Home/Work : Katie Allison Granju

Adult Garanimals: What's Your Working Mom Uniform?

kgranju — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:51:00 GMT

This is a photo of me, earlier tonight, talking to the very clever students who run the University of Tennessee's digital journalism showcase, TNJN.com. I had a great time, and appreciate having been asked to talk about what I do for a living.

As you can see in the photo below, I am wearing my defacto version of adult Garanimals - black, black and then some more black. These black on black ensembles are easy to throw together without being all matchy, matchy. Or at least that's what I like to tell myself.

The adult Garanimals are a great solution for me to pull together quickly and painlessly as I rummage around each morning, attempting to get myself dressed, C dressed for the day, all the kids fed, and everyone out the door in time for school and work. The only down side I've found is that black does tend to show all the dog hair and stray curry that one might encounter in a given day....

So what's your own working mom uniform, or do you have one? Tell me in the comments below.

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When working moms go berserk

kgranju — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:20:00 GMT

As I have mentioned, I have been working A LOT lately. The reason I am working a lot is a good one; the area of business that I oversee for our agency is booming. That's fantastic and it's especially fantastic given the fact that the economy is not booming. I am trying to take full advantage of the opportunities that are happening for the agency and for me right now, and that has meant a lot of hours for the past six months.

I have been looking for a new mother's helper to handle afternoon duties (school pick up, tumbling lessons, lacrosse practice, etc) for a while - and I finally found a wonderful person (YAY!) last week. But week before last, I still had no help. So that means E had to stay in aftercare at his school several afternoons a week. And he HATES aftercare. He hates it. There is nothing specific he hates about it; it's just the idea of it.Most of his friends at school have mothers who do not work, or who work part time. Almost none of them seem to work the kind of demanding hours that my job entails. So he sees them go home right at 3:30 pm when their moms arrive in a line of gleaming minivans and SUVs to pick them up. But he has to stay in aftercare when he would really rather go home, like "all the other kids." But such is life. I explain to him often that my job means we have a house and food, but right now, he only sees that my job means....aftercare.

So anyway, week before last, before the fabulous Anna Laura began work as my new mother's helper, I had one particularly busy day where I didn't manage to get to aftercare to pick E up until 5:45 pm. It was already dark outside and the school felt thoroughly deserted. I walked into the cafeteria, where the last three kids and one or two aftercare workers were hanging out, waiting for the neglectful working moms. As I walked in, I could see the look of disapproval on one of the aftercare worker's faces. I tried to ignore it.

I approached E, who was sitting at a table, and in a cheery voice that belied my tiredness, asked him to gather up his things. As he did, the aftercare worker with the disapproving mien approached me, and told me that E had been loud during the study hall period of aftercare. I turned to E, who had his things ready by now and was waiting to leave, and I asked him to apologize for his behavior. But before he said a word, the aftercare lady turned to him and said in a tone of voice CLEARLY intended to convey that what she was about to say was actually for me, and not for E, "That's okay E. All of us at the school understand that it's REALLY, REALLY HARD to behave when you are so tired of your mother leaving you in aftercare so late."

Normally, I am a patient person. I make it a habit to pick my battles. I don't waste energy on ultimately meaningless tangles with people over things about which I will never change their minds. But I was tired. Very tired. I had worked my ass off all day, and my feet hurt from the heels I was wearing. I love my job, but that day hadn't been one of my best. And I already felt incredibly guilty about leaving E in aftercare until 5:45 pm, when I am well aware that he hates staying there at all. And this combination of tired + guilt meant that I snapped. I just...snapped.

"May I speak to you for a moment?" I hissed at the woman, as I motioned her out into the hall, away from E's ears.

I explained to her that I did not appreciate her snarky, patronizing attitude, and told her that she wasn't doing E any favors by essentially excusing his misbehaviior as the result of having a working mother. I suggested that she try to be positive with the kids in her care who have working mothers in order to help them feel positive about their own family realities as well. But she just stared back at me in a way that indicated her utter disdain. She shrugged and told me she was "sorry" if I "misunderstood" what she had said. But here facial expression said she was mostly sorry that she couldn't tell me what she REALLY thought of me, because she knew she could only go so far with her backhanded insult before I would take it to her higher ups.

And that's really pretty much how it ended. I turned on my heel and walked away, quickly retrieving E and hurrying him out to our car to go home. She never changed her look of derision. I felt really irritated all the way home, despite my attempts to shake it off and focus on asking E about his day. And I have to admit, it's bothered me ever since.

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I love the "Terrible Twos"

kgranju — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:50:00 GMT

So lately, C has been an absolute joy to me. She's 27 months old, talking in complete sentences - which are generally hilarious - and she's increasingly engaging in real play with her toys. I love watching her "cook cook" at her play kitchen, or pretend that it's time for the Breyer horses (passed down from her previously horse-crazy older sister's collection) are ready to go to sleep in their big wooden barn. She has this fantastically entertaining and ongoing conversation happening with her hands lately where she says absurd things like, "It's okay hands! Pretty soon we'll be out of this carseat and we can play!"

Here is a video of C playing with her toy kitchen. Please ignore frightening animatronic monkey heads sitting on the dining room table. Suffice it to say that E went through a phase about four years ago where he was obsessed with monkeys, and we now have all these wildly expensive yet creepily lifelike electronic monkeys that we are trying to figure out what to do with.

And I also love dressing her at this age, in adorable little get-ups with smocked dresses, corduroy jumpers, tights and mary janes. It's truly like playing dress up with a doll, only she's cuter. And yet even with all this exciting verbal, intellectual and emotional development, she's still very much a baby. She has baby fat on her face and legs. She sleeps in little footed jammies, and she has sweet baby snores when she sleeps (she still sleeps with us). In some ways, this age seems pretty much perfect.

C in the bath at 27 months.

But one of the great things about raising four kids of four very different ages (mine are currently 2, 11, 14 and 18) is knowing that each age has its special charms.I know that age two will be followed by the the amazing pretend play of age 4, and the wonder of watching your child read for the first time at age 6 or 7. In late elementary school, they are sweet, yet incredibly independent and smart, informing you of amazing facts and bits of information you really didn't know. Middle school allows you to begin to see them blossom into adolescents, with the first, charmingly awkward romantic advances, and that changing body that is as amazing as the changes of baby to toddler. Then there are the teenage years, where you get to have honest-to-goodness, REAL conversations with this almost adult person. Occasionally they even give you advice that's so wise and smart that it knocks your socks off.

Yep, each age has its charms...and its horrors. And those horrors are different for every child and every parent: the sleeplessness of the newborn, the constant nursing of the seven month old, the nasty diapers of toddlerhood, the complete meltdowns of preschoolers, the hassles and logistical challenges (softball practice, the costume for the school play, etc) of the elementary years, the mouthy sullenness of early adolescence, and finally the terrors - absolute terrors - that come with having a teenage child.

I've now lived through each and every stage, and like every parent, I have my favorite and less favorite ages. I have some friends who could barely tolerate the newborn phase, feeling that their heads (not to mention their boobs) would explode from the constant neediness. Other friends love, love, love the Class Mom, PTA President, Costume-Sewing, Lesson Shuttling phase that elementary and 'tween years bring. Some parents I know are all about teenagers, and have houses filled with their adolescent offspring's friends each weekend. I think that each parent's favorite age and stage is a combination of the parent's temperament, and the child's. For parents who have several kids, favorite stages can be different with each child, too.

Given all this, I will now reveal my favorite stages thus far:

Newborn phase: Love it. I feel literally euphoric, and drunk on babylove. I love a newborn's tint hands and feet, and how they make that little mewing sound when they nurse. I love those tiny little newborn nightties, I love bassinets and baby swings and all the accoutrements of newbornness. I love those first weeks of getting to sit around in my nightgown, enjoying the occasional prescription narcotic pain reliever (recovering from childbirth, of course), and soaking in every second of newborn deliciousness. Yep, this is a favorite time for me. (Maybe I'm actually a bumpaholic! Heh;-) )

C, one week old (so only 37 weeks gestation)

Infancy: I find the stage from about 6-18 months to be THE hardest stage of early childhood. During this period, each of my children have seemed kind of, well, pissed off. It's like, once they can sit up at about 5-6 months, they really want to be able to DO something, but they still can't. And that leaves them whiny and me peevish. And they want to be carried all the time, everywhere, which is hard to do, even with a babysling or backpack (my two fave babywearing items). All of mine started walking between about 11-13 months, so not long after that, when they stopped careening into everything with the drunken stagger that comes with being a brand new walker, they seemed a lot happier. And I was too. But one year olds are still pretty tricky creatures, even after they learn to walk. They have a tendency to want to do ridiculous things like eat catfood from the bowl in the kitchen, and that gets really old. Lots of meltdown tantrums at this age, too. At least with all of mine. They were grumpy right before they learned to walk, and grumpy again right before they learned to talk. After each developmental breakthrough, however, they each cheered right up.

Toddler: I've already admitted to loving toddlerhood, and why (see above).

Preschool: Everything I love about toddlerhood, only better! They sleep in later on weekends (yay!), no longer require diapers on outings (yay!) and they say even funnier things. But there is, for me, a bittersweet quality to the preschool age, as I know that - as my grandmother used to say about children this age, "that baby will soon be all used up." I'm already finding myself having some of that bittersweet sadness oflost babyhood about two year old C, because I know she's almost certainly my last baby.

E - sheer joy at age 4 or 5.

Elementary years: I have enjoyed the heck out of each of my three eldest kids' elementary school ages, except for one thing: the school part. I am just terrible at keeping up with all those school papers I am supposed to sign and diorama assignments and soccer practice start times. And school seems to get more and more complicated with each child, too. (I swear it wasn't this complicated when H was a third grader.) And I've already written extensively of my hatred, sheer HATRED for our homework system. However, leaving the school logistics aside, I adore kids this age. They are so open and physical; I like the sounds of bouncy children rushing around the house. I love watching them play with their toys, and the fact that they still like toys (wait til you see how hard it gets to buy holiday gifts for your kids after toys no longer hold any appeal). I enjoy seeing their peer relationships start to develop in a more independent way, and I love reading chapter books, rather than little kid books, with them each night before bed. Ten year old girls haven't yet figured out that they are "supposed" to live their lives for anyone else, and their confidence blows me away. Ten year old boys haven't yet figured out that they aren't "supposed" to give lots of hugs and kisses to their mamas, and I love that. Yep, the elementary age years are pretty darn great overall.

H (12), J (8), E (5) - Fiat the dog - still certifiably insane six years later...

J and me, Edisto. She's about 8 years old here.

E and me at my wedding to Jon. E was eight years old here. Still little enough to snuggle.

Middle School: For those of you who haven't been through it yet, I don't want to freak you out or anything, but here's the deal: middle school is just as scary as everyone says it is. (Example: that whole "sexting" thing? It isn't just some made-up ratings grab story for Dateline. SEVENTH AND EIGHTH GRADERS ARE REALLY DOING THAT!!!! AGGGGHHH! Quelle horreur!) The best advice I can give you about parenting a middle schooler is to do whatever you can to keep your child from growing up too fast for as long as you can. Don't give in to the "everyone else's mom lets them" whining, because as it happens, not every 11-12 year old has a cell phone and yes, you do have a right to read your middle schooler's email. . I made a lot of mistakes during middle school with H, and the biggest one was that in too many ways, I let go of too much of my absolute parental authority (and I mean authority in the truest, non-PC sense of the word) far too early, believing that I had some obligation to accommodate his need for autonomy and self expression. I was, as I've written previously, flat out wrong. So hang onto the reins as long as you can and as tightly as you can during middle school. Err on the side of too much authority rather than not enough. Keep a super tight control on technology use. And remember that each child is going to be different. In my own case, H made middle school quite....challenging for his mama (I don't think he would mind me saying that), while J, who just started ninth grade, made it easy as pie. Same family, different middle schoolers...

High School: H, who just turned 18 this month, also made high school....uhhhh....challenging.(if by "challenging," you mean that his mother thought she might keel over and die if the whole thing got any harder). So I am probably the wrong person to ask on this one. But H is doing some serious growing up recently; he starts a new job this week, and starts college in January. I am really proud of him. (But he owes me BIG TIME for what he's put me through. I'm just sayin'....)

H and me; he's a freshman in high school here.

H and me, Christmas '07.

H, just turned 18.

To me, as a parent, high school is scary. It just is. It's far scarier than I realized when I sent H off for that first day of ninth grade. No matter how hard you try, you cannot completely protect your high schooler from bad people, choices, influences...But having gotten one child to the age of 18, I can now say that I am MUCH more confident being directive and yes, strict, with my teenagers-coming-along. Parents have to get comfortable and confident saying no, or even HELL NO to things like texting after 11 pm, unfiltered internet access at home or mushroom-glorifying Grateful Dead posters on your teenager's bedroom wall - anything that voilates your values as a person and a parent. It may be a cliche, but it's true: your job is not to make them happy or to be their pal. It's to get them safely to age 21 with a well developed character, and with your sanity intact. And I gotta tell you, that's waaaaay harder than it looks.

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"The Opt-Out Revolution" Has Become "The Please, Please Let Me Opt-Back-In Recession"

kgranju — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 23:22:00 GMT

In yesterday's New York Times was a story about highly educated women who have been stay-at-home mothers, but who are now being forced by the recession - and specifically by their previously well-compensated husbands' downsizings and layoffs - to seek full time employment for the first time in many years. The story features several women who were able to find jobs in their fields (law, banking) relatively easily, even after as much as a decade away from their careers. It also features an interview with one longtime homemaker - a woman who previously had a successful legal career - who has been forced to start her climb back into the workforce with an unpaid internship at a law firm.

Ouch.

The story's tone is generally positive, tacitly assuming that most women who want to get a paying job can do so without too much trouble. The piece focuses more on the hardship of having to get a job at all, rather than on the more realistic hardship of being unable to get a job when one is needed, much less a well-compensated job in a super competitive field like law or finance. The story also references a much-discussed 2003 New York Times Magazine, Lisa Belkin-penned piece titled "The Opt-Out Revolution," which profiled a group of women in this exact same, rarified demographic who were "opting out" of the careers for which they had trained in order to be at-home wives and mothers. (I'm a Lisa Belkin fan; so don't take my essay questioning the wisdom of her interview subjects' decision to "opt out" as criticism of her or her writing.)

When the "Opt-Out Revolution" piece came out, I was newly divorced after almost a decade of being a mostly at-home wife and mother myself. I was 34 years old, unemployed, a mother of three, and for all intents and purposes, I was completely penniless. The divorce ate up my share of whatever modest property and savings my ex and I had managed to accumulate by that point in our lives, and I found myself starting over with literally nothing. I didn't even have a real bed - I slept on a futon on the floor for the next three three years. Family help sustained me until I was able to find a real job with benefits, which took several months, even in that very good economy. Thank God, I had done quite a bit of home-office-based, high-profile freelance and contract work over the years, which made it possible for me to land that first job, because if my resume had been blank for the past almost-decade, I would have been in a world of hurt.

After the experience of finding myself starting completely over at age 34, I had a sort of Scarlett O'Hara moment,in which I promised myself that I would never, ever again depend so much on anyone else to provide financial security for me. I had always been hardworking and ambitious, but I found myself with a new, very intense drive to succeed in having a career that would protect me and my kids. I was completely traumatized by that first Christmas season after my break-up, when I found myself unsure how I would both eat AND buy even the most modest of gifts for the kids during my half of the shared-with-their-dad holiday break, when they would be home full time with me. Never again. I thought to myself. Never, ever again.

And then I read that New York Times Magazine piece, about all of these smart, successful, well-educated women making what I now realized to be an extremely risky choice to simply walk away from their own incomes and careers, and place their total financial futures - including their health care access and their ability to retire with dignity one day - into the hands of other people: their husbands. So I penned a response to the "Opt Out Revolution" piece, which appeared in a couple of online publications, offering the perspective of someone (me) who had done a version of the "opt-out" thing. In this rebuttal essay, I shared my thoughts on why women should be very, very careful about making such a weighty decision.

I ended my essay, titled "The Case Against Opting Out," with this:

"As I read Belkin’s article, I shook my head sadly as I applied current divorce statistics --including the rise in no-fault divorce and the virtual disappearance of alimony from most divorce settlements -- to her interview sample. Odds are that around half of the happily fulfilled, college-educated, para-homemakers she interviewed will find themselves single at some point in the next decade, at which point their choice to “opt out” of their formerly promising career trajectories may also mean that they have “opted out” of not only the lifestyle extras they seem to take for granted, but also fundamentals like a house, health insurance, and retirement funds.

Let me be clear: despite my current circumstances, I don’t regret the many personal benefits my kids and I gained during the years I worked less and mothered more, but the plain fact is that my choices have left me at a distinct economic disadvantage at a time in my life when I always assumed I’d be “all set.”. What I wish I had known then and what I do know now is that the years I spent primarily concentrating on being a mother and wife didn’t represent anything more than one phase among many in a working life that will, by today’s economic necessity, span my entire adult life.

While Lisa Belkin and her interview subjects may believe that they have “opted out,” the reality is likely to be much less clear cut for them as their children grow and many of their marriages end. Ten years from now, I suspect that we may be hearing from a new group of suddenly single, 50 year old, college-educated women who haven’t held a paying job in a decade about a new and fascinating trend: the “I-was-only-kidding-and-I-really-need-to-opt-back-in Revolution.”

So it turns out that I was kind of right in predicting the boomerang, "I really need to opt back in" trend, only it's been only six years since I made that prediction, not a decade. And as it happens, it's the bad economy, rather than divorce that prompted the cultural-bellwether-that-is-the-New-York-Times to revisit this topic. But divorce (or death of a spouse, too) still matters a lot to this discussion. In fact, since I wrote my essay in 2003, I've had the unhappy experience of watching several women-friends find themselves getting the seriously short-end of the financial stick following marital dissolutions. Prior to their marriages ending, they each had some pie-in-the-sky misunderstanding of how division of property and income would work in the modern divorce system. They believed that they would receive fair credit for giving up their own careers in order to put in years of hard work to be the primary caregivers to their children. They believed that in a divorce settlement, they would be provided with sufficient financial support to cover the time it would realistically take to find a good job after being at home for a long time.

In each case, however, these women's soon-to-be-ex-husbands took the position during divorce proceedings that they - the husbands - had literally begged and pleaded with their wives to "get a job" during the years these women were stay-at-home mothers to these men's children. The men gave this version of the story - instead of telling the truth - which was that their wives did the messy, unpaid, unappreciated home-based work that raising a family requires so that these guys would never miss a day of work for a sick child, and so that they could have the time to build a successful business, or make partner, while still getting to enjoy being fathers (when time permitted between late nights at the office and weekend golf games.) As a result of their soon-to-be-exes sudden disdain for stay-at-home mothering - disdain that only arose when the divorcing men were faced with sharing the profit from the business or law firm partnership they built while their wives took care of home and hearth - several women I know not only did not receive fair compensation for their time on the job as stay at home parents, they were instead explicitly punished in the settlements for the fact that they had "opted out." One stay-at-home mother I know was even lectured directly by the judge in open court for having been "too lazy" to work at a "real" job during her now-dissolving marriage.

These personal, anecdotal observations of friends' experiences since I wrote that essay six years ago have only served to strengthen my belief that mothers need to be very careful about leaving a good career completely behind. And this new twist - women being suddenly forced back into the workplace due to the bad economy's impact on their husband's jobs - offers further support for my view that there is nothing revolutionary about completely "opting out." Instead, for many women, it's simply the best of bad options, and one that won't look very pretty when these women are ready to retire...on nothing.

What would be truly revolutionary would be a real Mother's Movement in this country, in which meaningful grassroots organizing would actually be taken to the voting floor by the women who represent us in Congress and to the boardroom by the female executives in the companies that employ us. Together, as mothers, we should be building support for the family leave, affordable health care, and child care options that would make this entire "opt out" conversation moot. We need universal, paid family leave that allows one parent sufficient time at home to care for an infant, and we need more career-track, part-time jobs with real benefits, so that women with babies and young children don't have to make a potentially life-altering choice between immediate family needs and longterm financial security. Further, we need a well-coordinated system of public and private childcare that allows the many women who "opt out" of paying work altogether following the birth of their children - simply because they can't find or pay for acceptable care - to make their choices based on the bigger picture.

Longterm, total (meaning no paid work of any kind over a period of years) stay-at-home parenting is a wonderful choice for many mothers, but women need to make that choice with a clear view of the longterm ramifications and risks. If I were going to stay home full time with a child at this point, and step completely out of my paying job for any period of time beyond a year or two, I would ask my partner to sign a legally binding agreement that would specifically lay out how my work at home would be valued in a divorce settlement, should the worst happen. Maybe that sounds crazy to some of you, but I suggest that you take a look at the statistics. Is it crazy to have car insurance, even though you are far more likely to end up divorced that you are to end up involved in a serious auto accident? I don't think so.

Have you opted out? Or subsequently opted back in? Have you been forced to start completely over folllowing death or divorce?

Talk about the whole "Opt Out" controversy in the comments below.

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My run-in with the naked baby police

kgranju — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:04:00 GMT

The other day, my sister left my one-year-old niece NC with me for a few hours to play with C, who is only a few weeks older. The baby cousins are best pals, and were very excited to have some playtime together, which had been hard to come by the previous week, since NC had the flu (not the Swine Flu, but a bad diagnosed case of Influenza B.)

As it was a warm afternoon, I set up the baby pool in the front yard, stripped the girls down, slathered them with sunscreen, and proceeded to sit on the porch, watching the naked babies play in our small, fenced front yard. They had a blast, jumping in and out of the little pool, splashing each other, and running around the yard together.

Our street gets lots of car traffic, and quite a bit of foot traffic. Most people who walked by while the nekkid babies were frolicking smiled and waved at us, or commented as they passed by on how cute the girls were. But then, the Naked Baby Police arrived, this time in the form of a very sour-looking older lady who must live nearby, because I see her out walking in the neighborhood quite often. She took one look at the girls playing in the pool sans culottes and stopped dead in her tracks just outside our front gate. Then she held forth in my direction, loudly and angrily.

You need to put some clothes on those children!

I took a deep breath, and responded as politely as I could, explaining that they are not "children," but BABIES who aren't even two years old yet, and that I think it's fine for babies to be naked sometimes. She was not deterred, responding with righteous indignation.

But what about the perverts?!

Ummmm...I didn't really have any interest in responding to that, given the fact that I don't actually know this woman. I really felt no need to engage in a debate on my parenting, or about "perverts" with her as she stood out on the sidewalk. So I again tried to be polite, reaffirming that I was comfortable with letting the girls play naked. Obviously completely dissatisfied by my answer, she harumphed loudly before quickly walking away, shaking her head in obvious disgust at me.

This is not the first run-in I've had with the Naked Baby Police. With all four of my children, I've allowed them to get naked out in the yard when they were babies and toddlers. That's actually how E finally ditched diapers; he spent most of the summer after he turned two running around without pants in our yard - with me nearby, of course - taking great delight in "watering" the bushes and flowers. But I've definitely encountered disapproval of my naked babies from time to time from various neighbors and friends and passersby. Mostly, I just ignore it, knowing it's much ado about nothing. However, I have one friend who actually had the police called on her by a nosy Gladys Kravitz as my friend oversaw her twin toddler boys playing naked in their baby pool. And the police came! I've also heard stories of parents being harassed by child welfare authorities after taking naked baby photos to a lab for printing.

I truly don't get this cultural hang-up about letting little children be naked sometimes. When I worked as an au pair for a prosperous French family one summer, they happily let their four-year-old daughter play naked on the beach, as did all their friends. She did own a swimsuit, but it consisted of only a bikini bottom. No top. The idea that there was anything potentially sexual about this never occurred to these parents.

But what about the "perverts?" Should I worry about this when deciding whether to let C play with the garden hose with no clothes on? I don't think so. Just because a few very sick people see children as sexual objects doesn't mean I am going to treat my own child like she actually is a sexual object - which she most certainly is not - by refusing to let her be naked, ever.

So yeah, I am pro-naked-baby. Early childhood is a brief and innocent time of life, and I love seeing my children enjoy it. But I do have a few friends who seem really uncomfortable with this, even declining to have any photos of their young children in the nude for their own family photo albums.

How about you?

Home/Work : Katie Allison Granju

Adult Garanimals: What's Your Working Mom Uniform?

When working moms go berserk

I love the "Terrible Twos"

"The Opt-Out Revolution" Has Become "The Please, Please Let Me Opt-Back-In Recession"

My run-in with the naked baby police

Middle-schooler meets frog on trampoline; hilarity ensues

My big, fat life

There but by the grace of God, go I

Blogging through divorce

What makes a good sibling relationship?

A better kind of coming out party

Getting old, sans kids

I'm becoming the nap nazi

Church nursery dropout

Family party time

I am the mother of a teenage girl

A portrait of the toddler as a 17 month old

Crazy clomidians

The birthday boy

Genes, chance, and the Halle Berry Phenomenon

My kid has one foot out the door already

The Christmas card photo sessions

Who are the people in your neighborhood?

A few o' my favorite parenting blogs

Baby's getting off the fuss bus