Celebrating 3 Decades of Chris (Not-Quite-Wordless Wednesday)

Our parenting stories are our own, and although there's a stretch of years when it's difficult to separate them from the stories of those we parent, eventually our children's stories become their own, too (and parent bloggers find themselves floundering for new things to talk about).

This story was supposed to begin on July 4, 1984. From the very beginning, Chris has done things in his own time.

My parenting story began 30 years ago today, and by my math, that means that my son's stories have been his own for quite some time now. However, in keeping with the July NaBloPoMo theme, "Decade," I thought I'd share a few of my favorite photos from Chris' most recent decade on his 30th birthday.

October 21, 2006 (with Aunt Teresa): The day he tried to give me away to his stepdad...

...and got himself a new grandma out of the deal

May 2007: Graduate of the University of Tennessee College of Engineering!

...and living near all of this stuff ever since

With 3000 miles and a lot of busy-ness between us, I'm glad he's still coming "home" (sort of--California's my home now, but it never was his) for the holidays.

He's tried to teach me about coffee snobbery. I'm a slow learner.

Happy birthday to the one who calls me "Mom"!

An InLinkz Link-up

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WW: Reader, I Married Their Father

October 21, 2006. We were all so much younger then...(and is it me, or do the kids look a little bit unnerved at the prospect?)

An InLinkz Link-up

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WW: Run, Jump, Flip--ZIP!

The prompt for the Wordless Wednesday Link-Up this week is 
"Run. Jump. Flipped." This involved some of everything.

Father and Son Zipliners--June 2013, Wiscasset, Maine
(text applied with Over for iOS)

An InLinkz Link-up

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WW: (Puppy) Love

Puppy Love: Paul and Bellatrix, our "grand-dog," December 2013

Puppy Love 2: Bel and her "mom," Kate

An InLinkz Link-up

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A Christmas Story, 2013

It’s the first Christmas in the new house--the house we bought this past summer, next door to the old house. The old tree is up in the new living room. It’s not stuck in a corner here, but claims a place of honor right next to the staircase, in the middle of the house, and gets to wear more of its ornaments this year. The cheerfully wrapped packages wait under it for Christmas morning to arrive. We wait for our children to arrive on Christmas morning.

For Paul and me, the best Christmas gift will be having all of our children with us, together, under our new roof. It won’t happen until Christmas Day, and it won’t last nearly long enough.

This is my twelfth Christmas in California, and my son, Chris, has chosen to spend all but two of them out here with me. He was almost eighteen when his father and I divorced, so custody issues and the related holiday schedules were never really an issue; he’s always been able to make his own decision about where to spend Christmas. I’ve never taken for granted that he’ll spend it here--partly because this isn’t “coming home” for him, and partly because I’m waiting for the year that the “other” family he might spend the holiday with won’t be his dad’s back in Memphis, but a girlfriend’s...and eventually, his wife’s, and someday, their own. However, that year isn’t this year. Assuming that Washington, D.C. isn’t snowed in on December 23, we’ll have him here with us from Christmas Eve through Boxing Day.

This is my ninth Christmas with Paul, and since his children are younger than mine, holiday schedules have been very much an issue. They alternate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day between their parents each year. This is a Christmas Day year for us, and that will be the first time we see his daughter, Kate, since she left for college in New Hampshire back in August. We moved into this new house the week after she moved across the country, so she’s never lived with us here, and her old room at her mother’s house is now being occupied by her brother Spencer--in a way, this isn’t “coming home” for her, either, any more. But since our kids are coming to us, we feel like it’s a homecoming.

Thanks to our Italian heritage, my side of the family gives just as much weight to Christmas Eve celebrations as most do to Christmas Day. We would have a special late dinner, then go to midnight Mass, and each of us would open just one gift after we got home from church. Midnight Mass isn’t part of the tradition any more; I haven’t attended Mass more than half a dozen times since moving out here, and all I really miss is the singing, but the rest of my family of origin will be there on Christmas Day in the morning.

The special dinner, however, remains fully in effect. On Christmas Eve, we’ll gather at my sister Teresa’s house--Paul’s kids won’t be there this year, but mine will, and so will hers, of course. Teresa and her husband Mike will do most of the cooking, but I’ll probably be asked to bring my roasted potatoes as a side dish--my dad tells me he waits all year for those. My ten-year-old nephew Joey has been taking piano lessons, and I’ve heard that he’ll give us a little musical entertainment during the evening. Between dinner and dessert, there will be gifts to open--each of us will have one, and the younger ones among us will have quite a few more than one.

I love Christmas Eve with my relatives, but in the years that Kate and Spencer are with us on that night, it almost feels like Christmas Day itself doesn’t matter so much--we don’t linger over unwrapping gifts because they need to get back to their mother’s house, and since Spencer’s been eating gluten-free for over a year, we don’t have the customary Christmas morning cinnamon rolls any more.

This year, Christmas morning may get a late start, because even if my stepchildren don’t linger over unwrapping gifts at their mother’s, it’s still a good half-hour drive between there and here. The packages will wait a little longer, but the kids are older and the waiting’s not as difficult as it once was, even without cinnamon rolls. And Paul and I have been waiting for months to have them all together, in our home, on this day--we’ll manage these last few hours.

I’ve struggled to feel the “Christmas spirit,” whatever that’s supposed to feel like, for the last couple of years. This year, it’s seemed to come more easily, fueled by the anticipation of having our family together in a home that’s truly ours.

This is the final piece I wrote for my online Writers' Workshop, in response to the prompt "'Twas night before Christmas and all through the house–what?"

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The Annual Alzheimer's Post: Walking to End It in 2013

family photo courtesy of Teresa Lantos DeGagne

(I call this "The Annual Alzheimer's Post" because, with minor changes, it goes up around this time every year, to accompany the annual Walk to End Alzheimer's. Details on the 2013 Walk, and my team's fundraising link, are below.)

On October 8, 1999, my mother, Mary Ann Corsino Lantos, passed away. A New York City native and, after a nine-year detour to southwestern Connecticut, a resident of St. Petersburg, Florida for 22 years, she was 69 years old at the time of her death. She was survived by her husband, two adult daughters, and one teenage grandson. This is what my sister says about her:

My mother was many things: loving, smart, funny, artistic, a voracious reader, and a quiet influence. She overcame many challenges throughout her life--including being born legally blind and losing her own mother before she was six years old. (Her) story is filled with drama, hope, faith and laughter. It would have been amazing to see how it would have played out had she lived fully, longer. My mother passed away at the age of sixty-nine, after being in the full throes of dementia from early-onset Alzheimer's disease for seven years.

But our family had truly lost her well before that. For over seven years, she had been living in a nursing home, incapacitated by early-onset Alzheimer's disease. We had begun to see changes in her health, demeanor, and personality when she was in her mid-to-late 50's--sudden weight loss, strange sleeping habits, difficulty in speaking, disengagement with her family and surroundings, paranoia and hallucinations--but her long-standing fear of doctors and medications caused her to resist our efforts to get her to seek help. My sister and I had both moved away, and geographic distance and the demands of our own lives limited what we could do about her situation; my dad was uninformed, fundamentally passive, and unprepared to force the issue. By the time Mom reached the point where something had to be done, there wasn't a realistic alternative to round-the-clock care for her, and the next several years were spent in a form of limbo. By the time she died, much of our grieving had been long underway; Alzheimer's doesn't take the body quickly, but it does take the intangibles that make a person unique and special.

My experience with Alzheimer’s has left me with feelings of loss, guilt, and fear. I often feel that I didn’t do enough to help with or advocate for my mother. I was a young mother myself at the time she became ill, and lived over 1000 miles away for most of the years until she died, and those facts have helped me rationalize my lack of involvement. But I wonder whether I would have done many things differently if I had been there--and I’m not sure I would have. The distance and denial feel connected, and they both feed guilt, even now.

The fear comes from the scientific facts about Alzheimer’s, including these: it remains difficult to diagnose in a timely manner, lacks effective long-term treatments, and is an incurable, terminal condition. It’s still associated with many unknowns, as the 2010 Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Takes on Alzheimer’s, elaborates:

• What causes Alzheimer’s? Is it inherited? What causes younger-onset Alzheimer’s? Is there any treatment that can delay the onset or slow down the course of the disease?

• What about new tests that may be able to tell you if you’re going to get Alzheimer’s? Are the tests ready for use? Are they accurate? Who would be a candidate to take them? If there are no foolproof treatments yet, what’s the good of knowing?

• What can we do to prevent Alzheimer’s? Do lifestyle changes really help? Should we all be hitting the treadmill, drinking tea, doing crossword puzzles, taking Omega-3 and Vitamin D?

• Why do more women get Alzheimer’s than men? Is it just because women live longer? Does estrogen play a part in prevention? If so, how much and when?

• What exactly is the natural course of the disease? Why does it play out in a few years for some patients, in a decade or more for others? Why do different people have different symptoms: some explosively angry, others hypersexual, still others mumbling or even silent? In other words, why is it that, “Once you’ve seen one case of Alzheimer’s, you’ve seen…one case of Alzheimer’s”?

• And for God’s sake, when will there be a cure?

Those living with Alzheimer’s--not just the patients, but their families and other caregivers--need resources and support now. Those who could find themselves living with it in the future need research to answer some of those unknowns.

The annual Walk to End Alzheimer’s is the nation’s major fundraising/awareness event on behalf of this disease:

"The Alzheimer's Association Walk to End Alzheimer’s™ is the nation’s largest event to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer’s care, support and research. Held annually in more than 600 communities nationwide, this inspiring event calls on participants of all ages and abilities to reclaim the future for millions. Together, we can end Alzheimer’s disease, the nation’s sixth-leading cause of death.

Walk to End Alzheimer’s unites the entire community — family, friends, co-workers, social and religious groups and more --- in a display of combined strength and dedication in the fight against this devastating disease. While there is no fee to register, each participant is expected to fundraise in order to contribute to the cause and raise awareness.

When you participate in Walk, your fundraising dollars fuel our mission-related initiatives of care, support and research. In addition, your actions, both through fundraising and participating in the event, help to change the level of Alzheimer’s awareness in your community. At a Walk event, you can learn more about Alzheimer’s disease and the support programs and services offered by your local chapter. You will also have unique opportunities to get involved with the cause through advocacy initiatives and clinical trial enrollment."

All of the unknowns can leave a person feeling that there’s little she can do about Alzheimer’s. Participating in this walk every year is one thing I can do, both in remembrance of my mother and in support of a healthier future. My family will be doing the 2013 5K Walk to End Alzheimer's at the Thousand Oaks (California) Civic Arts Plaza on Saturday, September 21. If you’re local, we’d love to have you join us there!

I may not be able to join my sister, brother-in-law, and nephews on the Walk this year due to a schedule conflict, but I do want to help them reach (or exceed!) the team fundraising goal--I hope you'll help me help them with a donation to Team Mary Ann's Mafia!

Previous posts about Alzheimer’s on The 3 R’s Blog (sources for some of the material included in this one):

Remembering Mom: October 8, 1999

Book Talk: *Still Alice*, by Lisa Genova

Walk with me, and remember

A Turning Point: Maria Shriver and a Woman’s Nation Take on Alzheimer’s
Fear of Fifty: Or, Before I Forget

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The Daughter, in #JustOneParagraph

“She’s going to be a beauty,” I said to her father, as she timidly modeled the dress she would wear at our wedding. And she is. Endlessly tall and dressed in black, she’s a presence, and she’s rarely timid anymore. She is smart and confident and creative; she is loyally devoted to what she loves, and she’s been generously gifted with the support to make herself into herself. And that support won’t be staying behind, three thousand miles away. Her things were put onto a truck on Monday, and this morning she, one of her two best friends, and her cat will set out cross-country in a packed-to-the-roof Toyota Prius. She should be arriving at her new place in New Hampshire around the time we're moving to the townhouse next door, and she'll have a couple of weeks to acclimate before the next phase of her learning, and her life, officially begins. She is the one who made him into a dad, and although it’s been almost nine years since he’s lived every day with her, this is a new stage, and a new distance in place and time, for them, as well as for her and the younger brother who has lived every day with her, and hasn't yet known life when she wasn’t there. I’m thankful that they both have our own move--next week, next door--to distract them from this other change for the next little while, but soon we’ll all have to adjust to living in a place that has a dedicated guest room, but doesn’t have her room. Still, there will always be room for her there, whenever she wants it, even as she makes room for herself in the big wide world--even in her absence, I have no doubt she’ll be a presence among us.

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The Boys and Me, in #JustOneParagraph

It occurred to me, as we went out to dinner last night, that I'll soon be the only female member of my household for the first time in fifteen years…and yes, that's counting the dogs. There was even a nearly five-year period when the girls outnumbered the guys around here, although we've been at parity since we lost Gypsy in 2010. But now, as three of us get ready to move next door, our girl is preparing to move to the opposite corner of the country, and it will soon be just the boys and me again. They're not the same “boys” with whom I shared my life and home fifteen years ago; I was seven years and nearly two thousand miles away from meeting them (and no one had met the younger one, since he didn't yet exist), but as I contemplate this next stage, I have a feeling of coming back around. I hope we'll be able to add a dog back into the mix before too long, too.

Posted with Blogsy

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Wordless Wednesday: Family/Love on Vacation

The red-haired girl is off to college in New Hampshire this fall. We took a family trip to get acquainted with her new locale, and we saw a lot to love.

Top left: father and son; Botton left: granddaughter and grandmother; Right: sister and brother

My photos, edited with Snapseed and collaged with PicFrame; text by Phonto

Posted with Blogsy

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The Annual Alzheimer's Post, 2012 edition: Still Walking

(I call this "The Annual Alzheimer's Post" because, with only minor changes, I do it every year, just as I do the Walk to End Alzheimer's. Details on the 2012 Walk are below.)

On October 8, 1999, my mother, Mary Ann Corsino Lantos, passed away. A New York City native and, after a nine-year detour to southwestern Connecticut, a resident of St. Petersburg, Florida for 22 years, she was 69 years old at the time of her death. She was survived by her husband, two adult daughters, and one teenage grandson. 

But our family had truly lost her well before that. For over seven years, she had been living in a nursing home, incapacitated by early-onset Alzheimer's disease. We had begun to see changes in her health, demeanor, and personality when she was in her mid-to-late 50's - sudden weight loss, strange sleeping habits, difficulty in speaking, disengagement with her family and surroundings, paranoia and hallucinations - but her long-standing fear of doctors and medications caused her to resist our efforts to get her to seek help. My sister and I had both moved away, and geographic distance and the demands of our own lives limited what we could do about her situation; my dad was uninformed, fundamentally passive, and unprepared to force the issue. By the time Mom reached the point where something had to be done, there wasn't a realistic alternative to round-the-clock care for her, and the next several years were spent in a form of limbo. By the time she died, much of our grieving had been long underway; Alzheimer's doesn't take the body quickly, but it does take the intangibles that make a person unique and special.

My experience with Alzheimer’s has left me with feelings of loss, guilt, and fear. I often feel that I didn’t do enough to help with or advocate for my mother. I was a young mother myself at the time she became ill, and lived over 1000 miles away for most of the years until she died, and those facts have helped me rationalize my lack of involvement. But I wonder whether I would have done many things differently if I had been there--and I’m not sure I would have. The distance and denial feel connected, and they both feed guilt, even now.

The fear comes from the scientific facts about Alzheimer’s, including these: it remains difficult to diagnose in a timely manner, lacks effective long-term treatments, and is an incurable, terminal condition. It’s still associated with many unknowns, as the 2010 Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Takes on Alzheimer’s, elaborates:

• What causes Alzheimer’s? Is it inherited? What causes younger-onset Alzheimer’s? Is there any treatment that can delay the onset or slow down the course of the disease?
• What about new tests that may be able to tell you if you’re going to get Alzheimer’s? Are the tests ready for use? Are they accurate? Who would be a candidate to take them? If there are no foolproof treatments yet, what’s the good of knowing?
• What can we do to prevent Alzheimer’s? Do lifestyle changes really help? Should we all be hitting the treadmill, drinking tea, doing crossword puzzles, taking Omega-3 and Vitamin D?
• Why do more women get Alzheimer’s than men? Is it just because women live longer? Does estrogen play a part in prevention? If so, how much and when?
• What exactly is the natural course of the disease? Why does it play out in a few years for some patients, in a decade or more for others? Why do different people have different symptoms: some explosively angry, others hypersexual, still others mumbling or even silent? In other words, why is it that, “Once you’ve seen one case of Alzheimer’s, you’ve seen…one case of Alzheimer’s”?
• And for God’s sake, when will there be a cure?

Those living with Alzheimer’s--not just the patients, but their families and other caregivers--need resources and support now. Those who could find themselves living with it in the future need research to answer some of those unknowns.

The annual Walk to End Alzheimer’s is the nation’s major fundraising/awareness event on behalf of this disease:

"The Alzheimer's Association Walk to End Alzheimer’s™ is the nation’s largest event to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer’s care, support and research. Held annually in more than 600 communities nationwide, this inspiring event calls on participants of all ages and abilities to reclaim the future for millions. Together, we can end Alzheimer’s disease, the nation’s sixth-leading cause of death.

Walk to End Alzheimer’s unites the entire community — family, friends, co-workers, social and religious groups and more --- in a display of combined strength and dedication in the fight against this devastating disease. While there is no fee to register, each participant is expected to fundraise in order to contribute to the cause and raise awareness.

When you participate in Walk, your fundraising dollars fuel our mission-related initiatives of care, support and research. In addition, your actions, both through fundraising and participating in the event, help to change the level of Alzheimer’s awareness in your community. At a Walk event, you can learn more about Alzheimer’s disease and the support programs and services offered by your local chapter. You will also have unique opportunities to get involved with the cause through advocacy initiatives and clinical trial enrollment."

All of the unknowns can leave a person feeling that there’s little she can do about Alzheimer’s. Participating in this walk every year is one thing I can do, both in remembrance of my mother and in support of a healthier future. My family and I will be walking in at the California Lutheran University campus in Thousand Oaks, California on Saturday morning, September 22. If you’re local, we’d love to have you join us there!

I do have a fundraising goal for the Walk, and if you’d consider a donation to help me reach it, I would seriously appreciate you!

Previous posts about Alzheimer’s on The 3 R’s Blog (sources for some of the material included in this one):

Remembering Mom: October 8, 1999

Book Talk: *Still Alice*, by Lisa Genova

Walk with me, and remember

A Turning Point: Maria Shriver and a Woman’s Nation Take on Alzheimer’s

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Pictures from the Past: sketches by my mother

Before I wrote, I drew pictures. It runs in the family. My ability and my style both came from my mother, and my sister and I both loved flipping through her old sketchbooks when we were kids.

Most of those books have been lost during the years (and moves) since then, but my sister does have thirteen pages of Mom's drawings, and she recently scanned them so we'd have copies to keep. I thought I'd show y'all a few of them. None are dated, but I think most may pre-date marriage and children (mostly because I have more memories of seeing her reading than sketching--I got that from her, too).

My mom was legally blind, and had almost no formal art training. In light of that, I wholeheartedly agree with my sister's comment that "(A)s bad as her eyesight was, I always marveled at my mom's ability to show perspective and her attention to detail."

Given the subject matter of this one, we think it may have been drawn during her Catholic-school years (she graduated high school in 1947).

This may be a later drawing (possibly from the 1960's or even the '70's), based on the lighter pencil strokes. I don't know whether it was due to her declining vision, having less time to work on her art, or something else, but my impression is that her style became more tentative over time.

My sister commented "I find it interesting that my mother, who was an introvert, drew a lot of party and social pictures." I suspect some of them were meant as illustrations of scenes from books she read (but I may be projecting, because I liked to draw those). I think the color may have been added later, and she doesn't seem to have gotten around to finishing it.

This one seems unfinished, but what's completed is so beautifully detailed; I think it's my favorite of the bunch.

Thanks to Teresa for scanning Mom's drawings and sending them to me, providing both an archive record and blog fodder. And just in case you were going to ask: My old sketchbooks are lost to...somewhere, so I doubt you'll be seeing any of my drawings here. Hers are better anyway, trust me. Besides, these days, I'd rather take pictures than draw them.

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Mostly Wordless Wednesday: Congratulations, Class of 2012!

Graduation night for the High School @ Moorpark College, May 24

Having had dual high-school and college enrollment for the last two years, our Kate is more than ready to continue as a full-time real college students. Congrats and best wishes to her cohort in the Class of 2012, everywhere!

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"Are You Mom Enough?" Yes. No, Maybe. (Graded on a curve?)

(I rescheduled a book review from today to Thursday because I wanted to put on my mom-blogger hat before last week's news literally becomes "last week's news.")

I really wasn’t sure if I’d make a response to last week’s sensational TIME magazine cover for its feature on attachment parenting, but the more I read other people’s responses to it, the more I realized I did have some thoughts of my own to add to the many thousands of words already spilled over it.

For those who might somehow have missed this, here’s the cover:

The people on the cover are LA mom blogger Jamie Lynne Grumet and her almost-4-year-old son...who does, in fact, still breastfeed. I haven’t met Jamie Lynne in person, but she is one of my fellow contributors at Moms LA and has done some very thoughtful, articulate writing on attachment parenting (including extended breastfeeding) and adoption on her blog I Am Not the Babysitter.

I’ve been a mother for almost my entire adult life (and now approaching 60% of my entire life, period)--my son is a year or so older than Jamie Lynne. I’ve seen a lot of child-raising practices come and go, and I’ve heard some of the same debates go on for decades, believe it or not. There were “lactivists” back in the ‘80s. There were “family bed” advocates and baby-wearers. There probably weren’t as many of them, but I’ve come across them throughout my years as a parent. And the further I get from raising young children, the more of them there seem to be.

One of the things that’s impressed me about Jamie Lynne is that she firmly believes in what she’s doing as a mother, but she also consistently expresses support and lack of judgment for those who don’t do the same. She hasn't struck me as the combative know-it-all "mommier-than-thou" sort who would pose a question like the one TIME uses on its cover

I understand that TIME chose that particular photo and designed that cover for provocation (and Jamie Lynne had to be aware that there was a chance they’d use that photo as they did when she and her son posed for it). I think they knew what buttons it would push, and I’m sure they knew that mothers ask themselves that question over and over...no matter how old their kids are.

I didn’t nurse my son. His father and I almost never let him into bed with us, although we took him plenty of other places. He was frequently with his grandparents while his father and I finished our college degrees, and I’ve worked full-time outside the home since he was three years old. I let him cry. By attachment-parenting standards, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t even close to being “mom enough.” Having said that, if I started all over again tomorrow, I probably still wouldn’t be “mom enough,” because I’d do--and not do--a lot of the same things. My focus wasn’t really on my son’s experience of childhood...or on my own experience of parenthood. I was always aware that he wouldn’t stay a child, and considered my job to be raising him to be a functional, contributing member of adult society.

By most objective standards, he’s there--a college graduate with a solid career, a thriving side job, and a variety of interests who lives independently. By more subjective standards, I think he’s there too--he’s smart and funny and caring and principled, and I genuinely like the person he’s become. (And most of the time, I’m pretty sure he likes me.)

I think the ultimate verdict on whether a parent is “enough” isn’t rendered until years down the road, but I think I may have been. In any case, I was mom "enough" to refill my empty nest and take some of the nitty-gritty of motherhood on again when my son was 21...and I became stepmother to my new husband's daughter and son, then 12 and 7. There's a whole different calibration of "enough" that goes with that job.

There’s more to this story than a provocative question on a magazine cover (a question which, for the record, is fairly loosely related to the content within), so I wanted to highlight a few of the responses from within Jamie Lynne’s Moms LA community; they’ve ranged from deeply personal reactions and impassioned defenses to considered questioning of blogger motivations and concerns about the photo’s future effects on her young son.

At MomsLA:
Dear TIME Magazine: Working Moms Can Attachment Parent Too
Attachment Parenting: How I Made It Work For Me

Ciaran @ Momfluential: Are Mommy Bloggers a Bunch of Boobs?

“...If lactivist wasn’t her brand yesterday, I sure as hell hope it will be her brand tomorrow. Because she has been made the face of this controversy, along with her 3 yr old son. The world will move along to the next willing 'model' without her if she doesn’t use her words well. They probably will even if she does. Models are ultimately interchangeable...

"This is just my opinion, but Brand and Media 'ops' like this and so many more are starting to feel like bad boyfriends. More and more bloggers are being motivated by the scraps of addictive fame that these pimps are peddling. This addiction to attention is dangerous. It runs the risk of undermining all the wonderful other things they do. And for what? 40 dubious comments about how pretty we are?

"Five minutes of fame and fluffing is not enough!”

Shannon @ The Woman Formerly Known As Beautiful: In Defense of My Friend Jamie Lynne Grumet: TIME Magazine's Breastfeeding Cover Girl

I think TIME did Jamie a disservice by photographing her in an unnatural position in a calculatedly provocative pose in order to sell magazines. The woman on the cover – while as stunningly beautiful as the real Jamie – doesn’t reflect the inclusive, intelligent, wise-beyond-her-years, loving, nurturing, non-judgmental woman I know who would never have authored the headline 'Are You Mom Enough?'"

Kristen @ Rage Against the Minivan: where is the mommy-war for the motherless child?

"I don’t much care if you breastfed your kid until they started kindergarten, or if you fed them formula from day one. I don’t really care if you turned your infant car-seat forward-facing prior to age 2, or if you homeschool, or if you send your kids to daycare while you go to work. Do you cosleep? Did you circumcise your son? I DON’T CARE.  Do you babywear? Push your kid around in a stroller? Use a leash for your kid at Disneyland?  Whatever.  Good for you. 

"When it comes to issues of motherhood, there is one issue I care about: some kids don’t have one. All of these petty wars about the choices of capable, loving mothers is just a lot of white noise to me, Quite honestly, I’m often astonished at the non-essential parenting issues I see moms getting their panties in a wad about. Particularly when there are so many kids in this world not being parented at all."

Deborah @ BetweenParents.org: TIME and time again...

"A school administrator who’s a friend of mine talks regularly about appreciating diversity in our culture and on the school yard. She’s referring to parents who have gossiped relentlessly about the way other people raise their children. The gossip and name-calling damaged our small community. People were put in the position of picking sides on issue after issue. A lot of bad feelings went back and forth. We see this over and over with the media-manufactured 'Mommy Wars.' I know a lot of us who write and blog are trying not to enter the mudslinging fray."

Morgan @ The818.com: “Mommy Wars”: An argument around us, about us, but not between us

"I read a LOT about parenting and motherhood. I read books, and articles, and research papers, and blog posts. I read the views of mothers and children and MD’s and Ph.D.’s, and the only common thread I see is the one where this argument, this battle…these MOMMY WARS? Nobody is fighting them. When it comes to Mothers, WE ARE ALL ON THE SAME SIDE."

Jessica Gottlieb: Jamie Lynne Grumet Breastfeeds on the Cover of TIME Magazine (vlog)

Cheryl @ Mommypants: Are we mom enough?

Sunshine Wonderland: I am mom enough, Time.

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