Urban Mamas

When I first clicked on a link to TriMet's fare increase survey, I looked over the options with growing fear. Where was the choice that would give TriMet more revenue -- but not make my daily riding vastly more expensive? I'd be happy to pay, say, 40 cents more per ticket for my own ride, especially if I could get more (a longer transfer, maybe), or even buy day tickets if I had a great option for my family -- wouldn't it be great if an $8 ticket would allow one adult and all her children to ride for a whole day? This weekend, for instance, I had made plans to pick up one of Everett's friends, who lives more than six miles from us -- neither family has a car. We were going to meet at the intersection of our bus line and theirs, and I was going to return with four kids. This sort of time-consuming trip would be ok, I thought, if I didn't have to pay so much to bring her back home ($1.50 for each kid under today's rates = a lot for one four-mile bus ride. Each way).

The survey options didn't include anything like what I'd imagined. I entered my thoughts in the comments. "I'd like to see a *cheaper* ticket for kids!" I'd written with the kind of crazy optimism I have sometimes. "It would encourage more families to choose the bus instead of the car for short errands." Hahaha!

I saw the proposal today (most of the details were leaked a few days ago) and the commentary from TriMet is this: the agency does not believe in errands. Five percent of its ridership, it says, uses the bus for roundtrip errands of the sort that are the vast majority of my own bus use. (And, as far as I've observed, many other families in my neighborhood use the bus similarly -- to go to the library, to go to the play park, to go to Fred Meyer, to go to the doctor, home again, home again, jiggety jig.) Under the proposal, it would cost $11.60 for one parent and two children ages 7 to 17 to run an errand, no matter how short in duration or distance the trip was. My default trip is from my house near Holgate, on the 75 straight to Hawthorne -- about 1.6 miles -- to go to Powell's, or to Fred Meyer, or out for pizza. Now it's a gentle indulgence to take my three boys there, as it only costs $3.60 (my middle child is about to turn 7, in April, but he's free now). With these fare changes, it would be more like crazy financial misplanning -- $11.60. Sure, we could ride for the rest of the day, but we don't want nor need to.

Buying monthly passes for my family, excepting my husband (who's in Kuwait -- most families would have to factor two parents into these decisions), would cost somewhere around $160 a month. That's more than it would cost to insure and put gas in a beater car. I am firm and unyielding on my desire not to have a car -- we can usually choose the bike instead. But I am a very rare and stubborn bird.

Most families, given the choice between $11.60 errands or $160 monthly passes, would make the obvious choice: the car. Even if the car was uninsured or its tags had expired or was in imminent danger of breaking down (I know lots of low-income families who drive uninsured because they just can't scrape together the money -- it's a calculated risk that they're too stressed to really calculate). This proposal forces families on the road. I think it's bad for families; in my opinion, it's a call to families to stay off buses entirely; and ultimately it's bad for Portland, creating more congestion, forcing many low-income families into devil's bargains (the uninsured car or the $11.60 we don't have?), and probably decreasing revenue. I know my choice is pretty easy: we'll take the bike instead of the bus on short errands. Most families don't have that option and TriMet, for now, doesn't seem to care. (See the guest post I wrote for Taking the Lane before the options were revealed here.)

I've had it up to here (the writer draws a line with her finger somewhere above her hairline) with the Wall Street Journal headlines proclaiming the superiority of one parenting style followed by an entire culture. You'd think the editorial team was on the payroll of a publishing house (the writer begs forgiveness for her snark). They're certainly not nuanced or creative when they come to writing headlines.

Today, it's the French parents, who are superior, according to one head-shakingly inferior American ex-pat, Pamela Druckerman. It started when her daughter was just 18 months old and she, and her British husband, took the little girl to a French beach vacation. Quelle horreur! She just was so busy and ran all over the place. The other little French bébés sat there like little silent film starlets, eating fish and courgettes. What gives? She came up with a bunch of rules after "several years investigating French parenting":

• eat at regular mealtimes and only allow one snack, at 4 or 4:30 p.m. 
• remind them who's boss (In case you're wondering, YOU.)
• say please, thank you, hello and goodbye (the article actually says this is to "help them remember they aren't the only ones with feelings and needs")
• give scary looks
• say "no."

I have all sorts of reasons to roll my eyes about this. But I'll skip a take-down of the WSJ summary of Druckerman's distillation of all that French mamas do. Because I think that parenting is not a formula. It is not a matter of doing something that will work every time. We all have different children, different contexts for parenting decisions, different skills and areas in which we absolutely fail every time. There are only three things, in my opinion, a parent needs to create fantastic children (and despite my kids' considerable challenges, the majority of the time when we are out in public I get comments like, "your children are so adorable and well-behaved!" -- REALLY. No lie). Of course, it took me lots of Doing It Wrong and desperate, stressed-out trying on of Other People's Parenting Formulas to get here.

1. An environment that allows the children to feel safe and loved and to grow. I think this is where the French strategy comes in with its regular mealtimes. Yes: we all do better if we eat regular meals that are nutritionally complex, and if we don't fill up in mid-mornings on processed flour and bad fats and processed sugars and chemicals. The French society places a premium on eating deliciously-prepared whole foods. When my kids eat good breakfasts and on-time lunches and nutritionally-dense snacks at 4 p.m.; if they get a lot of exercise and plenty of rest; then I too could take them to a white-tablecloth dinner at 6:30 and have them behave so well you'd swear we were ordering in French.

It doesn't take a lot for my children to feel safe. Or -- it does -- lots of deep breaths and calm words from their parents. Few shouting matches. Confidence and happiness and a sense that nothing is the end of the world. The French have a huge leg up here, thanks to social support systems that 2/3 of Americans would call "Socialism" or worse. Short work weeks. Ample vacation time that French families actually take (as opposed to the U.S., where many workers infamously have to be forced to take what little vacation they have before it expires). As Druckerman writes, "Parents don't have to pay for preschool, worry about health insurance or save for college. Many get monthly cash allotments—wired directly into their bank accounts—just for having kids." This sort of social support would have greatly impacted the mother I was six years ago. Today, the mother I am has forced the French system on herself (I quit my full-time job a few years ago; my husband joined the Army to get health insurance; we don't do pricey preschool).

My kids are also most secure and happy when they aren't rushing around. So we don't do music lessons or many sports or playdates. We do errands and the kids play. This is, evidently, French: "French parents want their kids to be stimulated, but not all the time. While some American toddlers are getting Mandarin tutors and preliteracy training, French kids are—by design—toddling around by themselves."

I'm feeling it as much as (or more than) my kids some years -- the post-holiday "I want"s. These come from such innocuous activities as talking to my friends, browsing Twitter, or looking at the Facebook photos of my community. So you got a Garmin, hmmm? I could have used one of those! A new iPad? Never mind that I already have an iPad (it's a work tool! I swear!). Somehow the fact that someone else got one for Christmas puts my own gifts in stark relief. Let's just say, regarding my Christmas take, that "modest" is an understatement; though yesterday I felt warm and happy and loved thanks to just those modest tokens of generosity.

And those photos of Christmas dinner! My parents us invited us to their house for my mom's longed-for new "tradition": cooking a lasagne for Christmas dinner. But we didn't have transportation and, well, Thanksgivingtime was oh-my-god-stressful. We had dinner at home (roast pork loin and apples from my tree -- which turned out fantastic, and easy to boot, and all out of the pantry or freezer so there was no new expense: frugal!). So when I opened Instagram to bountiful pics of rare roast beef and fancy wines and well-dressed families around a big (and, note: clean) dining room table, well. My heart twisted a little with the desire. I ate on (lovely) thrift store plates while watching Leverage with the boys who hadn't fallen asleep yet. I drank tea.

My kids want a Beyblade top, each. They want 2000 or 3000 Nintendo coins for new games. They want another remote control for the Wii (the big present my husband bought this year -- against my early best judgment). I wish I'd got them Legos -- not in the budget this year. They want more gummy bears and to go to Starbucks and to order pizza. I want new yarn and a new pair of running shoes and wouldn't it be nice if I had some new books to read?

I don't have the money for any of it (well, maybe the gummy bears, but I said "no" on principal of "too much sugar already"), so I'm having to take a deep breath and get away from the wants somehow. Here are a few ways I escape:

• Going for a run. Even if I don't have the latest gear or running shoes without hundreds of miles on them, running clears my head and gets me wanting only more running.
• Reading a book. I know, I'd like new books! But I have a bunch of old ones that could enchant me perfectly.
• Organizing something. I have any number of corners and shelves and whole rooms which could benefit from a deep clean and organization. And I always discover things I (or the kids) have forgotten about -- satisfies the "I want" urge too!
• Make something new out of something old. I have a pile of pants to patch or hem, and an equal pile of old clothes and thrifted bits of things ready to be used for something. I made a couple of pretty potholders out of some old quilt squares of my grandma's, and that was ridiculously satisfying -- and quelled my desire to buy some potholders with graphic (and brand-new) fabric.
• Give something handmade or unneeded. It's amazing how giving something to someone else can reduce your wanting for things. Something about how generosity fills you up instead of shopping. Is that a real thing? Oh well. I like it.
• Practice. What is your practice -- a musical instrument? Yoga? A foreign language? A craft? Meditation? Prayer? Calligraphy? Knitting? Or even, just seeing the world around you? Practice it. Become the person you want to be.
• Asking yourself, what would I do with a gift of time? Remember when I had that day alone? Almost all of the things I wanted to do didn't involve any expense, and none of them were acquisitive. Your ideas were equally nonmaterialistic. Consider this time a gift, and use it accordingly. (And if you can get a spouse, family member or friend to give you a truly free, kid-free amount of time, do one of those amazing luxurious things!)

Now: to practice what I preach. Off to sew, run, and organize my kids' book nook!

There surely was a real St. Nicholas, of course (who would have given very few of our children the things on their Christmas lists -- his assistance of the needy, the sick and the suffering probably wouldn't have included a Nerf Vortex Nitron or the Disney Fairies gift set), but what we have today is all myth. It's the myth that sits our children on his lap, telling him their deepest desires; it is the myth to whom they write letters and make lists; it's the myth that appears in 1,000 permutations on TV shows and movies this time of year. It's the myth that signs his name on packages under trees and fills the stockings (then turns with a jerk...). it's the myth that gives a darn whether or not your kids are "naughty."

I've always been non-committal about the myth of Santa. My parents, despite the religious background that would seem to conflict with the whole idea of an imaginary present-giver, still signed presents under the tree "from Santa" and perpetuated the idea of a guy sliding down the chimney with a big red bag. I remember, one year, writing a letter to Santa and burning it; the idea, that the ashes would float up to Santa in some sort of readable manner, sure didn't make any more sense to me at five than they do at 38. But, I believe it, willing to take a leap of faith if it meant good things like lacy dresses and baby dolls. By my third or fourth lost tooth, however, I was all skeptic; I asked my parents not to sneak in and leave money under my pillow, no matter what! When they acquiesced and, indeed, I woke up to a tooth still in its place, I remember a little disappointment but mostly relief that the world's logic was preserved. I don't remember it being cold or harsh or sad; just helpful. Now I know.

 With my kids, I offer the story like I do Zeus or Achilles or Noah: a story that no one can be 100% sure of. That some people believe, and others don't. The boys are welcome to believe if they like. Most of those guys dressed up on the street certainly aren't the real Santa. Might this one be? Perhaps. If they want to believe it.

Everett, who at eight renounced God, the tooth fairy, Santa and the Easter bunny as myths all (to my disappointment; I still believe in God), is a staunch non-believer, and not quiet about it. This does not affect his brothers' beliefs at all. On Peacock Lane, the boys confronted a Santa Claus together, and Everett informed the others this was a fake Santa. A little while later, with Everett's attention elsewhere, Monroe encountered another Santa. This? The real Santa, he decided, with no one to tell him incontrovertibly that it was not. Even later, as Monroe had not seen Everett evaluate the man (so as to gather evidence for his reality or lack thereof), he remained convinced the second Santa was the real one.

Tomorrow on Think Out Loud, a conversation about Santa and whether or not we tell our kids "the truth" will take place, and the intro to the post and an email about it had me shaking my head.  "Spoiler alert: If you're a Santa believer, you might want to stop reading right now." Really? If you're a Santa believer, even the presence of doubt in others has you disbelieving? This doesn't work for anything else -- take any religion, ever. Even climate change deniers find a way to discount all scientific evidence that works against their theory. Can a radio show shake a kid's faith?

Not in my opinion, especially if a beloved big brother can't even change your mind. The Santa secret is safe, and here's the thing: it was always safe in the minds and hearts of the true believers. Even, if for just a few more years.

I got the chance to connect to my email after several hours offline at a cross country meet, alone with my nine-year-old son. I read the comment on the Halloween costume post that quoted a memo the Buckman principal sent to families:

"As you know, we have requested students not to wear costumes to school on Monday for Halloween. The reasons have been expressed in several ways, most recently in a letter sent out on October 20th. Since this issue was picked up by various “media sources” all over the country, we have received many disturbing emails, phone calls, and countless blog entries. Many of these were threatening in nature and completely inappropriate. I do believe that the majority, however not all, were from outside of our community.

"I wanted you to know I have met with the District and we will have our School Resource Officer here Friday and Monday to help in case we have problems with those outside of our school community. Our number one concern is the safety of our students, families, and staff. Please do not be alarmed if you see this extra security on these two days."

I said something incredulous aloud. (Probably: "oh, my GOD.") "What?" asked Everett. I gave a basic rundown of the issues: an administrator made a decision to ban costumes. His expressed aim was to reduce the pressure on the small number of students who didn't celebrate Halloween, and to remove distractions from school.

"So..." I said. "He didn't want kids distracted by wearing costumes. But now because people are so angry about his decision, the entire school community is going to be subjected to security in the halls because of threats from around the country. And there will be TV cameras and radio microphones outside school. A little distracting, don't you think?" [Update: there will be armed police officers at the school.]

"Why doesn't he just change his mind?" said Everett. Indeed.

Even though the pressure and criticism may be mostly external, it seems that the principles are now being largely obliterated by the stand the administration is taking. Is it worth it? In my opinion, no.

Talking it out with Everett made me see what I think the issue has become: not cultural sensitivity. Not the protection of childhood fun. This is about power. The principal who made the decision is not backing down, even though the debate now smacks more of circus than education. I don't think all our kids' best interests are preserved by protecting a few students who don't celebrate Halloween from awkwardness -- not now that it has become such a huge debate.

Keep Portland weird. Consequences be damned.

I remember the debate, when I was a teenager, over birth control access in Portland schools. On one hand, it's positive to prevent teen pregnancy and (in the case of barrier methods) sexually transmitted diseases. On the other hand, providing birth control in schools is a tacit encouragement of sexual activity! (A worry that research suggests is unwarranted -- studies show no increase in promiscuity among teens who have condom access and education in school.) And schools aren't in the business of parenting!

When I was a teen, as the product of a very religious family, I felt only slightly different about this than I do now. I had no need of such things -- I wasn't sexually active myself. But I recognized that my classmates were, and didn't really think that it had anything to do with whether or not they could get condoms from the health center. I was in favor of birth control, though concerned about the parenting thing. Should schools be in the role of offering such advice? My opinion was, no.

Monday's Think Out Loud discussion about birth control access in Canby shows me that, despite two decades of research and supposedly loosening social norms, the debate hasn't changed a bit. Same story, different millennium. I'm a parent now, though, and I have to say that my beliefs have changed just slightly; now I believe that putting birth control in schools has nothing to do with parenting; parenting happens at home. Parenting is the stuff that should already have affected students attitudes toward sexual behavior before they get to the point of asking for birth control. I got parented in a way that kept me chaste through high school, but at no time in the process would I have gone to my parents to request access to birth control. I did not want to talk to them about sex (still don't, honestly). The more available birth control is? The more likely teens are to use it. I don't believe it has anything to do with encouraging the activity, tacitly or overtly.

Now that you're a parent, what do you think? Have your attitudes changed?

While it would be a stretch to say my kids' screentime is very limited, when my husband is away (in the military, he's currently serving the second of two one-year tours in Kuwait) the TV is usually off. The boys might watch a half-hour or hour on school days, and usually go on a Saturday morning Pokemon and Ben 10 jag if we're home. There's Friday night movie night -- which we'll skip on particularly exhausting weeks. Of course, I don't have a baby, but when Think Out Loud came on this Friday morning, discussing new AAP recommendations that parents with kids under two limit the TV to zero, I immediately thought back to my very different household when my boys were babies and toddlers; in a word, TV rich.

My husband grew up in a household where TV was on all the time, and his young adulthood, when he lived with his siblings, only reinforced this habit. It's hard to get the TV off in my house when he's around, and more so when the kids were younger and he had the (according to the AAP, highly mistaken) viewpoint that they wouldn't watch the TV if it wasn't meant for them. So, my boys grew up, likewise, to the sound of Law & Order and NCIS and other procedural dramas. I'm going to paraphrase the guest on TOL, University of Washington professor of medicine Dimitri Christakis: this is keeping us all from paying attention to our kids and interacting in the way babies need. "It holds your attention," he said, mentioning studies that show how hard it is for us to see anything else when the TV is on.

I had to laugh, a little, when another caller asked the question I was about to ask (as I washed dishes and listened to NPR instead of interacting with my own kids), is radio just as bad? How about NPR? Christakis kind of skirted that question, by emphasizing the difference between TV and music radio -- it's the visual part of TV that sucks us in.

What we get from this new recommendation is not much different in tone than the message in the SpongeBob study: when we're turning the TV on to get something done, it's not good for the kids. We should be interacting with them instead of setting them in front of the tube. Christakis said that he gets all the time, "but how am I supposed to make dinner if I don't turn on the TV?" His answer: parents for millennia have been making dinner without TV, and with current estimates on how much TV kids are actually watching -- it's four or five hours for many toddlers (a DAY, and I know there have been times when that has been the reality in my house, and it kills me to think of it) -- he asks, "how much of a break do parents need?" Kids this age are, after all, only awake for 10 or 12 hours a day.

On one hand, I agree with a friend on Facebook, who (and I know her son watches little TV, comparatively) took the radio program as opportunity to tell all the parents she knows that they're doing a great job and can just stop listening to the media criticism of the job they're doing (thank you!). On the other hand, I want to agree with Christakis. Really, I don't need that much of a break from my kids. And honestly -- they're fine without screens. They can occupy themselves for hours with sticks and a field of grass, or pinecones and fences to climb, or the room full of Hot Wheels and Thomas trains and dress-up clothes and stuffed animals. I get plenty of break (during which I can wash dishes, do laundry, and make dinner all I want. Yay!).

However tempted I am to say something like, "Halloween was simpler when we were kids!"; it's just not true. When I was of trick-or-treating age, I was faced with an enormity of moral and safety concerns each October 31st. My family, very faithful Conservative Baptists, approached Halloween with great suspicion thanks to its age-old ties to the Devil himself. A few years, we went to church on Halloween for witch-free celebrations (that's where I got my first goldfish!); I always chose "good" costumes, princesses and fairies and, ok, I really only ever wanted to be a princess. Also, we had the specter of razor blades and poison, which must have happened one time ever, and yet most of our parents were sure there were razor blade vendors on every block. Beware of the caramel apples! Take heed of the popcorn balls!

This year, in Portland, we have a modern flavor on the ages-old debate over Halloween. At Buckman Elementary, costumes will be banned for the second consecutive year; the principal "says celebrating Halloween at school excludes some kids and can be very offensive." (My six-year-old's school, Grout, is allowing costumes but banning weapons and gory/offensive/skimpy "content.") This has brought up all the debates you'd think ("what's happened to childhood?" "Halloween is an American celebration" "children need to have the opportunity to use their imaginations and dress up, but I do not believe this needs to be accomplished through Halloween"), and a few new twists. A few commenters on Think Out Loud said that they were disallowed from costumes by their family due to strict religious beliefs, and they appreciated the opportunity to stand up for their beliefs (in one case) or to soak up the "normalness" of the culture around them (in another case).

I'm not very passionate either way on this one; costumes at school, for me, means I have to have them ready earlier (I'm a very-last-minute homemade costume aficionado). And I do understand that they are distracting from the learning environment, and agree that there are ample times outside of school to wear costumes. On the other hand, I disagree that Halloween costumes in particular create disparity and cultural discomfort. As one commenter said and I agree wholeheartedly: these differences are always apparent, and Halloween costumes don't highlight them more or less than any other day at school. In my experience, you can see the cultural/economic differences best in the clothing worn to school when it's cold and rainy outside. (And as someone who was once a very poor high school student and is now a high school coach, I'm telling you, the disparity issues only get worse and more obvious every day that goes by in public school.)

Want more reasons to feel ambivalent about Halloween? The candy. It's not just probably pretty bad for you and your kids (and even I let my kids gorge for a day or two on Halloween and a few other holidays; childhood, right?). It's also the product of child slave labor.

I have been a "professional blogger" since before that was really a thing, starting out making $3 a post in 2004 at BloggingBaby.com. I wanted to go to the Very First Blogher conference, in 2005, but was a bit hampered by an infant baby (Truman) and no money. In 2006, I managed to get a spot on one of the panels and a roommate -- Asha from Parenthacks -- and brought my infant along. Jonathan and Everett drove down to San Jose in a Flexcar minivan and the boys hung by the pool with other daddybloggers while we women browsed the casual panels. Arianna Huffington was there. Dooce was there! So were all the OMB's, Original MommyBloggers. Even then, though I knew almost everyone, I felt like a bit of an outsider, not as famous as Dooce or even Melissa Summers; not as commercial, not as edgy as just about anyone. Since then, Blogher either didn't fit into my career (the finance management I was working for by then at Aol wasn't really interesting in me writing about a bunch of women bloggers) or my family.

This year, I knew it was time to reinvest. I bought my ticket back in February when I had extra cash and was planning my year. I booked a room at a hostel and, after much debate, a flight by myself, no family at all, to San Diego for Blogher '11. As both an insider and a decided outsider -- I don't really get involved in the same communities as the OMBs, even though I do enjoy reading their work and think they're brilliant and lovely women, I don't do giveaways or participate in the more commercial social networks of the new crop of MBaB (MommyBloggers as Businesses) -- I wasn't sure. Would I have a blast? Would I feel left out? Would I learn a lot? Would I roll my eyes?

As with anything, it's all about who you spend your time with. On the second day, I walked past a woman in the hall on her phone. It was in the middle of a panel session -- I'd ducked out in the middle to switch sessions -- so it was quiet. "It's like being with 3,000 babies who only want to talk about themselves," she said. I thought about some of the questioners at the sessions -- those who preambled their queries with a 60-second (or more) bio in which they list their dotcoms and economic interests. Yes, some of them just wanted to talk about themselves and their own unique concerns (I'm sure I've said things that could be construed as such). But most of the women I was encountering were just as eager to talk about us. Issues we have in common; how we can make a difference using social media (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of it); who we are and how sharing that is making our lives better.

the wonderful Jessica and the lovely Charlene. you know, they're both lovely AND wonderful.

The first two sessions I attended had me in tears, rolling-down-my-face sniffling tears. The first one, Blogging Your Way to Self-Acceptance, talked about so many things I feel that the OMBs were all about: finding your own truth, telling a story that speaks to the universal, being true to yourself. Brené Brown started, taking us all outside the hustle and bustle of sponsors and products for a beautiful hour-and-a-half. She said, "one of the things that I have come to learn is that our worthiness, our ability to really engage with the world from a place of I am enough, that worthiness lives inside of our story. ...we have two choices and that's own our story and share our story or stay outside of your story and kind of hustle for our worthiness, which I have done a lot of in my own life, perfecting, pleasing, performing, proving, and it's just exhausting and I don't think it's sustainable." The way I heard her was this: believing that our own truth is worth sharing -- and doing so in a personal, authentic way -- is not just an exercise in self-worth but also a necessary and world-changing act.

Shauna James Ahern, the Gluten-Free Girl, was someone I already knew I loved through Twitter. I wasn't sure if I knew what she was doing on this panel, though -- until she started talking (oh!).

Are you a Netflix subscriber? If you're like just about every urbanMama or dad I know, you probably are, and you may be shaking your fist in the general direction of Netflix headquarters thanks to the price changes (you say "increase," they say "lowest prices ever") announced this week. When I wrote a post about it for WalletPop, after "library" the first great free alternative that sprung to mind was the ultimate big-screen, close-to-home experience: Movies in the Park. No: it's not streaming over your internet, it's not something you can pause while you answer the phone. But as a family entertainment experience, a Friday Family Movie Night like no other, it's as good as it gets.

Portland Parks scatters its free movie nights around the city and lets neighborhood boards weigh in on the movie selection. There is something for everyone; vintage Oregon favorites like The Goonies (Sellwood Park, Sunday, July 31); brand new movies like Karate Kid (the one with Will Smith's kid, Knott Park, Saturday, July 16); adult recent releases that may have been on your own Netflix queue, like The King's Speech (Laurelhurst Park, Friday, July 29) and The Social Network (Laurelhurst Park, Saturday, August 27). There is the climbing wall for the afternoon preceding most showings, often free popcorn or other goodies, and local bands. With Tangled (Glenfair Park, Tuesday, August 2; Hazeltine Park, Sunday, August 14), a hair styling and braiding competition. I've only been to a few of these showings over the past few years, but everyone who's gone to one agrees: it's like a block party or a truly old-fashioned drive-in movie theatre, where families show up with wagons and picnic baskets and blankets to share with young singles and older couples, babies fall asleep on their fathers' shoulders and get walked home while their mother and siblings watch the end of the show. It's as Norman Rockwell as you can get, with a big screen movie.

How to Train Your Dragon is showing several times this summer, and as it's a movie my family saw and loved, I'll review it with this column, too. (And oh yes: How to Train Your Dragon is not available streaming on Netflix, for the record.)

My neighbor, who has a lot of connections, friends and family in Japan, has been doing all she could to help with the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami, and resultant nuclear disaster there. She asked me to post this and my hope is the urbanMamas community may have resources to help.

 
It's all in a headline, isn't it? That's something I've learned from my two decades as a journalism junkie. And then there's the old saying, "statistics lie." I worked on Wall Street and for a bank selling loans to other banks -- I know from long practice doing and analyzing other people doing so, you can get numbers to say whatever you want them to.

So the above is the headline I'd like to see on Oregonian writer Joseph Rose's piece on how Sam Adams and the Portland City Council decided to spend the "uncommitted budget" -- in other words, the part of budget that's discretionary. It's funded by gas taxes and parking revenue, and makes up about 25% of the overall transportation capital improvement projects funding. He went instead with "Portland Mayor Sam Adams boosts funding for bike projects, but now there's less for paving streets" as a headline and then, in the first few paragraphs, described Adams' statements about the funding (which, for bike projects, works out to 17% of discretionary funds, or 6% of overall CIP funds) at the Alice Awards as having "boasted about what he had done for bicycles." Rose's piece kept up the rabble-rousing bent: "Portland quietly boosted the amount of uncommitted transportation funding it spends on bike projects from just 1 percent to 17 percent – or $2.8 million – in the budget adopted last June. Meanwhile, it slashed the amount allocated to motor vehicle projects by 22 percent... Coming out of the recession, the budget is still bruised. Pothole complaints are up. Nearly 60 miles of the city's streets remain unpaved. By allocating 17 times more of that funding on building bikeways, Adams has left no doubt that he wants more commuters on bicycles."

There are many, many things on which I'd love to see Portland spend its money. And while I understand that Portland's roads are pot-hole filled and it's not nearly easy enough to drive 40 MPH everywhere you want to go, well, when it comes down to it I value the safety of our kids and older citizens more than I do speed. Spending 6% of our budget on bicycle projects (which improve traffic safety, speeds, pollution, noise, and long-term environmental costs for everyone who uses our roads and even those who don't) and another 21% for pedestrian projects (which make our communities more livable and make our citizens healthier and happier -- attracting businesses and invigorating the retail climate and wooing middle- and upper-class new residents), even though these funds come from gas taxes and parking revenue, seems like a sensible and worthwhile investment in a safe and sustainable transportation mix.

The boys were still awake, as they usually are at 7:20, when I first saw the news on Twitter suggesting that Osama bin Laden had been killed by the U.S. military. I turned on the news, because I couldn't imagine missing this announcement. So I had to tell the boys (who were really more focused on their dinner) what was happening; and all I could say was, "the president is announcing that he killed a very bad man. He ordered attacks on the U.S. -- thousands of Americans were killed," and, "this is what started the war Daddy is fighting." The war is not over. This does not affect his homecoming, and probably won't curtail future deployments.

I was glad, then, when I turned on the radio later, turned my computer on, to see the celebrations (and they'd fallen asleep already when a neighbor set off fireworks). I don't like the idea of celebrating death, even of a very bad man -- however you feel about the news, I suspect parents have common feelings about that. And if any of our children were alive during the attacks on 9/11 (of the urbanMamas founders, only one, Olivia, already had a child in 2001), it's likely they were too young to understand any of it.

Honestly, I think I'll try to shelter my kids from the photos of celebrations and the related news. We'll just leave with the title of my post: a bad man is dead. And they can learn more once they hit high school and study recent U.S. history. There are lots of tragedies I feel I shouldn't keep from my children; knowing that bad things happen as part of this complex rich life is something we've accepted, more or less. Knowing that people celebrate someone's death is just too nuanced for them; or maybe it's just too nuanced and conflicted for me to explain. How do you feel about this news?

Most of us parents were young during the Chernobyl accident, and have vivid memories of our first exposure to the story of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I can still see, in my memory, terrible black-and-white photos of the devastation in Hiroshima. It was so inhuman; there was so much humanity. Exposed, its surface melted away. And the concept of the invisible threat, the sickness that eats away at you from inside, insidiously: how can it not stay with a girl?

Now we're faced with the crisis that will be our own children's Chernobyl, perhaps: the earthquake and tsunami that devastated so much of northern Japan, and the developing crisis as the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant deteriorates. I took my boys to Seaside yesterday with my parents; Truman was so terrified of the idea of a tsunami that he kept going back to Grandpa's truck (there's a story there about the policemen who decided I was a very bad parent because I was spending more time calming everyone's fears than making sure I had eyes on all three boys -- a story for another day that I'm sure I'll tell soon). Everett got scientific and figured out how he could estimate the power of the waves through scientific observation, calming his own fears of one of those waves going Japanese on him.

The short answer to this crisis coming to Oregon shores, as I've learned after lots of research into Walletpop stories on radiation danger and sushi, is not to worry. About this, anyway; any radiation that gets here is at least a million times below toxic levels. Japan exports almost none of its fish, and whatever it would export wouldn't be any more dangerous than a mercury-laden river fish. (We in Oregon actually export a ton of fish and other products to Japan; it's an interesting story, too.)

There's plenty more to worry about. I'm freaking out on a near-daily basis about pesticides and the dangers of exhaust; I'm pretty sure it's part of the reason I struggle so with my boys. Other people are really concerned about radon in their homes; evidently, it's potentially a far, far worse source of radiation than any nuclear plant -- although you can have your radon levels tested and there's a fix. Other friends are having some big worries about lead contamination -- in the paint, in house keys, in the soil, in old furniture you hadn't suspected, in lots of jewelry little kids might get their mouths on (even though it's not meant for kids -- funny how that works). A bunch of us are very concerned about BPA and other plastic-based endocrine disruptors.

And another thing. I got an email which led me to this post I wrote forever and a day ago about radiation exposure of parents and how it affects the yet-to-be-born offspring. I didn't do a lot of research at the time and didn't follow up beyond the post. But I still haven't dismissed it. The mama who found my post wrote,

My dad had polio as a small child and was treated in an iron lung chamber. My aunts recall the doctors believing the radiation exposure is what caused his numerous bouts of cancer. My dad passed away at 40 after battling cancer most of his life.

All this attention on radiation has me wondering if I've been exposed, and what that potential danger could be. And, of course, if I could have passed anything along to my children.

I'd love to talk with someone locally about this. I don't even know where to start or what kind of doctor to call to get checked.

Do any of you have experience with this sort of thing? If you have ideas for how this mama can get tested for the markers of inherited radiation -- if that could be a problem -- please chime in! And tell us what's keeping you up at night with this disaster; I can't stop thinking about my parents' house, that would surely fall in an earthquake and slide into the Nehalem River; wouldn't my 1912 house crumble, too? There's just so much to worry about, you hardly know where to start.

Update: Jules Bailey tells Bike Portland he and Greenlick have agreed to alter the proposed bill to instead call for a study of family biking. I've written asking Greenlick apologize for jumping into this conversation by demonizing parents who choose to put their children on bicycles (and comparing this to the seatbelt debate in the 1950s); I hope he does so.

Representative Mitch Greenlick has sponsored proposed House Bill 2228, which would make it illegal to carry children aged six and under on bicycles, including trailers and trail-a-bikes, punishable by a maximum fine of $90. He tells Bike Portland he did it to keep children safe; while he has no statistics on children's death, he does have a study on adult males, who often are injured when they crash on their bike. He said, "if it's true that it's unsafe [for a four-year-old to ride on his parent's bike], we have an obligation to protect people. If I thought a law would save one child's life, I would step in and do it. Wouldn't you?" His email address is rep.mitchgreenlick@state.or.us; his district office phone number is (503) 297-2416. (He represents NW Portland; Jules Koppel, (503) 986-1442, represents my SE neighborhood. Find your representative here. Katie wrote this letter, inviting Rep. Greenlick to Kidical Mass on Saturday. Here's another letter.)

The four of us who founded urbanMamas didn't all start out six or seven years ago as the things we are today: competitive and eager runners, whole food-conscious, green-minded, three-kid-having, family bike activists. It's happened, as much because of the place we lived and the people we live around -- we're co-inspirators, I've said -- than because of any special long-held personal conviction. The conviction, it's grown on us, and some of it grew like a weed, accidental, perhaps meant to be after all. Native to Portland, Oregon, we're sure.

Biking has become for all of us a personal freedom, an identity, a way of glorious life. It's frugal and emission-free and it changes the dynamic of risk for transportation; instead of putting everyone else on the road in danger, we're putting only ourselves and our children. Given the statistics -- the by-far-and-away-crazy leading cause of death for children is automotive accidents, over a thousand kids die each year and many more are badly injured -- our risk is miniscule. I've looked for statistics on death as bicycle passenger, and can't find them. Julian describes the data as "entirely without denominator." Surely, one day a child or even a dozen will die as passengers on bicycles, probably in a collision with an automobile. It is guaranteed that another thousand children will die next year, and the year after that, as passengers in cars.

Portland water has never been fluoridated, so most of the public concern about fluoride ingestion for kids in our city is imported from other hometowns (though we've had some past discussions about fluoride, here, here and here). I've done a little research on the topic in the past few years, helped by my dentist (an urbanMama reader who encourages even the most militant green among us to use fluoridated toothpaste because it's helpful when applied topically) and a great book, The Case Against Fluoride: How Hazardous Waste Ended Up in Our Drinking Water and the Bad Science and Powerful Politics That Kept It There. (phew.) So when I heard the news on NPR last week that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Environmental Protection Agency were working together to lower the maximum recommended level of fluoride in water -- to 0.7 mg per liter from its current maximum, 1.2 mg/L -- my first thought was that it wouldn't affect us, much.

Then I started reading through the articles in greater detail, compared with the information in the book I have now on my lap, and found some interesting leaps to conclusion and some great shifts from unexpected sources. For instance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has long been the leading proponent of municipal water fluoridation, arguing that the benefit of preventing tooth decay overrode the risk of toxic effects -- and according to all government sources to date, the biggest risk is fluoridosis, or discoloration, streaks and spots on your tooth enamel. The NPR story begins: "Fluoride is a finicky friend to teeth. Too little of it, and you get cavities. Too much, and it starts to eat away and discolor the enamel of your pearly whites, " and quotes a dentist with the American Association of Pediatric Dentistry as saying, "There's a cosmetic risk, not a health risk."

There are a number of problems with these statements.

I know that we all have our own reasons why to vaccinate our children on schedule, do it more slowly than the AAP recommends, or not at all. Many of us know now that the scientific evidence linking rising autism rates to the thimerosal preservative (which contained trace amounts of mercury) has been discarded by nearly every public health professional.

Still, today's news that Dr. Andrew Wakefield, the author of the original (and since retracted) study linking autism to vaccines did not just create a bad study but "an elaborate fraud" is chilling. The British medical journal BMJ conducted an investigation, and the editor told CNN, "in this case, we have a very different picture of what seems to be a deliberate attempt to create an impression that there was a link by falsifying the data." The editorial revealing the results of the study said it had created a long-lasting deleterious effect on public health and, worse, "perhaps as important as the scare's effect on infectious disease is the energy, emotion and money that have been diverted away from efforts to understand the real causes of autism and how to help children and families who live with it."

Speaking of those. No one (as far as I can tell) is calling pesticide exposure a definitive cause of autism -- perhaps the study has created a scientific-community-wide crisis of confidence. But I'm chilled by results of a 12-year study of migrant worker mothers and their children in Salinas, California, the Center for Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas project. Mothers who had the highest exposure to pesticides had children with poorer attention spans.

""We have very, very high reports by the mother of behaviors consistent with pervasive developmental disorder," UC Berkeley Public Health profession Brenda Eskenazi said in comments at a neurotoxicology conference. "These include signs like the child is afraid to try new things, can't stand anything out of place, and avoid looking others in the eye. This is considered to be autism spectrum behavior."

I know many of us transport our kids by bike through much of the year; many of my closest mama friends (and I) have done such shocking things as bike-while-heavily pregnant, tote a small baby around, put our children between our handlebars in a baby seat, or expose our young offspring to rain, wind and even, rarely, sun (ha) through miles of commuting. Many of you can remember a dozen or a hundred times you've heard another citizen of this city opine on your transportation choices. My favorite (or something) is when a woman yelled at me, "get those babies baptized!" (I had.) I've also had any number of angry men and women shouting about how "that's not safe!" I've been reminded loudly how I forgot to put a helmet back on a youngster after a stop (we stopped and put the helmet back on right away, me shaking from the vitriole of the FYI); I've been asked who's going to take care of the kids when I DIE FROM NOT WEARING A HELMET (I had a hat on, and forgot my helmet, and by the time I remembered it we were too far away from home).

After one of these exchanges I often spend the next 10 or 15 minutes of my ride composing a undeliverable response to those who question my parental responsibility, exposing the kids to the elements and the possibility of death-by-vehicle. My thesis usually looks like this: I believe not only in the superiority of this method of transportation -- which emits zero pounds of carbon per mile and has no regular monthly cost nor incremental cost, saving me thousands each year, and has an infinitesimal chance of seriously injuring any other humans than those aboard by its use -- but I believe in the power and imperative of living one's values. If I am so worried about the health of the planet that I toss and turn many nights, wondering if my grandchildren's Portland will be overrun by refugees from an unlivable California, I can hardly put them into a single-family vehicle (that I can't afford anyway) for the 13-and-some miles of daily commute.

There's a lot more, involving my own vivid fear I'll run into a pedestrian or another car every time I get behind a wheel, and the nausea that I seem to always suffer after driving. But last night, I was thrilled to see on another mama's Facebook stream a link to an official ethical scholar's general agreement with my thesis. The questioner, a Portland, Maine bicyclist with children aged four and one, wondered, "Is it O.K. to take the kids by bike when our admittedly safer, albeit not risk-free, car is available?"

Randy Cohen's answer had its usual twists and turns of humor and extreme examples. ("Different parents tolerate different levels of risk for their children. Some allow their kids to go rock climbing while on fire; others forbid them to leave the house unless they’re swaddled in Bubble Wrap.") But here's the important bit: "There is no universal and immutable scale for your ethical obligation here. But there is a better way to describe your duty: seek prudent, not utopian, transportation...  If you forswear bikes and travel with them only by car, you teach them to do likewise, promoting the sedentary lifestyle that contributes to obesity and other health problems, and you express acceptance of the environmental damage cars inflict even on nondrivers — two disheartening lessons."

I thought it an excellent answer and with his usual non-judgmental acceptance of most of our parental choices. Don't text while driving or biking; don't do either under the influence; wear helmets. If you really believe in biking, work in your community to support better infrastructure for the safety of pedestrians and cyclists.

Now I have a bigger question, though: how do you communicate this to someone shouting at you on the street? I've been composing a PSA video on the topic for some time; independent filmmakers are encouraged to contact me immediately. In the interim, perhaps my usual; a sigh and a deflating of the shoulders; is the best response.

In a 4-3 decision last night, the Portland Public School board voted to close the three academies at the Marshall High School campus, a group of Gates Foundation-funded experimental small schools, at the end of the 2010-11 school year. The school had been in decline before the switch to academies, and in recent years, "falling enrollment and rising operating costs" -- along with parents who were generally desperate to get their children in stronger "community schools," as the PPS buzzword goes -- led to the near-inevitable decision. The students in those clusters will go to Cleveland, Franklin and Madison; the teachers will be distributed; the building will be closed.

Another decision, to change Jefferson into a "powerful focus school that offers students the opportunity to earn college credits even as they complete high school," is equally expected but far less understood (and voted for with a strong 6-1 margin). Northeast neighborhood parents, left with two options, Grant and a long-declining Jefferson, often chose Grant; the privileged students went to Lincoln; Jefferson was in dire need of a return to its relatively strong identity in the 80s and 90s as a performing arts school. 

Benson was already "saved," and Grant, despite early fears by parents and community members, was never really in danger (I submit that the idea was grandstanding by Carole Smith meant to soften the blow of her eventual decision; but that's entirely an unfounded conspiracy theory :). In light of our initial discussion when the first plan was released, what do you think? Is this the best option to fix an awkward-if-not-totally-broken school system? Could equity result if everything goes according to plan? How will your family be affected?

[These are the words to start the post that buzzed through my brain that couldn't sit still that skipped through the weekend that ended the summer that Sarah built...] In the ongoing debate between 'can't wait' and 'apprehensive about' school starting, I'm firmly in the latter camp. Much though I tempt the children with excitement in my voice and hope in my heart, I'd rather it just stay summer. I've done the Labor Day holiday many ways; camping trips and barbecues and (in the investment banking days) charity picnics where everyone wears big hats; but since I've had kids going back to school, it's been a buzz of preparation and me looking at a list as long as my arm of all the things I wanted to finish, but didn't quite, this summer.

There are peaches in a box in the floor and another one with 20 pounds of cucumbers for pickling; there is a pattern I printed out for preemie-size diapers -- my sister just had a four-pound, nine-ounce baby Friday, teeny and healthy as can be; the laundry with special new clothes is still hanging on the line; the snacks still need to be put into the backpack; I haven't washed dishes since yesterday night. On errands, we stopped to pick up dill from a friend's house for the pickles, and Suzanne was busy with tomato sauce while her son played in the backyard, having already done "all the pickles I need!" on Sunday. Other friends are tallying up their weekend like radical homemaking box scores, three loads laundry, three pints zucchini bread & butters, two apple upside down cakes, 32 pints tomatoes...

Though Labor Day is meant as a break from work, we mamas seem to be mostly laboring. It's nice labor, of course, but surely not what the Founding Holiday Declarers meant. How did you labor this Labor Day?

The thing is, this day pictured here was a hard day, as days go. Many of the days are hard. My sister was babysitting, a rarity for a Saturday, and Monroe wouldn't be left behind while I biked to the farmer's market. It's easier by myself. I can really chat with the vendors, a thing that is always fascinating and lovely; I can buy all the produce and meat and cheeses I want, quickly, and proceed with photographing or browsing; I need never chase or carry or negotiate with a strong, strong-willed child. Monroe cried, fussed, screamed, begged with tears in his eyes and hope in his voice, 'go wif you?" I couldn't resist him, I went, I could barely talk with anyone, I had to rush through my list and never once got to photograph a pile of radishes.

But this picture, as so many of my pictures are, is of joy. And as I look through my photographs I see all my children's personalities, and I see many moments of joy, moments that spark out amongst the hardness. I see much work, but I see love in that work, I see that it is all work that I love, every minute of it. The washing dishes, the gardening and the bread-kneading and the lacto-fermenting, the biking and carrying and chasing children, the bringing to events both minor and major, the "talking to children, answering questions with questions, and treating each child’s thought as a special contribution," these are the things I love most!

I have been reading two pieces meant, I am sure, to spark discussion and controversy. The first was a piece in Salon by Babble blogger Madeline Holler. The second -- also written about by Madeline, curiously -- is a cover story from New York Magazine by staff writer Jennifer Senior. Holler spends a lot more of her time comparing her own personal life -- and how hard, indeed, it is -- to the lives of others, specifically the "radical homemakers" of whom Shannon Hayes writes.

As I went into my garden this evening for a little therapeutic weed-pulling and, ironically, to pick St. John's wort buds (to make more skin salve good for burns, hives, bruises... and bites), I wasn't that surprised to get a few hungry mosquitoes swarming my yummy arms. After all, I'd been heedless enough to go out with a sleeveless top. And then. I got a bit through my stretchy black cotton pants and my underwear, right on my behind. As I rubbed some of the buds I'd just picked inside my undies, another mosquito landed on my pants and went in for a snack. Ouch!

For the next 45 minutes, I proceeded to pull weeds with dozens of mini-breaks to wildly swing at the mosquitoes. Never since I lived in Montana when I was a tween have I seen so many mosquitoes in such a short time. I ended up with so many bites I was afraid to look; I went inside and slathered myself with St. John's wort oil (thankfully, I have lots already steeped).

As I have a sister who lives in Panama and gets regular governmental notifications of such things, I realized quickly that our recent weather has been perfect mosquito breeding weather. Lots of recent rain, with a few cloudy cool days following, means lots of standing water for mosquitoes to lay their little eggies. The warm weather we're moving into now is pitocin to these biological processes! Zow!

Thanks to those weeds growing in my backyard, many of them medicinal, I was hoping I'd find the perfect concoction for a natural herbacious mosquito repellent (I've always been sensitive to the smell of bug spray and I finally decided it couldn't be good for me; I've foresworn). Sadly, I may have to suffer through. I found these recipes for catnip and rosemary repellent... lovely, but you need to let 'em steep two weeks. Also, I hve no catnip. I may try to spray myself with a rosemary tea tomorrow, it's worth a shot. If you have other ideas for more instant herbal repellents, send them my way! And dump any standing water you have around, pronto.

Last week, I listened to a Planet Money piece on a financial crisis in Barbados in the 1970s. The country had to borrow money from the IMF, and in doing so, were told they needed to follow some rules in order to reduce spending -- rules that meant they'd have to reduce social services, or reduce wages. After a few of the protests you'd imagine, magically the business leaders and the labor leaders came together and, through difficult talks and careful negotiating, agreed to reduce wages instead of laying off workers or cutting important social programs. Many businesses instituted productivity bonuses and other incentives to help increase worker loyalty.

Decades later, Barbados' economy had improved, wages were much better, employment was stable and -- amazingly -- a deep sense of trust had developed between business and labor interests. Jamaica had experienced a similar crisis and dealt with it differently. In Jamaica, the economy was still bad.

Listening to this story in the background of news from the past few weeks -- in Oregon and around the country -- is sobering. I wish we were as strong and community-focused as Barbados was in the 1970s; I wish we could come together and agree on belt-tightening and shared support for the things that matter to us: people, one by one, jobs, one by one, students, one by one. But no.

In Portland, PPS superintendent Carole Smith has proposed a series of budget cuts meant to reduce the expenses by $19.1 million. In order to be "equitable," she plans to require all schools to make similar cuts. These will, if her proposed budget is approved, be to PE and library employees (126 full-time-equivalent, or FTE, positions); ESL and special education employees (52 positions); and central support and operations (25 positions).

How could we not but hold our collective breath? All of those of us who have children in Portland Public Schools got the auto-call sometime Friday evening; a second-grader from Skyline Elementary in Southwest Portland, Kyron Horman, was lost to his family and the school sometime between a science fair before school opened, and his arrival at class. His stepmother visited the science fair with him; classmates saw him headed towards his room; when she met the bus at 3:45, he wasn't there at all. Police, FBI, and other agencies have no idea. There is no evidence of foul play.

I had wondered why the automated call I always get around 10:30 a.m. if my child is absent, hadn't triggered concern -- but the latest news from today's press conference with PPS superintendent Carole Smith is that it was such a small school, teachers usually know students and parents and the reasons for absences, and didn't have a dialer. All schools will now be getting automatic dialers (although the timeline for that change wasn't announced). It was just a slip, through a crack no one even thought to concern themselves with. And why? A safe neighborhood, a small school, a sweet child. What could go wrong?

The unthinkable. I've been thinking a lot about such typically unthinkable happenstances over the past few weeks, as I came across the news of writer and prolific mommy blogger Kate Granju's oldest son, Henry. He died several weeks after overdosing on the drugs to which he'd become addicted, and being beaten badly. And earlier today, I came across another mother searching for her 16-year-old daughter, last seen in Seattle. These things happen in lovely, loving families just like ours, and they chill to the bone and have me looking around instinctively every few minutes to make sure my boys are safe.

They are, and according to the FBI, violent crimes were down 5.5% last year and have been falling for several years. Free Range Kids creator Lenore Skenazy points this out in her blog, with great little tidbits like this one from a pediatric ICU nurse: "the real dangers are overlooked. Lock your second story windows, make sure your kids understand car and bike safety. Model safe behavior. Don’t talk and text while driving... I can tell you that I have NEVER once taken care of a kid who was assaulted by a stranger."

What is there to be done? Who is to blame? I don't see failings in security or parental care; I think the best answer is to be vigilant, to pray for these other family's awful predicament and the continued safety of our own, and to hug our children tight as much as we can and thank heavens for them.

Concern about mercury in vaccinations, the worry that they might cause autism, and a host of other what-ifs have many, many parents in Portland delaying vaccinations for their children -- or, in some cases, foregoing them altogether. Tales of chicken pox parties are common, and among the reviews of any local pediatrician is her attitude toward vaccinations. Results of a study that had originally been designed to study whether thimerosal produced an autism risk (this connection has been discredited) now say that children who undergo a delayed vaccination schedule, or who don't get all the recommended vaccinations, don't have any neurodevelopmental benefit -- in fact, they may do worse.

The study was conducted on children born between 1993 and 1997, and new vaccination schedules contain more vaccines that are formulated with less antigens; so the researchers believe the effect should be about the same now. It also doesn't necessarily suggest that vaccinations improve a child's brain development, as there is a correlation between parents' income and education levels, and keeping a vaccination schedule (at least in this study group -- I imagine in some neighborhoods in Portland, New York, Berkeley, and San Francisco today, the correlation is opposite, that is, parents with more education are more likely to delay vaccinations).

As a mama who generally kept her kids on schedule for their vaccinations, and has definitely suffered much in the way of neurodevelopmental delay, I'm happy to see this -- I generally don't place any of the blame for my children's brain function on the hearth of the CDC's suggested vaccination schedule. I worry more about persistent environmental chemicals, especially those to which the kids were exposed in utero or in their licensed-character jammies, than those dosed via wicked needle several times during my kids' infancy and young childhood.

The licensed-character flame retardant-packed jammies are in a trash bag, the vaccinations are up to date, and I think this news gives me some small comfort with my choices. I think it would be revealing, though, to do the study again in some neighborhoods like the ones in which many of us live, with children born in the past decade, the age of heightened autism fears. I'd bet the neurodevelopmental benefit from sticking to the vaccine schedule would be erased -- but it wouldn't mean much.

As we listened to the announcement about changes to Portland Public Schools high schools from Carole Smith, PPS Superintendent tonight, we noted our thoughts and reactions. Please add yours in the comment section below.

The proposed changes to high schools were made with what Carole Smith called "an incredible opportunity for neighborhoods to reinvest in high schools." In talks with stakeholders, the common theme was "I want the whole thing [all the comprehensive core classes plus well-rounded electives plus engaging extracurriculars] and I want it close to home." These changes are to be effective in Fall 2011, after a process of community feedback and a chance for board debate. The final vote will be on June 21.

The way this is being created, Smith hopes, is through a series of "community comprehensive schools" whose boundaries have been slightly changed to better maintain the "cluster" approach to elementary, middle and high schools. These will be mostly as we all expected: Cleveland, Franklin, Grant, Jefferson, Lincoln, Madison, Roosevelt and Wilson. Each will have things for which parents and students have asked from all schools, like a full advanced placement or international baccalaureate program, a full athletics, dance, and visual and performing arts program, and a lower counselor-to-student ratio.

Marshall, a school that has struggled mightily over the past decade, with at least two very radical approaches to school design, will be closed as it now stands. In its place will be "a new focus school built upon the strengths of PPS small schools would open on the campus to all students districtwide." (I'm not exactly sure what that means: I have taken a quick look at the presentation but would love more color from our commenters.)

Benson, a school that had its heyday in the eighties and early nineties and whose perceived quality and attendance has fallen significantly in the past few decades, will change, as well. "Benson Polytechnic High School would, in fall 2011, become an advanced learning center for career-related and technical learning experiences. 11th- and 12th-grade students across PPS would have the opportunity to apply to spend half their school day or week at Benson and half at their home school, to pursue an in-depth career or technical program."

Transfers will be much more limited than they are today; language immersion programs will be created by 2013 in Spanish (Franklin, Lincoln, Madison, Roosevelt); Japanese (Grant); Mandarin (Cleveland) and Russian (Franklin). Jefferson will offer a dance program. You can look up your address here to see if your neighborhood school(s) will change with the proposed new boundaries.

On one hand, I love the idea of Earth Day, because it gets people talking about how to reduce consumption, and cut down on waste, and it was lovely to see so many parents biking their kids to school/day care today. (I was unapologetic when I biked down Division with Monroe and Everett today: usually I feel bad getting in the way of traffic that wants to be moving faster than 15 miles an hour, but hey! It's Earth Day!) On the other hand, really? Just one day? And I worry that many with less of a feeling of weighty culpability than me (I'm not sure if guilt & fear is the answer, but I've surely got a lot of it) will bring their own cups to Starbucks for a free coffee, and plant a couple of lettuce seeds, and recycle something, and then forget about it until next spring.

I'm conflicted; I like the talk but but worry that's most of it. A scientist has written a book about alternatives to cutting carbon emissions -- because, he says, although everyone seems to agree cutting emissions is the only sensible solution, we all just keep driving cars and using, and mining, coal. The fact that few governmental officials made even the smallest commitment to reducing the number of coal plants in their countries and municipalities after the latest terrible mining accident says that nothing -- not the loss of human life, not the obvious destructive effects of carbon mining on the environment during and after the coal mines come in (really? mountain top removal??? how did that ever make sense in the first place?), not the clear connection between coal-burning and climate change -- will get us off this train, the end of which seems to be dead oceans, big swaths of the world becoming uninhabitable due to high temperatures and drained aquifers, drought, starvation, and the rise of Canada's watermelon-growing industry. More of us need to stop driving; we all need to stop burning fossil fuels to turn on our lights and pouring petroleum-based chemicals into our soil, our rivers, our bodies.

So, today is an everyday for me, and I know especially in Portland, many of us feel the same. (Sharon Astyk, a writer about sustainable living and environmentalism, wrote this about the topic, focused on the "greenwashing" of corporations in the celebration.) Many of you, like those who have joined the new Portland Radical Homemaking group on Facebook, are part of the choir, right? I will do this: plant a blueberry bush, eat my leftovers, take out the compost bucket, feed my chickens something yummy, buy organic food, in bulk, with my own containers, ride my bike, start another loaf of bread, keep the TV off, make instead of buy, write about what I believe in. I will do this, too: try to relax, not worry; it's kind of crushing.

How are you celebrating Earth Day: and how do you feel about the holiday? My neighbor sent me a link to this piece on Green My Parents, an advocacy group started by a 12-year-old that encourages children to use savvy marketing tactics (those that advertise on cartoons call it "the nag factor") to get their parents to wash in cold water, ride their bikes, and stop drinking bottled water. Writes Allison Arieff, "they've designed a program that makes behavior change easy and economically rewarding for participants." Is this the answer? Would you change your behavior if your children were advocating it? Or do you feel you already do all you can?

Who knew such a little post on going sans shampoo would send me down so many do-it-yourself roads? It was easy (and, as they say in Pokemon, super-effective!) to give up washing my face for the oil cleansing method and I just had one personal care product holdout: the deodorant. I've been applying my trusty stick of Dove (sensitive skin fragrance free) daily for over a decade, and after reading something about how chemicals to which a pregnant woman is exposed in her first trimester affecting behavioral problems (boy do I have those around here): well, it was time to cut the cord.

I went to the package today and read the list of chemicals I'd been avoiding. What do I know about the active ingredient, aluminum zirconium tetrachlorohydrex GLY? Nothing. And it could be fine, or crushingly destructive. Who knows? The "inactive" ingredients were equally curious, and though sunflower oil sounds fine, I've been trying to avoid conventional almond products because of the crop's excessive use of pesticides and its contribution to colony collapse disorder (many scientists believe stress from trucking bees to pollinate the almond crops, added to the detrimental effects of those herbicides and the lack of a diversity of diet when all the weeds are whacked, is a big factor in CCD), so even one of the other things I recognized, sweet almond oil, didn't have me exactly relaxed.

There was more, too, and while it doesn't appear on my Dove package (phew), it's evidently in lots of other products: triclosan. After the first few giddy years with antibacterial soaps (I was living with a bit of an obsessive when they were introduced, he was thrilled), I became suspicious and, after a few of those usual exposes in which it is shown that antibacterial soap doesn't kill any more bacteria than Ivory, or that people don't stay any weller using antibacterial soap, I went back to the ordinary variety. According to the LA Times, this doesn't necessarily prevent me from having lots of triclosan exposure in my everyday life; a bacterial inhibitor, it's also used as a preservative in soaps that aren't marketed as antibacterial, and in deodorant, face washes, mouthwashes, and toothpaste (Colgate Total is one offending brand). Why this is scary: after having approved the ingredient since 1970, the FDA is once again reconsidering its safety after research in animals shows similar effects to the super-scary chemicals like bisphenol A, dioxins, and pesticides like DDT. That's not all: one of the reasons I tossed it in the first place, the potential for it to hurry along the development of superbugs, is also a concern.

Instead of spreading chemicals of unknown quantity, quality and harm onto our skin (the best way, incidentally, of getting the chemicals into our bloodstream), why not rub on a mixture of things you know and wouldn't actually mind eating, if it came to that?

My deodorant is simple: coconut oil (which is a semi-solid consistency at room temperature), baking soda and arrowroot. I didn't measure exactly, but it's about two parts oil, one part each baking soda and arrowroot (I suggest looking for arrowroot in bulk at People's or New Seasons, it's probably cheaper than buying it in the spice aisle, as I did), stirred around to a good consistency with a little spoon and then spread on with my fingers each morning. Amy Karol has a lovely 'mail order' recipe book (it's #11) with a more involved deodorant, and some other great homemade personal care products, if you want something fancier.

It doesn't work quite so decidedly as the Dove, but it smells delicious and, as long as I apply it every morning, inhibits odor quite nicely. And there's something so liberating about the knowledge that (should I happen to without thinking) I can lick my fingers after applying deodorant. For some reason, that makes me quietly happy every day.

I've been watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution (along with a lot of you, I know) and I can't tell if my blood is boiling hotter than my tears are stinging, or vice versa. During the third episode last Friday, I was in need of a good noseblow by the end. I think it was the stunning failure of Oliver to inspire anything like interest in real food in the kids in episode two that hurt the most, and it was the chicken nugget bit that had people talking. I wrote about it: "When he showed children how chicken nuggets are made -- grinding up the least desirable parts of a bird, gloppily straining out the bones, and adding flavorings and fillers -- he expected them to refuse to eat them. Instead, after having cried 'ewww!' and 'gross!' they each asked for a patty, answering his bewilderment with: 'We're hungry!' ...

"Though part of Oliver's stunt was pure fiction -- 'Thankfully, chicken nuggets in this country are not made this way,' he clarified before heading off to cleave a carcass into pieces -- it's part of a wider movement that's calling out processed fake food by name and calling for it to be eliminated from children's diets." What surprised me was how many of the people I know (and plenty I don't) started talking about how chicken nuggets were now off their family's menu.

There's a lot not to like in Oliver's show. There are the cafeteria workers, who grumble and complain when Oliver dares to bring real chicken and potatoes in need of a peeler into the kitchen, where the comfort food comes in a box and needs only to be heated up. There are the rules that say Oliver's many-vegetable pasta "isn't a cup and a fourth" of vegetables (he has to serve fries with his healthy fare to make it up) and that every meal needs to have "two breads" even if those breads are both halves of an extremely processed, nutrition-bereft pizza crust and that schools need to have "two kinds of milk" which often means milk that's been colored pink and sugar-added. There is all that sugar, so much sugar that Oliver himself has been making special note of it. In that post on Moms Rising, he writes, "Ask a pediatrician (or a teacher for that matter) to identify the biggest enemy of child’s health and they will answer,” sugar”. You put beautiful little kids in school, 180 days of the year, from four to 18 and nearly every choice offered to them is some version of junk food."

And there's the grocery store, where the aisles are packed with sugary treats disguised as healthy food. There's the "Froot Loops" and the happy-dippy commercials stacked five solid in our kids' favorite TV shows, the ones that say cheerfully, "part of this good breakfast!" (I tell Everett, overhearing one, "you know, that's not really a good breakfast..." "I KNOW, mom," he replies.) There is the yogurt (even the organic stuff), whose makers feel it necessary to pack it with so much sugar that one eight-ounce serving is as much sugar as the AHA recommends kids have in a day. There are the "fruit snacks," the lemonade which has no lemon juice, the trail mix with so many ingredients I have to look twice to see if there are really raisins and peanuts.

There are our kids, who eat a bunch of candy on Easter or when a well-meaning aunt or uncle stops by, or we ourselves let them go crazy at Starbucks' pastry counter, and then proceed to act horribly, fighting over Froot Loops and Skittles and Petite Vanilla Bean Scones until we cover our ears with our hands and scream, "no more candy, EVER!" (Is that just me?)

In all this craziness, I'm happy to see that more scrutiny is being placed on the harmful quality of junk food, poor quality meats, white bread and the abhorrent state of the "reimburseable meals" provided in our schools. It seems hopeful. It also seems crushing: how many cafeteria ladies will have to be convinced that kids might eat broccoli if we keep offering it to them? How many hard decisions will have to be made -- no chocolate milk, french fries once a week, a re-categorization of "food" in the food stamps even -- how will we pay for it?

When I first saw the news, I wanted to just, you know, sigh. It's a drum many Portland mamas have been beating for at least a decade, probably several: breastfeeding is not just great for a baby, it's cheap, and not just for a family's budget during those first several months but for society. (And I want to say here that I know some mamas want to, but aren't able to, breastfeed because of work or health reasons or adoption or just some rare bit of fate that comes between a baby and "breastfeeding success," and that I don't want to call out the mamas for whom it doesn't work out -- except to offer my sympathy and support and love.) But, says my friend and fellow finance geek Melly, a "recent study published in Pediatrics found that poor compliance with breastfeeding recommendations costs the U.S. at least $13 billion each year, with nearly all of the cost related to infant morbidity and mortality."

Well. You know if the finance geeks, the AP, the Daily Mail and Business Week and CNN and the rest of them are putting the word "breastfeeding" in headlines and -- it's not just a casual glance at the practice, they're encouraging it -- you know times, they are a-changing. And I appreciate the specificity of the facts here. Another bit from Melly's piece: "In 2006, only 13 states met the quite low 17% target set by the Healthy People objectives for mothers exclusively breastfeeding their infant through six months of age." Wow -- I know Oregon is one that easily met the target, but 17%, and we know why (poor social support, terrible workplace conditions for breastfeeding moms, tiny or non-existent maternity leaves, too many low-income working and single moms, too much -- too effective -- marketing by the formula companies). Mamas in Portland and elsewhere are working on that stuff; a press release even this weekend from the Nursing Mothers Council of Oregon offers support to businesses to give moms a place to pump at work -- see more info from Marion Rice about that, after the 'continued' link. But we can't even get 17% of moms (theoretically, quite a few more than 17% are able to stay home with their children) to breastfeed for six months, even though it's far cheaper?

Here's the part that had headline writers clucking and the news anchors squawking: "The study authors listed direct and indirect costs associated with illness and premature death due to the current poor levels of compliance compared with 90% compliance in 2007 dollars." I'll go ahead and list the ones Melly put in her piece because, they're not shocking to us who've been stressing about how easy it would be to make the beginnings of so many little lives better. Here it is:

• $4.7 billion and 447 deaths due to sudden infant death syndrome.
• $2.6 billion due to 249 deaths from necrotizing enterocolitis, a common gastrointestinal syndrome in premature infants.
• $1.8 billion due to 172 excess deaths from lower respiratory tract infections, such as pneumonia.
• $908 million due to otitis media (ear infection).
• $601 million due to atopic dermatitis (eczema).
• $592 million due to childhood obesity.

Umm, wow, again. And I decided in the end that I shouldn't sigh or roll my eyes or wring my hands one more time and ask, "why? how? what the heck have we done, modern society?" but just be hopeful, because to have finance geeks and news anchors and CNN talking heads well, talking about this is an awesome way to get breastfeeding more accepted. And really, money that we all are spending on ear infections and eczema and obesity and death should get us sitting up and paying attention, and then sitting back down in our favorite cozy chair to breastfeed our babies.

I have just negotiated a new quasi-peace in the house -- Monroe, I declare, is no longer allowed to use the iPod touch to play fruit matching games due to tearful angry meltdowns when he gets even a taste, while depriving him wholly keeps relative calm -- when I open the newest issue of Brain, Child. The cover story takes me several hours to begin; honestly, it sounds as bent for artificial controversy ("let's get mommies talking!") as any of the other mommy war-type content that has lately been flooding the journal's pages. Titled "Guilt Trip into the Woods," it starts as all long essays in mothering magazines do: with a little anecdote. Family, consisting of blogging journalist mama, dad and seven-year-old son adopted from Asia (this seems relevant to the writer), must decide where to go on vacation: nature, or New York? They pick New York, kid loves it, can't get enough of Times Square and the 10-story movie ads. He's just not a nature guy, says mama.

She's feeling bad about it, after all; she's been reading and seeing stuff online about getting kids out to nature. The focus of much of her ire is the echo of the headline, Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods, with generous distaste left for the National Wildlife Foundation's Green Hour (for which, incidentally, I wrote a blog post last year). But writer Martha Nichols is not a believer. "...perhaps most disturbing for environmentalist moms and dads, I’m discovering that the nature movement—green and forward-thinking as it appears at first blush—looks an awful lot like a conservative message cloaked with some liberal fig leaves." She goes on to explain that she's feeling guilty, in the "morning when there’s barely enough caffeine in my system to cope, NPR seems to pummel me with stories about why our multi-tasking, Internet-chained pace isn’t good for kids..." but "whether nature is the only solution is the question," and though she connects with the concept of loving nature herself -- remember that pine tree I used to climb when I was a kid? she asks -- " long before I finished Last Child in the Woods, I wanted to chuck it across the room."

What comes down to it is this: her son isn't the nature journaling type. "He’s never been one to draw daisies in a journal if I suggest it. Instead he’d sketch a jousting tournament or a new comic strip, no matter how much I burble about the veins of a leaf. Or he’d rip the leaf apart—which for Louv might be just the ticket for a young naturalist—except that what fascinates Nick is the landscape inside his own head." She begins to describe the "fellow believers" of Louv as sectarians, they "present themselves as valiant nature warriors facing a horde of technology Visigoths," they're "nature evangelists," they're "polemical."

As if to punctuate the news I was listening to on NPR on the morning of February 10, rapt and horrified, as soon as the piece on the draft of the new 'Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders' released by the American Psychiatric Association today, Monroe rolled over, asked to nurse, and when refused, screamed and punched me in a brief, intense fit of anger. The news, at least in part: mental health medical professionals will be urged to consider an alternative to pediatric bipolar disorder, a label currently on the chart of a whopping 1 million (!!) (!!!!!!!) children in the U.S.: temper dysregulation disorder. I do know that I'm not qualified to make this diagnosis myself, but the child described by the mother in this piece is my seven-year-old; he's also my two-year-old; oh my god OHMYGOD if Everett were to have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder?

I learn after listening to a few more pieces on the subject, if Everett were to have been diagnosed with BPD, he'd still be at Grout; given the oppositional/defiant disorder "diagnosis" handed to us by a parenting coach and shared with the school -- I'd no idea at the time I was possibly creating a Berlin Wall's-worth of barriers for my poor child's future -- he had to be sent to a special school, not mainstreamed with gentle love and school district-provided assistance. So-called "conduct" disorders like oppositional/defiant, once on his chart, allow school districts to remove your child from the mainstream. There may be many drawbacks to temper dysregulation disorder -- I've been reading a wide range of them in the past few days (for instance, it's limited to children between six and 10, perhaps leaving the window open for psychiatrists to consider it a precursor to bipolar disorder and, thus, prescribe the anti-psychotics that are precisely the enormous concern of parents and activists surrounding pediatric bipolar disorder) -- but its availability as a more accurate diagnosis for kids like Everett, being biological and not conduct-based, could open up educational options.

The other big news was that Asperger's Syndrome will be removed from the manual (which isn't published until 2013), with the recommendation that children who meet the current criteria for Asperger's be instead diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This, too, could have far-reaching effects mostly centered around public school accomodations and social service eligibility, with perhaps a minor effect on which treatments would be reimbursed by insurance companies.

I'm working on a larger article about this and will be interviewing a few pediatricians and other experts in the next day or so; I'd love to hear your thoughts and perhaps weave them into my interviews. I'd also be interested to see if any of you with children who fit either diagnosis "basket" were heartened, or terrified by the news? Did you see relief or great worry? I have so many rather weighty questions that I don't think the experts can answer (should Everett have been placed on anti-psychotics? Are the anti-depressants he is taking ultimately harmful? Just how badly did I effect his future by allowing that conduct disorder diagnosis? What about the kids who are on anti-psychotics? I million freakin' bipolar kids? How could that be?)

Economic data determined that women were no longer benefiting economically from marriage (as had been the case up until now), and everyone's opining. Not least, the New York Times, which rounded up a variety of responses to the so-called "Alpha Wives" issue. I appreciate the perspective of Andrew J. Cherlin, who points out that most women don't earn more than men, and this isn't really a revolution so much as an anomaly that's now returning to its baseline, writing: "The idea of a “housewife” who exclusively cared for the children and the home only emerged in the 20th century as Americans migrated to cities and as factories replaced farms. What’s happening today is that we are returning to the more typical kind of family in which women’s work of all sorts — which now includes earning money — is crucial. That kind of family was fully accepted until the mid-20th century, and there is no reason to think it will be rejected now." In my family, I think this is the direction we're headed.

Perhaps we didn't need this research as inspiration to encourage our teenagers to avoid alcohol and drugs. But news that alcohol abuse does permanent damage to a teen's developing brain is, at least, one more piece of ammunition we can use in our well-reasoned, rational arguments for our kids to avoid the stuff.

Food writer Amanda Hesser said 'Bravo!' to Jennifer Steinhaeur for her essay in today's New York Times on snack food, and more pointedly, our parental addiction to the practice. "Of the many horrors that lurk in the e-mail in-box of a working parent ... nothing quite rivals the snack request," she writes. "Not a month goes by without someone somewhere asking me to serve up some snack for an event that one of my children will attend and that, generally speaking, will not last more than 90 minutes." Perhaps that opening line is a bit maudlin (umm, I can think of plenty of horrors worse), but she gets around to pointing out that kids eat too many snacks, they expect to eat too many snacks, and we organize around it! "Rarely do I see a parent show up on the soccer field with a homemade snack, or even a bag of carrots. Oreos are the post-game snack of choice, even in sports leagues dominated by upper-income parents." She suggests we could have kids bring their own snacks... or maybe no snacks? That last bit sounds right to me! I'm always amazed at the capacity of my children to eat awfully healthy food, when they haven't just filled up on fruit leather and cookies. No snacks it is.

On NPR, we learn that Army wives worry (a lot) (no, a LOT) while their husbands are at war. I've written about this and my husband hasn't even left for war (still, no orders). The study learns that military wives whose husbands have been deployed have a lot of anxiety, depression, and sleep disorders: but the support system for these problems isn't in place. I've noticed a distinct difference recently in the Army's approach to mental health; I think I have high hopes.

I thought I'd try something new and newsy: a bit of a.m. storylinking to get your mind whirring comfortably, so when you sit down to your 'net access and coffee before the kids awake, or when they're busily engaged in Lego wars, or after you've gotten to work and need to take a breath, you'll have something light and accessible. Let me know if you like it!

urbanMama Margaret Foley shared a new survey from Britain, that country always ready to share a completely unscientific but nonethless fascinating poll with the world: 8:25 a.m. has been named the most stressful time in the day. Greatly adding to this stressful time: the fact that many mothers are driving to work, which compounds the stress (another bonus to biking and public transporting: not perfect zen, but for me, less stressful).

Many green-leaning mamas were linking to this item in the New York Times about therapists reporting many "green disputes" among couples. I was not surprised that most of the interviewees were from Portland. In fact, I'm fairly certain this makes up 56% of all couples counselling sessions. Including my own, where tussles over food were chief amongst the topics of discussion one recent summer; and now we've moved on to my exaggerated sighs when he borrows a car to do (in my opinion) bike-able errands. Again?

I heard this morning on NPR about Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, an Army cook who joined the service in 2007. When she had Kamani 10 months ago, the little boy's father chose not to help raise him. Shortly after her baby was born, her unit in Savannah, Georgia got deployment orders to Afghanistan.

Soldiers with children are required to submit a dependent care plan before they can be deployed; Alexis had done so. Her mother, who lives in Oakland, California, agreed to take care of the boy; but she has in her home an ailing mother and sister, as well as a special-needs daughter and, during the day, up to 14 children in an in-home daycare. After two weeks of watching Kamani, Alexis' mom threw up her hands and sent the little boy back to his mother.

Alexis told her commanding officer her problem, and says she was given 30 days to develop a new plan; but then the deployment date was moved up and she panicked, without options. What looks like the miscommunication of a young, freaked-out mom occurred; she thought she'd lose her baby if she showed up for the airplane to Afghanistan with her child, so she hid.

Within a day, she'd turned herself in, and was arrested for failing to deploy. Her little boy was taken from her for the night, and the next day her mom arrived to take him back to California. Now Alexis is facing prison time; she may be court-martialed, although for now the deployment is on hold until the military sorts it out.

According to the Army, if Alexis had arrived at the airfield with her little boy on schedule, she wouldn't have been deployed. She says her commander told her that, if she didn't find care, her little boy would be placed in foster care. Even putting aside the he-said, she-said, it's a terrifying story (especially given my own possession of a husband scheduled for deployment, now, in the early spring) and shows just how great a toll the Army takes from young families and, most especially, their children.

Because by any indication the alternatives for Kamani all fall short. Where the boy is now, in his grandmother's home, is obviously too busy and demanding; can the primary caregiver devote even a tenth of the attention and energy an infant requires? As a young single mom far from home and with only a few years' experience in the Army, it's likely that Alexis has no friends with enough space in their lives and homes to care for such a small child. And if she were to find an acquaintance to take the boy? Would the burden mean the little boy would be resented, not necessarily neglected but most definitely not loved sufficiently? Would you take the 10-month-old of even a moderately good friend, for a year?

It's too much, I think. Too much for babies to have their only parent deployed for a year. Too much for babies to live without their mothers to fight unwinnable wars for so long. It's just too much.

Last Tuesday, Marysville School in SE Portland was heavily damaged by a three-alarm fire.  It is so amazing that all 460 students and 17 teachers of the K-8 school were quickly accounted for soon after the evacuation.  In the past couple of days, PPS has been hurrying to ready another school, Rose City Park Elementary, to accept the relocated Marysville students starting on Monday.

How can we help this community in need?  Schoolhouse Supplies is partnering with Portland Public Schools to provide help:

• Host a supply drive at your location.  Print a poster here.
• Donate supplies at Schoolhouse Supplies' location.  Marysville's wish list is rather basic and it includes: paper, crayons, markers, colored pencils, erasers, glue sticks, scissors.
• Volunteer at Rose City Park Elementary on Saturday from 8am to noon to help prepare the school for Monday.  Help is needed to clean, move furniture and get the school ready for kids!  Sign up here.
• Donate coats, jackets, sweaters, backpacks, lunch bags/boxes, art supplies, library books, boxes of tissues, construction paper and photocopy paper.  The drop off point is Marshall High School at 3905 SE 91st Ave, between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m Monday through Friday.  This donation drop off is being sponsored by The Oregon PTA and Portland Council PTA.

Flipping through Facebook updates, I noticed that a mama mentioned that her son was down with the flu.  A few comments later, she also mentioned that H1N1 has been confirmed in students at her son's school as well as at her daughter's daycare.  Later on this evening, my husband said drearily, "It's confirmed."  His colleague's husband and their school-aged son were also afflicted with H1N1.

It looks like H1N1 has made is appearance here in Portland - in schools and in workplaces.  Has H1N1 been confirmed at your school, daycare, workplace, or commuity at large?  For those who have decided to vaccinate for H1N1, have you done so yet?

Be sure to check out DHS' website on H1N1 in Oregon for more resources and information.

Is it hot enough for you? Portland is smack dab in the middle of the kind of heat wave that has many of we mamas wilting (especially those of us who grew up in temperate climes, and/or don't have air conditioning in our homes). It's hard enough when you're just you and have to decide how to deal with the discomfort and short tempers of extreme heat; and then comes motherhood and the testiness is compounded. And if you're the mama of three, like me, somehow hanging out beside a pool seems the very least relaxing thing in the world -- you're the lifeguard to three little ones and, eek! Talk about water torture.

There must be a better way! We've talked before about ways to beat the heat, so I've developed a list of some of my favorite antidotes to the hotness. What are yours?

1. The Multnomah County Library. Branches are air conditioned and you can catch up on your Summer Reading if you haven't already sped through the "map" -- or start now if you haven't already! Most branches have computers set aside just for kids with educational games and books; here is a link to story times. Or just sit in a corner and read. Woodstock and Belmont are our neighborhood faves.

2. Wading pools in Portland Parks. While the wading pools' days are numbered (state regulations and concerns about chlorination standards mean that standing-water features are being phased out as of last year), the people at Portland Parks & Recreation work hard to extend hours and open as many wading pools as possible when it's hot. I know from the neighborhood listserv that Creston Park's wading pool is open 11 to 7 through the heat wave; is yours open more hours, too? Let us know!

3. Solpops and make-your-own popsicles. Inspired by Solpops, the fruit-positive popsicles that are sold at many farmer's markets and now New Seasons, I made my own popsicles the other day. Convenience food it wasn't, but I loved the process and the promise of super-concentrated fruity iciness. I made mine by rinsing and pitting (if appropriate) fruit -- I used cherries, blackberries and currants -- and simmering it with a cup or two of water and a half-cup of honey for about 20 minutes. Then I pushed the mix through a sieve (if you don't mind seeds or have fruit that is already peeled, like bananas, you could just mash or blend or Cuisinart it) and poured into shot glasses, putting sticks in once they started to freeze up. When I was a kid we had our own popsicle mold and we froze Kool-Aid: a much quicker and easier method.

Inauguration Day is coming in less than two weeks.  There are many among us who are excited for the moment our 44th president is sworn in and addresses us for the first time as our President. 

Just as the kids stayed up on Election Night 2008 watching votes roll in, coloring electoral college maps, we want them to be part of and remember the occassion on Tuesday the 20th.  Tons of stuff seems to be happening in DC the weekend prior to the event, but the inauguration will happen at noon EST on Tuesday, which is 9am Portland-time.  The line up will start around 8:30am our time with some opening remarks.

We've received several emails now from mamas looking for kid-friendly activities for the day.  Are you planning on partaking, somehow, in inauguration day activities?  The 8-9AM time slot sounds like a mighty fine time to congregate at one of our favorite coffee shops for a little Inauguration Day Playdate, doesn't it?  There are TVs at favorite haunts like Sip 'n' Kranz, Airplay Cafe, and Sydney's.  Perhaps Barackspace (aka Backspace) will project the live televised event on their big screen.  Or, can you TiVo/DVR it and enjoy it in the evening with a little bubbly all around to celebrate?  If you kids are school-aged, do you think they'll show the event at your school?

It wasn't even midnight before day one of snow days when I looked at the forecast for the week and had to ask: will they have any school before January? Portland Public Schools isn't known for making children and staff get to school when there is any ice on the roads or sidewalks, and I know from long experience that snow + frozen temperatures + Portland, Oregon means zero relief from icy conditions. (I am just old enough to remember the great ice storm of 1979, which kept my Taylor Street home sparkly and slick and kept me home -- though my elementary school was only a block-and-a-half away).

So I worried over the forecast, freezing temperatures all week, more snow on Wednesday and Thursday, and expect that our kids won't go back to school until school's out for the holiday. This had me frantic with rather inconsequential anxiety. What about those last-week-before-Christmas craft fairs and art projects and holiday concerts? How will I get the teachers the brilliant gifts I'd planned? (A few tokens for the Portland Farmer's Market along with a card listing my favorite vendors and the schedule for 2009.) Will the last farmer's market of the year even happen? (I know, nothing to do with school, but it's my fear nonetheless.)

Then last night, a surprise: the east-siders were going to school today, so my little one was packed off on his very early bus (no west-siders to pick up). Of course, my teacher gifts weren't yet ready so I'm now hoping for beautiful (cold) weather on Friday. [Update: PPS announced no school tomorrow, Wednesday, December 17.] One of the teachers on my Twitter stream announced only about half of her students were in class today; so many parents are calling this week a snow week, regardless of PPS openings. Do you dread or yearn for an extra whole week of vacation? What do you think of the east side / west side division (as if we weren't already divided enough)? What silly anxieties are you harboring? And are you as tired of bundling and un-bundling as me? (I have a blog post going on about that topic in my head...)