Where I'm Writing When I'm Not Writing Here

The busyness of the past two weeks has been a big wow. Lots of work hiccups keeping me & the rest of the team on our toes, a cool business trip for Seymour, a birthday party for Mali, lots of visits from relatives and friends, BlogHer parties, soccer tournaments for Iz, excellent behavior & new developments from Leo, and very little sleep for me. The result: I declared this past Sunday's tired "unprecedented." I didn't win anything, though, except the satisfaction of getting some decent writing out on other internet spaces besides this one:

On BlogHer, I interviewed Jen Silverman, Sarah Talbot, and Yantra Bertelli, editors of the wonderful new book about parenting our children with special needs, My Baby Rides the Short Bus. Here's Yantra's take on why the book matters:

I hope our book helps its readers to stretch their definitions of inclusion and helps complicate mainstream ideas around individualism that silence or obscure the ways children are connected to their families and societies. Inclusion is a process and the work is never ending.

On Body Impolitic, I described my unapologetic efforts to equip my daughters for a life-long fight against a culture that wants them to hate their bodies:

I do my best to teach my two daughters to celebrate their beautiful and very different bodies just as they are. I talk about any problems of my own in terms of health, not moral failure. I do not hide my body, nor make excuses for it. And I stock my girls’ everyday lives with strong, confident women who talk about their bodies with practicality and humor, because I believe a positive body image is learned, like table manners or martial arts.

On (Never) Too Many Cooks, I laid out a recipe for one of my family's favorite meals, Vietnamese Grilled Pork with Rice Vermicelli:

My kids call this scrumptious all-in-one meal "Vietnamese pork bowl." It's a crowd pleaser: gluten and dairy free, vegetable gateway for picky eaters, straightforward preparation, and its three-hour process is done in spurts with lots of interstitial free time to pull apart brawling children—and oh my goodness is it delicious. Even my picky son with autism can be coaxed into nibbling on one of the carrot sticks.

And on Can I Sit With You?, I got to enjoy the fruits of a solid month of badgering Michael Procopio for another story, as he sent us The Horror of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (So I didn't write this one. But I did solicit, copyedit, and post it!)

As the two cute-as-can-be children of Dick Van Dyke’s character, Caractacus Potts, Jeremy and Jemima were the manifestation of my two greatest childhood fears — abandonment and replacement. Where did these children come from? I squirmed in discomfort every time they screeched, “Daddy! Daddy!” I simply could not accept that these were Mr. Van Dyke’s children, because as far as I was concerned, Dick Van Dyke was named Bert [from Mary Poppins] and already had two children.

Time for some sleep, though I once again failed to get to bed before midnight. I'll try to get up some details from the past two weeks, perhaps tomorrow.