I like to call the season from now until the end of the year, “The Months of Eating Dangerously.” In the next forty plus days, we will all be celebrating Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza and New Year’s. These are all wonderful holidays where we gather with friends and loved ones to rejoice in our family traditions and important religious observances. Each holiday is rich with meaning and also with rich food. We are faced with an onslaught of holiday eating. There are office parties, school parties, holiday open houses, snuggling up in front of the fireplace drinking the hot chocolate and eating the sugar cookies that were left for Santa. With all the hams, turkeys, latkes, egg nog and even the ubiquitous fruitcake, it’s no wonder the average person gains five to ten pounds over the holidays. This time of year is rough. My daughters have barely recovered from the Tootsie Pop and Hershey Kiss induced coma brought on by Halloween and we’re already making plans for the upcoming foodapolooza.

While the MomsRising discussion boards are filling with comments about the recent assault on airplane breastfeeding. Amy at Mojo Mom has logged a must-read post about how truly radical an act breastfeeding is. This new event reminded me of something I'd written about in the past, the Starbucks nursing shame.

When Judith Warner's book Perfect Madness reached the shelves a year or so back, it wasn't immediately clear that she'd become a forceful political advocate for mothers. Yes, the book did end with a slew of policy proposals. The majority of the pages offered cultural analysis, though, and more often than not, Warner seemed to tread perilously close to blaming mothers--affluent, over achieving, hyper-perfectionist mothers, the prime focus of the book--for the malaise upon us. The book's political ending was nice, but it felt tacked on. How, after all, would improved access to quality daycare really make life easier for the mom committed to hand painting paper plates for her child's birthday party? The blogosphere, especially, took aim. The lack of online word limits allowed an almost limitless analysis of Perfect Madness, and most bloggers were relentlessly critical of the book.

On Monday, Kiki delivered your 6,100-name petition all over Harrisburg; visited dozens of legislative offices; spread the word to anyone who would listen about SB 440 and HB 352; AND spoke at a conference of the Pennsylvania Women's Commission! Whew. Her report is so amazing, and awesome, I am sharing with you the whole, wonderful thing... Good Morning, I am still recovering from my trip to Harrisburg on Monday, October 23rd. Thus my delay in getting my report out to you. My dear friend and colleague Debbi accompanied me on this trip. She had never been involved in any political activity so this was quite an eye opening experience for her.