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stepmama
Life can be hard, but it's a lot easier when you are a good person, trying to do the right thing surrounded by people who love you! Goodness has a way of being contagious. Lucky boy. Lucky MAMA.
(from CLEAN UNDERWEAR: Book MAMA's February Review For Kid-O's)2 days, 2 hours agoShare your opinion
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Bloodroot by Amy Greene
As you may have gathered by now, I read a lot. And I think about reading and writing a lot. And if I’m reading a particularly engrossing book, it is sometimes hard for me to focus on real life but I can do it. I have become somewhat adept at switching back and forth. Now that I’m trying to write movies though it is getting harder because I keep visualizing things as scenes, and I can’t even watch a movie without thinking about the re-writes and the dialogue between director and writer etc.
ANYWAY, even though it completely sucked that my daughter got this weird high fever/ bad tummy illness on our way to the mountains over spring break and had to spend the first 36 hours of the trip in bed/ on the toilet, it turned out to be super convenient for me because I was reading Bloodroot. So, I just lay next to her...
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The first thing that is amazing about this book is that van Ogtrop had the time to write it! She is the editor of REAL SIMPLE magazine, has 3 young sons, lots of pets and is always tired. But she is also really funny. The book is written like a little A to Z guidebook/dictionary of terms like “accounting error” which she defines as “the irrevocable mistake you make when you decide to have one more child than you can actually handle, which pushes the parental sanity balance sheet from the black (a place of comfort, if occasional boredom) to the red (excitement, panic).” She is beyond honest, extremely realistic, and hilariously self-deprecating. A fast read/ a great gift for any working mother.
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This book, coincidentally, is also written by an editor-in-chief of a major magazine. Stacy Morrison is the editor of REDBOOK, and a few years ago, her husband of 10 years and father of her infant son decided he was done—done with the marriage, the baby, the house etc. Morrison begins this heartbreaking story at that point and then describes in honest detail the next two years of her life as she sorts out her life, her divorce, her job, child care, her flooding house. She survives a fire, a couple trips to the emergency room with her son, some very real spiritual crises of self, and many, many run-ins with her Ex as she tries to fall out of love with him and tries to create an entirely new life/identity from the one she thought she was going to have. As one of my girlfriends is fond of saying, “the hits just keep on coming,” for...
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I’m calling this our Kids’ Book for the month, but really it is for everybody. And honestly, it’s just too cute for words. I was drawn to it because my kids are BIG animal lovers and the black and white baby animal photography is adorable. Each page features a different animal and words written in the voice of a child (or adult) thanking mom for all the various and sundry things we do as we raise our kids and try our best to make them into good little people. Get this book and a picture of yourself with your mom or yourself with your child, frame it, and you’ve got the perfect Mothers’ Day Gift.
This is how this little gift book begins: “Mom, the other day I was rubbing my belly button and it really made me stop and think; what a funny little reminder of such an important connection.” I think about that sometimes, when my girls...
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For this month, we have a little bit of a Mothers’ Day theme happening. O-Mama is always celebrating Moms—especially opinionated Moms…so this month’s books are about Moms—and our special, joyful and sometimes complicated relationships with our kids!
Rainier Maria Rilke (one of my very favorite poets) said: "The knowledge of impermanence that haunts our days is their very fragrance."
That's an interesting idea. Especially to parents --- we've all felt it. The ticking clock. That guilty feeling you have when your child is a psychotic toddler and you find yourself wishing time away—just a few months or even a year, just to get you through the terrible 2’s and 3’s. How the days are long, but the years are short. How our kids can't know what they mean to us until they have kids who mean everything to them.
10 ½ years ago, I had my...
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Another book by the wildly prolific Jodi Picoult! The mother in this story is struggling with an 18 year old son with Asperger’s Syndrome—a disorder on the Autism spectrum—something very much in the news and pretty controversial as far as causes etc. This mother has devoted her entire life to her child—her children—2 sons, but obviously the special needs child has received the lion’s share of her attentions.
Her marriage has crumbled; her second son has his share of resentments, but her eldest—because of her tireless efforts—has become extremely high functioning. She has learned exactly what sets him off and has adapted their household, meals, schedules etc. around his specific needs. The story takes a jarring turn when her special needs son is accused of murder, and because of the nature of his disorder, he appears to virtually...
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