When CJ was three months old, we drove from New Jersey to Colorado.  I wasn’t a nervous wreck, but I wouldn’t do it again.  For months afterward, CJ screamed every time we strapped her into the car seat.

In less than two weeks, I’ll take outings to a whole new level with Oliver.  We’re going to Chicago together.  (I’m a panelist at the upcoming “Mommy Blogger Monologues” sponsored by BSM Media.)

That’s right, I’m flying solo with a baby - and I don’t mean flying solo in the metaphorical sense.  I’m going to wrangle a Bjorn, infant seat, stroller frame, diaper bag, and our luggage.  I’m going to (gasp) breastfeed on an airplane.  I’m going to spend the night co-sleeping and be knowledgeable and coherent at breakfast the next morning.  I’m going to lunch with one blogger and grab a cup of coffee with another, all with baby in tow.

(I will get a sitter for Oliver during the panel.  Even I have my limits.)

It could be a disaster or a dream come true.  I’ll report back when I return.

——————————

What sorts of outings have you taken with a newborn?  Adventurous, crazy, silly, fun-filled or catastrophic - we want to hear about what you did during your rookie years!  Today’s PBN Blog Blast is sponsored by The Rookie Mom’s Handbook (read my review here!) - two participating bloggers will each win a gift bag full of awesome goodies for moms and kiddos.  Shouldn’t one of them be YOU?

That’s right, she told me to. And while I’m used to giving the orders around here, I can take direction too. That said, this meme is about random stuff, and I can’t just tick off a list of random stuff - there’s got to be a THEME. A theme to the meme.

But to show that I’m following the spirit of the rules, here they are:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
6. Let your tagger know when your entry is up.

All of my randomness has to do with stuff that has happened in the past few days.

The Owl - Monday night, our doorbell rang at 8pm. Both Kyle and I had the same unspoken thought: This better be good. And it was! Our neighbors had spotted an enormous owl perched on the roof peak of the house across the street. Seriously, this sucker was HUGE. It swooped down to the grassy area next to our house, then back up to roost on the roof of another house down the street. I wish it hadn’t been so dark; I wanted to take a picture to show Tacy.

The Missionaries - Living in an apartment for so long, I’m still not used to random arrivals at my door - least of all people seeking to convert me. But even though I’m not surprised to see missionaries on foot in our neighborhood, it was a little strange to see them riding bikes on the trail.

The Memorial - Having been absent from the trail since I got pregnant, I hadn’t yet seen the Angel Memorial erected by the Rowan Tree Foundation near one of the trailheads. It’s a beautiful statue honoring children who have died and the families that remember them. It reminded me of this sad but lovely site.

The Dude with His Laundry - One last tidbit from the trail: A man pushing a hand cart, with a box of laundry detergent and a huge black garbage bag, presumably filled with laundry. Maybe he was washing in the creek?

The Bumblebee - CJ tried to pet a bumblebee. ‘Nuff said.

The Rude Awakening - I warned Kyle that I was going to tell the Internet about this.

It’s about 12:30am Tuesday night (Wednesday morning?). I hear something bump against the bed frame, so I sit up and ask Kyle, “Is CJ in here?”

“Yeah,” he says. “So’s Oliver.”

“What’s Oliver doing in here?”

“He was crying, so I went and got him. He’s sleeping on my chest.”

I reach over to pat Oliver. No baby, only a pillow.

“He’s not on your chest! Where is he?”

Kyle turns on the light. CJ is perched on the pillow under his head, and he’s clutching a pillow to his chest. Oliver is nowhere in sight.

“I swear he was in here.” Kyle starts tossing pillows aside, looking for the baby.

“Are you sure you didn’t DREAM this?”

“No, he was in here!”

“Well, then WHERE IS HE?”

I get up to go look in Oliver’s room. Sure enough, he is sleeping soundly in his crib.

SIGH.

So here comes the tagging. I’m tagging a few of my fabulous commenters: Ali, Don Mills Diva, Heather, Loralee, Miss Britt and Oz. Enjoy!

And don’t forget about the PBN Blog Blasts this week - Johnson’s Baby Cause wraps up today, and The Rookie Mom’s Handbook kicks off tomorrow!

Why do so many mothers pin their hopes on a single day out of the year?  Why does it have to be such a make or break occasion?  Cards, flowers, phone calls, breakfast in bed - yes, it’s all lovely.  But what’s wrong with showing mothers appreciation and affection all year long?

Even more irritating to me than the merchandising of Christmas is the merchandising of Mother’s Day.  I’ve received dozens of pitches asking me to hawk all sorts of ridiculous stuff in the name of Mother’s Day.  Neither a new telephone, nor a flash drive, nor a tutoring service for my kids (just to obliquely name a few) would be a Mother’s Day dream come true.

You want ideas for material goods that mothers would appreciate?  Click here.

I wish the partners of my fellow mothers would be kind and considerate all year long.  Think about what’s important to her, and make an effort in that area - every single day.  Not because you want her to stop bitching or because you want to have sex, but because you love her.  It’s not that difficult.

And just because she IS a mother doesn’t mean that she’s YOUR mother.  Wipe the crumbs off the counter after you make yourself a sandwich (you do make your own sandwiches, right?).  If you’re running out of clean underwear, throw a load of laundry in the washer (and then transfer it to the dryer and fold it and put it away yourself).  Navigate away from ESPN.com for ten minutes and hit the Food Network.  Find a recipe you can handle and make dinner (and do the dishes afterward).  Tell her that you’ll chauffeur the kids to their lessons.  Notice that you’re almost out of milk and stop at the grocery store on the way home without being asked (bonus points if you pick up a pint of Haagen Dazs in her favorite flavor).  The list of ways to show you care is endless.

But here’s the key:  Do all of this stuff all year long.

She won’t take you for granted, I swear.  If anything, she’ll appreciate you more and more, especially when her friends - whose husbands aren’t as fabulous as you are - complain about dirty socks and couch potatoes.  She’ll be easier to live with, and you’ll probably have sex more often.  Just sayin’.

Mother’s Day is a lovely sentiment, as is Father’s Day and all other holidays intended to celebrate those we love.  But there’s no reason to confine the celebration to a single day, nor to interpret it solely as a call for gifts.  Let this Mother’s Day be the start to a whole year filled with celebration.

But it wouldn’t hurt to kick it off with a pair of earrings and a pint of Haagen Dazs.

——————————

How do you want to be recognized this Mother’s Day?  Tell us about it as part of our super-duper extra-special Blog Blast, sponsored by Johnson’s Baby Cause - a new charitable giving site.  You’ve got until tomorrow night to write your post.  Oh, and when you email your link to us at PBN, you might want to copy your partner.  It can’t hurt, right?

And if you’ve got a new baby (or even if you’ve got a houseful), check out The Rookie Mom’s Handbook.  Super-duper extra-special bonus points if you take the kids and accomplish one or more of the awesome activities in that handbook, all on your own.

I’ll admit that I don’t know much about Miley Cyrus or the character Hannah Montana, but I think the key word here is “character”. Hannah is a character played by Miley, even when she’s onstage. Miley is not Hannah, just like other actors and actresses are not the characters whom they play.

It may sound simplistic, but I think that’s an important point to emphasize to kids. We already tell them that monsters aren’t real, that they shouldn’t believe everything they see in commercials, and that princesses are a creation of Disney. Why not tell them that Hannah Montana is a Disney creation too? We may allow our pre-schoolers to believe that a talking purple dinosaur really exists and that a group of four singing Aussies all have the last name “Wiggle”, but tweens ought to learn to separate fact from fiction.

But even if tweens understand that Hannah Montana is a character and Miley Cyrus is a person, is it fair to expect that because Hannah is admired by tweens, Miley should be held to a higher standard of behavior?

In theory, yes. As long as Miley wants to continue playing the part of Hannah Montana, it’s in her job preservation interests to, well, play the part - both onstage and off. But only if she wants to hang onto the role, not because she owes it to her fans. She’s free to pursue other opportunities (within the terms of her contract, of course). Likewise, her fans are free to abandon her - or their parents are free to shut off the TV.

But regardless of what course Miley wants to pursue, she’s not ethically bound to emulate her squeaky clean character so as not to confuse or disappoint her young fans. It’s the responsibility of those young fans’ parents to clarify that Hannah is a character, and Miley is a person - a young woman, just like they’ll be someday. A young woman who faces many of the same uncertainties that they do, and who, due to her circumstances, may make some decisions that wouldn’t be right for them.

Decisions that would be out of character, for them - and for Hannah Montana.

——————————

Yet another primary day is here - can Obama pull white working-class voters away from Clinton?  Why or why not?

I found this link in my Site Meter. I don’t know where the hell he got that god-awful picture of me that’s at least fifteen years old, and I realize that, at #5 on the list of May’s Blog Babes, I just barely passed muster. Maybe women in uniform aren’t as hot as women in miniskirts. But I still think this is the best blog award I’ve received.

So, thanks Maddog. You’re kinda cute yourself.

I’d like to turn this into a meme. Since there are a lot of us who are either pregnant or post-partum or simply run completely ragged by our children, let’s remember those days when we were at our most bangable.

It was the fall of 1991. I was thin and tan and my self-esteem was at an all-time high - which was good since I was going through sorority rush (always an assault on one’s self-esteem).

Ah, to be nineteen again. But only for a day or two.

I’m tagging a couple of pregnant ladies - Motherhood Uncensored and Her Bad Mother - and a few not-so-pregnant ladies - Mocha Momma, Mother Bumper and Redneck Mommy. Let’s hear about you at your most bangable. Bonus points for photos.

——————————

I may not be feeling particularly bangable these days, but it’s not for lack of trying. It’s been six months since I headed to Sephora, armed with my copy of Beauty Confidential. What’s still working, and what’s fallen by the wayside? Come find out.

And oh, do I miss my big girl…

One, that she would have to go to the bathroom mid-flight, and I wouldn’t be there to remind her to hover over the pee-splattered toilet seat. And two, that in spite of her ability to charm the pants off almost anyone, the adult passengers would hate her on sight simply for being a kid who dared to invade their aircraft, especially without a parent along to keep her in line.

So when Kyle called to tell me that she had safely boarded the plane (after having used the restroom in the terminal one last time), I was relieved. Until he said this:

“Yeah, the gate agent told me that there were a bunch of deadheads on this flight, and they’ll look after her.”

Deadheads? You mean, like GRATEFUL DEAD deadheads?

I took a deep breath and calmly asked, “Isn’t that what we pay the airline to do?”

He sounded puzzled, like I had asked a dumb question. “Right. They’re off-duty, but they can still take care of her.”

My turn to sound puzzled. “Off-duty?”

Now he was impatient. “Yes. Flight attendants and pilots who are traveling on the same flight, but who aren’t on duty.”

Oh. Ohhhhhhhhh. Not THAT kind of deadhead.

I started to laugh. “I thought you meant DEADHEADS.”

He started to laugh too. “Uh, NO. Actual airline employees.”

Although I congratulated myself for remaining calm even when I thought the airline had pawned her off to a bunch of Jerry Garcia fans, I have to admit that it’s really not such a bad idea after all.

Just as long as they didn’t feed her any special brownies, of course.

In the weeks leading up to CJ’s birth, I would gaze at Tacy and wonder how I could possibly feel the same all-consuming adoration for another child that I felt for her. It wasn’t that I doubted that I would love CJ; I knew other mothers fell just as much in love with their second child as they had with their first. But I was still so awed by the depth and breadth of my love for Tacy that I couldn’t imagine that well of emotion deepening even further.

But it did, and it does. And I continued to be awed by my ever-expanding capacity for love.

I won’t deny that adding to the family adds stress. Freedoms are lost - or temporarily suspended, at least. Attentions are divided. Logistics require military precision. Brightly colored plastic accoutrements threaten to overwhelm your decor entirely, and adult possessions inexplicably make their way into children’s toy boxes. It’s the inescapable entropy that children bring to a formerly orderly life.

I’ll admit that adding to the family increases conflict. Discipline takes on new dimensions that you and your partner probably haven’t foreseen, and you won’t necessarily agree on how to handle it. And when the kids get big enough to antagonize each other, then all hell really breaks loose. Sometimes they can resolve it themselves; sometimes you need to arbitrate. Nearly all the time it’s ridiculous and petty and it will make your eyes roll back in your head as you say for what seems like the millionth time: “Now, stop crying and tell me what happened.”

But the love - oh my god, the love. As overwhelming as it might seem now to picture the future, when the four of you are sprawled on the sofa together - watching TV or reading a book or just tickling each other - your heart will swell until you think it might burst.

And the best part is that those moments aren’t few and far between. They’ll happen every day, and they’ll make you forget all the stress and conflicts that came before.

That is, until someone accidentally-on-purpose elbows someone else in the mouth, which gives someone else a bloody lip, and that someone else yanks a clump of hair out of the first someone’s head, and then the tears and requests for Band-Aids start up all over again.

But you’ll be able to handle it just fine. Because you know that another one of those wonderful moments is coming up tomorrow, if not sooner.

All the best and much love to my friends Mrs. Chicken, Mrs. Chicky, and Her Bad Mother.

Today, Tacy will fly to Washington DC to visit my parents for ten days.

She’s been asking to do this for months, and I kept telling her that we’d do it in May, when she was off-track from school and the weather was nice*. And now May is here, and she’s getting on an airplane all by herself with no qualms whatsoever.

Sure, she’s given me a few extra-hard hugs over the past few days, telling me that she loves me and that she’ll miss me so much. But mostly it’s been “Can I bring this dress to Mimi and Poppy’s house?” and “Do Mimi and Poppy live near the ocean?” and “When I’m at Mimi and Poppy’s house, I promise I won’t spill.”

Yesterday afternoon, she dragged a suitcase up from the basement and proceeded to pack it all on her own. I have to remind her to put on underwear, but the girl can pack her own suitcase.

I have to smile thinking about everything they’re going to do together. Tacy loved the New York subway, so I have no doubt that she’ll be impressed by the DC metro (much cleaner and quieter, with fewer rats). I hope my father will take her out on the Tidal Basin in a paddle boat; they can try to run down seagulls the way he and I did. I know my mother will take her to Tyson’s, and they’ll stake out a dressing room for a good hour and a half.

I made sure that all the clothes in her suitcase are stacked in outfits, but I’m already giggling to myself at the combos she’ll wear - and my mother’s reaction to them.

I hope she’ll use her manners. Sometimes she forgets the magic word and that she’s got two feet that touch the floor.

And I hope she has a wonderful time. I don’t want to receive a phone call from a homesick little Goosie who needs to COME HOME NOW. Because her tickets are non-refundable and we can’t afford to change them.

But most of all, I hope that this act of great independence is just the first of many to come.

*Does this qualify as nice weather?

I’m having a little trouble getting back into my old jeans as quickly as I did after the girls were born. Ten pounds isn’t much, but on a five-foot four-inch frame, it’s enough to keep me in elastic waistbands. Which is depressing, so I try not to think about it.

This weekend, I got a good dose of perspective from a woman who hates elastic waistbands even more than I do - Stacy London, who spoke at the Colorado Women’s Expo on Sunday afternoon.

I started watching What Not to Wear about a year ago. While I enjoyed giggling at Stacy and Clinton’s snarky comments and feeling superior to the clods they made over - compared to some of those women, I absolutely ooze style - I was honestly touched by the transformations that took place. These women underwent dramatic mental shifts because they finally felt attractive - and they really were attractive, regardless of their dress size or face shape or hair texture.

But I stopped watching when I discovered I was pregnant. Why bother figuring out what not to wear when, as I ballooned, I couldn’t wear anything that didn’t have an elastic waistband anyway? I’ll watch A Baby Story instead, and by the way, would you please pass me another Dove bar?

Now that the baby’s out and I can once again take the stairs two at a time, the weight’s been coming off. But I’m not a patient person, and it’s not coming off fast enough for me. I want to look in the mirror and like what I see - or, at the very least, not focus immediately on what’s still out of whack. I want this not just for my own satisfaction, but so that I can set a good example for my girls, demonstrating for them a healthy body image.

Stacy spoke about how personal stressors have contributed to her own recent weight gain. Granted, she’s at least half a foot taller than me, so the weight is better distributed and hardly obvious, but she admitted that her clothes don’t fit now. That was the point that really resonated with me: Due to temporary circumstances, both she and I just aren’t where we want to be.

And that gave me hope. If fashion magnate Stacy London can put on a few pounds thanks to everyday stress, then I - who just had my third child - ought to be a bit more patient with myself and a bit more forgiving of those elastic waistbands, at least in the short term.

A woman a few rows up from me didn’t feel the same way. She didn’t accept that Stacy was admitting her own fallibility, that she was as human as all of us in the audience. She stood up and shouted her rebuttals. When a facilitator approached her with a microphone (Why? WHY?!), she grabbed it and continued ranting. When the facilitator moved away (FINALLY!), she leaned over to a little girl - maybe eight years old - who was sitting with her mother, hissed at her, “She’s LYING!” and jerked a thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the stage.

It seemed that as much as this woman didn’t like Stacy, she hated herself even more.

I don’t want to hate myself for still wearing elastic waistbands at three months post-partum. Even more so, I don’t want my girls to see that I’m the least bit dissatisfied with myself - now or at any time. I want to set an example for them of unconditional love for myself.

That doesn’t mean that I’ll say screw it and dive headfirst into a box of Dove bars, vowing that every extra ounce of me is worth adoring. Patience and forgiveness is one thing; willful neglect is another. The same reasons why I make my kids eat their veggies and play outside in the fresh air apply to me too.

So, thank you, Stacy London. Thank you for being funny and smart and so in tune with what makes us look and feel good - and for not letting a heckler, or your errant ten pounds, get you down. Thank you for setting an example to follow.

Just let me hang on to my elastic waistbands for another month or so. I’ll be out of them before BlogHer, I swear.

Problem is, following the rules doesn’t guarantee a white knight outcome. Plenty of women adhere to these so-called ideals only to discover that they’re miserable. Their lives seem idyllic to observers, but underneath, they’re festering with resentment. I did everything like I was supposed to, and THIS is how it turned out?

Rebecca Woolf’s memoir, Rockabye, is particularly refreshing for those of us who followed the rules, but wondered (and still do sometimes) about those paths not taken:

“…while living in Europe, the summer I was nineteen, I persuaded a magazine to send me on location to international music festivals, working as a journalist with no journalistic experience. Passionate and fearless, I booked meetings with a blank portfolio and the kind of confidence that could only come from teenage naivete…”

The summer I was nineteen, I took Calculus II and worked at a bookstore. Worlds apart from the life Rebecca led.

Even so, I could identify closely with her feelings about her friends, the people around her, as she described them:

“…friends you go out with, who know your name but not your story. The kind of friends who never ask, who cannot be bothered to know. Mutual acquaintances disguised as friends.”

She was a caretaker, filling other people’s needs while camouflaging her own. Letting them take from her, though it appeared that she was giving to them.

But it was when she took a pregnancy test - six of them, actually - that she realized she couldn’t go on that way:

“I want everyone out of my life who has taken from me and not given back - all the cool cats living their ninth lives. I do not want them near my child. Not even now, as it grows inside me.”

It seems that feeling of protectiveness is universal among mothers, even those who weren’t “breaking the speed limit and racing down the freeway with music blasting, ashtray overflowing” prior to learning of their pregnancies. Just that knowledge itself, before the baby can be seen or felt, is enough to spark changes in how we see ourselves and the people around us.

As her due date draws near, Rebecca voices her concerns about how her body will change - concerns that I imagine most women share, but very few discuss:

“I don’t want to be perceived as a baby-making machine instead of a sex object; I don’t want to lose my feminine power - a power that, no matter how hard my friends try to deny it, is based on sex.”

I have great respect for Rebecca’s honesty on this point. We’ve all felt the rush that comes with realizing that our appearance - our anatomy - affords us a means of manipulating others. Call me anti-feminist, but power is power and having it feels good, no matter what the source of it may be.

Rebecca’s devotion to her newborn son, Archer, is nearly overwhelming:

“I’m crazy in love and scared out of my mind because the world is so fucked-up and jaded and my baby is so new and perfect and I want to protect him from the monsters. Just like my mother wanted to do for me, and her mother for her, and every mother through time.”

We all begin as new and perfect and completely innocent beings, unaware of all the wrongdoings in life. Even now that my oldest child is six, I still yearn to preserve her optimistic outlook, her confidence and faith in the grown-ups around her, and yet in order to help her survive, I must teach her of the monsters that do exist.

Having a child brings a shifting perspective. As Rebecca describes it:

“I want to be taken care of, and at the same time I want so badly to be able to take care of myself. And I can’t. I want to help everyone, but I can’t. I want to show Archer that life is not perfect…”

And coming to terms with the changes in her life that occurred so suddenly is incredibly difficult:

“…sometimes it sucks being a mom and a wife. Sometimes the pressure is too much. Sometimes I just want to be alone. Have my old life back. Sometimes I think, How did I get here, and who are these strangers in my house?“

Again, I greatly respect Rebecca’s honesty. Because even when the ambiguous sequence of life is followed - diplomas are framed, engraved wedding invitations are sent, and ovulation predictors are employed - we still sometimes wonder how in the hell we ended up where we are.

And even when it appears on the surface that a marriage is serene and satisfying, I expect that very few couples have the sort of perspective that Rebecca and Hal do:

“[Marriage] is about trying. And messing up. And falling down. And getting up. And making up…Marriage is about the flowers that grow wild in the sidewalk cracks, often disguised as weeds and equally hard to manage.”

Most of all I admire Rebecca’s gleeful enjoyment of parenting:

“Our days mainly consist of chasing each other in circles until one of us gets hurt. Sometimes, when we’re both tired and neither of us feels like napping, we eat Cheerios straight from the box and watch Sesame Street side by side.”

And her dedication to Archer’s individuality:

“I want him to grow up knowing what a beautiful thing it is to be different. I don’t want him to follow the leader or feel more comfortable in a crowd than he does on his own.”

Those so-called ideals, the sequence of life, are still the norm to which most parents hope their children will aspire. Following those rules may make life easier, but there’s no guaranteed outcome - for boys or girls. As Rebecca succintly sums it up:

“Of course you have to know the rules before you break them, and Archer will certainly know rules. But he will also make his own. And I will make sure that he knows that although conformity is a way to get by in this world, it has never been the way to excel.”

Her circumstances of love, marriage, and motherhood may be out of the ordinary, but Rebecca Woolf is one mother from whom we can all learn.

Rebecca’s book, Rockabye, is available at Amazon. Her West Coast book tour is in progress - check her website for details. For more reviews of Rockabye, check out Parent Bloggers Network.