When you stop by Al Di La at eight o’clock on a Sa­turday night, you don’t seriously expect to get a table any time soon. Still, when my husband and I inquired about how long the wait was on a recent weekend, we weren’t quite prepared for this response: “Well, we can’t guarantee you a table tonight,” they said, as if there was a possibility of sticking it out until tomorrow. But while the idea of camping out in the wine bar for twelve hours before digging into a Northern Italian breakfast definitely had its appeal, our sitter needed to be home by midnight, so we went with plan B, a decent, …

Seriously, more snow? The only thing worse than yet another week of herding my kids through the chilled gunk puddles and over the banks of thawed and refrozen slop to cross the street is hearing everyone continue to complain about it. Still, I have to admit it’s pretty much impossible to bear in silence. So maybe it’s time we start looking at our winter precipitation bounty in a positive light. If you concentrate hard enough, there are at least a few benefits. Consider this: We’re all finally getting our money’s worth out of all that snow gear we bought for our kids. Last year, I bought my …

A lot of people say their best ideas come to them in the shower, but my inspiration comes while being pelted by the wintery mix that is plaguing New York this winter. In my last column, I proposed a handful of micro-niche services specifically for Park Slope parents, but as I attempted to push a double stroller full of my two unhappy, damp children through the puddles/lakes/rivers of slush/snow/ice/ that are waxing and waning at every curb cut in the neighborhood with each fresh snowfall, it occurred to me that there is also a vast untapped market for inventions just for NYC parents.  Here's …

New Yorkers pay for services that no one in my southern Illinois hometown would even dream exist. So when I first heard that it’s common to hire a paid consultant to get your child into a sought-after public school, my first thought, was, “That’s crazy!” My second thought was, “How much does she charge?” I don’t even know why I was surprised. This is, after all, a city where you can easily find professionals who will do your laundry, move your car for the street sweeper, bring you ice chips while you give birth, re-organize your closets, and coach your three-year-old for an IQ test. The truth…

"You should see them when you're not here," my three-year-old's acrobatics teacher explained to the parents assembled to watch the final class. I had gotten pretty geared up to see a real show after twelve weeks of hearing Mary describe the handstands, somersaults, hula hoop tricks and trapeze artistry she'd been working on after I'd dropped her off each week. Now that we were finally allowed to stay for the show, she and her classmates were all just running amok on the fancy obstacle course the instructors had set up—bouncing from the trampoline over to us to ask for snacks or insist on a …

William Sears has taken a lot of flack over the years, most recently from Erica Jong, whose Wall Street Journal op-ed last month slammed his parenting bible, "The Baby Book," and concluded that attachment parenting is a crock of spit-up homemade baby food—"a prison for mothers," that makes us feel guilty with its unrealistic, retrograde expectations. Any mother who relied on "The Baby Book" to help navigate those first years must agree with Jong at least a little bit. After all, who wouldn't feel a little overwhelmed when Dr. Bill and his wife/co-author Martha ever-so-gently insist that you …

My six-month-old, Ann, is woefully behind in her education. By the time her big sister, Mary, was this age, she'd learned basic music competence via a playful, non-performance music environment at Music Together, developed her literacy and social skills via the library's Babies and Books, and completed a session of yoga in which she'd actually demonstrated correct poses week after week (okay, just Happy Baby pose, but still…). And she wasn't even the most accomplished of her peers. Friends were teaching their tots to pantomime their desire to breastfeed in baby sign language, singing them …

"I want to live in a house," my three-year-old daughter, Mary, announced the night we all returned from Thanksgiving with my husband's family. I was tucking her into her wee little bed, in her small bedroom, in our diminutive apartment. My husband was out scouring the neighborhood for a decent, post-holiday parking spot. A house? Surely this would be a passing fancy, the result of spending a long weekend basking in the attention of a half dozen attentive, adoring grown-ups and being allowed to eat an entire dish of whipped cream in lieu of her usual snack of flax-oil-infused, organic trail …