Jun 13 2013
By Elissa Strauss at 12:30 pm
My eyes were ready to take a giant lap around my forehead when I saw this headline in today’s New York Times style section: “Mommy Blog or a Glossy Fashion Magazine?”
I took a sip of my breakfast tea and prepared myself for a delicious hate-read of the story in which, I imagined, shiny-haired socialites would talk about their $3000 diaper bags and which pieces work best on their postpartum “cleansed” (starved) bodies.
Instead, I found that I liked what these fashionable mamas had to say. Julia Restoin Roitfeld, daughter of former French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld, said she had the idea for her blog Romy & The Bunnies after she had a baby and was struggling to feel attractive and fashionable. Read the rest of this entry →
By Amanda Koppelman-Milstein at 9:56 am
I went to my first postnatal checkup wearing maternity pants that I didn’t realize were covered in spit up.
“Next time I see you, I will be sure to make sure that this doesn’t happen,” I said to the midwife.
Seven months later, due to some rather high doses of steroids, I am still in maternity pants. They are still almost always covered in spit up. Had I known I’d spend longer post-pregnancy in maternity pants than I spent during pregnancy, I definitely would have invested in more pants–particularly since they’re regularly soaked in foul-smelling regurgitated hypoallergenic formula. Read the rest of this entry →
Jun 12 2013
By Molly Tolsky at 3:53 pm
All the Jewish celebrity parent gossip you (n)ever wanted to know.
- Breaking news: Bethenny Frankel is a horrible mother and stole the Hello Kitty sunglasses right off of daughter Bryn’s face. Just kidding. She’s not horrible. I would have done the same (cause they’re cute). (Celebrity Baby Scoop)
- Look out world: the Parker-Broderick twins have been given scooters and are on the move. Glad they’re being safe, but what would Carrie Bradshaw have to say about their inevitable helmet hair? (Celebrity Baby Scoop)
- Here’s a photo of Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld’s very cute son, Julian, sporting red lips at the Baby Buggy Bedtime Bash. (Instagram)
- Elsewhere on Instagram, Rachel Zoe shares a photo of her with Skyler, accompanied with the hashtag #magicalmommymoments. It’s all very sweet and precious and hard to make fun of. (Instagram)
By Alina Adams at 10:00 am
I have never liked having a fuss made over me. I skipped both my high school and my college graduation ceremonies because I didn’t see a point to the long-winded, tedious ritual (held outside in the heat, no less). My husband and I got married at City Hall, because I felt the same way about weddings. (Maybe I inherited the trait from my own mother. Whenever we go to a friend’s wedding, she always tells my husband and I, “Thank you so much for not putting me through this.”) Read the rest of this entry →
Jun 11 2013
By Racheli Fuld at 2:00 pm
I was just shy of 23 years old when my first son was born. That meant that the sole people I viewed as role models were my mother, who had my sister when I was 13, and a handful of friends, who had children practically right after high school.
When it came to the issue of breastfeeding, they are the ones I turned to as examples. My birth class teacher was somewhat of a hippy, who informed all of us new mothers-to-be that a year of nursing is the absolute minimum. I had stared at her in shock as I heard these words, certain that I would only last six months or so as the mothers I knew had done. It was only when I held my little boy in my arms for the first time and tried to get him to latch on that I truly began to discover what breastfeeding was all about and what it entailed. Read the rest of this entry →
By Evan London at 12:14 pm
I am not a fan of baseball. I’ve never understood the draw of the game, and could never comprehend the passion people have for it. My closest friends from college are all crazy baseball fans; they’re involved with fantasy leagues, spending hours arguing over who has better players.
I didn’t get it. After all, I didn’t play baseball as a kid. I never watched it on TV. I never played catch with my dad, who was never around. My only real experience with baseball was occasionally–very occasionally–going to Shea or Yankee Stadium to see games with my camp or friends. We’d sit all the way at the top, in the cheap seats, directly in the summer sun. There we’d sit, broiling, as all the action occurred amongst the ants on the field far below. In my opinion, a slower, duller game could not have been invented. Y-A-W-N. Read the rest of this entry →
By Adina Soclof at 9:59 am
When my second son was 8 years old, he decided to that he wanted to go to camp. My husband and I were all for it. We went to different camps but we both loved, loved it. Did I mention loved? We both started our camper careers young, me at age 8 him at age 10.
We chose a camp, my husband’s alma mater, made the necessary arrangements early in the year, and talked about how great an experience it would be for him. We regaled him with tales of our camp adventures, boating, color wars, girl boy singalons, trips to town, hikes, camp outs, and ghost stories. Even my mother-in-law got in on the action; she told him about unpacking his father’s trunk when he got home and finding the new packages of underwear that she had sent unopened. Gross…but so campy… Read the rest of this entry →
Jun 10 2013
By Yael Armstrong at 4:00 pm
Occasionally I like to think about the kind of mom I want to be and the kind of mother I actually am. Am I calm and compassionate? Overprotective? Who do my boys see?
Last week when I asked myself this question it was at the end of a very long day. I was tired from spending hours at the park, then coming home to a house that needed cleaning and followed around by two little boys who wanted me to entertain them but were soon content to entertain themselves by messing up whatever I’d just cleaned. The day ended with both boys refusing to eat what I’d made them for dinner. A momentary food fight ensued and I yelled at them to stop it. At bath time they splashed and shrieked and the headache that had been holding itself at bay throughout the day burst into my temples around the time that the oldest pushed the youngest down and they both started to cry. At bedtime they wanted to read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. The irony was not lost on me. I put them to bed and they got up six times until standing over dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, I yelled for them to lay down and go to sleep. Read the rest of this entry →
By Kveller at 12:55 pm
All the parenting news you probably didn’t have time to read this week.
-When did sunscreen get so complicated and how do you choose one that won’t kill your kid? (Slate)
-Meet Melissa and Doug Bernstein. You probably already have their names on cute wooden toys in your house. Now, find out about the couple behind the brand. A few teasers: they have six kids (which comes in handy for product testing) and live in a 36,000 square foot home. (New York Times)
-The secret to being both a successful writer and a mother is apparently to have just one kid. Or so says Lauren Sandler in a highly contentious article (promoting her book One and Only). Here’s a list of female writers with just one child (Joan Didion, Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Hardwick, Margaret Atwood, Ellen Willis.) (The Atlantic)
-Supermodels and their moms. A photo essay. This is from a few months back, but it’s worth posting now. Ah-mazing. (New York Times)
By Alissa Butterfass at 10:54 am
Thanks to a New York Times article, there was quite a bit of discussion last week about whether a baby conceived with a non-Jewish egg donor but carried and raised by a Jewish women is considered Jewish. And here on Kveller, Jordana Horn eloquently proposed that rather than question the identity of such a baby, we should embrace this child into Jewish life, with which I wholeheartedly agree. As long as any child or family considers itself Jewish and lives accordingly, should it matter what a small group of Rabbis declares is that child’s identity? No, of course not.
That said, two weeks ago my husband and I took our four-year-old son to the mikveh to complete his conversion.
Our younger son S. was born through gestational surrogacy. He is 100% biologically our child but was carried by another women, in our case a non-Jewish woman.
My husband and I have no doubt S. is Jewish. Neither does S. He sang the Ma Nishtanah at our Seder, sings Shalom Aleichem each Shabbat, and will spontaneously burst into Adon Olam, to the tune of Call Me Maybe, while playing with Legos. But because of the circumstances of his birth, there are those who might question whether S. is indeed Jewish. Read the rest of this entry →
