Chicago Moms Blog

Spawn of the Devil

Here in northern Illinois, we've had a wet summer. Great for my garden, bad for mosquito-haters - and who doesn't hate mosquitoes?

I'm no defender of these horrid bugs, like alien Agent Pleakley in the Disney movie Lilo and Stitch, who believes Earth is a nature preserve for the endangered insect. I always crack up at the scene where Pleakly (voiced by the great Kevin McDonald from The Kids in the Hall) squeaks, "Oh they're nuzzling my skin with their noses!" Right before they devour him.

My Trip Through Laborland

When an intense contraction jerked me awake at 2:00 am, I gasped without thinking, “God is Great!” And this from a confirmed atheist.  Not so much a prayer, but instead, the last and only thing I could say when brought all at once and unstoppably to the brink of one life and the mysterious opening of another.

There was no let up in the contractions – it was immediately clear the baby was coming.

I walked around the couch, swept up some pebbles from our rough basement floor (after all, she might crawl here someday) and drew a bath.

Summer Escapes

"This is hard for me," I tried to explain to my husband during the middle of my hissy fit last weekend.  "I can't just run off to Montana to go backpacking.  I want to go backpacking!  But I can't."

That Montana trip, the actual one I took a million years ago, B.C. (Before Children), has taken on epic proportions in my mind.  It stands as the borderland between my old life and new - we got engaged that week with enthusiastic plans to start our family immediately.  And it symbolizes the perfect freedom I enjoyed when I could leisurely flip through the backcountry outfitters brochures, spend hours shopping at Uncle Dan's, wander a spectacular part of the world with everything I need on my back and have interesting conversations with my plane seatmate on the way home about grizzly bears and life philosophies. 

Tadpoles

The scene was about as quintessentially Summer as a lemonade stand, a tire swing or a drippy ice cream cone:  My daughters chasing real live tadpoles.

There's acres and acres of nature to explore in the beautiful Morton Arboretum but my girls were content to spend the whole morning in a tiny pond catching baby frogs. 

I don't think I'd ever seen one up close before.  We had to laugh at the sight of them - inky fat drops, propelled by nothing but tail-dashes that wiggled in the funniest way.  They looked like a child's drawing come to life, or something a little more suggestive, if you know what I mean.

I heard a mom ask her two sons, "Now isn't this better than video games?"  and they nodded, eyes on the water.  My imagination reeled out a vision of that morning in their house - the boys cemented to the couch, Mom prying them off with a crowbar.  It took us forty minutes to get here; it will take twice that to get home.  Worth it.

Warm wind, puffy clouds, my girls squealing in delight.  Hello, summer.  Where you been?

An original post to Chicago Moms Blog. Cindy blogs at We All Fall Down.

Miranda and the City

On Memorial Day, some friends and I were talking about the Sex and The City movie and the original series. "I like the stories," I confessed.

Orrin laughed, "Yeah, and I just read the articles."

In anticipation of tonight's Sex and the City opening, I've been poring over the Entertainment Weekly issue that reviews every episode of the HBO show. I wouldn't have called myself a huge fan, but I guess I am; as I read the show synopses, I recognized nearly every one.

In my memory the individual episodes all kind of all blend together like the bleary recollection of a night of bar-hopping - there were new guys, old guys, amazing clothes (remember Carrie's purse with the four foot fringe?), embarrassing situations, hashing it out over cocktails or coffee with the girls...and repeat.

But one story arc kept my full attention - Miranda's transformation into a mother.

Sex Ed, Then and Now

My formal sex education at home was limited to this single piece of advice from dear Aunt Ruth, who raised me:  "Sometimes a boy will be dancing with you and he might bump up against your chest and it will hurt.  Well, he didn't mean to hurt you."  And that was it.  Seriously, that is all I remember her telling me.  Oh, and she showed me how to wash blood out of my underwear with cold water.  Were you the kind of twelve year old who would ask a follow-up?  Not me. Voluntarily go through another excruciating moment with a grownup who had obviously never known anything like the thrills I felt watching "Hungry Like the Wolf" on MTV?  No way.

I Heart Carpool

Carpool is supposed to be one of those typical mom duties that we endure rather than enjoy, an endless and largely mindless task that symbolizes our demographic in a confining way. But I love it, always have.

With gas at the wait-that-can't-be-real price of more than $4.00 a gallon, it seems like the wrong time to be praising any activity involving the internal combustion engine. But any shared ride is one more car off the road, so it feels good to fill our hybrid up to the gills with kids.

Yes, there are tough days. Contorting my aching back over the rear seat, my ass up in the air as I struggle to snap the 17-point harness, then shove my hands between the hard plastic rough edges of the portable seats, searching for the ornery buckle in its finger-crushing crevice while the kids pull off my hat, demand snacks and scream with laughter or outrage as the cold wind whips my hair in my face and the line of cars waiting behind us nudges impatiently forward is not my idea of fun.

But now that summer break is approaching I'll admit I'm going to miss it.

What My Blogging Can Do, What It Cannot

The upper elementary students were writing with chalk on the sidewalks and steps in front of Mia's Montessori school last week. I got a closer look and saw the marks weren't doodles or random scribbles - the children were transcribing stirring quotes as part of a poetry project.

One child had written E.M. Forster's words: “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” That idea stuck with me all day. It reminded me of what I used to tell my high school students: "We write to learn." These days, as a mother and a blogger, I understand even more that writing about our crazy world can help us to understand the experience, to name it, to give it order and the shape of a story.

Although most mom bloggers are familiar with guilty twinges from too much time spent in front of our keyboards, I'd venture to argue that blogging can help us be better mothers because it can help make sense of the controlled chaos that is family life. Advice columnist Cary Tennis says "Writing is like a sixth sense used to apprehend a reality not detected by the other five." Sometimes I look at the debris of a tantrum (occasionally mine) and I ask myself, "What the f-- just happened?" Then I write about it. And the writing helps me figure it out.

Don’t Mess with the Fairy Castle!

Our family codeword for the Museum of Science and Industry is "Petroleum!" announced in a voice something like a robot and something like an oily 1950's gameshow host.  It sums up for me the dusty flavor of some of the museum's more outdated exhibits - like the stomach-churning (sorry for the pun) celebration of factory farms.

The museum has announced plans to revamp ninety percent of its exhibits over the next four years.  What's in store for fans of the museum like us?  I'm hoping the new and revamped exhibits' emphasis on science education won't be at the expense of the "industry" part.  I'm fond of the scattershot collections that remind me of a mad scientist's attic - a little antique circus here, a little pinball machine promoting Swiss tourism there. 

A Chicago Walk

Having a baby in the winter is hard. Having a baby in the winter in Chicago is very hard. This long slow spring we're having takes me back to the April when my firstborn was an infant. After six long months inside with Mia, I was desperate to get her some fresh air and get me some exercise. We set out to explore Chicagoland parks and we found some beauties. We worked that sling and later - when my back complained - a stroller, visiting the Wooded Island and Osaka Japanese garden in Jackson Park, and the wide expanses of the waterfront north of Montrose. I nursed Mia in the quiet sanctuary of Alfred Caldwell's Lily Pond and under the humid palms in the Garfield Park Conservatory.

My favorite Chicago walk was only a few blocks from home. We needed no car or bus to get there, just a walk east down Belmont and over the river. As I pushed Mia in the stroller, I would narrate the world to her, like they tell you to, pausing only to say ola or hello or not to the people we passed.