Sleep Is For The Weak. Mommyblogging Is For The Strong

Okay, so I'm biased. I'm a mommyblogger. Some of my best friends are mommybloggers. Some of my best friends who are mommybloggers are in this book. Which is why I'm not going to tell you that you should buy this book for the brilliance and wit contained therein* - even though it is a FACT that such brilliance and wit spill in abundance from its pages - because you will think that I'm just saying that. Even though I'm totally not.

No, I will, instead, tell you that you should buy this book for this reason: because it is made of paper. Which is to say, it is a handy-dandy way of reading an excellent sampling of mommyblogger writing without having to power up your computer and sit with it scorching your lap and zapping your ovaries with its computer-zappy-rays. The greener choice for reading mommy blogs! The healthier choice for reading mom-blogs!

GET YOURS NOW!

*If you do need convincing about the brilliance and wit contained therein, there will be a bunch of no-doubt brilliant and witty and substantially more substantive reviews of Sleep Is For The Weak at the Parent Bloggers Network - you can follow those reviews HERE.

'Sleep Is For The Weak', $11.95 @ Amazon

(cross-posted at WeCovet)

Who's A Rookie?

When the opportunity to review The Rookie Mom's Handbook came up, I thought, well, 'rookie' doesn't really apply to me, seeing as I'm about to - OH PLEASE GOD SOON - become a mom again for the second time, but maybe it would be a good recommend for first-time pregnant friends.

So when I began reading it, it was with that in mind: to consider whether a first-time pregnant woman or brand new mom would find it useful. I hadn't really expected that I would find it useful.

But I did.

Granted, a lot of the tips (and can I say? I LOVE the flip-open numbered-tip format. It made it fun to just occasionally pick the book up while grabbing a coffee or something and flip through for inspiration) (but I digress)... a lot of the tips are very been-there/done-that for a second-time mom, but again, this book isn't pitched at second-time moms. Which is why it was a nice surprise for me to a) find tips for activities that I'd never thought of (host an ugly baby clothes party, take a picture in the same spot once a month over a period of months), and b) find some inspiration in ideas for activities that I already knew about (go swimming - this time around, I'm having a warm-weather baby; enjoy art - I meant to go to galleries and museums last time around, but, um...)

I also enjoyed the book because it validated something that I didn't fully appreciate with my first baby - the idea that these creatures are highly portable and user-friendly in a way that toddlers very often (*cough*) are not. I struggled with PPD the first time around and spent a lot of time huddled on the sofa being terrified of everything - the very idea of an excursion out of doors filled me with tremendous anxiety. Looking back, I wish that I'd been of sound enough mind and strong enough will to just get my ass out that door - and into shopping malls and art galleries and cafes and airplanes and bars (those last two? On the agenda for this time, because I'm going to BlogHer with this kid strapped to me kangaroo-style NO MATTER WHAT and I am definitely hitting those parties. So.) This book validates - more than validates, encourages - that approach to early motherhood, and this time around, I was ready for that message.

And, hell yeah I'm gonna spread that message around.

You can find more reviews of The Rookie Mom Handbook at PBN. And consider joining in on the Rookie Mom blog blast this coming weekend!

Daring Is As Daring Does

It's been forever since I posted here, mostly because I've been sick, sick, sick and then sick again, and the reviews are the first thing to go when I'm not feeling well (hard to remember what I'm even supposed to be writing about, let alone whether I liked the thing or not, when my head's hovering over the toilet.) But I'd been dying to write about The Daring Book For Girls, because I so loved The Dangerous Book For Boys and because, well, I just love the spirit of the whole thing. Every girl and boy probably needs one or both of these books on their bookshelf, if only so that they'll know that, sometimes, the coolest information isn't the kind that you Google, but the kind that's preserved between two dusty hard covers, on dog-eared pages that beg to scribbled upon with personal notes. I may well end up buying both of these books in bulk, just so that I'll always have just the perfect gift for any adolescent - or adolescent-at-heart - that crosses my path.

But it's been an exceptionally hard week, and it's hard to fully summon review-friendly enthusiasm for anything, least of all a book that celebrates childish joie-de-vivre. There's not much joie in my vie right now, because I've been forced to contemplate what the life of my future child will look like if certain genetic/chromosomal test results hold up. How could I celebrate 'daring' when there's now every possibility that my child's life will not, could not, be 'daring' or 'dangerous' or involve any of those wonderful words that evoke stolen horses and secret hide-outs and covert missions and great adventures?

So I wasn't feeling particularly enthusiastic about this review-enterprise when I flipped open The Daring Book this morning, weeks after first reading it, having forgotten everything about it and well in the midst of a deep, dark funk. But then I found myself lingering over passages about how to make the coolest paper airplane, ever, and about palm-reading and making a willow-whistle, and then scrolling down a list of books that could change a girl's life, and it occurred to me that daring is not necessarily all about great physical adventures. It occured to me - rather banally, I suppose - that a daring life might just be one that is well-lived, whatever the terms. My child might (might) never jump rope or climb a tree - but she might exult in a willow-whistle, or thrill to stories about Artemesia or Boudica or Cleopatra or Josephine Baker. Daring doesn't always mean stealing horses. It sometimes means just living, in the very best way that one can.

The Daring Book For Girls skews heavily toward the stealing horses (not that they advocate that, though I do) kind of daring. Climbing trees, doing back-flips, plotting spy missions, skipping rope, playing four-square, paddling canoes - independent spirit understood here, mostly, as physical spirit. But not entirely. Alongside female adventurers are female inventors; alongside daring feats of strength and agility are feats of intelligence and creativity; there are books to read and codes to write and many, many a story of incredible women who have changed history (and a solid reminder to keep a copy of Herodotus' Histories - history's first equal-opportunity story-teller, and one of its finest - on your child's bookshelf.) Would I keep this book on the bookshelf for my special-needs child (if I have one)? I don't know. I might just go straight to Herodotus and Little Women (wherein it's useful to remember that Beth is, in her way, just as daring - if not more daring, in bravely facing death - a girl as Jo). I'm having trouble viewing anything through any lens other than what if? right now, which maybe isn't fair to the book, but still.

So maybe this book wouldn't be ideal for a girl who can't run or jump or skip rope or steal horses. It doesn't, end of the day, really matter. It's still a fabulous, life-affirming book. And today I found that this book was good for me. It reminded me that taking joy in life takes many forms, and that folding a super-awesome paper airplane can make one feel pretty good. And I needed that.

(Part of the Mother-Talk book tour for The Daring Book For Girls.)

Come On Vamonos!

Wonderbaby speaks Spanish. Sort of.

She speaks Spanish - is being raised to know some Spanish - because I speak it. I'm not Spanish, nor any strain of Latin, but I did live for a couple of years in Spain and because some of my very dearest friends (Wonderbaby's godfamily) is Spanish and because we're all going back to live there one day (well, that's the dream, anyway.) So she's going to need it.

So far, her education in Spanish has consisted of me reading to her in Spanish, listening to Spanish and Latin-American music with her, and - not least - using the services of a part-time Spanish-speaking nanny. And it's been more or less successful: Wonderbaby communicates easily with her wonderful nanny, who has spoken to her only in Spanish since WB was nine months old. (And, from time to time, WB tosses in some Spanish with her English just to keep things interesting: bye-bye sometimes becomes adios (or, 'ciao,' for some Italian flavour), cow becomes vaca, water becomes agua, etc., etc.) But I've worried about how we'll keep this up once the nanny goes (which she must, because we can't afford to keep her full-time) - I'd read that children learn best when one person speaks the second language to them exclusively, and although my Spanish is good, I don't want to use it all the time.

Enter The Bilingual Edge, which tells me, to my very great relief, that this is not necessary. I can use all variety of methods to keep up WB's language skills - music and reading, in addition to conversational speaking. Indeed, TBE insists that parents don't need to be native speakers of a language in order to introduce it to their children. Rather, parents just need to be committed to exposing their children to that language at any opportunity - and willing to perhaps look a little silly, sometimes, doing it (as when, as the book recommends, reading in a language that one does not know. My husband - who does not speak Spanish, but who gamely tries to read it to WB, found this very reassuring.) And it dispels the myth that 'mixing' languages (one person speaking more than one language to a child) is counter-productive to language learning. (Children, they insist, sort through differences in language on their own, and this exercise can actually be developmentally advantageous.) Which, again: big relief.

This, I found, is the book's singular strength - it aims to help and encourage parents who are confused by the whole issue of language learning, parents for whom such training is desirable but not straightforward. If we were truly a bilingual household, and spoke Spanish regularly in front of WB, I wouldn't concern myself too much with 'how to's'. But we're not such a household, and because of this - even though we're not exactly an entirely unilingual household - we needed some help. And that help and encouragement was very welcome - not least because it came wrapped in the message that learning second languages needn't be, nor should be, stressful or challenging. Just welcome that language into your home, and enjoy it. The rest will fall into place.

How often do you get to hear that message in relation to your child's education? That's what I thought.

(With thanks to the Parent Bloggers Network!)

Abandon Biases All Ye Who Enter Here

I'm generally not one for touchy-feely medicine. I'm well familiar with it, having grown up in the Pacific Northwest, where there's no ailment that can't be cured in a sweatlodge or with pot and ginseng tea, but it's not really my bag. Give a me good old-fashioned medical doctor, complete with white coat and stethoscope and grouchy bedside manner.

So although I was open-minded about Body, Soul and Baby, I have to admit to a wee bit of scepticism. Oh sure, I thought. "Integrative Medicine." It's gonna tell me to drink wheatgrass juice and get acupuncture and 'journal.' But the credentials of the author, Tracy Gaudet, were impressive - bona fide doctor! from Duke University's School of Medicine! - and so because these things matterto me, I decided to give it a chance. If a real doctor - that is, not a graduate of the West Coast School of Alternative Hemp Therapies - can make a case for touchy-feely medicine, I'll be sold.

My interest was specifically in the TTC (trying to conceive) material, so after the reading the introduction (which confirmed my suspicions that this would the sort of book that uses nouns as verbs - 'journalling,' 'dialoguing,' argh) I headed straight to the section on preconception. Here, Dr. Gaudet promotes what she calls 'conscious conception,' which, not surprisingly, pushed my anti-woo-woo buttons. 'Conscious,' 'intentional,' meh. Gazillions of women get pregnant every year without the slightest bit of conscious intention.

However, however... upon reflection, I realized that there was something important to this idea. My husband and I have been 'trying to conceive,' but not very hard. It's been a matter of simply throwing caution to the wind and not paying attention. Which means, really, that we haven't been trying. Should this tell us something?

I don't know that our lackadaisical approach means that deep down we don't want another child. But it certainly points to some ambivalence, and Dr. Gaudet is right to urge women to be as conscious as possible of any ambivalence, not least because it will certainly colour one's experience of pregnancy and of the post-partum period. As someone who struggled with a bad case of post-partum depression that actually started pre-partum, I learned the hard way that staying aware of my feelings - no matter how negative they seemed - was absolutely necessary for pulling myself out of the darkness. Gaudet calls this staying conscious, and she's right to emphasize its importance. If I'm to make it through - make it happily through - another pregnancy and birth, I do need to remain conscious.

She's also right to promote things like journal-keeping and engaging in dialogue. I avoided both of these in the late stages of my pregnancy and during the early post-partum weeks, against the advice of my psychiatrist, and definitely suffered for it. It wasn't until I discovered blogging - an exercise in 'journalling' and 'dialoguing' if there every was one - that I was able to begin bringing about a sort of consciousness, and so pull myself out of the dark.

All of which is to say - I might have been much better off had I read this book before my first pregnancy. The problem is, I might have avoided this book for all of the silly reasons that I note above. Which really is a shame.

So - for all you skeptics and anti-woo-woo types out there - take the advice of this Bad Mother: in pregnancy and motherhood, more than any other experience you've ever had, you need all of the gentle, loving help that you can get. And you need to set aside your biases in accepting that help. This is like nothing that you've done before, so abandon all your preconceptions and embrace this adventure, body and soul.

And a good first step in this would be to read this book.

Part of the Parent Bloggers Network review series on 'Body, Soul and Baby' by Tracy W. Gaudet, M.D.

A Nicer Shade Of Fairy Tale

WonderBaby is a little young for fairy tales and folk tales, but I stockpile them anyway. I still have all of my old collections of Grimm's fairy tales, and Hans Christian Andersen, and some collections of Italian folk tales and Chinese folk tales and at least one copy of Isaac Bashevis Singer's Gimpel The Fool. I loved fairy tales when I was young - the darker the better - and I'm hoping that WonderBaby will love them, too. So I want to be ready - books all lined up on the shelf, ready to go - when she is.

The fairy tales that I received in the mail last month are not in the vein of the Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen. If there is any hint of darkness to The Fairy Chronicles, it's the sort of darkness that just creeps in at the edges, only to be shooed away, quickly and efficiently, by sweetness and light. So I was not disposed to like these stories, preferring, as I do, dark morality tales featuring witches and trolls and other forces of evil that come perilously close to prevailing every time.

The thing is, I'm no longer a child - I'm a thirty-something curmudgeon - and so I'm probably not the best person to evaluate fairy stories aimed at the pre-tween girl market. At the least, I'd need to set aside my curmudgeon cap and consider the stories on their own merits. Which is exactly what I tried to do.

And I can say this: The Fairy Chronicles - a collection of fairy stories that hold in common the conceit that real girls might themselves be fairies - provide an interesting twist on the fairy genre. The main characters are young girls who discover that they have special fairy powers like speed and agility and 'ferocity in defense of others' - good, solid grrl-power stuff - and who embark upon a variety of fairy adventures in which they have use their special powers to resolve some problem or address some threat (in one case, a Web of Dreams has been broken, allowing nightmares to enter childrens' sleep too easily, and needs to be repaired.)

As I've already said, these threats do not stir any real fear (and, for the record, I AM as easy to scare as a nine year old girl) but end of the day, there's really nothing wrong with that. I shared one of the books with my sister, who has a daughter who is close in age to the target audience here, and she commented that her daughter would appreciate an adventure story that could be read at bedtime with no worry of nightmares. (Point well taken.) She also said that her daughter would love the premise that quote-unquote ordinary girls might be fairies - a welcome change from the usual run of Disney stories that feature princesses.

The stories told in these books are very much of the ilk that my mother told my sister and I at bedtime and around campfires: all the adventure and colour of a classic fairy tale, with none of the death and dark evil. The adolescent me might have loved the darkness of Grimm and Andersen while curled up in the bright comfort of our family sofa, but I recall well that I preferred the sweet security of the fairylands that my mother conjured for us when it came time for bed.

My sister (as always) absconded with The Fairy Chronicles, and this is, as I've said before, probably the highest praise that she could offer (thievery being the sincerest form of flattery.) When WonderBaby comes of fairy tale age, I'll probably still start with the classics. But if she starts crawling into bed with HBF and I after night-time readings of The Snow Queen or The Tinder Box, I'll ask my light-fingered sister to send those books right back.

Read more about The Fairy Chronicles here.

Green Is The New Black

For a while, when I was in my twenties, I was, like, a rabid Marxist eco-warrior type. And vegan, to boot. Which means that, you would only have found me fun if you were also a vegan Marxist eco-warrior type, which itself means that you probably living, like me, in the Pacific Northwest and studying something useless like philosophy or cultural studies or the history of new social movements and prone to get drunk on organic wine coolers and pontificating loudly about how cow farts were burning holes in the ozone. (Or, in one case, getting drunk at a wedding at the Georgian Club in Vancouver and lecturing the entire room on the evils of veal. That My Bad Husband stuck with me after that is testament to his deep and abiding love for me, and his tolerance for my weirdness if it means that he'll be gettin' some later.)

Anyway. I grew out of it. Which is not to say that I grew out of my concern for the health and well-being of the planet, but that I realized that - once the baby-doll-dress-and-army-uniform of the vegan grunge grrl squad passed out of fashion - I didn't like the clothes. And that I did, actually, really like cheese, and that I had a weak spot for leather bags and shoes and that it was, accordingly, getting harder and harder to (literally and figuratively) walk my talk. Also, I figured out that Marxism really had very little to do with Marx, and that Nietzsche was far more interesting, but that it's far less interesting to get drunk and stand on chairs and ramble on about what he really meant when he said that God was dead than it is to get drunk and be all militant about some cause or another.

So I gradually became a quiet environmentalist. And, I gotta say, a sorta lazy environmentalist. It's easy to be rigorous when you're militant, because rigor is your schtick. But when you've already slid partway down the slippery slope of leather shoes into complete environmental irresponsibility, you find that you're more likely to lay back and slide on your ass and hope that the reverse traction caused by your butt-cellulite - packed on by all that cheese - slows your descent.

It's the lazy environmentalist in me that loves The Green Book, by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen (with contributions from people like Will Ferrell and Jennifer Aniston and Tyra Banks and other people who have no cellulite and so need more effective ways to keep from sliding down slippery slopes). It's cute and (yes) green and it fits in my Coach bag and its exactly the sort of cunning little book that I can whip out while I'm on the subway or pushing the stroller through the park and peruse tips for making my life more green. Easy tips. Tips like, don't take your ATM receipt. And, brush your teeth in the shower (this from Jennifer Aniston, who, you know, could probably afford a whole separate tooth-brushing room complete with on-call dental hygienist). And, ditch your answering machine (though really, who hasn't done this already?) And, use Blu-ray discs instead of traditional cds (more storage, more recyclable - I did not know this). And - wait for it - look for shoes and bags made with recycled materials (there're all variety of cute ones out there - Matt & Nat, based in Montreal, make gorgeous stuff.)

Like I said, easy. And easy makes it more likely that I'll act. And acting more... well, that takes me a step further. That takes me closer - back to, forward to - that place where I get really, really passionate about these things. Where I want to do more, regardless of whether it's easy or not.

Where I get drunk and preach the virtues of caring for our planet.

That's a good place to be. And if The Green Book works as a little bit of guidebook for that journey, and a little bit of kick in the pants, that's a pretty awesome thing.

Go, find it. Read it. Use it. It beats calling for a culling of old people.

Loving the earth doesn't mean you can't wear hot pink boots.

My Baby Can Read! (And Dance!)

I loved reading from a very early age. So early, that I don't have any recollection of being taught to read. I recall my parents telling me stories, I recall holding books in my hands, I recall sinking into those books and disappearing into their pages... but I have no recollection of struggling with words, of making an effort to bring those words into focus.

I must have done, of course. I was not born a fully-formed reader. Still, it seems to me that whatever my education in reading, there must have been something organic about it if all that remains of the memory of that education is the vague recollection of the first pleasures of the text.

So it was that I was somewhat skeptical of the idea behind the 'Your Baby Can Read!' program. Not because I doubted its claims to be able to teach babies to read, but because I doubted the desirability of doing so. Sure, I might get WonderBaby to read the words in her books, rather than just fondle the pages and kiss the pictures, but to what end? Shouldn't she love her books for the simple joy of being able to embrace their bookiness, before rushing to decode the letters inside? Shouldn't the relationship begin as an erotic one, such that her intoxication with the book compels her to explore every inch of its mysteries, from form to image to word and beyond?

And, how could I overlook the disconcerting irony that attends to teaching one's child to read with a DVD?

Still, I was curious. So we gave it a whirl.

And it works. Sort of.

WonderBaby can now identify the words 'Hi' and 'Cat' - and, sometimes, 'Dog,' although she resists saying dog, because she is insistent upon the true status of dogs as cats at the moment - on a flashcard, without pictures. And she certainly loves the pictureless flashcards (pictures slide in and out of the side of the card). But then again, she's always enjoyed plucking novels from our bookshelves and sitting down with them and pointing at the lines of text, so I'm not sure to what extent her love of the flashcards is due to the program.

And she loved the video - not as much as she loves Teletubbies, but the very fact that she let me play the DVD instead of Teletubbies for minutes on end was an accomplishment in itself. She loved the songs, and has become a fanatic enthusiast of the song 'Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes.' She loved pointing at words on the screen, and shouting hi whenever the little girl who narrates appeared. And the whole system made good sense - incorporate text with images, use music and children to make it fun. Sesame Street has been doing this, brilliantly, for decades, but WonderBaby hasn't warmed to Sesame Street yet - she hasn't warmed to anything on television or DVD save Teletubbies - and so it was amusing and interesting to see her response.

Still... she was never interested in watching for more than ten minutes or so at a time, and I was never interested in compelling her to do so. So when she would toddle over to the TV and push the power button off and say no, that was that. And when she would wander away from the TV and reach for Hug or Maisie's Colors or Goodnight, Gorilla and shout Ya Ya Ya Ya Boo! (book), my heart would swell and I'd remember: This is how we read.


Last word: at $79.95 for the complete 5-dvd set with flashcards, I'd consider it, if only because she looooved the flashcards, and because the dvds provided much needed respite from Teletubbies (that is, after I learned to fast-forward through the opening sequences featuring the good doctor Titzer, creator of the program, who seems a nice guy but bears a disconcerting resemblence to Steve Buscemi and tends to go on.) The musical sequences were like crack for WonderBaby, who would begin dancing and hooting immediately. And if the idea of teaching your young child to read in this way appeals to you, then by all means go for it - even with sporadic viewing, WonderBaby learned very quickly to recognize certain words. We, however, will stick with books.

(With thanks to the Parents Blogger Network!)