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One of my favorite new fashion icons is Wendy Nguyen. Her Lookbook is always chock full of great fashion ideas, though to be sure, I never look that dressed up in my life. That said, I do always seem to gather good inspiration from her. So, thanks for that Wendy!

I’m headed to the mom conference in Miami in a few weeks and one of the evenings we will all be attending a dinner party on the beach, white attire requested. Now, I love love love the mental image of this. I can’t wait to go. Only, I don’t have anything to wear. Read more…

I just had a facial at La Petit Rose Spa, thanks to my good friend Michelle, and I feel all glowy and amazing. Only, I’m a little frightened, too.

You know that part in a facial where the bright light comes out and your pores get uber-inspected? Well, as Michelle was doing this, she asked me about my skin care routine. I told her what I use – L’Occitane Immortelle Divine Cream, which I love by the way – and she told me about Safecosmetics.org. Read more…

Our culture and our time all impact us parents. We can no more step back to the 1950s than we can prepare our children for the inevitable eyelid embedded, thought reading iPhone of the future. We live in the here and now.

And that’s a good thing. Because A) who wants to re-live the 50s, really? And B) a thought reading iPhone – yeah, right?!?

But how does our past influence our current lives, even our future? Let’s look simply at language. Yes, I’m talking specific word choice. As in ‘use your words,’ a phrase you no doubt know. Hey, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right?

What words do you use to express yourself – are they productive or unproductive to little ears? Read more…

If you could look up bravery in the dictionary (OK, you can actually do this, but let’s pretend) you’d see a photo of a newborn baby with the words ’nuff said underneath.

Babies are among the most brave souls on this planet! “Someone turn down those lights!” only you can’t say that just yet so you simply squeeze your eyes closed. “What the hell are these things that flail about and hit me in the face?” only you don’t know yet that you have arms and hands, much less how to control them. “FEED ME!” and your mouth goes searching about, trying to suck on anything within mouthing distance.

The things babies have to deal with! And to think, newborn babyhood is probably the happiest any soul will ever be. The nuzzling, the breastfeeding. Oh la la.

So undertaking to teach a child bravery could be considered an exercise in redundancy. Or is it? Read more…

Summertime
And the living is easy
Fish are jumping
The cotton is high

OK, I’m from the South, can you tell? Every time I think about warm weather, I hear this song and I want to sway in the summer breeze.

This summer, we are headed to the beach! I can’t wait. Of course, we live in San Francisco, so technically there is a beach here, too, but it’s cold. Definitely not your typical beach experience.

So off we go to warmer climes. As a bon voyage ‘happy’ (as my mom calls random gifts for no reason), Stephen Joseph sent over a hooded butterfly towel and matching flip flops. Even though summer is technically not here yet, and our trip is more than a month away, we are getting ready! Read more…

OK, fighting is a harsh way to say it. Discipline. Boundaries. Rules. When your child breaks them, and you’ve got not one nerve left to handle it calmly, what verbal weapons fly out of your mouth?

My mother’s go to arsenal was a mass of starving children in Africa and “just wait till your father comes home!” So, in my little brain I was surrounded by hungry eyes or I was quaking in fear till 6pm when Dad came home.

The thing is – and often we don’t realize this until we become parents ourselves – parents need a break. Only we don’t get one. So, mom, I’m just apologizing again for…well…everything, OK! Read more…

Just yesterday, a good friend of mine went to India to visit her parents. So sweet! She took along her whole family, because of course she did – it’s a visit to the grandparents! On a 20 hour ordeal, though. Their first flight was 15 hours alone! Not to mention multiple connections and then a drive. With 3 kids! Urgh.

And also, if you’re not gasping yet, lemme throw the kicker out at ya. She doesn’t watch TV. So, that means the children don’t watch TV. They don’t have an iPad with apps, they don’t have computer games, they don’t even have headphones to plug into the airplane’s TV. I’m in awe of her spirit. Read more…

At a parent’s night at my daughter’s preschool, a number of us were talking and the idea of a biography class came up. Biography not for writing books. Biography for looking at one’s own past. As in, arm chair psychology, kind of. Or crazy train. That, too.

This being California, a circle of us moms decided we’d all take this class together. Now, we don’t know each other more than, “hi” and “bye” in the mornings and afternoons. But we certainly are about to! I’m a little scared. I’m also a little excited.

Whatever comes up, I’ll have to have an open mind. And Kleenex. Read more…

Still homeless. Still dreaming. While my husband and I haven’t found a house to buy yet, I’ve been doing renovation research. Well, OK. Not really ‘renovation research.’ Let’s call it what it is: gawking.

And dreaming.

And here is my barn renovation dream: buy an old barn, fix it so that it’s modern inside and enjoy. Only, there aren’t many barns available in San Francisco. Wouldn’t that be cool, though, to be able to say to your kids, “Table manners please! You weren’t raised in a barn!” But they were. Raised in a barn. Get it. He he.

OK, lame sense of humor aside, here are some pictures of barn renovations that might be more convincing than my ‘raised in a barn’ joke. Read more…

It’s a thing most moms do: telling their birth story. Like an initiation ritual, or a right of passage. I was sharing mine with my daughter’s preschool teacher, going on about giving birth in a teaching hospital and the veritable audience in attendance when she told me she was in the hospital for 4 months. On bed rest. In the hospital. 4 months.

She carried her twins to full term – healthy boys – but from the outset it didn’t look like that would be a likely outcome. Hers is not my story to tell, so I can’t go into all of her details. But it got me to thinking about how our different baby experiences unite us on a continuum of shared smiles and tears, hormones and fears. Read more…

Curiosity (and fear of Russia) got us to the moon. Curiosity gave us oysters – imagine being the first guy to think, hmmm, what if I crack open this wavy rock and slurp up whatever slimy nugget is inside?

Did you know that the entire reason James Cameron made Titanic wasn’t because he wanted to tell a Romeo and Juliet story on a sinking ship. It was the ship. It was diving down in the real ocean to explore, and incidentally film, the actual Titanic at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. His curiosity, mixed with a good dose of imagination, got him to the bottom of the ocean. Look how that turned out for him. Read more…

Oh, if only they made a tool that safely pried open my toddler’s mouth.

I didn’t intend to become a short order cook, but somehow it happened. Dinner is served and my girls find reasons why they don’t like it and won’t eat it. Then I make something else. And something else. And something else. Do you know that one night they said “yuck” to me and I about lost it. That’s when I realized something had to change.

Certainly you’ve experienced this. I do hope I’m not alone in this struggle!

Then a few days later I walked into my daughter’s preschool for lunch and there she was, eating spinach. YES! Spinach. Not a “yuck” in sight. Oh, the positive affects of peer pressure! When I asked the teacher how she manages to get the kids all eating their veggies, here is what she said: Read more…

Yea! Your child has started lying to you. Looks like you’ve got an intelligent kid on your hands.

Lying, like cheating and stealing (which your child does, too, by the way), can actually be a good thing. Even though it does have a stigma attached and brings to mind visions of the principal’s office or mall security cops or even worse. Yet for children under 7, who incidentally lie, cheat and steal all the time, those actions are wholly different actions than we adults think they are. Read more…