Last year, when my 13 year-old son, Sam, staked his claim in adolescence and announced he wasn’t going to attend summer camp anymore, I panicked. As a single mom living in New York City, I couldn’t afford to send him to sleep away camp, nor could I leave my job as an administrator in one of the local colleges, pack the SUV (even if we had one), and head for Maine or Cape Cod for a month. Sam was too old for day camp and too young to work. What kind of TV addled X-box blurry-eyed puddle of sludge would I come home to find if I left him in the apartment all day?

Then I had an idea. Although Sam had put the kibosh on summer camp, why not take the opportunity to do something I’d always dreamed of doing myself: enroll us in a Spanish language immersion program, somewhere far away from the hot and sticky city? I’d always wanted to improve my embarrassing tourist Spanish, and Sam was already studying Spanish in middle school. What could be better than giving him a leg up before 9th grade? --read more >>

On another blog it was suggested that I write a separate blog post about how I got away from the man who abused me. As you may know I have an outside hipmama blog called Beyond Battered that is about what I went through. I am getting my story out in bits and pieces...truthfully it is very hard to re-visit the mental state I was in at the time but I am finding it therapeutic.

I left after a 'minor' beating, meaning no skin breaking/bleeding,and no kicking. He 'just' pushed me into a wall, smacked me really hard several times and knocked me down. This was in response to him coming home and finding me on the phone. He had recently stopped taking the phone with him when he left and allowed me to use the phone again, so I thought it was ok to use the phone when he was gone. I was wrong in that belief and I paid for it that day.--read more >>

1. Put that baby down before you spoil it. How exactly can you spoil a baby? They’re supposed to be dependent. The great thing about front packs and slings is that your baby can be exactly where she’s supposed to be and you still have your hands free.--read more >>
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A couple weeks ago I traveled to New York City for work. It was my first visit to the city, and on my one free afternoon, I shot out of my hotel room and into the city like a pinball. I popped in and out of stores. I raced up and down streets. I bounced in and out of subway tunnels. I wanted to see it all: the visual assault of Times Square; the carousel at Central Park; the tiny, closet-like cafés in the Soho district; the children skipping through the fountain at Washington Square Park. I was so busy shopping I didn't even have time to buy anything. In the evening, as I made my way back to my room, I passed a street vendor selling t-shirts for children printed with images of pop icons. The shirts seemed like the perfect New York City souvenir for my children: hip, edgy, irreverent. For my six-year old daughter, I chose a purple shirt with Einstein sticking his tongue out for the camera. For my two-year old son, a bright blue shirt with Che Guevara's chiseled profile set against a red background.

I was pleased with my purchases, and so were my kids. The first morning after I returned, I dressed them in their new shirts. On the drive to my son's Spanish immersion daycare, my daughter amused herself in the back seat by teaching her brother to say the name of the man on his shirt. He caught on quickly. Over and over in the car, she pointed to his shirt and asked, "Who's that?" And he responded proudly: "Shay Gebaba," and all three of us giggled. When we arrived at his classroom, he ran up to his teacher, a soft-spoken Cuban woman who never failed to greet him with a hug. He pointed to his chest and squealed: "Shay Gebaba!" --read more >>