What do you do when one spouse wants another child and the other does not? Add advanced maternal age and one fallopian tube to the equation and you have a recipe for disaster. I am an only child and in my ideal world would be the mother of two children. However, my desire may not be fulfilled. My husband is not too keen about having another child, I've heard every excuse from the economy to sleep deprivation and am honestly at my wits end.

 

When the news broke about the missing "balloon boy" last week, I was attending Blog World Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. More specifically, I was a panelist and focused on my presentation - far away from television but I was connected by twitter. As tweets scrolled by with #balloonboy, I tried to piece together what was going on with this trending topic. From what I gathered, 6 year old Falcon Heene was in a hot air balloon being persued by authorities and at some point it seemed as if the child had fallen out of the balloon.

My mother tells me I used to wake up in the middle of the night and clean my room. This? Does not bode well for motherhood. Hi, my name is Rita, and I'm a Type A mother when it comes to housekeeping.

I  got a letter from my insurance company telling me that they will decide if a medication is valid, not my doctor. The insurance company will decide on the dosage, the length of time I can and can't have the medication and whether I take a prerequisite medication before I can be receive that my doctor wants me to have. This gives me an excellent opportunity to review of my last post.

I can still see them, my beloved back-to-school jeans. I got them every year and their denim was so indigo-dark it hurt to look at them, especially when paired with my bright-white tennies. Life felt crisp and new again in back-to-school jeans. Which is why I still buy myself a pair every year.

It always amazes me when Staples starts running that "most wonderful time of the year" ad because kids are going back to school and their parents are so happy.  As we whose kids are grown and gone know, those summers are irretrievable treasures.   I was thinking about all that and suddenly, oddly in fact, remembered my own favorite "back to school" memory.  

For all its passivity, promise is a loaded word. It requires belief, faith, even hope. We have the promise of peace, the promise of the recent graduate, and the promise I made to you and have yet to keep. All are potentialities. All assume the best of humanity. As I sat on the green of Dartmouth College below the tower of Baker Library, I looked at my classmates here to celebrate our 25th reunion and wondered, have we lived up to our promise?

The first time I had to leave my son overnight was difficult. He was eight months old and I had to attend an advocacy trip in Washington, DC for my job. I traveled to New York from Atlanta so that my mother could take care of him. I was nursing at the time and carried as much expressed milk as possible on the trip and also took along some formula for good measure. Although giving him formula was a rarity, I had to ensure that my mother was prepared in the event that my milk ran out.

I got the jits, as in jitters. I know better but I'm starting to get the "What do you mean I'm meeting 1,400 plus people? What am I suppose to do and say and not say…" and the screaming Mee-Mees are in full gallop. After laying off the ice tea and other forms of caffeine I have some answers. As always I have to start with what I know.  So, in the order of each prior conference location here are some ideas on how you and I can cool our jets and make the most of any convention. BlogHer '05: Santa Clarita (Correction: Santa Clara) Lessons

Children are taught the expression "it's not fair" in the womb, shortly after they're told how to suck their thumbs and how to walk into the rearview mirror of every car in the parking lot. While they don't have speech until their second or third year, that crying you hear? They're saying, "Mommy, IT'S NOT FAIR!"

I don’t babysit. Period. End of story.