A glossy catalog arrives in the mailbox on Monday afternoon. More dead trees to recycle, along with the enticing reams of Pottery Barn, Hanna Andersen, and J. Crew. If I’d gotten to it first, I would’ve pitched it straight into the recycling bin, hiding it safely beneath a broken-down cereal box. But my girls are [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Spilt Milk Column'
AMERICAN FEVER
September 4th, 2011 3 Comments
Tags: American Girl Doll · Cinderella Ate My Daughter · Disney princess · girlie-girl culture
WANDERLUST OR BUST (part 2)
August 3rd, 2011 No Comments
On day two of the Wanderlust Yoga & Music Festival, I started to make friends with the Beautiful People who’d so intimidated me at first. I even began to enjoy the eye candy, mostly young and female, that enticed at every turn. In my Advanced Kula Flow class, I tried to focus my gaze on my [...]
Tags: Vermont · Wanderlust · Yoga · yoga festival
WANDERLUST OR BUST (part 1)
August 3rd, 2011 1 Comment
I worked hard to get to Wanderlust. Three days of “Yoga, Music, and Nature” at Stratton Mountain, and I was determined to be join the party, no matter how much sleep and money I lost in the process. The chilled-out Acro-Yogi moms were bringing their kids with them, I knew, letting them run free by the [...]
Tags: Vermont · Wanderlust · Yoga · yoga festival
FOOD SERVICES
June 8th, 2011 5 Comments
After my first baby was born, I lay in a milky haze in a dim room with dark crimson sheets. We nursed and slept, nursed and slept as late summer pulsed with cricket-song, and sunflowers blazed in the garden below the window. My body, which had previously been decorative, had become functional. I fed the [...]
Tags: breastfeeding · cooking · food services · kid food · mothering guilt · Parenting
Growing Season
May 30th, 2011 No Comments
The garden is no place for perfectionism. Especially with a toddler running wild at your feet. I’ve always had ambitions of building a Sunflower House—a fortress of Mammoths interspersed with Moulin Rouges, roofed with Heavenly Blue morning glories. By late August, my children would have a natural playhouse, an enchanted hideaway for picnics. We could [...]
Tags: gardening · gardening with kids · Lilac Ridge Farm · Sharon Lovejoy
Of Mice and Moms
May 3rd, 2011 3 Comments
It’s Friday afternoon before April vacation, and I’m loading up the car with bulging folders of artwork, spare mittens, muddy socks, naptime bedding, and a glass cage of mice. On a whim, I’ve volunteered to take home Buster and Harriet, the preschool pets. I’d like to be the kind of mom (laid-back, yet nurturing) who [...]
Tags: hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy · mice · motherhood · rodents
Three-peat?
April 13th, 2011 1 Comment
I wake from a nightmare at dawn, tangled in damp sheets. I was pregnant, just starting to show. Tired, swollen, and depressed, I wanted to go hiking to boost my mood, but I was ravenous and needed to eat something first. All I could find was a fluorescent buffet bar in a hotel lobby, loaded [...]
Tags: babies · family · how many kids? · motherhood · siblings
The Marshmallow Test
March 29th, 2011 5 Comments
Scene: a grim, slushy, rainy day in Mud Season. I’ve got PMS and the late winter blues. Now I’m staring down a long afternoon alone in the house with two cranky sisters who can’t stop fighting. How to avoid our usual cycles of sibling squabbles and snappish mom interventions? Answer: conduct a “science experiment!” I’m [...]
Tags: children · David Brooks · Marshmallow experiment · The Social Animal · will-power
The Secret
March 17th, 2011 No Comments
“Is that you, Mommy?” asks A. She’s caught me perusing the Victoria’s Secret catalogue, where a 19-year-old Brazilian goddess pouts for the camera in a turquoise plunge push-up bra. Other than both having brownish hair and breasts, this nymphet and I look nothing alike. I feel the warm glow of pleasure that comes from a [...]
Tags: body image · Girls · self-esteem · Victoria's Secret
Sick Day
March 3rd, 2011 No Comments
Just when I’m getting pumped to step clean out of The Baby Cave– one high-heel stiletto boot at a time– and paradoxically going dewy-eyed over other’s people’s plump babies, the hormonal zeal for yet more procreation fueling my third-child fantasies– we get hit with a Tummy Bug. First my three-year-old falls asleep on Sunday afternoon, [...]
Tags: motherhood · mothering guilt · Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy · sick · The Baby Cave