely into January and I am done with snow, ice and bitter cold. We're in the midst of the coldest winter in 8 years and the first brutally cold season I've endured with small children.

It's rough. Just heading to the car involves wrangling hands into mittens and arms into coats. There are necks that need wrapping, heads that need hatting, feet that need socks pulled up and boots yanked on. Halfway through the process we may decide the weather warrants snowpants as well and we have to remove scarves, coats and boots to get on the padded overalls. G-d forbid a kid decides she needs to pee.

But worse than the gear is the cabin fever. I long for the days when a touch of boredom could be solved with a walk over to the neighborhood playground or a bike around the block. The kids could get their ya-yas out and we were virtually guaranteed to run into friends. Many of those spur-of-the-moment playdates turned into barbecues that stretched the fun into late evening.