When Dash was a peanut of a newborn, I propped him up in his boppy each day surrounded by a selection of picture books. I tuck Zora in at night with a kiss, a stuffed animal, and a few dozen board books.
The Rader family has passed the giant, gleaming cube of the Taco Bell Discovery Center in Santa Ana dozens of times on the way to Disneyland. So we finally decided to stop by and “discover” it.
I am sitting backstage with a room full of women, all mothers, preparing to go on stage for the show Expressing Motherhood, a play about real moms sharing real stories, that I have been doing for the last two weekends.
I figured a gym class might be a good thing to try for my daughter Addison. I’d been told Addison had a slight gross motor delay and she never crawled.
For those of you who follow this column, you know that a little ways back I made a very grand and public declaration about my commitment to lose those last 10 pounds from my pregnancy and get back into shape.
Santa may be the first name of our hometown, but with its balmy weather, Santa Monica is not exactly the winter wonderland of childhood memory. Coming from the East Coast, I’ve always had a hard time getting into the holiday spirit here.
Right near our house, on the corner across from Whole Foods and next to the car wash, there is an empty lot. My son and I pass this lot multiple times a day on our way to school in the car, running errands or just grabbing a bagel.
For the past nine years, the Fairmont Miramar Hotel has displayed a gingerbread replica of Santa Monica during the holidays. In addition to the bank with its gold coined roof, the post office, library, Fairmont hotel, school and church, this year’s city boasts surfers catching waves made of rock can
‘Tis the season for gift giving. No matter what religion or spiritual practice you subscribe to, the winter solstice is upon us and it demands that we exchange gifts with the people we love.
It almost seems too easy to have this column be about Thanksgiving. But it also seems so appropriate, being that it is only two days away. Since Thanksgiving is a time to take stock and be thankful for those around you, and since motherhood is a daily experience of stock-taking, I figured I had no c
We will be spending a lot of time this weekend stuffing ourselves with turkey and paying lipservice to the concept of “giving thanks.” This year we decided to find ways to really show how thankful we are to live in a place like Santa Monica.
During our pregnancies, we practiced yoga to try to relieve stress, backaches, and that awful swelling in our knees and ankles. We did specific exercises to help us get our bodies in shape to deliver and keep our minds calm and focused through the excruciating pain of childbirth.
