But as long time readers know I write for many a blog and I've been a total slacker posting here when those go up. So here ya go:
At the AWEARNESS blog:
I have a new post at WIMNs Voices about the Oprah show with mommy bloggers.
I’ve been blogging since before I became a mom. While so many mommy bloggers started blogging to find community or reassurance of their lives and decisions as moms, I sought out a venue to rant and rave about politics and baseball. So when I got pregnant, the natural instinct was to keep on writing. And I did. I wrote about my midwives and why I stayed with them despite an hour drive into the suburbs to see them. I wrote about being diagnosed with gestational diabetes. I wrote about how I couldn’t save my mom from her own diabetes and she died at the beginning of my third trimester. I wrote because that’s what I do.
A few years later I joined a mommy collaborative blog, the Chicago Moms Blog. It was a lot of fun writing and reading with different moms. Attachment moms, adoptive moms, suburban moms…A fairly good spectrum of moms. One of the goals that most of the moms shared was getting our stories told on OPRAH. We thought we had a good story. A bunch of moms who might never spend 10 minutes together if it weren’t for blogging, who supported each other’s work even if it differed from our own and moms who were doing more than just complaining about leaky diapers and husbands who don’t realize the kids need dinner. We were moms, but more than the stereotype.
Turns out that Oprah prefers the stereotype.
One of my most vivid memories of first grade is when Mrs. Gerry wouldn’t let me have a counting strip. It had lily pads on it and a frog at zero. When I got up to get in line to get my counting strip, Mrs. Gerry told me to turn around and sit down. “You don’t need one.” I was embarrassed to have my math skills announced like that to the class. But she was right, I didn’t need it. That was the start of my math nrrd status.Last week I had my daughter at my office because of report card pick up. Yes, in Chicago, that means the kids have the day off so teachers can focus on parent conferences. She loves being at my office because I have a white board and I let her draw all over it. Normally she draws pictures, but this time she was doodling math problems. I turned around and saw that she was trying to add 15 to 20 and had figured it out. How did my kindergarten daughter figure this out? Well, she drew counters. First 15 then 20 more and counted them up. I also noticed that she wrote the problem out vertically, so I thought it was a good time to teach her how to add double digits. I drew boxes around the right column and told her to add those numbers, then did the same with the left column. I knew it would work because there was no carrying involved.
BTW - I think I might change my motherhood tag to mothering. Hmm...