Creating community by using donated breast milk
I feed my daughter a mix of my breast milk, formula and donated breast milk from five different women. Not only has donated breast milk benefited my daughter’s digestion and overall health, it has introduced me to other moms that I’m now proud to consider part of my community.
On two women and the family they adopted before they could adopt their own
Once upon a time, the economy crashed. My husband was laid off, and I started working more than an hour away for very little money. My husband stayed home all day looking for work and taking care of our infant twins. We were stretched to the max, and then two wonderful women named Elisa and Andrea came into our lives.
It takes a village to raise a tween
As my baby grows into this new, beautiful, moody, long-legged creature, I know she will have questions I can’t answer, problems I can’t solve, fears I can’t comfort. I know our friends won’t be able to solve all these problems either, but I’m enormously grateful that I’m not alone in this new stage of our lives, and neither is Alice.
An Offbeat Auntie’s perspective: 5 maybe-obvious things I’ve learned about kids
I would like to start off by saying that I have no idea what it’s like to be a mom (yet). I have no idea what 24 hours a day, 7 days a week responsibility for an ornery, screaming, time-demanding tiny human is like. All I’m saying is that becoming an aunt has given 10x more insight into it. I also got lucky with the BEST niece and nephew ever, not every kid is as cool as them. Here are some things I’ve picked up.
How my three-year-old niece and I bonded over Medusa
The first time Maggie saw it when she was around two and a half, she asked me, “who’s that?” “That’s Medusa, Maggie. She has snakes for hair,” I explained. She laughed, thinking it was hilarious. This became a constant back and forth nearly every time she saw me — asking about Medusa, laughing at the snake-hair. I quipped one day that it must be really hard for her to brush her hair. Maggie also thought this was hilarious and incorporated it into the routine — “So funny!” she’d say, hands over her mouth as she giggled.
“Do you want him to be gay?” Musings on gender roles, assumptions, and raising self-aware kids
We spend a lot of time talking about empowering girls to break gender barriers. Which is important — we should. And there is plenty more work to do in that arena. But now I have a boy to raise. And if he wants to play dress-up instead of hockey, or wear his hair long or short, or become a fashion designer or watch HGTV instead of judge shows (fingers crossed), or if he likes girls or boys or nobody at all, I want him to know that it’s OK.
My brother-in-law is having a baby: how do I nominate myself for Offbeat Auntie of the Year?
My husband’s brother and his wife are having a baby! We are very excited as kids are great and we haven’t had any in the family for about, oh, 15 years now. Unfortunately we’re not super close, but we want to be — how do I initiate becoming an awesome offbeat auntie?
When love becomes thicker than blood
In January of 2012, I chose to become a single mother. I packed what I could I fit into our minivan and left my fiancé of five years, my “son” whom I had raised since he was six-months-old, and an unhealthy partnership. I parked in a parking lot, only blocks from our house and cried. My two sons slept quietly in their car seats.