Listen to Your Body
Contributed by Stacy Dymalski - Posted: October 17th, 2007 
A female friend of mine recently asked me if I thought she should have a baby. She is about to turn 35 and feels like that bus is whizzing by and she needs to either get on or let it go. “That’s not a good reason to have a baby,” I counsel her. “Yeah, but I’m worried I’ll hit 40 and my uterus will self-destruct,” she replied. “I saw something about it on Oprah.”
I just recently read an article called “Listen to Your Body”. It said that the healthiest time for a woman to have a child is when she is between the ages of 16 to 20. Can you believe that?! Sixteen to 20?! In what, dog years? More…
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When I was a kid, it was an annual summer ritual to shop for new school clothes with my mom. She would haul my sisters and I to Lloyd Center in Portland, Oregon, which at the time, with 104 stores, was the largest shopping center in the world. (They didn’t call them malls then, they were shopping centers). 
There is one event that both kids and parents track with equal interest as it looms closer each year, and that event is the first day of school. And even though it’s on the radar for both, it’s dramatically different for each group. For kids, it’s that dreaded day when life has a schedule again; homework, music lessons, soccer practice, karate, community theatre, driver’s ed, after school sports, blah, blah, blah. Suddenly, your kid has a job, where they leave for work every morning at the crack of dawn and don’t return until dinner time. For the same reasons, we parents fondly refer to school starting as Independence Day. 
My 12-year-old son informed me that he wants a credit card. Now, there’s a recipe for disaster.
Dear Mom and Dad, 
I’ve been using scissors for decades. My first memory of scissors was when I cut my cousin’s hair with pinking shears when we were toddlers. My aunt wasn’t happy, but it really wasn’t my fault. Since I had used packing tape to style my cousin’s hair (we couldn’t find barrettes) I had no choice but to do surgery on her blond tresses. Unfortunately, I had to cut her hair rather short, which turned out to be a non-issue. They had to shave her head anyway when the doctor stitched up her scalp 
I, like every mom and dad I know, got into parenting for one reason; the money. No, wait. That’s why I got into high risk junk bonds. Now why did I get into parenting again? Oh yeah, for the rewards. Not the monetary kind, mind you, but the kind you get when you actually do something with your kids. And when I say “do something” I don’t mean stick them in front of a Game Cube while you have margaritas out back with the other moms in the neighborhood (although that’s a thought).
Are you planning your child’s first birthday party this year? Let me share something with you they don’t tell you when you take your little miracle home from the hospital. The evolution of the children’s birthday party is not unlike a twelve-step recovery program. In other words, it takes you (the parent) 12 years to realize that the best kids’ parties involve nothing more than a frozen pizza, a carton of Haagen-Dazs and some pitted black olives for the little darlings to stick on their fingers (but be sure to get the extra large ones so they can’t stick them up their noses – nothing ruins a party more than a trip to the emergency with a kid that isn’t yours). 
