MOXIE MOM on Life & Kids
Easter
The other day Ty asked me if we are going to have an Easter egg hunt on Sunday. 
Leah asked, too — both of them with an air of concern, as if expecting to hear I will be making them hunt for eggs just to please me.
“Do you want to?” I asked. We are waaayyy beyond the Easter bunny and have been for a long time, ever since Leah looked out her bedroom window early one rainy Easter morning and saw Dad hiding eggs.
“Uh, no, I don’t want an egg hunt.”
But I could feel a pause in the air, a little waft of something — nostalgia or regret or yearning for bygone days. Christmas is still Christmas even when kids no longer believe in Santa, but when they don’t buy into the Easter bunny, and they feel silly hunting for eggs in the yard just for fun, well, your family can’t avoid giving up past practices.
“But you’d like something, wouldn’t you?” I said. “You’d like a basket?” I recall going through this conversation last year, and since we’re not big on Easter family traditions like dinner with relatives — and we’re not a religious family — Easter is kind of a funny holiday for us, especially as the kids get older.
“Yes,” he said. “A basket would be nice.”
So we’ll be having baskets. And we’ll be silently acknowledging an era well over. Sigh.
leave a comment!Portland’s Food Carts
We headed to Portland over spring break to get out of Dodge for free (my mother-in-law lives there). We always head to the City of Roses for Thanksgiving, so it was fun to visit at another time of year and eat something besides turkey. In short, food carts. Love them! And kids love them!
If you haven’t checked out Portland’s street food, be sure to try some next time you go (I think it’s worth a special trip). So, so delicious, and kids love the idea they’re not eating your food of choice. We went to two locations, one downtown at 10th and Yamhill, where the food carts occupy a full city block (Korean, Thai, Bosnian, Greek, Japanese, the list goes on), and one in north Portland at Mississippi and Skidmore, where we got vegan rice bowl things with fresh veggies that the kids wolfed down (note to self: kids do eat raw spinach if it’s presented well).
Here’s a Bosnian dish of pork wrapped in pastry, popular with the whole family.
The best part of lunch was topping off with frozen yogurt (whose cart has an ATM conveniently built in so you’re never short on cash).
leave a comment!Chicken, Chicken, Duck
I 
had the pleasure of hearing local children’s author Nadia Krilanovich present her new children’s book, Chicken, Chicken, Duck, on Sunday out on Lummi Island. It was not a reading per se (although the audience talked her into it), but a presentation on the publication process, from concept to final printing of the book, which was released on March 22.
Let’s just say, children’s book publishing is not for the faint of heart. And you need to be willing to stick with it for years. Like half a dozen at least.
We’re lucky Nadia chose to stick with it. She both wrote and illustrated Chicken, Chicken, Duck, a beautiful book of barnyard animal illustrations with simple text aimed at the 3 and under set. Truly, youngsters (and their parents) will love the animals, the details of the pictures (look for the mouse), and their intrepid leader, bigger-than-life Duck, who of course… well, I won’t give anything away.
Nadia will be presenting the book at Village Books on May 8 (Mother’s Day). She is also the author of Moon Child, illustrated by Ellizabeth Sayles, which came out last year, and she’s already at work on something new. Stay tuned. I predict we will be hearing a lot more about this young author.
leave a comment!It Only Gets Better
I feel like every time I post, I’m referring to some parent article or study, but often it’s when I’m reading someone else’s point of view that I get to thinking about the broader brush strokes of parent life. Anyway, the New York Times’ Motherlode is one of my favorite blogs, and the original blogger, Anna Quindlen, is posted there now with a post called “Getting to the Point” (scroll down a bit to find it). In it, she details all the stages of parenting, and reminds us why it’s never over, and mostly, according to her, why it only gets better (her kids are now grown).
I will second that. I hear parents talk about how much they’ll miss their child’s babyhood, or the preschool years, or elementary school, but it’s true that life with kids just gets more interesting. My daughter is turning 14 this week, and I continue to marvel at who she is becoming: smart, independent, responsible, creative, thoughtful, sporty, geographically astute (I rely on her all the time), and the best travel agent you’ll ever meet — you just have to have the bucks for the trips she’ll send you on.
(Of course, I am not so blind that I don’t believe we may still go through hard times. High school is still to come for us, as is a second round middle school. I am always ready to eat humble pie.)
I admitted to my kids recently — I can’t even remember how it came up — that I was most interested in being a mom to older kids and that I wasn’t that thrilled about babies or being pregnant.
“I love babies now,” I told them, “because of you, but I’m still not thrilled with three-year-olds.” Since neither of them is no longer three, they laughed out loud. I think they know what I’m talking about.
But Anna Quindlen reminds me why three-year-olds are loveable (it’s always easier from a distance). If you’re in need of a reminder that this too shall pass, or if you just feel like reading some good writing, check out her post.
leave a comment!Distracted Driving
We keep hearing about texting while driving, talking on the cell while driving, but I’ve always had this uncomfortable feeling that there are other menaces out there on the road. Like sleep-deprived parents who are so tired they can’t remember driving from A to B.
Or parents who are looking at their toddler in the backseat when, oops, the car in front of them stops and the parent driver taps its bumper (oh, wait, that was me).
Or parents who are trying to load a story CD or DVD in crazy traffic because their kids are fighting.
But no one talks about us parent drivers being dangerous.
Until now. The March issue of Parents contains an article titled “The Most Dangerous Drivers” (yikes) that takes a close look at parent drivers. According to the article, 80 percent of accidents are caused by distracted driving, and minivan drivers, moms specifically, are a deadly epidemic.
Here’s what they do in the car:
- Eat breakfast
- Feed their kids breakfast
- Play music loudly for kids who don’t like the car
- Open boxes of crackers
- Pick up sippy cups off the floor
- Load DVDs
- Take wrappers from kids
- Referee arguments
- Deflect vomit
The article didn’t mention sleep deprivation, which in my mind is a biggie, but maybe there’s no way to measure that. Remember those days? Or maybe you’re in them right now. Truly, I never felt so off as those first three years of parenting — as if I was half-sunk in quicksand all the time.
Here’s a stat worth thinking about: 27 percent of adults text, while 26 percent of teens do. Huh. And we blame the teens. And here’s something else: moms in school zones have some of the worst behavior, with those in the biggest cars the most distracted — apparently because they feel better protected. Now how’s that for irony? Stats show that involved parents help kids be successful in school — but only if kids live through their mom zipping through the school zone in her SUV, it seems. Okay, yeah, I exaggerate. Or maybe not.
At any rate, here’s what Parents tells us to do:
- Feed the kids (and yourself) before leaving the house
- Turn off your cell and put it in the backseat
- Lay down the rule you can’t touch any devices (GPS or DVD) while driving.
Now that my kids are older, driving feels a lot easier. In fact, I enlist their help all the time: they answer my cell for me, they open food packets, they pick up their own debris, and we don’t have a DVD player in the car. But, wow, how did I make it through those early years? I guess by the skin of my teeth.
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