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I am a jeans and t-shirt gal and I have Amelia Bloomer to thank for it. I hated wearing dresses & skirts as a kid because my mom never let me wear shorts or pants underneath so that I could still play on the monkey bars. Even thou I have made my peace with dresses and my daughter practically lives in her black and white plaid skirt, I know that it's hard to do certain things in a skirt.

Thus it makes sense that a seven-year-old project to highlight empowering stories for girls is named after Amelia Bloomer:

[T]he 2008 Amelia Bloomer Project honors the authors, illustrators, editors, and publishers who give life to books that encourage readers young and old to push the envelope and challenge what it means to be a woman, regardless of ethnicity or social-economic background.

This year’s list includes books challenging the young women of today to take a new look at what it means to be feminist, showcasing who fought for our rights. These books bring to light the stories of women who break boundaries, from civil war doctors and journalists covering WWII to graffiti artists and girls demanding to be accepted for who they are.  The 32 books on the 2008 Amelia Bloomer Project list encourage and inspire girls to be smart, brave, and proud.

We are frustrated by the small number of truly powerful, well-written feminist books for young readers, and by the small number of non-white, non-Western characters. We are also dismayed by the dearth of authentic feminist fiction for beginning and middle readers. We challenge publishers to develop thoughtful feminist books that will open the eyes of young readers to the possibility of equality for women. Jyoti says simply, “The battle has just begun.”

Some of the books are about princesses and some are about regular girls who do extraordinary things. Either way, I think the stories would be more fun to read than the millionth reading of "Cinderella."  One of the 2004 books, "Players in Pigtails," was an early favorite in our house.

Check out the list out it has some amazing books! I can't wait to get started on collecting them.
 

Veronica is actively raising a fellow bookworm in her daughter. Veronica also blogs at Viva La Feminista, WIMN's Voices, Chicago Moms Blog and Work it, Mom!

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Of course you do!

One of my favorite indie stores is having a contest to cap off Women's History Month:

Please post [at Sticker Sisters] about [a brave woman or girl] you know or [one] you admire from a far.

On April 1st [Ariel will] pick one of the posts out of a hat and that person will get a free Brave Girl t-shirt!

Shirts come in kids sizes up to Adult XXL.

These shirts are awesome people. I bought one for my favorite toddler girl for her birthday last year. I just saw her in it last week and it's too cute on her. And you know what? She is fiercely brave...just like her mama. I get to peek in on her at daycare and today I saw her sliding like no one's business.

And unlike other baby boutique shops, these shirts are for the tiniest of brave girls to XXL brave women.

So hurry on over and talk up the brave girls in your life. And while you're there, get some of the matching Brave Girl band-aids.

Photo from Sticker Sisters...isn't she just a cutie? 

PS: An update on the CPS LSC situation is that enough people did sign up for LSC positions!

 

Veronica is lucky to know many brave girls and women. She blogs at Viva La Feminista, WIMN's Voices, Chicago Moms Blog and Work it, Mom!

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There are days when my husband & I joke around about shipping our sassy & (some days too) precocious daughter to boarding school. Thus it intrigued me to see the headline - No small plan: Public boarding schools for Chicago - in Friday's Chicago Tribune. Low and behold...the first time I've ever said "Brilliant!" about CPS. Yes, I know I'm hard on the public system that has to cater to us yuppie parents and work to educate kids who don't have the luxuries some of our kids have. But I'm serious that I read the first paragraphs of this article and immediately hit "email story."

Public boarding schools where homeless children and those from troubled homes could find the safety and stability to learn are being pursued by Chicago Public Schools officials.

Under the plan, still in the nascent stages, the first pilot residential program could open as soon as fall 2009. District officials hope to launch as many as six such schools in the following years, including at least one that would operate as a year-round school.

Homeless kids getting a steady home? That's a no brainer. The fact that homeless kids are even going to school should be rewarded with a home of their own. Of course to sell this idea, CPS may have to pander to some of the most insidious stereotypes about urban living:

Chicago Public Schools chief Arne Duncan said he does not want to be in the "parenting" business, but he worries that some homes and some neighborhoods are unsafe, making education an afterthought.

"Some children should not go home at night; some of them we need 24-7," he told the Tribune. "We want to serve children who are really not getting enough structure at home. There's a certain point where dad is in jail or has disappeared and mom is on crack ... where there isn't a stable grandmother, that child is being raised by the streets."

Of course the problem with stereotypes is that there is some truth to it. There are neighborhoods where it is too dangerous to walk around at night and even during the day. As a friend and frequent commenter, Dani, pointed out, that sometimes the older child of the family needs to walk the younger kids to school. That path plus the path to high school may cross gang lines a few times. But are dangerous neighborhoods enough of a reason for kids to be sent to a boarding school? I'd say if the parents say yes, then yes. 

Our daughter is beginning kindergarten next year meaning that we're going to rely on her school for aftercare. It just astounds me how many "good" schools do not have aftercare. Is it because there are so many SAHMs that the demand isn't there? That the staff is too stressed to plan an aftercare program? I really don't get it. Thankfully I am sure that the school she's going to attend will have aftercare (those following our kindergarten saga have to wait a few more weeks for an update on the search). I can only imagine how hard it is for parents who are going it alone or working at jobs with inflexible schedules and super tight budgets to figure out a safe place to send the kids for the hours after school closes to when they arrive home. The insane part is that each CPS elementary school has a different start and end time.

Mothers are known for sacrificing for their children. Books upon books are written about our sacrifices. I'm sure enough parents will consent to sending their kids to a boarding school. As for the homeless students, I think this would be a godsend to them:

For her entire freshman year at North Lawndale College Prep, Tinesheia Howard commuted to school from a homeless shelter, where privacy was almost nonexistent, theft was a constant concern, and studying couldn't begin until 9 p.m., after the din around her settled down for the night.

To make it from the North Side to the West Side by 8 a.m., Tinesheia rose from her dormitory bed at 5 a.m. each day. By last-period algebra, she was fighting sleep.

Tinesheia is now a freshman at a small two-year college in Illinois. But looking back at her one year of homelessness, she says she could have benefitted from a Chicago Public Schools plan to create boarding schools for CPS high school students who can't or shouldn't go home.

I would hope that this idea that would only benefit the students' with the least advantages would go over with the majority of Chicagoans. I fear though that the racism, classism, and the "boot strap" mythology will end up killing this idea. On the other hand, the way that CPS has been able to open up many charter schools with corporate support, I think we very well will see the opening of a boarding school in Chicago in the very near future. Plus there days, I don't think that ideas like this are floated as testers...but as early warnings. If we can have a boarding school for the best of the best, why can't we have one for the neediest of our kids?
 

Yes, Veronica is obsessed with CPS and blogging at Viva La Feminista, WIMN's Voices, Chicago Moms Blog and Work it, Mom!

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The hardest part about raising a daughter has been watching my mouth. I swear a lot. I use the F-word A LOT. I also take almost any opening I get to say something negative about my body.

"Oh these chicken breasts are huge!" I bet they could at least button their shirt.

As women, I think we all do this. As a woman who isn't a size 8 much less a size 2, I do this constantly. I work in an all-woman environment and at least once a week we find ourselves in some sort of "My body is worse" pissing match. So when I read Rosie's post my heart broke and I teared up at its brutal honesty:

One of the things that I often talk about is the need for us to modify our own language– what we project about ourselves– and the language of others. That instead of saying “I hate my cellulite” when someone else says she hates her nose in order to be in companionship with that person, we should say, “I can’t imagine why you would hate your nose, and you have a smile that lights up the world” (or whatever else might be the case)...After my talk at Amherst College, I met some roommates who told me about the Self Deprecation Jar they had in their suite. Anyone who says anything bad about him or herself has to deposit some cash in the jar. When it all adds up to a quality loaf of bread, they hit the bakery. I just loved it.

And so did I. Go ahead, click on the link to read the entire post, it's totally worth it.

I've assumed that we'd end up with a swear jar at some point at home, but a self deprecation jar? I never would have thought that up. But now it's out there. About six months ago my daughter asked her daddy if her legs were fat. She was just past her 4th birthday. Fat? *sigh* Thankfully it was a one-time occurrence, but it still lingers in the air.

The Gods created my daughter in my image and this is a blessing and a curse.

It is a curse because I really don't like my body. I treat it poorly. I don't take care of it the way I know I should. I scold it, poke it, and jiggle the flab. Yet I have read memoir after memoir essay about women growing up with mom's who diet and hated their bodies. Some of the women wrote about how others who comment that they were a "little Susan" at the same time they saw their mother's weighing chicken breasts to ensure a "correct dinner." I don't want that to be what my daughter remembers of me when she's grown and I'm dead.

It is a blessing because each morning I wake her up and see how freaking beautiful she is. I see how much she looks just like me when I was her age and it scares me. Some days I think something triggered the ugly gene...maybe around the same time I got curly hair aka puberty. But most of the time, I have to swallow my self-hate and realize that if she is this gosh darn beautiful (and it's been verified by many an outsider) then there must be some of that in me too.

And here I thought I needed a therapist, when all I needed was my daughter.

This post was cross-posted at Viva La Feminista, Veronica's personal blog. You can also find her at WIMN's Voices, Chicago Moms Blog and Work it, Mom!

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This action alert just popped into my inbox from MomsRising.com:

Right now, more than 40,000 kindergarteners are home alone each day afterschool, with a total of more than 14,000,000 school-age kids on their own afterschool. Surprised? The reality is that most parents work now, and there are too few affordable and accessible afterschool programs available to handle the number of children and families who need a safe place to go after the school day ends.

When I read that I reread it a zillion times. FORTY THOUSAND? For real? My first thought wasn't what kind of parent would do that? But how do these lil ones get home? Living in the big ole city of Chicago, I can't imagine a kindergartener making it all the way home without a police officer pulling up to her. That is unless they lived directly across the street. Which in this era of "school choice" is most likely rarer than when I was a kid. When I went to the Afterschool Alliance's website to find out more about this statistic and see what we could do about it, I quickly saw many articles about rural kids.

In rural Maine, one of the biggest challenges facing afterschool programs is transportation. "If we don't have buses to move children, we don't have children," Charles Harrington, Director of Maine Sea Coast Mission/The EdGE, told Congressional staffers.

Considering that one of my favorite grrls lives in Maine, I was floored. In my head, I know that rural America is hurting. I know it, but I also don't realize to what extent it is. When the CTA funding was passed in Springfield it included money for public transportation in other parts of the state but the tax burden was on the Chicagoland area. "You're welcome downstate!" I yelled during one WBEZ broadcast. It wasn't as in your face as it sounds...I know that Chicago & the suburbs put in a lot more money than downstate because well, there's more money here. I could move downstate to pay less taxes, but I'm not.

I've also heard, as I'm sure many of you have, complaints from downstate elected officials & residents that inner city kids get more than farm kids. I have no idea how true it is, but somehow I think it is. And this inequity extends to afterschool activities apparently.

The fact that kindergarteners are being left alone due to a lack of afterschool activities is insane, just plain insane. We hear politicians on all sides say time and again that this country cherishes children. Barack Obama won't mandate health insurance except for kids. "What about the children?" is a constant cry.

But how serious can we be about cherishing children if we allow anyone, George W. Bush, or the next president to cut funding for afterschool programs? I could go into a rant about how this is just a way to push us women out of the workforce and back into the kitchen, but I have to do some homework for the office. 

Seriously 40,000? 

Veronica also blogs at Viva La Feminista, Chicago Moms Blog and Work it, Mom!

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I haven't gotten my paczki yet, but we did vote this morning. There is a blurry photo of my daughter holding up our "Thank you for voting" receipt. We all got up extra early because I feared that with the snow coming in the evening others might wake early to connect the arrow and vote. But nope, no wait when we got there and it was quick & mostly painless.

I told her last night that we'll come home, eat dinner, and watch the results come in on TV. She complained that she didn't want to watch it all night. I told her that of course, we can play games while we're watching the results. She's a happy future voter.

 So tonight, while you're watching Tim Russet and his stupid dry erase board or CNN's talking heads (do they sleep?), we'll be at home watching the delegate tote-board and playing Candyland. I wonder if Milton Bradley could create a game where you get the top points, but alas, you still lose because you didn't get enough big pieces. Kinda like if Monopoly wasn't about your bank account, but your real estate portfolio. ha!

When Veronica isnt' raising the first Latina President, she blogs at Viva La Feminista, Chicago Moms Blog and Work it, Mom!

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Mommy guilt manifests itself in many ways. For me, one of the biggest is at dinner time.

Cooking has never been my cup of tea. It always seemed more of a chore than anything else. My mom often worked second shift, thus many a day she left work by the time we were getting out of school. My dad would be home soon after and by the time I was 12, cooking dinner was part of me pulling my weight. My younger sister throughly enjoyed seeing me struggle with cooking. Her perfect older sister couldn't make rice? Ha!

During the decade I spent child-free after leaving my parents home, I did some cooking, but rarely attempted to do more than easy pasta dishes occasionally adding chicken. When I got pregnant I thought that I'd be better. We'd eat balanced meals including more vegetables. I have to say that compared to our child-free days, I'm doing better. But not good enough.

My husband & I both work full-time, in fact we all car pool together. We drop off our daughter, he gets dropped off, I head to my office. Reverse that in the evening. If all goes well, we can be home by 6:30. We try to get our daughter in bed by 8:30 - 9:00. That leaves us 2, maybe 2.5 hours for making dinner, playing, cuddling, reading stories, and the nightly bed-time throw down.

One morning about six months ago I saw what I thought could be the answer to our prayers. A new service had come to town, Dinner by Design. The commercial touted a community kitchen for a price, but it also said that pick up was available. I could pick up a home cooked meal? About a year ago, I tried to get in on First Slice, but alas, it was full by the time I tried to sign up into their share-holder program.

Then one day the goddess shone a light into my life. Dinner by Design was now a partner with our pre-school. Oh, baby, yes! With free delivery? Only ambrosia could have tasted better at that moment. It was all so very Rosie the Riveter*. 

So far, the convenience is fair. While we do get a shopping bag of dinners once a month while we pick up our daughter. For less than $90, we got 6 homemade frozen dinners made for our small family.  The only hang up is that we had imagined that the cooking time would be shorter. 45-60 minutes really is a lot for us, especially when we had signed up to reduce our wait time for dinner. Many of the dishes also require a 2-3 day defrosting in the fridge. Considering that I barely plan for each day, planning dinners in advance is asking a lot for me. As for taste, they were pretty good. DBD does hold tasting nights about a week before orders are due, so we knew that some of them were pretty tasty.

We've only ordered from DBD two times, but I do plan on us doing it again. Mostly for dinners that I know won't be coming from our own kitchen (Chicken Piccata). But I also know after eating a few of the dinners that the hour that it does take to cook the dinners, we should be hand making our side dishes (mashed potatoes and not by Country Crock), steaming fresh veggies, or tossing a salad. My neighbors should be happy to read that - They've offered to make a batch of mashed potatoes just so we don't buy them from the store chock full of preservatives.

If you can or need help with dinner, I would recommend them. We don't eat them every day, but it's nice to have them as back-up or just as a welcome reprieve from having to make an entire dinner each night.

Veronica & her family have enjoyed DBD's Sun-dried tomato Meatloaf with Red Currant-Wine Sauce, Baked Dijon Chicken Alfredo, Chicken Kiev, and Confetti Meatloaf (the confetti is vegetables!).  She also blogs at Viva La Feminista and Chicago Moms Blog, where this will be cross-posted.

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When I first heard about Crayola's advancement in coloring that lead to mess-free markers & paints, I was pretty excited. My daughter wasn't old enough to use them, but I thought, when the time comes, that will be great. She'll be able to color and paint on the floor without us worrying too much. She's 4 1/2 now and can't get enough to crayons, markers, pencils, and any type of paper. She's quite the crafty kid when it comes to paper. Over the summer someone got her a mess-free "Color Wonder" Fairies packet with a coloring book and markers.

I hate it.

Not only do the markers only work on the paper, but they only work in the areas that Crayola thinks there should be color. There's one page in the book that leaves almost half a page of white space. When my daughter & I were coloring it, I thought it would be nice to draw in some flowers with the fairy. No deal. White space is white space in "Color Wonder" world. No embellishments. No additions. OK, we can work with that. We keep coloring the fairy and BAM! Out of no where, there are now spirals on her dress. Yes, the geniuses at Crayola thought that this fairy's dress looked best with spirals. There was no choice in the matter.

How is the next Cynthia Rowley supposed to come about when she doesn't have a choice to put stripes instead of spirals? How is the next Georgia O'Keefe going to blossom without adding in extras to a garden scene?

Yes, I love the idea of paints that won't stain my rugs or sofa, but I also like my daughter using paints to express herself in her own way. I remember coloring Strawberry Shortcake and her beloved Custard the cat and then adding in stars in the background or diagonal stripes in the background. White space was to be conquered not allowed to mock me with its blankness. I'm sure that I'm more frustrated with the white space than my daughter. She might have already learned to accept that "The Coloring Man" has placed rules on her coloring. Until then, I think I'll accept the mess on my kitchen table as the price for my daughter's imagination.

Veronica rants about other matters on her personal blog, Viva La Feminista. Come join her! 

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