I think if you live in Manhattan’s West Village, you should be guaranteed certain rights… like clean drinking water, routine garbage pick-up, reliable mail delivery and at least one Sarah Jessica Parker sighting.

But after 5 years of calling this neighborhood home, nothing.

NOTHING. Not one glimmer of SJP.

But I’m making a little progress.

Because earlier this week, my friend Julie and I were strolling along Waverly Place, when we saw the hubby. Matthew Broderick. So I asked the great Ferris Bueller… did you cheat on your sensational, fabulous, fashionista wife?

And he said nothing. But you know what, that might not entirely be his fault because I may not have actually asked the question out loud. It’s probably more accurate to say I just thought it.

Officially, his publicist has released a “no comment’ on the rumors.

Anyway, Ferris seemed a bit intrigued by us and our strollers.  Maybe because we both have the double decker Phil and Ted strollers – although it can’t be his first Phil and Ted experience because they are pretty common in the city.  It looks like this…

How else can you maneuver a double stroller in and out of quaint, cramped stores?

But if Ferris had questions about our brilliant stroller system, he kept quiet. That guy is very big on the no comment.

Not the case for everyone in my hood.

The other day, I pushed my stroller into a local coffee shop and a man peered down at Summer and said to her…

“You poor baby. All strapped in like that. It must be torture.”

“Trust me, if anyone is being tortured in this scenario, it’s me,” I responded laughing. I had endured a great deal of whining that morning.

“I don’t feel sorry for mothers. You chose this. No one forced you.”

Holy double caffe latte what?!

Hmm… what would Sarah (no, not Palin) do in this scenario?

I looked around the shop and another mother gave me a look that said, forget it girl. He’s not worth the effort.

She was right.

So I said nothing, grabbed my latte, aimed my Phil and Ted’s towards the door and headed out.

mama bird notes:

Contributing mama Daphne Biener faces some tough questions from the playground about God, goblins and magic. You might just start to believe. Click on contributing mamas to read more.

By Contributing Mama Daphne Biener

Ah Tuesday.  Good old predictable Tuesday.  I set out a snack of peanut butter and apples, rolled up my sleeves, and got down to the business of begging.  Because begging is what it takes to extract even the tiniest morsel of information from my children about their days.  Every little detail comes hard won. Except for today. Today Kira started right in about the boys on the playground. Boys with questions.  Questions like what does she believe in? Is it monsters or goblins or God?

Monsters. Goblins. Or God.

Previously if I were to hazard a guess about the composition of a second grade boy’s mind, I’d have said some mixture of tetherball, dinosaurs and airplanes.  Boy would I have been wrong.  These kiddos are wrestling over the big stuff.  The mythical, the magical, the religious.

I was concerned that my second grader was unprepared for such topics, but Kira handily bested the sandbox crusaders:

“I can tell you this: I believe in fairies and magic.  Because they’re real.”

I sliced up another mackintosh, and casually prodded:

“Fairies and magic? How nice.  You know that it’s ok to believe whatever you want to believe.  Even if your friends believe in something different.  Even if your mommy…”

“Oh, I know you don’t believe in fairies, Mom.  That’s ok.  It’s ok because fairies are real, so it doesn’t matter if you believe in them or not.”

And here Acadia, who had been silently snacking, chimed in:

“Yeah Mom, fairies are real.  But you have to clap to help them stay alive.”

Right-o. Clap. Clap. Clap.  More apples anyone?

Kira dipped a slice into the peanut butter, her face still scrunched up pensively.

“Oh, and Mom?”

“Yes, honey?”

“Can the police really throw you in jail for not believing in God?”

Whoa. This question came with blinking lights and sirens. This one I had to get right.  And get it right within the second or two allotted by my seven year-old’s attention span.

The weight of responsibility to the next generation bore down on my shoulders.

This was important.

I had to do it justice.

But be fair and impartial.

And keep my hand-wringing regarding the direction of our country to myself.

I’ll explain that America was founded on the freedom for each individual to choose for herself what to believe in.

I’ll discuss the importance of respecting each other’s choices and beliefs.

I’ll tell the story of our forefathers, who believed so strongly in freedom from religious persecution that they left their land and took a treacherous journey and dumped tea overboard and recklessly killed the natives so that we could secure a place where it was safe to pray in our own way.

“Um, Mom?”

Oops. Where was I?

“No, the police can definitely not throw you in jail for your beliefs.”

Clap. Clap. Clap.

Addendum:

Driving home the next day, Kira admired a neighbor’s yard.  “I wish we could grow flowers up the side of our house like that,” she said.  Following our earlier theme, I nudged, and asked if she couldn’t just ask a fairy to arrange that for us.

“No Mom, it doesn’t work like that.  The fairies don’t need to spend their time on me. I already believe.”

“Oh?” asked I.

“You know Mom, like with Obama.  He’s not going to come here to talk to you when he’s got other people out there who still don’t believe. That’s who he needs to visit. It’s the same with the fairies.”

All of which has got me thinking; if the fairies can get by on the hope of a few young believers, then surely Obama will get this chance at the change I so desperately believe in.

To read more of Daphne’s work, visit her eco-fabulous blog, A Greener Biener.

My husband has never really been all that handy. I know some of you are married to guys who can fix a leaky pipe while putting together a piece of Ikea furniture while watching a ball game.

Rick? Well, he’s got that ball game part down. Solid.

But my husband has countless other skills like spotting celebrities, juggling and singing in tune so I’ll be sitting pretty when I open up my own little community theater.

As a result we have a lot of little stuff in our apartment that just needs fixing and we can’t quite figure how to actually make that happen. Because I’m clueless too.

I wish I could do it all… kill a moose, drag it back with my bare hands and then fix that broken closet door knob, but it’s just not me.  (That last sentence was inspired by the multi-talented, multi-tasking Sarah Palin, but should in no way be read as an endorsement of such candidate.)

So I was a little apprehensive when we ordered the most adorable, pink retro bike for Dylan.

That arrived in a big box.

Needing some assembly.

But man, did my husband make it happen.

Now the handle bars were a little crooked and the seat was too high and the front light didn’t quite work.

And as Dylan set off on her first official spin, the left pedal did fall off.

And then a few yards later, it fell off again.

Listen Dylan, no one said riding a bike is easy.

But Rick is not a man who accepts failure. His girl would ride. So he ran back home, grabbed the wrench he borrowed from our super and fixed that little retro number. And off she went on the most lovely of September days.

And I understood the moment perfectly. This is just the beginning of a trillion moments to come where I watch with pride as my little girl pedals away.

Of course, 14 seconds later, I chased after her and grabbed her handle bars so she wouldn’t careen into some pedestrians and flip over the curb.

But still, for a few moments, it was joyful to just watch that little pinkalicious girl fly.

mama bird notes:

Miriam is the winner of the fabulous travel brush set from Design Brushes.  Miriam, email me at kelcey@mamabirddiaries.com with your mailing address. More giveaways to come!

So earlier this week, I see this image (with no sound) for a split second on the television…

and I think to myself… that poor woman. Her baby is so NOT cute. Sigh. Well, I’m sure she thinks he’s cute. I mean, doesn’t every mother think their own baby is cute? They must.

Then my attention is quickly diverted because 4 year-old Dylan says to me…

“I love coffee so much. Kira gives it to me all the time. I just love it.”

“Really? Kira [our babysitter] gives you coffee all the time?” I ask.

“Yes. I just love it.”

This story sounded incredibly suspicious since Kira is absolutely the best babysitter EVER and I really can not imagine a scenario where the two of them are sipping cafe lattes all afternoon.

But then I lose my focus on their supposed caffeine outings, because I notice some photographs in 21 month-old Summer’s crib.

“What are these?” I wondered out loud.

“I gave those to Summer,” Dylan explains.  I pick up several photos of me and my ex-college boyfriend.

“Where did you get these?” I ask.

“From your drawer,” Dylan says. Apparently Dylan dug them out of a drawer that is packed with photos chronicling my life from high school angst to 30-something midlife crisis.

I look at the photos. I must say, I’m relieved the mock turtleneck is pretty much extinct.

For some reason (and I don’t really understand why), it seems inappropriate for my young children to be pouring over photos of my ex, so I shove them back in the drawer.

Later in the day, I call Kira. Turns out, she does not ever give my 4 year-old coffee. They split a cigarette now and then but that’s it. And only when they’re stressed.

Ok, the cigarette thing is most definitely not true.

And then I glance in the paper and see this….

along with an article explaining that this is Pingping, the world’s smallest man, hanging out with Svetlana Pankratova, the woman with the world’s longest legs.  All part of the publicity for the new Guinness World Records.

Thankfully, not a mother and son combo after all.

I can’t tell you how much better I feel.

And there you have it – a whole post without one mention of Sarah Palin. Oh, wait. There it is.

If I have to defend Sarah Palin one more time, I’m really going to start to get pissy.

Because her policy positions are appalling to me.

And it doesn’t make a difference to me that she’s a woman.

Because having a vagina is not reason enough for me to put someone in the White House. I need a pro-choice, pro-environment, pro gun control, pro free speech, anti-war vagina. You know what I mean?

That said, I’m still a bit unsettled by this grassroots effort, Women Against Sarah Palin.

I just don’t like the idea of pitting women against each other.

The leaders of this anti-Palin effort are quick to point out…

“We want to clarify that we are not against Sarah Palin as a woman, a  mother, or, for that matter, a parent of a pregnant teenager, but  solely as a rash, incompetent, and all together devastating choice for Vice President.”

But still. Something just does not feel right about it.

For instance, “Men Against Joe Biden” is still an available web address. Probably because it sounds pretty ludicrous, right?

And I’m still bristling at the so-called “mommy wars.”  How exactly did I miss this fierce battle between working moms and stay at home moms that the media just adores referring to?

I have friends who work full-time and others who stay at home with their kids. And a lot of moms do something in between. But our country loves a good cat fight so us moms MUST just loathe any other mom who lives her life differently from us. Really? Yeah, I don’t think so.

So frankly, I’m not a Woman Against Sarah Palin.

I am a Voter Against Sarah Palin.

And an American Against Sarah Palin.

This isn’t a female thing. It’s a future of the country kind of thing.

So let’s celebrate that we, once again, have a woman as the Vice Presidential Candidate.

And then let’s all go vote for the candidates that we believe will do the best job leading our nation.