Blog Posts by Mommy Tracked

by Leslie Morgan Steiner (Two Cents on Working Motherhood)

One of the choice scenes from Sex and the City Two takes place between Charlotte and Miranda, the two moms from the fabulous female foursome. Miranda gets Charlotte drunk because she senses Little Miss Perfect needs to open up about how frustrating motherhood and marriage can be.

"When I started thinking my nanny and my husband might be having an affair," Charlotte confesses to Miranda a few drinks later in an Abu Dhabi bar, "My first thought was: I can't lose the nanny!" The scene ends with Charlotte and Miranda making a tipsy toast to less-economically-well-endowed mothers who have to take care of their kids and their marriages without "help."

However, in reality many New Yorkers and others across our country demonstrate far less appreciation for their childcare providers. In New York and elsewhere, in-home childcare workers go without basic workplace protection: they don't receive paid vacation or sick days,

by Risa Green (Tales from the Mommy Track)

Over the course of the last two weeks, my daughter and I have been preparing for her to go to sleepaway camp. We've ordered labels, we've bought toiletries, we've stamped and addressed envelopes, and, most importantly, we've gone clothes shopping. I love shopping with my daughter. She's a clothes horse (a chip off the old block) and she looks great in everything she puts on (and knows it). But because she has to wear a uniform to school every day, we don't shop for her all that often, which makes the times we do shop really fun and special for us both. But this time, our shopping trip was a little different than it's been in past years.

I suggested that we start off at Target for some of the basics, and then round things out over at Gap Kids, like we usually do each summer. But my daughter was not having it, and instead insisted that the only acceptable store at which to shop is Justice. If you are not familiar with Justice, there are

by Meredith O'Brien (Moms in Pop Culture & Politics)

Okay, so we TV addicts are still feeling a tad melancholy about the fact that many of our favorite TV shows have wrapped for the season, not to return with new episodes until late September or early October. And some shows, like Lost, 24 and The New Adventures of Old Christine, aren't going to return at all. (*sniff*)

But all is not lost. Many new and returning shows are premiering over the summer. So if you're looking for a cheap form of entertainment for which you don't need to hire a babysitter, fight traffic or find a parking spot, I've got a few suggestions for you, TV-wise, to keep you entertained until the fall:

Sundays

Mad Men (Season 4) AMC, 10 p.m. Premieres July 25.

This show cannot return fast enough for me. I'm jones-ing for new Mad Men episodes in a big way. For the uninitiated: Mad Men is an exquisitely thoughtful, sexy, intriguing series set in 1960s New York City, and its suburbs, chiefly

by Vicki Larson (Around the Watercooler)

"It's not fair!" I heard one of my boys scream to the other one day.

From where I was in the house, I couldn't tell what wasn't fair and which one wanted to make an issue out of it, but it didn't really make much difference. Each had at some point embraced the phrase as his own, along with "You can't make me," "I'm going to run away!" and the ever-popular, "I hate you."

"It's not fair!" is an equal opportunity phrase, unconcerned with gender and where you are in the birth pecking order among your siblings, or even if have siblings or not.

Kids are preoccupied with fairness. It always seems to them as if someone's getting more than they are - more time, more attention, more stuff. They feel it in sports, too, when it wasn't fair that their team - clearly the better team - didn't win. They feel it on the schoolyard, when they don't get picked for a game of Four Square but Johnny, who can't thrown a ball to save his life, does.

Like most new parents, Julie Aigner-Clark wanted to give her baby daughter the best. What could be better than exposing her to the arts, thought the former English teacher. From that idea back in 1997 grew the multibillion-dollar infant development media empire known as Baby Einstein. Although Aigner-Clark and her husband, William, sold the company to the Walt Disney Co. in 2001, they have been involved in a controversy stemming from two University of Washington studies claiming to link TV viewing by babies and toddlers to attention issues and delayed language development. Recently, William went to court to get the University of Washington to release its data. Disney also was facing pressure by consumer groups and the threat of a class-action suit over its educational claims, prompting Disney to offer refunds in late 2009 for Baby Einstein products.

At the same time Aigner-Clark, 43, was battling breast cancer, twice - in 2004 and again in 2008. Her book geared for children about her

by Meredith O'Brien (Moms in Pop Culture & Politics)

*Warning, minor Sex and the City 2 spoilers ahead*

Okay, so it wasn't as bad as ALL THAT. It wasn't Glitter for God's sake. Geez film reviewers, hate much?

As I stepped into the theater to plunk my hard-earned cash onto the counter to pay for admission to see Sex and the City 2, I carried in my head the brutal reviews I'd read in newspapers and online journals lampooning the latest frolic featuring the four pampered ladies of Manhattan as they embarked on a well-heeled platinum jaunt to Abu Dhabi.

One review in my local newspaper set the tone for me before I even set foot in the movie house. The writer observed, ". . . [T]he once-fab foursome of Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte have gone from confident and independent 30-something women to neurotic, self-indulgent middle-aged shrews." Just for fun, I looked up the definition of the word "shrew" in my dictionary; it read, "a nagging, evil-tempered woman."

by Jennifer Sey (Around the Watercooler)

I want a baby. I am 41 years old and have two kids already. Ages 7 and 9. They can do most things for themselves these days including but not limited to: fixing their own breakfast (cereal), wiping their own butts (mostly), and putting themselves to bed, albeit past their bedtime. It's not that things are easy. As all parents know, the hard stuff just changes as kids get older. When they're babies it's all about figuring out what's causing the seemingly unprompted bawling. The surefire go to is always the boob. Whip it out, shove it in. Problem solved, mission accomplished.

By two or three years old it's tantrums in the grocery store. Or at the park when it's time to leave. At the top of the slide, he stomps his feet and refuses to come down. You might insist, you might scream and then you might bribe him down with sweets. But he knows what you're up to. After downing the cookie, he grabs on to a bollard with heretofore unseen

by Risa Green (Tales from the Mommy Track)
The preschool that my children have gone to is awesome. It's this super-mellow, down-to-earth, developmental haven, which is not an easy thing to find in Los Angeles. I've been bringing one or the other of my kids there for seven years now, and in a few short weeks, my son is graduating. For me, it's the end of an era.

In a lot of ways, I feel like I've grown up in my kids' preschool. I started as a neurotic, first time mom in mommy and me, then watched (in horror) as my daughter transitioned to staying at school without me. And the next year, I started all over again with my son, this time as a seasoned veteran. My daughter soon graduated, and I went on to become one of those harried, crazed preschool moms with an older kid in elementary school, trying to straddle two worlds at once and not doing a very good job in either of them. And now, finally, here I am, about to become a mom of a preschooler no longer, but rather a mom of two