How do you create a village for your child when you don’t have a network?
My partner and I are considering having children sometime in the next few years, but the question of “community” has been holding us back. We both grew up in religious households but we are pretty much agnostic. However, we both know how powerful that supporting community can be.
My four-year-old son and his eggplant sibling
So my pregnancy ticker tells me week by week how big my new baby is in relation to produce. My nearly four-year-old son loves it. He’s an on-hands learner (His grandmother the teacher says it’s a ‘kinesthetic learner’) and it gives him a tactile idea of how big our new wiggly addition to the family has grown. He asks me constantly how big the baby is now and really grasps the process of growing with the progression of fruits and veggies.
What do you do when your kid is inadvertently rude to strangers?
I’m a server at a restaurant that has a unisex uniform that includes a button-down white oxford and tie. I’m a woman who has a very short pixie haircut. Recently, a young girl loudly proclaimed to me, “YOU LOOK LIKE A BOY!”
This family definitely knows how to bask in the sun and love each other
I oh-so-very much love family photo sessions that take place at parks and playgrounds, like this one from Natalie Champa Jennings Photography. It’s just like.. you want insta-kiddo smiles? Let them run around, swing, and be crazy!
Gender, adoption, and identity: how being transgender will help me be a better dad
When I began testosterone replacement, I was giddy and excited. Surgery made me anxious, but I was relieved when it was over. And now: nothing. The elation I expected never came. I had rejected the most basic gift from my mother and father — I had declared myself someone other than the daughter they had welcomed two decades earlier.
A Merry Prankster-inspired bus birthday cake that looks so bad it’s good
My son has spent the better part of his almost three years on the planet totally head over heels for any kind of vehicle that has wheels and can move. Cars, trucks, bicycles, and… buses. So last year for his second birthday I set out to create something perfect, sweet, and wondrous: a bus cake.
“Mom, why do the kids at school call me poor?”
A few months ago my three children and I moved from a not-so-great suburb of Detroit to a more affluent part of the city. I was thrilled by the idea of them attending a school in at top-notched district that also seemed to have a close-knit and more liberal leaning community. Up until a few days ago everything was going as smooth a skein of fair trade silk. Now that the ripples of a new move and a new school have dissipated, that “new community smell” is starting to get a little rank.
Becoming a parent made me better at my job
As I was approaching my last year of grad school for my Master’s in English, I had been dating an awesome, goateed, tattooed locksmith for a few months. That Christmas, as I was choosing my thesis advisor and getting ready to embark on the challenge of writing a full short story collection, my body started to feel a little weird. What I thought was nerves over the impending thesis, we came to find, was actually our little droidlet beginning to grow. Surprise! The following August, my son was born.