Chicago Moms Blog

The Toys of Summer

When I was a kid, “go play outside” meant, “Please get as physically far away from me as possible. I don’t care what you do, as long as you aren’t doing it in the house.” The neighborhood—and the neighboring neighborhood, and generally the neighborhood neighboring the neighboring neighborhood—belonged to kids to explore, as long as we made it home for dinner.

In today’s more paranoid culture, sending kids out without supervision is far less acceptable—rarely do I see a child wandering away from the confines of his or her own yard. But, as my kids have told me, “yards are boring.” Luckily, the solution to mid-summer ennui is as close as the toy store, where you’ll find a supply of the latest and hottest water toys—ready to keep your kids cool, ruin the grass in your yard and possibly break a rib or two.

Afraid to be Free Range?

On today’s Salon.com, Lenore Skenazy takes worrying parents to task, arguing that we’re raising an over-protected generation of kids who haven’t been allowed to enjoy the freedoms that should come with childhood.

And while I can’t imagine letting my 9-year-old ride the subway alone as Skenazy did, this is something I’ve been thinking about since my oldest child (now 11) turned 8 or so. He was changing, wanting to become more independent, wanting to walk to school, wanting to go off alone with his friends…and I wasn’t sure what to do.

I knew what I thought was OK and age-appropriate, but it was often in stark contrast to what the other parents I knew were letting their children do (to be more accurate, NOT letting their kids do). So I second-guessed myself and said “no” to things for no reason except all the other parents I knew would have said “no”, too.

Is the Internet making us less safe?

Soon after moving to Chicago, I was looking for a mattress for our infrequently-used guest bed. Not wanting to pay a bunch of money for a good new mattress—or kind of a lot for a crappy new one—I decided to look on my old friend Craigslist for a used option.

Before you say “ewww”, consider my reasoning. A second hand bed is no more likely to contain grody germs than a hotel bed, right? And people sleep on those all the time when they’re vacationing. So by going on vacation to my house you would be sleeping on a mattress that was no more likely to be gross than the one at the local Holiday Inn. Plus, I planned on covering it with one of those industrial-strength mattress covers that seals everything in, whether it’s a dust mite or a bed bug.

Navigating the NICU

Please excuse any typos: I’m writing this post while holding my fifth child and very first daughter—Clara, born on March 13.

I’d have posted sooner, but the day after Clara was born—peacefully and without complications at home—she suddenly turned blue. She did it two more times in the next hour, both times returning to pink pretty quickly after we rubbed her, talked to her and ran her feet under cold water.  After calling her pediatrician (the first time) and the paramedics (the second time), we finally decided to take her to the ER. After she did it again in front of the ER doc, our day went spinning into a confused mess of tubes, wires, beeping machines and more scrubs and white coats than I could even begin to count.

We were transferred to a Level 3 NICU in the area, where we spent the next 11 days.

Internet privacy and kids...yeah, right?

The other day, my eleven-year-old son borrowed my laptop (he doesn't have his own) to check YouTube. For some reason, he and his friends use YouTube as their own social network--they send messages back and forth, rate videos and carry on conversations.

"I need my computer back," I said.

"Hold on, I have to log out!" he said, an edge of urgency in his voice. He turned his body away from me as he signed out and closed the browser.

I watched in amusement. After all, as the person who set up his account, I have his user name and password. And every message he receives gets sent to my e-mail address anyway.

When I reminded him of that fact later, he looked uncomfortable. "Mom, I don't want you reading my stuff," he complained. "It's embarrassing!"

I assured him that I don't make a point of it, which is true. Generally I just ignore the alerts when they come in, though out of curiosity I did check a few one day. They were dumb. Supremely silly. Not so much as a hint of worrisome behavior or conversation, which doesn't really surprise me: as 11-year-olds go, my son is pretty innocent.

The Car Seat Shuffle

In just six weeks (or so), I'll be adding my fifth child to the family.

This brings up a number of questions. How am I going to function on very little sleep again? I've gotten nice and used to a solid 8 hours. How is this labor going to go? My last three were 4, 3, and 2 hours long, respectively. Does that mean the baby is going to fall out on the floor after I sneeze while grocery shopping the way people have been joking she might?

But for some reason the question that's been top of my mind lately is this: Just where is everybody going to sit in the car?

New Year's Resolutions, kid-style

I’m a self-help author’s dream come true. I’m constantly making lofty lists of goals, re-drafting the mission statement of my life, and other Oprah-magazine-worthy stuff like that.

You might then imagine that New Year’s Eve is a list-making, goal-setting, life-changing extravaganza over here. But it’s not. Somehow I can never seem to get excited about self-improvement when I’m also downing champagne and eating everything in sight (well, this year, it was just the eating everything in sight part).

Since I have a hard time getting excited about making New Year’s resolutions for myself, I thought maybe I’d try to get my kids on board this year. Making resolutions, I thought, would help them feel that same sense of fulfillment and optimism that I feel each time I make a to-do list. Also, I figured, I could use it as a way to guilt them into helping out more around the house and to maybe even stop fighting with each other.

Can you afford NOT to shop local?

A few years ago, my husband attended a book release party for the then-latest Harry Potter volume. The little bookstore in the small town I lived in then went all-out on the party, offering a quidditch match, trivia games and food. The boys and I were out of town, so we couldn’t make the party, but my husband was in line at 12:01 waiting to purchase his copy of the book.

But, he told me later, he noticed a strange phenomenon as he listened to different conversations going on in the crowd around him: some of the people who’d been enjoying the party were getting in their cars and leaving—to go buy the book elsewhere, cheaper.

This holiday I’m reminded of that story as I wonder what fate our small bookstores and indie shops might face as people tighten their purse strings even more, whether because they’re suffering economic setbacks, or in anticipation of them. If a beloved community store couldn’t get people to pay full-price for a book during relatively prosperous times even after offering a fun evening and free food, how are they supposed to survive during a recession?

Problem, solution?

Not long ago at a writer’s conference, I was discussing publishing with somebody in the business. Her publishing house (and several others!) had considered but ultimately rejected a book proposal of mine on the topic of motherhood and friendship. We discussed the difficulty of getting new parenting books out there, and she said something along the lines of: “The parenting books that sell the best first propose a problem, and then promise a solution.”

Though that didn’t really surprise me (though I had never quite thought about it in quite such frank terms before) the more I thought about it over the next few months, the more bothered I was by it. Of course, she’s right. Which parenting books go on to be bestsellers? Typically, the ones that promise a solution to: your baby’s sleep problems, your toddler’s poor eating habits, your preschooler’s discipline issues, your school-aged child’s attitude problem.

No, No, N-Word

As a musical theatre geek, I was excited earlier this spring to see that the Wilmette Park District was planning to produce Ragtime, a Tony-award winning show based on the book by E.L. Doctorow. 

If you’ve never seen the show or read the book, the story centers around famous figures, politics and conflicts of early 20^th century American life. It blends the experiences of fictional white, black and immigrant characters as well as famous figures from the time like Houdini and Emma Goldman. Racial tension and racism are central to the story.  And as with most true-to-life tales about racism and racial tension, there is some ugly language in the play.