The Mom & Baby Issue 2018
Managing Labor Pains; Baby Backpacks vs. Strollers; Creating a Minimalist Nursery; Summer Camp Guide
A Chihuahua Bonds With Children
On a breezy April morning, Gail Peck sits down on a comfortable couch at Little One’s University in Essex with a 5-year-old girl, a picture book and Superhero — a tiny black-and-white Chihuahua with enormous ears. Tucked beneath the girl’s arm is a stuffed horse. “When I was little, I loved horses so much, I…
Destination Recreation: MetroRock
My 2-year-old daughter leaps without thinking, while my 6-year-old son strategically plans and calculates risks before taking the plunge. So when Luke and I arrived at Essex Junction climbing gym MetroRock for our private rock-climbing lesson, I could tell he was nervous. “You only go as high as you want,” I told him. I worried…
Backpacks or Strollers: Which is Better for Babies’ Development?
When Gina Mireault’s son and daughter were small, she often chose a backpack baby carrier rather than a stroller out of necessity. She owned two golden retrievers, which she walked twice a day, and the backpack provided a better hands-free option. Whenever she carried her babies on her back, Mireault noticed a difference in their…
Pathways Through Pain: Three Mamas Share the Different Ways They Managed the Challenges of Labor
In other cultures and languages, there are specific words for the feelings women experience during childbirth. In Swedish, the word is värkar. In Swahili, the phrase is maumivu ya uzazi. But in the English language, we customarily describe the intense sensations of labor with the same word we use to describe the sensation of having…
Habitat: Minimalist Nursery
One of the first things you’ll probably hear upon entering my house is my 2-year-old son, Mo, addressing you with an outstretched hand. “Hands, walk, room,” he’ll say, as he leads you into his tiny bedroom, just off the central living space. The walls are warm white, a low wooden bed sits in the corner…
Expressing Motherhood’s Mama Monologues
In 2010, Sheramy Tsai was living in Boston with two kids under age 2 and blogging about her experience as a mom. Her interest was piqued by an online call for submissions for Expressing Motherhood, a live stage show that began in Los Angeles in 2008 in which women (and the occasional man) share their…
A COTS Walk for Grateful Hearts
The theme for this year’s COTS Walk — gratitude — was inspired, in part, by a 6-year-old Bellows Falls girl who sent a box of pet rocks to the Committee on Temporary Shelter last fall. Gracia Lenois and her dad, Darren, made them, they said in the note they included with their package, “for people…
Haute Kiddie Cuisine at the Hungry Pea
Thanks to TV shows such as “MasterChef Junior” and “Kids Baking Championship,” young people today are more culinary-savvy than ever. They — and their parents — are the target audience for South Burlington resident Maja Novovic’s upscale kids’ catering business, The Hungry Pea, which she started in 2017. The seed for the company was planted…
Grandma’s Maple-Glazed Apples & Hot Dogs: A Recipe Passed Down Through the Generations
When my parents were first married, they lived in Oklahoma and Texas. But nothing felt like home except Vermont, where my father had lived for several years as a child, and where my mother had lived since her early teens. They made the decision to move back north for good when I was about a…
Gabrielle & Cirilo Augustín
You were raised in a French-Canadian family in Vermont; your husband, Edwin, grew up in Chile; and you both speak Spanish to Augustín at home. Did you speak more than one language growing up? Gabrielle: No, my mom’s generation was the first one to grow up not speaking French in the home, so I grew…
Being There: How Birth and Cancer Tightened Family Bonds
My nephew came into this world on the day before Thanksgiving in 2003, via an emergency cesarean. My sister, Tanya, had unexpectedly developed a placental abruption. A health-conscious long-distance runner, Tanya had enjoyed an uncomplicated pregnancy. Despite this fact, as well as excellent prenatal care, her placenta began dislocating from her uterine wall when she…
Tell Us About a Favorite Camp Meal or Food Tradition
The camp kitchen is steaming with yummy smells and the sounds of laughter and chatter on Saturday nights. Our wonderful camp cook has Saturdays off, and the on-duty counselors and “stay-over” campers (who are attending for more than one week) have the opportunity to come together, five or six at a time, to prepare the evening meal. Campers…
Tell Me a Story
Do you know the story of your birth? I’d always had just a hazy idea of what happened during mine. Recently, though, I asked my mom to recount my birth story — and recorded it on my iPhone for posterity. My mom confirmed that my dad was indeed reading aloud People magazine’s “The 25 most…
How Can Moms Model Self-Compassion for Their Children?
New York Times best-selling poet Rupi Kaur captured the attention of readers across the globe when she wrote, “How you love yourself is how you teach others to love you.” Considering those words may make us uncomfortable, but there’s little denying their truth. Think honestly about your behaviors, the choices you make, the language you…
Duo Lingo: A Bilingual Family on Raising Twins, Packing Lunches and Taking Breathers
Smiles and laughter are abundant in the Fitzgerald family’s small but cozy house, tucked away in a neighborhood off of Shelburne Road in South Burlington. Nadeth and Ryan — her second husband and the father of twins Nyal and Naya — have complementary personalities. His steady, calm disposition balances her high-intensity one. His patience is…
Humor & Heart: An Interview With Essayist Kimberly Harrington
When Kimberly Harrington walks into Burlington’s Citizen Cider for a chat with Kids VT — sporting red lipstick, a stylish shag haircut and a gray motorcycle jacket draped over her shoulders — she looks more like the front woman of an indie band than the writer of essays about motherhood. Harrington is a rock star…
