Busy first November weekend

Gabe had a full weekend. There was the play date that I mentioned in the last post, a birthday party on Saturday and another play date on Sunday. Whew!

The party on Saturday was for a two brothers, 3 years and 1 year. Their mom is Nigerian/white and their dad is Indian. The party was a place called Pump it up, where they have inflatable slides for kids 6 and under. Gabe wasn't too sure about these weird inflatable contraptions at first, but warmed up a little when Craig and I got in with him. When it was time for pizza, Gabe did really well sitting at the little kids table eating. I just watched him from a distance. Gabe and another little girl from our mom's group, who is half black, half Hispanic, really favor one another. Like they could be brother and sister. She is about 1.5 years old and don't you know she starts feeding Gabe his drink? And he accepts it like he is the King, and then she starts rubbing his ear, and he's like, no that's going overboard. It was so funny. Craig and I and her parents got a big laugh out of that.

Yesterday we went over to our friends Steve and Amy to have a play date with their son Silas who is the same age as Gabe (we met them in our pregnancy class). I made some chocolate flax muffins that I brought over, and they ordered pizza from Pizza Fino that had caramelized onions, mushrooms, mozzarella and fontina cheese and Gabe actually ate it, mushrooms, onions and all! We were surprised. He didn't eat my muffins though. Hmph. However, Silas loved them, but he eats almost anything, lol.

Other news: I got a freelance assignment for a local family magazine last week. I sent them a query about writing an article on black moms and breastfeeding. Some recent studies have come out this year, so it's a fairly current topic (we have the lowest rates of BF out of all ethnicities).

So, I emailed the query letter to them thinking it would be a few weeks before I'd hear one way or another because it says on their site that it could be like six weeks. So I was really surprised to not only hear from them the next day, but an expression of interest in the story and acceptance of the pitch. I'm, like wow! Also, I expected them to pay a certain amount in my mind, which was rather low and it turns out they are able to pay a little more than I thought. Now, don't get it twisted; that amount is still NOT a lot, but just more than I expected.

So I have until the end of the month to do interviews and write and submit the story. Fortunately, I started a little bit of legwork before sending off the query, so I am not scrambling for to do stuff: I will be interviewing a lady who blogs about black women and breastfeeding, a local lactation consultant I will be meeting with this week, two local moms (one older with grown kids who breastfed and one younger who is currently breastfeeding) to interview, and I will insert a little bit about my own experience.

It feels really good to have an assignment and to actually be getting paid for it. If all goes well, I'd like to write for them regularly (dependent on me having good ideas for stories, that is; they could also like me well enough to give me assignments) for a year and then I'd like to branch out and try writing for larger magazines, which means higher pay. It is all very slow going, patience is key. We'll see how it goes!

Multi-Cultural Mamas

Gabe had a great time today at a play date. There were five moms there, including the hostess, and 7 kiddos. What I realized after I left was the diversity of everyone: I'm black (as you all know, lol), the hostess is biracial (black/white, her husband is Indian), the other 3 moms were white, Hispanic (her husband is black) and Indian. It was cool to have all the moms from different ethnicities and backgrounds (in fact, the Indian mom is Catholic, not Hindu, while the hostess' hubby is a practicing Hindu).

Anyway, it was nice to notice and appreciate differences.