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  • Sex After Baby: "Objects Shift During Flight"

    For what could be viewed as such a serious topic -- getting it on after pushing it out (see? serious!) -- the moms at Momversation were on a holy tear of comedy goodness, tackling a touchy issue with hilarity and personal insight.

    Really, if you're not watching Momversations already, you should have your head examined. Basically, it's an online video diary of some of the web's most popular writers dishing on everything from politics to birth choices to, this week, sex after the baby.

     

    Read More...


  • Meet the Author: Rockabye's Rebecca Woolf Coming Soon!

    Babble's very own Rebecca Woolf of Straight from the Bottle and Girls Gone Child has a new baby -- a book baby. The early reviews show it's an unconventional parenting book, and coming from a writer with fantastic essays like this, this and this under her belt, I don't doubt it. And I can't wait to read it. She's a parenting writer not to be missed.

    So if you're interested in checking out "Rockabye: From Wild to Child", you can find her book tour dates here. I'll have a mini-review up once an autographed copy is my hands after her reading.


  • Fresh Air? Times Square!

    There’s been a lot of talk around Babble lately about raising your little ones in the city that was previously the greatest place on earth and now the greatest challenge to your parental sanity. Alison Lowenstein brings back the original meaning of ‘nursery’ in His and Hers to justify staying in her crowded Brooklyn apartment where her daughter and son share a bedroom and everyone wants for privacy. Last week Rebecca Woolf tackled the lack of kid-friendly baristas in Los Angeles and you all had a lot to say about your own urban baby experiences as well. Living in a fast-paced metropolis has always been about compromise and adjusting your life and perspective to make it work. Obviously the pay-off is worth it as more people are procreating in New York City and not moving to Westjerseticut, forcing the single and child-free to share their playground. But it doesn’t mean that my own household doesn’t discuss what a pain in the ass it is to live in our crowded, volatile and awesome neighborhood at least once a week. Where is the best place to hang your hat when your family unit changes from two to three (or four or five…)? Readers?


  • When Mom F's Up: Kids Who Swear

    Being the designated "Pottymouth" of StrollerDerby, it probably goes without saying that I have been known to cuss.  More than I should.  Yes, I really, really try to censor myself around my kids, but I'm not so good at it.  I've always - to my own detriment - been the kind of person who reacts (verbally, emotionally) first, and thinks later. 

    And yeah... the kids pick up on that.

     I'm not proud of it... but sometimes is kind of funny.  Oh, come on.  It is!  Hearing "oh, shit!" come out of a helium-voiced, baby-talkin' little sweetheart whose marker has just hit the deck can be giggle-inducing.  Hearing that Rebecca Woolf's two year old feels "like ass," might be similarly smile-making.  The juxtaposition of the cuteness and the the potty talk can crack even the steeliest of faces (hidden behind shirt sleeves, backs turned, of course). 

    The trickiest part of having toddlers who swear is that we can't make too big a deal out of the little buggers borrowing our more colorful vocabulary word.  We can't ignore them - that's not cool.  But we can't harp on them too much, because then they'll use the choice words all the time, or we'll have a power struggle on our hands, or both.  I have been unbelievably lucky - my kids have never sworn in public. I don't know why, but they seem to instinctively know that if they drop an s-bomb in public, I'll feel like major ass. (No cuss therapy for us, thanks). 

    C'mon - confess.  Has your kid ever cussed?  How did you handle it?  Have you ever had to deal with it in public?


  • True Mom Confessions: Have You Confessed Yet?

    Here's a confession: I'm addicted!

    Seriously, TMC is like free therapy, Craigslist, and a good cry (or laugh, depending on the day) all rolled into one.  (In case you haven't hard, TMC is a message board where moms are flocking by the thousands, laying their souls bare, and divulging their inner most secrets, anonymously.) 

    Babble's own Rebecca Woolf (one of the two creators of the site) has confessed that at least a dozen of the confessions are her own.  I haven't counted, but I think I've posted as many, if not more.  Why?  If, for no other reason, than just to say it - to get it off my chest and put it out into the universe honestly, without fear of judgment, whatever "it" is.  Scrolling through the confessions, I am surprised by how many women are in unhappy marriages, how many hate their mothers-in-law, how many would give anything for a little more time to themselves.  Some of them are sad, some are hilarious, and all of them are real.  You go there, you confess, and you are heard - and often echoed by many, many others.  It's validating, not being "the only one."  It's oddly liberating.

    You really should try it.  Oh, and keep your eyes... I mean ears, peeled for True Mom Confessions Radio.


  • True Mom Confessions: You Must See This Site!

    true mom confessionsLike PostSecret? Then you will love True Mom Confessions ("Motherhood is hard. Admit it."), brought to you by Babble's own Straight From the Bottle blogger Rebecca Woolf.  It's an anonymous list of raw, real disclosures by moms like you. And me. At least, sometimes. Care for a sample? Of course you do:

    *I want to just for one day give myself the credit I think I might deserve. I am tired of feeling like I suck at this. I am tired of worrying every minute of every day that I am not a good mom. I want to believe, deep in my soul, that I am and that my kids are going to be just fine.

    *Sometimes I let the kids make big messes in the house, just so that they'll leave me alone for five minutes.

    *Sometimes I wish I never had children. I love my kids but somtimes I am so envious of childless people who can just do whatever they please without a second thought. Whenever I hear someone is pregnant with their first baby, I can't help but think in my mind "Ha! Have fun...you have no idea what's in store for you"

    *I forgot to pick my kids up at school!

    *I'm sick of the fact that every conversation I have with my friend is really a competition to see who has the smarter kid.

    *So far, no one, not even my therapist, has been able to tell me quite how I'm supposed to reconcile the whole having a baby, and having a full-time, saving the world kind-of career, or any kind of career for that matter. I'm scared.

    *Sometimes I fantasize about getting in my car, driving away and never coming back.

    *Every so often... I masturbate while my kids nap. When they interrupt me and ask what mommy is doing... I tell them that mommy's taking a nap. And to go watch TV. Until I'm finished.

    Any of these strike a nerve with you? I could chime in with several of them myself. Check out the site, there's much, much more. 


  • Neal Pollack, Babble's Rebecca Woolf Get Their Say at South by Southwest

    Arvind Grover is liveblogging the events he's attending at this year's South By Southwest Interactive festival, and one of those events just happens to have been Monday afternoon's Alternadad Live, featuring Neal Pollack and Babble blogger Rebecca Woolf.

    Grover's notes are here at his 21Apples blog. It looks like, surprise surprise, Rebecca and Neal were obligated to speak on the (deep sigh) Hipster Matter. It's hard to tell how it really went from Grover's notes, but there are tantalizing clues: The panelists discussed their motivations for blogging, the ethics of using children as blog fodder, and seem to have at least attempted to define that pesky label. I'm looking forward to getting the scoop from both Rebecca and Neal.

    Grover, who works in education, also noted that he should probably start reading parenting blogs. Hi, Arvind!  


  • "Hipster Parents": And Now David Brooks Weighs In

    Always with the writing about the hipster parents.  And now David Brooks joins the fray.  Brooks, New York Times Op-Ed columnist and great-grandfather of 10, addresses the usual list of problems with Babble, Alterna Dad, and Urban Baby.  And like Time Magazine before him, calls out pretty little Girl's Gone Child writer and Babble contributor, Rebecca Woolf, who elicited a comparison to Erma Bombeck (we should all be so lucky!).

    Brooks covers the usual complaints against the hipster parent set: failure to grow-up, worship of fashion and the icons of youth, and an inability to surrender to Barney.  My response to David, and anyone else ranting and raving about Babble and all other supposedly hip parenting modalities of expression, is "turn away."  If it bothers you so much, then just don't read it.  On the other hand, most scrappy types enjoy a fight and I can certainly respect that.

    Truthfully, I find major media covering non-vanilla parenting very heartening.  If Babble hadn't come along when it did, I would have been forced to pillage and burn every copy of Parenting Magazine in every doctor's office around town.  How many smiling, skinny, happily crafting and cooking suburban moms can one stand reading about before one is driven to heavy drugs?  The nice thing about all this discussing of the hip parents, is it gives us a new scapegoat and something against which we can measure ourselves.  And I don't know about you, but I'd much rather be compared to an angst-ridden hipster than a Prozac filled cheerful-head any day of the week.



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