Forgive Me - Article

The following is an article written by Amanda Eyre Ward, author of Forgive Me.Publisher: Ballantine Books
Pub Date: January 2008
ISBN: 978-0-345-49447-4 (0-345-49447-4)
Lessons from Mom
By Amanda Eyre Ward, author of Forgive Me
No matter what I write about, my novels always seem to have a strong mother character. Inevitably, this character is inspired by my own astonishing mother, Mary-Anne Westley. From a dorm pay phone, a hostel in Nairobi, a restaurant in Athens, or the bench at my neighborhood playground, I’ve talked with her every day of my life.
Once a writer and model for Vogue and Mademoiselle, my mother settled happily into the role of full-time mom for sixteen years. When she left my abusive father, she worked for the phone company and then a chemical gas company, trying to make vibrant copy out of dull facts and figures. She put me and my two sisters through college, commuting over an hour to work until her retirement last year. Money was tight, but Mom never faltered, always inspiring us with her graceful acceptance of the way things had turned out. Now that I am a mother myself, I’ve been able to put some of her rules into practice.
Rule Number One: When in doubt, throw a party.
When my mother left my father, she left behind a giant house and many fair-weather friends as well. In our new, smaller house (next door to Mom’s former golf caddy), we all felt a little lost. When Christmas rolled around, Mom refused to get gloomy. She planned her annual Christmas party, inviting not only the country-club set, but our new neighbors as well: Lou, who had a few cars on his front lawn; Jim, who we suspected was a drug dealer. The same bartender drove across town to our new address, and Mom placed the Harrington’s ham, meatballs, and cheese ball on the dining room table in the middle of our crummy new house. When we dimmed the lights and lit candles, it felt like home.
Rule Number Two: When times get tough, the tough go shopping.
My mother is always beautifully dressed; my sisters and I regularly steal her clothes. When she had to work on telephone lines due to a strike at her company, she came home with a DKNY denim pantsuit, which she paired with pearls each morning.
At one point, while I was in college, my mother lost her job. I knew she was nervous about paying the mortgage, so when she left a message saying she had fantastic news, I called back immediately.
“You got a job?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” she said cheerily, “but Manda, that sweater you loved went on sale at Bloomingdale’s! I bought it!”
Rule Number Three: Believe—and believe in—your children.
I didn’t always tell the truth to my mother. I lied about boyfriends, I lied about beer, and once I lied about cashing in my meal plan in college and spending the money on a trip to Florida. But my mother always believed me. I think now that the guilt I felt when I lied was worse than any punishment could have been. My mother always expected the best from me, and in the end, I never lied about anything that mattered. I hope I will remember that overlooking a dumb decision (I had to eat Ramen for the rest of the semester, and learned my lesson in spades) might be better than policing my child. My mother’s faith in me, and her absolute belief that I would become an honest person, has been the guiding force in my life.
Last but not least: Mothers deserve to be happy, too.
My mother did give up a great deal to raise me and my sisters. But she never stopped wanting happiness for herself. If she came to visit us at college, she wanted to go out dancing, too. When visiting me in graduate school in Montana, she wanted to go river-rafting and skinny dip in the hot springs. If I ask her to stay in the car with my sleeping baby while I run into Target, she says, “Absolutely! If you go buy me the New York Times to read while I’m stuck here.”
Most importantly, Mom wanted to fall in love, and the best part of the story is that she did. On my mother’s wedding day, she was just as difficult as any bride, complaining about the humidity and the hairdo, and just as radiant. She danced, threw her bouquet, and boarded a friend’s boat with her new husband. And then she sailed off into Long Island Sound, leaving her three daughters to watch her go.
Author Bio
Amanda Eyre Ward is the award-winning author of How to Be Lost and Sleep Toward Heaven. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her family.
For more information, please visit http://www.amandaward.com/.

The Sneaky Chef

Most moms will tell you that at some point, their child is a picky or finicky eater. There are only so many meals of mac and cheese, hot dogs, and chicken nuggets you can manage before you start looking for help. You want your child to eat more nutritional foods, but when they snub everything except what they've decided to eat, it makes it nearly impossible! The The Sneaky Chef by Missy Chase Lapine has the perfect solution for any mom looking for a way to get their picky eaters to include more nutritional foods in their diet.

In addition to being a recipe book filled with kid-friendly foods that they love, The Sneaky Chef explains how issues of control are what empowers the picky eater. Children don't have to eat poorly. They can enjoy nutritional and tasty food, which will help them fend off the childhood obesity monster that is creeping its way into the American household. Lapine gives many examples and reasons for "sneaking" the good stuff into their favorites, while making it easy for mom.

The book is arranged in a fashion that is easy to read and easy to reference. It includes lists of foods that kids believe to be the good, the bad and the ugly. More lists include staples to buy, important foods to buy organic if possible, the most contaminated foods, and the tools you need to make your sneaking work best. Plus, in Chapter Five, you will read all about "The Sneaky Chef's Bag of Tricks," where you will learn to be the queen of sneaking nutritional foods into their favorites. Tricks include methods to combine foods (the sneaky way, of course), the health benefits of those tricks, and even how to make the food visually appealing for children so they dive right into their meal! There are thirteen total methods used to make your child's favorites into something healthier! It's a win-win situation!

The second half of the book covers actual recipes you can use for breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner, treats and drinks. These are things that kids already love, but prepared in a way that makes you feel better about what they are putting into their mouths. Imagine your children eating things like peanut butter cookies, burgers, fries, pizza, pasta, chicken, meatloaf and even cheese dip without cringing from the lack of nutrition making it past their lips! The recipes are easy to follow, aren't full of ingredients you've never heard of (or rarely use), have nutritional highlights and many have variations you can use to tweak to your liking.

Not only is this clever book a good educational reference, but it's a must have for every mom on the block. Please your children (and their palate) while giving them vitamins, vegetables, protein, fiber... and the list goes on! The Sneaky Chef is a book that lives up to its name, and then some!

The Second Nine Months: One Woman Tells the REAL Truth About Becoming a Mom. Finally.

The excerpt below is from The Second Nine Months: One Woman Tells the REAL Truth About Becoming a Mom. Finally.
by Vicki Glembocki

Book Description from Amazon.com: In the spirit of Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions, a reality check for new moms. I want to walk out of Target and leave Blair there, wailing.... Nice people work at Target. Surely someone would take her home and care for her and buy her pretty things. So begins Vicki Glembocki's brutally honest yet hilarious memoir of her agonizing transition into motherhood. Why agonizing? Because no one told her how tough it would be. Finally, Glembocki lays out the truth about those first months with baby: the certainty that you're doing everything wrong; the desire to kill your husband, your mother, your dog; the struggle to balance who you were with whom you've become--a mother. Unlike any other book on motherhood, Glembocki breaks the New Mother Code of Silence, proving that "maternal bliss" is not innate, but learned. Funny and wise, she connects with new moms on a shockingly intimate level, letting them know that they are not alone.

Excerpt From The Second Nine Months: One Woman Tells the REAL Truth About Becoming a Mom. Finally.
by Vicki Glembocki

Two weeks later, I push the stroller down a street I've never been on before. This is the first walk the baby and I are taking together. There is probably a line in the baby book my mother gave me, the one that's still in its plastic box in one of the many piles on our dining room table, where I'm supposed to document this moment-First Walk In Stroller. Taking this walk is supposed to be relaxing. The Girlfriend's Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood said so-"Get out and get fresh air…it does wonders for your spirit." My spirit is supposed to be inhaling the warm, late-March air, feeling invigorated while I maternally point out the many things the baby is seeing for the first time. The buds on the maple trees. The trail from an airplane. The tabby cat sunning itself on the back stoop of the white house we just passed. But I am not. Because the baby is crying.

I push faster.

She keeps crying.

I hum The Alphabet Song.

She keeps crying.

I shift the angle of the canopy, in case the sun's shining in her eyes.

She keeps crying.

I reach down the back of her neck, under the cotton blanket she's swaddled in, under her lavender one-piece body suit with the yellow butterfly on it so I can finger the tag, in case there's a plastic, price-tag holder sticking out of it. Or an open safety pin. Or a pickax. There's nothing.

She keeps crying.

No matter what I do, she keeps crying.

What I should do is turn the stroller around. I should not be in public. I should go home. But I can't go home. Because, a block away, there is a Laundromat, and in that Laundromat are the quilt from our bed and the afghan from our couch, tumbling in an industrial dryer, a task that was on my "List of Things To Do Before The Baby Comes" because the quilt and afghan-too large for our washer and dryer-had fused with zillions of sharp, blonde, burrowing dog hairs, discarded by Levi, our 80-pound Lab, hairs that I was certain would break free, lodge in the baby's throat, and choke her. I need to finish this job. I have two hours between each nursing so there's time to finish this job. I feel along the sides of the baby's swaddle to make sure her fingers aren't bent the wrong way. I tuck the blanket under her feet, in case her feet are cold.

She keeps crying.

What am I doing wrong?

I pull out my cell phone and dial Thad's office line.

"I can't do this," I say, before he even says "hello."

"What happened?" he asks. I hear the wheels on his office chair roll across the floor and his door close. I tell him about the afghan and the Laundromat and the crying. About how I can't stop the crying.

"Is she hungry?"

"No."

"Is she wet?"

"No."

"Maybe you just tried to do too much, sweetie. Maybe you should just go home," he says in his new mellow tone, the one he's been using in the middle of the night for the past two weeks, every time I nudge him awake and declare that I'm certain the baby is dead.

"She's not dead," he always says, calm and patient, just like he was when I woke him up with the same worry roughly 13 seconds before.

"How do you know that?" I always ask.

"I know."

"How do you know?" And Thad flips the covers onto me, staggers over to the Pack 'n Play at the foot of our bed, and leans over so his cheek is next to Blair's tiny mouth, waiting until he feels a few bursts of warm air.

"She's not dead," he whispers, climbing back into bed. I always lie there for a few seconds. Then I get up and check myself, resting my hand lightly on Blair's chest, swaddled so tight I wonder if the receiving blanket is the only thing holding her fragile body together, until I feel it rise, up and down, up and down.

Now, though, in the light of day, his soothing "everything's okay" tenor makes me clamp my teeth together, as if he didn't just suggest I go home, but instead told me to do the very opposite, to suck it up, to finish the damn bedspreads and then make a meatloaf.

You can purchase The Second Nine Months: One Woman Tells the REAL Truth About Becoming a Mom. Finally. at Amazon.com!

Baby Signing 1-2-3

When my son was born, I knew nothing about baby signing. The older he got, the more I started seeing topics on the internet about the benefits of baby signing. As mothers, we want our children to be the smartest, most intelligent child on the block. However, I thought I had cheated him out of this language skill because I didn't start him as soon as I could have. Then I was introduced to Baby Signing 1-2-3 by Nancy Cadjan, and to my surprise, it really doesn't matter when you begin baby signing because children of all ages will benefit from the use of ASL (American Sign Language).

Baby Signing 1-2-3 is arranged in a very comprehensive way. The first part of the book addresses your child's developmental stages and the appropriate signing that can be used during that time. For those with children who develop at a slower pace either mentally or physically, an entire chapter is designed on how to modify the signing used during that child's individual development. The actual signs used during the developmental stages are contained in the second half of the book, and those same words are bolded in the text in the chapters from the first half of the book. This design makes it incredibly easy to reference the stage you are in with your child.

Since my son is four now, the stages of development aren't the most important parts of the book for our situation, but he can still learn signs in the order in which he would have if I had introduced ASL to him as an infant. Much like our children's own speech development and their capacity to understand, learning the signs he would have learned from stage one still applies. Words like mommy, daddy, milk and more are great starters even for the older child. The best thing is we can learn more signs at a quicker pace now that he is older.

Baby Signing 1-2-3 has been a great tool for my both my son and myself, and we've both enjoyed sitting down and learning signs together. He actually picks up the book and asks for me to help him learn. The added benefit is that once our next child is born, both my older son and I will be able to help baby learn ASL at a much younger age with the great help of Baby Signing 1-2-3. I highly recommend Baby Signing 1-2-3 for any individuals who are new to ASL and want to teach themselves and their children this life long, beneficial communication tool.

Emotionally Healthy Twins

Mom to twins? Me too! Well, at least in utero. I still have some time before my twins are born, and I am already hearing phrases that make my ears ring in pain. It's amazing how the moment you become pregnant with more than one child, others seem to lose a sense of couth (if they ever had it to begin with) and say things like "better you than me," "are they natural?" or "double the trouble." The list goes on, and if you are a mom to twins, it is certain you've heard even more offensive or hurtful words. It all goes back to the stigma attached to twins. The stigma of always being a twin, being compared to someone else, having to always share the spotlight with a sibling that just happened to be born on the same day. I suppose if you aren't a twin yourself, you may not think about these things until you become a mom to twins. To go even further, parenting and raising twins to not feel that stigma could be the challenge of a lifetime.

Goodbye stigma; hello to Joan A. Friedman, Ph.D. Friedman is a twin, is a mother to twins, and is author of an amazingly insightful book, Emotionally Healthy Twins: A New Philosophy for Parenting Two Unique Children. This book covers parenting from pregnancy into adulthood, and couldn't have come at a better time for me!

Over the past year I've listened to my best friend talk about her twins. From their birth she's made a conscious decision to never compare the two - but it's easier said than done. It just seems to happen naturally. However, her goal falls in line with the first chapter in Friedman's book, being a mom to two unique children, identified by their own individual likes, dislikes and personalities. Two children not identified as "the quiet one" or the "more active one." These kinds of comparisons begin in utero and can follow each child into adulthood. Combating the comparisons is immediately addressed in Friedman's book. Even though the world around us glorifies twins by making them seem more intriguing or appealing (think Double Mint commercials), we as parents can and will silence the glorification and focus on each child individually, making sure they grow into emotionally healthy adults.

Emotionally Healthy Twins is arranged in a way for parents with twins of any age to simply pick up and start reading and learning ways to help each twin feel unique and separate. For me personally, and for my husband, this book is providing strategies to view our children as two individual children long before they are born. We've already learned to use phrases like "the babies" instead of "the twins" to ensure the separate and unique ideal we will want to follow after they are born. It is easy little changes in the way we are thinking that will make huge differences for them in the future.

As for those with older twin children, relative guidance is given to parents with children in their preschool years, elementary school years, preteen and teen years, and young adulthood. Each age and stage brings new situations to the table, from friends in school and those rebellious years, to forming meaningful and emotionally healthy relationships with people and potential spouses in young adulthood. Emotionally Healthy Twins really hits on all the basic, yet pertinent stages of raising a child who is happy with themselves and happy with their relationship to and with their twin.

So whether you've just found out you will be having twins, or have twins already into their teen years, Emotionally Healthy Twins: A New Philosophy for Parenting Two Unique Children has something to offer moms and dads alike. Even if you haven't overcome the stigma, there are ways to move from it and Friedman offers the tools you'll need to raise two unique children who share the same birth date.

You can learn more about this book at Amazon.com or http://www.emotionallyhealthytwins.com/.

The New Mom's Survival Guide

I don't really consider myself a "New Mom" per se. Rather, I refer to myself as a "Renewed Mom." I just recently gave birth to two beautiful twin girls, which is almost five years since the birth of my first and only son. A renewed mom has to go through the same questions and concerns that a new mom has to go through. After five years, I had forgotten about all the things that happen after birth, and all the questions I have about those things. From my hair falling out to strange skin issues I had never had before.

The New Mom's Survival Guide, by Jennifer Wider, M.D. addresses just about any and every question a new or renewed mom has about their body, health, sanity and yes, even their sex life. As she mentions in the book, we (and baby) are the center of attention when we are pregnant. We are in regular contact with a physician or someone of the like, always interested in how we are feeling. However, after birth, all the attention is then shifted to our new little blessings and we are left to fend for ourselves. All the while, our bodies are changing, our lives have turned upside down, and even our own focus is pointed outward.

ike every other women that's been pregnant, a few months after giving birth, my hair started falling out at a frightening rate. It's actually completely normal, but not everyone knows that. The New Mom's Survival Guide addresses this topic directly, along with so many other normal issues and questions like "What's up with My Feet," which was an issue I had after the birth of my son. In all the pregnancy books I had read while pregnant, not one of them discussed this phenomenon, and I was completely shocked when my shoes didn't fit anymore! That's right - I didn't know that your feet can grow in width due to pregnancy hormones. And as Wider answers in the book, not only will they most likely stay this new size, but we now have a valid excuse to go out and buy new shoes - a form of shopping therapy many new and renewed moms can appreciate!

The New Mom's Survival Guide also addresses tougher questions and answers regarding the mental health of the postpartum mom. From common Baby Blues to more serious issues of Postpartum Depression and even Postpartum Psychosis, The New Mom's Survival Guide answers the questions related to each, making certain the reader understands that these are issues that can be addressed by professionals if necessary, and aren't abnormal experiences for a new mom.

In the introduction of The New Mom's Survival Guide, Jennifer Wider, M.D. expresses her desire to "have created a sold, well-researched health guide for new moms that addresses their concerns about themselves" while swimming in a sea of information about their children. Not only has Wider successfully achieved this goal, but she does it in a way that isn't just straight-forward, but also in the way of making the reader feel as if the answers to her questions are coming from a good friend - not only a medical professional.

So for all the new and renewed moms out there with the lingering questions about their body, mind and spirit, The New Mom's Survival Guide, by Jennifer Wider, M.D is the prefect postpartum manual to have on hand. Without it, your questions may be lost in the whirlwind we call parenthood!

More on The New Mom's Survival Guide:

The New Mom's Survival Guide
How to Reclaim Your Body, Your Health, Your Sanity, and Your Sex Life After Having a Baby

By Jennifer Wider, M.D.

Description

The New Mom's Survival Guide Answers These and Many Other Questions:

Why can't I lose the extra weight?

I'm just too tired to have sex -- and It hurts. What should I do?

Can I catch croup from my child?

At last your baby has arrived, and you're experiencing all the joys that come with being a new mom. But you may not have bargained on acne and varicose veins, not to mention constipation, vaginal pain, mood swings, or perhaps one of the more serious conditions that pregnancy can trigger. In this compassionate, comprehensive guide, Dr. Jennifer Wider, a physician as well as the mother of two small children, delivers up-to-date medical information, candid answers to a host of questions, and expert advice on a range of postpartum issues, including:

• When the baby blues are more than just a phase
• Feelings of isolation for the stay-at-home mom
• Feelings of guilt for the back-to-work mom
• Cracked nipples and other breast-feeding concerns
• Thyroid problems, anemia, diabetes, urinary incontinence, and other conditions that can show up during or after pregnancy

From redefining yourself to taking care of yourself while caring for your baby, The New Mom's Survival Guide contains such a wealth of practical help that new moms will turn to it again and again.

Author Bio

Jennifer Wider, MD, is a doctor, author, and radio personality who specializes in women's health issues. She is the medical advisor to the Society for Women's Health Research in Washington, D.C. Dr. Wider is a regular contributor to Cosmopolitan magazine and hosts a weekly segment on Cosmo Radio for Sirius Satellite. She has appeared as a health expert on The Today Show, CBS News, Good Day NY, Fox News, and a variety of cable channels. She lives with her physician husband, and their daughter and son, in Fairfield County, Connecticut.

Visit the author at http://www.drwider.com/.

Reviews

"Practical, upbeat, and medically accurate . . . like having a wise and experienced doctor at your fingertips." --Christiane Northrup, M.D., author of The Wisdom of Menopause and Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom

"This book offers the kind of excellent advice, guidance, and reassurance that every new mom could use." --Brooke Shields, author of Down Came the Rain