bekahcubed

Categories Parenting

The day I bottle-fed in public

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The plan was that she would drink her bottle on the way over to our missions pastor’s house, she’d fall asleep in her car seat, and then we’d set her car seat in some remote corner at their house while we visited with our mission’s care team.

Instead, she refused the bottle, stayed stubbornly awake for the drive, and spent the entire visit (all of which was after her normal bedtime) climbing around on the floor where we sat.

Well, except when she grew hungry and I pulled the bottle out of my purse to feed her with.

I know our missions pastor’s wife breastfed – her daughter got fussy while we were visiting during a new person welcome function when Daniel and I were new at the church, and she and I talked a bit about breastfeeding. Our missionary had been breastfeeding her sweet daughter as we all talked. She’d mentioned wanting to maybe learn more about maternal/child health so she could help the women she worked with – and mentioned breastfeeding specifically as part of that.

And I just pulled a bottle out of my purse.

I’m not usually self-conscious about my mothering – Daniel and I have been entrusted with the care of our daughter, and we’re caring for her as we know best. I don’t obsess over what anyone else thinks about that. I’m pretty confident that I’m doing the right thing – and I don’t need validation from others to give me that confidence.

Until I pulled a bottle out of my purse.

At that moment, I worried what these people would think. I’m a bottle-feeding mom. I don’t value breastfeeding. I don’t understand its importance. I’d just told one of the other women that I’d been a WIC dietitian before Tirzah Mae was born – would she think WIC wasn’t pro-breastfeeding?

I stuck the nipple in Tirzah Mae’s mouth and she sucked it down like the bottle-feeding pro she is.

No one mentioned it.

I wanted to defend myself, to interject that Tirzah Mae was getting expressed breastmilk. Could I somehow work the fact that I still have breastmilk from Tirzah Mae’s hospitalization in my freezer into the conversation? There was no opportunity. No need, really. But I wanted to defend myself from what I feared the other women were thinking.

Everyone’s eyes were closed to pray when Tirzah Mae grew fussy again. I stood and we walked to the side of the room to breastfeed. She calmed down and I returned my blouse to normal. Someone closed the prayer time and everyone’s eyes opened again.

It’s the first time I’ve ever bottle-fed in public.

Categories Theology

God’s Justice (2 Thessalonians 1:5-10)

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“This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you are also suffering— since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us, when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at among all who have believed, because our testimony to you was believed.”

~2 Thessalonians 1:5-10 (ESV)

What does God consider just?

God considers it just to repay persecuters with affliction and to grant relief to the persecuted.

When will God repay the persecuters and grant relief to the persecuted?

God will repay the persecuters and grant relief to the persecuted when Christ Jesus returns.

How will God repay the persecuters?

The persecuters will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His might.

How will God grant relief to the persecuted?

The persecuted will be relieved as Christ is glorified in His saints and as Christ is marveled at among all who have believed.

I look at injustices and cry out for immediate judgement.

Make the wrongdoer’s pay. Make the victims restitution. Justice must be served.

Now.

That’s what I say.

God considers it just to wait to judge until Christ has returned.

“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servantsand their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.”

~Revelation 6:9-11 (ESV)

It can’t be right, waiting to judge.

But all God does is right. He is just to wait to judge.

“But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.”

~2 Peter 3:7 (ESV)

God is not slow. He is patient.

He is not unjust. He is merciful.

When His judgment comes, it is final. When His relief comes, it is sublime.

He is willing to wait, chooses to wait so that relief may come to as many as are called.

Categories Recap

Recap (2015/07/11)

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In my spirit:

  • Contemplating God’s justice in 2 Thessalonians 1:5-10
  • Praying for us, “that our God may make [us] worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in [us], and [we] in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (2 Thessalonians 1:11-12)
  • Praying for our missionaries, “that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored” and “that [they] may be delivered from wicked and evil men” (2 Thessalonians 3:1-2)

In the living room:

  • I decided to try something new with my workouts this week – doing HIIT for different body parts instead of my previous 12 reps of various exercises divided by marching in place – and it is KILLING me.
  • More specifically, this leg workout almost killed me. It recommended 1 minute of each exercise, so I did so with a 30 second “rest” (marching) period after each minute of exercise – and got to the fifth exercise before I couldn’t breathe and my legs were too jelly to keep my balance. I’ll be trying 20 second “on” and 10 second “off” intervals next time – and will take my inhaler before I start. This one appears to be a workout you need to work yourself into!

In the kitchen:

  • We had leftover Spaghetti with Szechuan Chicken and Peanut Sauce earlier this week – I found the recipe in the Good Housekeeping Budget Dinners cookbook, and it’s a definite keeper. I found several decent recipes in that particular cookbook.
  • We’ve been eating and loving this lasagna soup – I used sausage instead of ground pork and farfalle (bow tie pasta) instead of broken lasagna noodles. I’ve done this before but hadn’t noticed how salty it is (probably because of the sausage – ALDIs sausage is quite salty); next time, I’ll skip the salt.
  • I was busy drafting an email yesterday afternoon and lost track of time – was just messaging Daniel to ask him if I should make dinner late or have him pick something up when the power went out, deciding it for us. The power wasn’t out terribly long (20 minutes, maybe?), but the pizza I didn’t make was delicious :-)

In the nursery:

  • Remember how I said Tirzah Mae can’t move forward? She seems determined to prove me wrong by army crawling almost everywhere.
  • I’ve been noticing how extroverted Tirzah Mae seems. She just lights up when we go out in public and when the world showers attention on her.

In the craft room:

  • I made Tirzah Mae a simple glitter bottle this morning after she spent a while rolling my Nalgene across the floor. So far, her favorite thing to do with it is to knock it off the ledge of the bathtub into my bathwater.

In the library:
aka “Books added to TBR list”

In the garden:

  • It looked like I was going to have beans, but while they flowered, they haven’t set on pods. Bummer.
  • On the other hand, my tomatoes are setting on nicely and I’m starting to see little cucumbers.
  • It’s been cool/rainy enough between hot spells that my broccoli is still putting on side shoots (although they do bolt rather quickly.) I might be able to carry these same plants all the way through fall.

On the land:

  • The trailer is off our land – so we’re ready to start digging as soon as permits are pulled!
  • We’ve just about got the septic permit and our builder is pulling the rest of the permits – which means we’ll probably be set to break ground first week in August (Ay-yi!)

On the web:

Categories Books

Puzzling over True Love

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A sibling bought me a Thomas Kincade puzzle for Christmas one year. It was a 1000 piece puzzle depicting scenes from “Gone with the Wind”.

Daniel and I started working on the puzzle earlier this year when I complained that we were defaulting to the television for our time together.

We worked on the puzzle a couple evenings, and it’s been on the living room table ever since – slowly being buried under mail, then uncovered, then buried again, then uncovered. I’ve worked on it intermittently, but it’s taken much longer than my usual cheapo 500 piece puzzles from the dollar store.

Well, I finally finished it this week.

And am I glad I did – because until it was finished and put away, I couldn’t keep my mind from puzzling over the little note from the artist on the back of the box.

Kincade wrote:

“My painting is populated with favorite film characters and rendered in small cinematic vignettes designed to capture all the drama and nostalgia of this Hollywood spectacular. I truly hope this painting delights all fans of GONE WITH THE WIND. Beyond this, I pray it reminds us all that true love does exist.”

That last part gets me. I don’t get it.

How does Gone with the Wind remind us that true love exists?

I think back over when I read it a few years back, puzzling over each dysfunctional relationship. Scarlett and Ashley. Melanie and Ashley. Scarlett and Charles. Scarlett and Frank. Scarlett and Rhett.

But surely Kincade doesn’t think Scarlett and Rhett embody true love?

The only potential example of true love I can see in Gone with the Wind is Scarlett’s love for herself.

Unless the movie is that different from the book.

Categories Education

Making Connections

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Unit studies were all the rage when I was reading about homeschooling in my mid-teens. Monthly themes governed every subject in the homeschooling curriculum.

A unit study on bugs would have children reading about bugs, catching bugs, counting bugs, exploring the bug ecosystem, learning about how bugs are used in different cultures or throughout history. Bug art would abound.

If mom didn’t have the time, energy, or creativity to come up with her own unit study, websites and books offered an abundance of options.

Learning like this is more natural, the unit study people declared.

I wished I could jump on the bandwagon, but it was unfortunately too difficult for me to figure out how to connect bugs to calculus.

It wouldn’t be long before a radical old approach became popular, thanks to Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer’s The Well-Trained Mind. This new approach was much more systematic than either the unit study approach or the traditional school approach (at least as far as social studies is concerned).

Wise and Wise Bauer’s brand of classical education focused on a four year cycle for both history and science – strictly (for history) and loosely (for science) following the progression of historical thought through the ages.

The Well-Trained Mind gave an example of how students make connections, even when their mothers don’t plan in such a way as to make the connections explicit. They used “Mars” as an example. A student might learn the mythology of Mars when studying the Roman Empire and later learn about the planet Mars (red with blood, like the warlike god). Likewise, he will learn about the martial arts and will trace the term “martial” back to the god of war. Each bit of knowledge becomes a hook upon which other pieces of knowledge (from disparate disciplines) are hung.

When I read this example, I nodded my head. Sure, I acknowledged that was probably true. It’s like when you get a new car and suddenly see that make and model all over the road. It’s not that those cars weren’t already there, it’s just that you became more aware of them.

But apart from my car example, I couldn’t really think of a time when I’d had “hooks” to hang new information on.

Then my husband and I checked out Tom Reiss’s The Black Count to listen to during our fourth of July travels. The Black Count tells the story of the novelist Alexandre Dumas’ father (also named Alexandre Dumas), a general during the French Revolution.

Now, until a year ago, what little I knew of the French Revolution came from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities (not a bad read by any means, but certainly not a comprehensive introduction to the Revolution.) But last year, that changed when Daniel and I started listening to Mike Duncan’s Revolutions Podcast. We listened as Duncan gave a history of the English Revolution, and then the American Revolution, and then the French (he’s not done with the French Revolution yet – and I haven’t listened past the first dozen or so podcasts on the French Revolution.) As we listened, I’ll admit that my eyes sometimes glazed over and my mind started wandering. So much was so unfamiliar – the names, the events, the political bodies.

But as we listened to The Black Count, something strange happened. I started hearing the names, the political bodies, the events I’d heard before. And I listened more carefully this time around. It picqued my curiosity to read more, to relisten, to become more familiar with the French Revolution.

I thought of the differences between unit studies and a more systematic approach as I listened.

While Daniel and I were listening to one podcast after another after another of Duncan’s Revolutions, I got worn out with the topic. If I’d have been listening to The Black Count concurrently, I likely would have ignored the parts about the French Revolution, thinking I’d heard it before.

But, listening to it several months later, I was able to see the Revolution through fresh eyes, able to enjoy it, able to pass through again to impress the events more deeply upon my own memory.

I feel that there must be application to how I choose to homeschool someday, but I’m not sure exactly what it is.

I’m still rather enamored with the Bauer and Wise Bauer approach to history studies. I still rather enjoy immersing myself in a topic every once in a while. But I think this has reminded me that connections can be anywhere – and that it’s okay to let them arise naturally.

I don’t have to beat my children (or myself) over the head with learning. I have to make plenty of good books, good audiovisual learning opportunities (like Duncan’s podcasts!), good educational experiences available to my children.

They will make connections – even if it takes them until they’re 30 to start recognizing it.

Categories Everyday Life

Driving lessons: Six lane highways

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Complaining about other peoples’ driving, like complaining about the weather, seems to be ubiquitous to the human condition (at least in the modern age).

Everyone thinks that they understand the rules of driving and the conventions of traffic, and that they drive in the most common-sense way. If only everyone else drove like them, traffic would flow smoothly.

I am no exception.

Now, let me clarify. My husband and I are what you could call aggressive drivers (which is not the same thing as bad drivers, family-of-mine). I am aware that not all people have the, er, gonads to drive like we do. They are easily frightened by changing lanes or taking left turns.

Other people drive differently than we because they have different levels of experience. Many residents of our hometown, Lincoln Nebraska, have no reason to regularly drive a six lane highway. It makes sense that they would have a lower level of comfort as well as a lower level of understanding of how to properly drive on a six-lane highway.

But Wichitans, who drive on a six lane highway on a daily (or at least weekly) basis, should have a basic understanding of how to drive when they have three lanes all going the same direction.

Alas, they do not.

In case you were taught by a Wichitan, or were never taught, how to drive on a six-lane highway, allow me to educate you.

A six-lane highway has three lanes going in each direction. Each of those lanes has a different function.

It would behoove you to think of the outermost lane as the “merging” lane, the middle lane as the “driving” lane, and the innermost lane as the “passing” lane.

Functionally, this means that you should only be in the outermost lane if you are getting onto or off of the highway. You merge onto this lane when you enter the highway, after which you should be looking for the first opportunity to move into the middle “driving” lane. When you want to get off the highway, you merge back from the middle lane into the outermost lane and then to your off-ramp. Getting into the “merging” lane should happen no more than 2 exits from your off ramp. Ideally, you should never pass more than one exit at a time in the outer lane.

Why is this?

Lots of people are getting onto and off of the highway at any given exit. They HAVE to travel through the outermost lane to drive on the highway. If someone is just hanging out in this outermost lane, access onto and off of the highway is impeded, resulting in traffic snarls on and off the highway.

The innermost lane should be reserved for passing and should only be used if you are going faster than the traffic in the center lane. It amazes me that people don’t understand this particular convention.

If you are going at the same speed or more slowly than the driver to your right, that means that anyone who comes up behind you is forced to either slow down or to switch into the (already busy by necessity) outermost lane in order to pass. The more people that are popping in and out of that outermost lane, the more likely it will be for accidents to occur. So, to keep traffic moving and to avoid dangerous snarls, you should only drive in the innermost lane if you are going faster than the traffic in the middle “driving” lane (and if someone comes up behind you going faster than you? You should move into the middle “driving” lane to allow them to pass before moving back to the innermost “passing” lane to pass those who are going even slower in the “driving” lane.)

THAT, my friends, is how you should drive on a six-lane highway.

Categories Parenting, Tirzah Mae

Tirzah Mae is Eight (Six) Months

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As of yesterday, Tirzah Mae is eight months old (corrected to six.)

In some ways she’s exactly at her age-by-birthday. In others, she’s maybe a little behind her age-by-due-date. But she’s growing healthily, normally, well.

Gross Motor Skills:
Tirzah Mae is rolling, rolling, rolling – and she can back on her hands and knees as well. Unfortunately, she hasn’t figured out any way to move forward. So, for now, this means she’ll frequently scoot herself underneath one of the couches so that just her head is peeking out – then she’ll cry for help because… forward, mom!

She’s still not sitting by herself – I’m not sure exactly whether it’s lack of muscle control or simply interest in moving around. She’ll sit for about ten seconds before she topples – except that topple isn’t quite the word for it. She’ll sit for about ten seconds until she lunges for some object a couple feet away.

Fine Motor Skills:
Our girlie has just about got the two finger grasp down. When she gets really quiet on the floor while I’m reading a book, I’ll look up – and, more often then not, she’s delicately picking up a piece of lint between two fingers and placing it in her mouth.

Eating:
I started her on solids around 7 months (5 adjusted) since she was grabbing at our plates and wouldn’t give us any peace at mealtimes unless we fed her (and no, breastfeeding would not do.) She generally has some fruit for lunch (or what I’m eating if I have enough leftovers for two), and eats what we eat in the evening.

I haven’t worried about introducing foods slowly (even though I have routinely encouraged moms to do that in the past – mostly because I had just enough moms come to me after the fact worried that their kids had intolerances and ended up doing elimination diets in an unsound manner – far nicer to add slowly while a baby’s getting good nutrition at the breast than to eliminate things when those are providing the bulk of a child’s nutrition). Anyhow – I haven’t worried about introducing things slowly, have just been giving her what we eat.

So she’s eaten enchiladas, curry, turkey and broccoli over biscuits, Great Grams’ spaghetti, Szechuan chicken, you name it. And she likes it all. (I won’t get too triumphant yet and pronounce this to be because of my expert child feeding practices – but I *will* say that if I’d stopped when she made faces on the first few bites, she’d have a much more limited palate.)

Sleeping:
This continues to be a struggle. Tirzah Mae sleeps “through the night” (meaning a five hour stretch) most nights, but she doesn’t often do more than that. She’s mostly in her crib, but still occasionally ends up in bed with us.

I think teething may be the cause of our most recent nighttime woes – she’ll wake up and want to nurse and then eventually fall asleep at the breast. But as soon as I take her off the breast, she’ll wake up and want back on – she’s not swallowing anything so I know it’s just for comfort. If I refuse her the breast or try the pacifier, she’ll be wide awake and screaming. I took her to bed with me a few nights, but she was on the breast absolutely all night long and I didn’t get any sleep. On the other hand, spending an hour and a half up with her trying to get her to sleep and finally resorting to graduated extinction (which means I don’t sleep for another hour after she goes to sleep because I’m still hearing her scream in my head) isn’t exactly ideal either.

This is a stage, I remind myself. I signed up for this, I tell myself. And it’ll only be another twenty years or so :-)

Teeth:

When are those teeth going to finally pop out? This is the question of the month. She chews on everything, rubs her gums with a fervor I’ve never seen, is fussier than she’s ever been, isn’t sleeping very well again. It’s GOT to be teething (right?) But the teeth remain stubbornly hidden and the teething process seems like it’s lasting forever.

This is a stage, I remind myself. I signed up for this, I tell myself. And it’ll only be another twenty years or so :-)

Social Skills:

Just yesterday at the library, one of the librarians came running (as she usually does) when Tirzah Mae and I walked in. Tirzah Mae took a little while to warm up before she smiled at the librarian. But, after a little bit of playing on the floor while her mama looked at books, she was ready to laugh at everyone she met – a girl near the computers, an older gentleman in the stacks, and the same librarian as we checked out.

It’s tremendous fun, being her mama.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupery

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Is The Little Prince a children’s book? It’s the question I’ve been asking myself since reading it for the first time a couple weeks ago. It’s the question I’m still asking myself.

It definitely appears to be a children’s book. It’s short in length, it includes integral illustrations. The main character is a “little” prince, apparently a child, who has a hard time understanding adults. The narrator is an adult, but even he considers other adults to be unperceptive and out of touch with what’s important.

But the book seems deep, way too deep to be a children’s book. It is full of deep thoughts, potential symbols, possible layers of meaning.

So is it a children’s book?

I don’t know, but I’m going to treat it as though it is.

Because The Little Prince seems determined to contradict the idea that big ideas and deep thoughts are the purview of adults. In fact, The Little Prince almost certainly proclaims that adults have got the world all wrong.

The story opens with the narrator telling of, when he was a boy, drawing a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. He showed his drawing to adults but they never understood it, since they saw only a dark outline, not comprehending the elephant within. The narrator explains that “Grownups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.” The narrator started using this drawing as a test of sorts, to see whether people were perceptive or not. Of course, the grownups never were, and so he would bring himself down to the adult’s level, speaking of bridge and golf and politics and neckties.

But after the narrator crashes his plane in the Sahara, he meets a little prince who has the perception to recognize a sheep inside a sketched box. Slowly, the narrator learns the little prince’s story – how he hails from a tiny planet which he carefully tends, how he has traveled through the universe, how he has tamed a fox and been tamed by a rose.

And as we read the little prince’s tale, we learn with him the foolishness of kings pretending to be absolute, of conceited men in their self-admiration, of drunkards drinking to forget their shame, of businessmen so occupied with money that they cannot enjoy life, of workers so busy with work that they never rest, of scholars whose self-importance prevents them from ever actually learning. We learn that everyone and everything is limited in perspective, seeing only what he will and what he can. We learn that relationships are what make life meaningful, that relationships require work. We learn that relationships can cause deep pain, but are also a source of great joy.

We learn, along with the little prince and his new friend, that life does not consist in its outer trappings, in power or position or prestige. Life consists of inner quality, of care for others, of loving and being loved.

And this is why I love this simple and complex little book with its simple and complex little prince.

It is a children’s book, yet not a children’s book – reminding us what really matters.

Rating: 5 stars
Category: Children’s (?) fantasy
Synopsis: A pilot meets a little prince after a crash in the Sahara – and learns great lessons from the little prince’s intergalactic travels.
Recommendation: Absolutely worth reading.

This was Amy’s pick for the Reading to Know Classics Bookclub this month – Check out what others are saying about this book.

Categories Everyday Life

Here’s to you, Mr. Robinson

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When I was in elementary school, I read an article about the Robinson family in Mary Pride’s Practical Homeschooling.

The Robinson story fascinated me. Lots of kids left without a mother, end up essentially “homeschooling themselves” with classic books.

I was always about being self-taught, thought that was the most wonderful thing. I wished I could be the Robinsons (without the mother being dead, of course).

Of course, even though my family wasn’t using the Robinson curriculum, I could still be really smart and self-taught. I wouldn’t be surprised if that article wasn’t partly responsible for my decision to read Plato’s Republic in sixth grade.

But there was one part of the story that I envied intensely and had no way of replicating myself. Mr. Robinson, a Ph.D., wrote of how he’d have other Ph.D’s over to dinner, where his children would listen to the technical and intellectual conversation, seeing how bright minds are always asking questions of the world.

Oh how I longed for a Ph.D. around our table, spurring my mind to ask big questions.

Fast forward twenty years. I’m sitting around the table with my husband and his parents. Daniel asks his mom if she still has those CDs from the Robinsons.

“Rebekah would like to homeschool our kids someday,” he said, “and I think she might find them interesting.”

And my mother-in-law begins telling the story of when a Mr. Robinson was visiting the institution where my father-in-law was doing his post-doctoral work. Mr. Robinson was a widower and he homeschooled his children, so he’d brought his whole family along.

The Robinson family came over and had dinner with the Garcias, where the children notably refused brownies and ice cream, on the grounds that sugar was bad for them. They’d told of hiding their father’s sweet stash from him – not because they wanted it for themselves but because they knew it was bad for him.

At the end of that visit, Mr. Robinson gave my mother-in-law a copy of their family’s homeschool curriculum on several dozen CD-roms.

Yes, the Ph.D. dinners I’d so longed for as a child? They were a reality for my husband.

I never got a Ph.D. dinner growing up, but my children will. Every time they go to visit their grandpa, my children can have dinner with one of those same Ph.D.s the Robinson children had dinner with.

Categories Book Reviews

Book Review: Didn’t I Feed You Yesterday? by Laura Bennett

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Laura Bennett is (apparently) best known as a contestant on “Project Runway” – I wouldn’t know since I’ve never seen that show and had never heard of Bennett until I started reading her book. But while Didn’t I Feed You Yesterday? does spend a chapter detailing Bennett’s “Project Runway” experience, the book is really about the adventures of raising six kids in New York City.

Now, if you started to think that this was a book of parenting tips from an experienced parent, you’d be absolutely wrong. Even if she had tried to give advice (which she thankfully doesn’t), you wouldn’t want to take it. Laura Bennett isn’t a professional mommy like New York is rumored to be teaming with (which is a mark in her favor). But neither is she a free-range mom or some other sensible variant. No, Laura’s parenting could be best described as… Well, come to think of it, I have no idea how to describe her parenting – except to maybe say that she doesn’t parent. At least, not in the way you or I think of parenting.

She doesn’t watch her kids, feed her kids, or clean up after her kids. Those tasks are relegated to the two nannies (a morning and an afternoon nanny), the (weekend) “manny”, and her husband’s housekeeper. She doesn’t intentionally teach or discipline her children. She apparently makes no rules for her children, exercises little decision making over their activities (apart from making sure that each child has an activity that they’re into and helping pay the bills for the accompanying classes, camps, etc.), and otherwise does little that I think of as motherly oversight. Well, she does attend their class plays and helps out with homework assignments that involve hot glue guns.

Maybe I’m too harsh on Bennett. Probably I’m too harsh on Bennett. The reality is that raising six kids in the city is very different than raising six kids in the suburbs. As Bennett points out, simply ferrying the kids to and from school and to activities (which are necessary because there’s no yard to send them into) is practically a full time job. And raising six kids in a loft appartment is very different than raising six kids in a suburban ranch. And raising six kids when you have a career is different than raising six kids as a full-time homemaker. This is true. Bennett’s reality is very different than the environment in which I was raised or the environment in which I am raising my own daughter.

But Bennett doesn’t try too hard to get me to identify with her, mentioning her Manolos again and again, complaining about cold or wet weather, or talking of the torture of three weeks with her children at home AND her M/nannies gone.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed this recital of crazy anecdotes about her family, reading with the same fascination I’d feel towards monkeys gamboling about in the zoo. She thought she’d just burn the Christmas tree after Christmas! In their living room! Still in the stand! She taught her child that “bitch” was a feminine term and “bastard” a male – so he could correct the troublemaker who called him a “bitch”! She went with her (now) husband on a safari to Kenya as their second date!

She’s insane.

She’s also funny, if you can get past the crudeness.

Rating: 1 star
Category: Parenting memoir/humor
Synopsis: Bennett tells about her crazy life, raising six kids in New York City.
Recommendation: Probably not worth seeking out.