Entries Tagged as 'Spilt Milk Column'

Advice From the Trenches

August 11th, 2010 No Comments

If you’ve ever picked up a magazine at the pediatrician’s office, you know that the glossies are full of parenting tips and advice. Five Simple Steps to Get Your Baby to Sleep Through the Night! Top Ten Ways to Raise a Happy Child! Magazine editors love bullet points, solutions, and sound-bytes.  They know how to [...]

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Appetite For Destruction

August 4th, 2010 1 Comment

(No, not the rockin Guns n’ Roses album, but the force of nature that is Carmen…) Of all the trials and tribulations in my nearly five years of motherhood, I’d never suffered public humiliation until last week.   I have a thick skin– I can handle my toddler unloading in her swim diaper every single time [...]

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Beauty Shop Hotline

July 26th, 2010 2 Comments

It’s ten o’clock on a Saturday night and I’m leaning over the tub, my head coated in brown-green goop.   The henna smells earthy and vegetative, like wet grass.  It stains the white tub with mahogany grit when I wash it out, and makes my hair dry as a husk of corn. But it’s all worth [...]

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Zoo Story

July 14th, 2010 1 Comment

By the end of the day, I’d lost it completely.  My façade of patience had melted, and I trudged through the hot hordes of Saturday zoo-goers, wielding the black double stroller like a weapon. But taking the girls to New York City for the weekend was an ambitious plan.  “Only people who aren’t New Yorkers [...]

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Never-Never-land

May 25th, 2010 1 Comment

My preschooler is on a quest for a Nanny. She writes up an advertisement for someone to take care of her when her mother is busy, distracted, or grumpy.  The two job requirements are: -Must Speak English -Must Be Friendly Ava is hoping for Mary Poppins or Maria from The Sound of Music (I’ve had [...]

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The Cult of Birth

May 19th, 2010 No Comments

Whenever I hear through the mother’s grapevine that some woman has gone ahead and had a 4-hour labor and a blissful, natural childbirth, I get a pang of envy and regret. What I would have given for a Butter Birth— a short, smooth labor where everything slides!  It’s not that I consciously want anyone else [...]

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C is for Cut

April 26th, 2010 1 Comment

We were lying on the living room rug, wrestling and talking about belly buttons. My daughter has long been fascinated and confused by her navel, which she calls “the hole in my body.” Our conversation meandered to umbilical cords, how babies grow inside their mommies’ tummies, and inevitably, to how babies come out. We’d made [...]

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The Princess Phase

April 11th, 2010 1 Comment

The revelation comes at bathtime: “Mommy, you know what?  All the Princesses meet a Prince in their movies!” My daughter’s eyes grow wide with the thrill of discovery.  At age 4, she’s utterly captivated by the Disney Princesses, despite my best efforts to downplay them.  These nine highnesses shine like beacons of magic, beauty and [...]

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Are We Done Yet?

March 28th, 2010 2 Comments

It’s spring, and babies are cropping up everywhere.  At Parent-Tot Open Gym I encounter a young blonde woman with 6-week-old twins– and a frisky 2-year-old. This is my personal nightmare, but the mom looked happy and calm as she told me what a good helper the toddler was, bringing her diapers, entertaining the infants. The boy-baby [...]

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Cocktails at Sugar Camp

March 24th, 2010 Comments Off

I have a secret lust for urban pleasures.  My friend Alexa is child-free in San Francisco, and I live vicariously through her city life.  She blogs about cocktails, cardio strip-tease, parties with fire-eaters and burlesque shows, and dancing till dawn at disco clubs. Alexa’s life gives me an infusion of fantasy, better than a bubble [...]

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