Product Description

Award-winning author Jeanne Marie Laskas has charmed and delighted readers with her heartwarming and hilarious tales of life on Sweetwater Farm. Now she offers her most personal and most deeply felt memoir yet as she embarks on her greatest, most terrifying, most rewarding endeavor of all….

A good mother, writes Jeanne Marie Laskas in her latest report from Sweetwater Farm, would have bought a house in the suburbs with a cul-de-sac for her kids to ride bikes around instead of a ramshackle house in the middle of nowhere with a rooster. With the wryly observed self-doubt all mothers and mothers-to-be will instantly recognize, Laskas offers a poignant and laugh-out-loud-funny meditation on that greatest–and most impossible–of all life’s journeys: motherhood.

What is it, she muses, that’s so exhausting about being a mom? You’d think raising two little girls would be a breeze compared to dealing with the barely controlled anarchy of “attack” roosters, feuding neighbors, and a scheme to turn sheep into lawn mowers on the fifty-acre farm she runs with her bemused husband Alex. But, as any mother knows, you’d be wrong.

From struggling with the issues of race and identity as she raises two children adopted from China to taking her daughters to the mall for their first manicures, Jeanne Marie captures those magic moments that make motherhood the most important and rewarding job in the world–even if it’s never been done right. For, as she concludes in one of her three a.m. worry sessions, feeling like a bad mother is the only way to know you’re doing your job.

Whether confronting Sasha’s language delay, reflecting on Anna’s devotion to a creepy backwards-running chicken, feeling outclassed by the fabulous homeroom moms, or describing the rich, secret language each family shares, these candid observations from the front lines of parenthood are filled with love and laughter–and radiant with the tough, tender, and timeless wisdom only raising kids can teach us.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #217472 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-25
• Released on: 2006-04-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780553802641
• Condition: USED - LIKE NEW
• Notes:
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About the Author
Jeannne Marie Laskas is a columnist for The Washington Post Magazine, a GQ correspondent, and the author of Fifty Acres and a Poodle and the award-winning The Exact Same Moon. A professor in the creative writing program at the University of Pittsburgh, she also writes the "My Life as a Mom" column for Ladies Home Journal. She lives with her husband and two children at Sweetwater Farm in Scenery Hill, Pennsylvania.

Customer Reviews

Hope for a sequel
I read the "trilogy" this summer, starting with, what I consider her best, Fifty Acres and a Poodle, followed by The Exact Same Moon. I did enjoy Growing Girls, although the chapters were erratic at times and did not exactly follow a timeline. It was more a collection of essays. I'm hoping she will write another book as I love hearing about her life as a mom and the rigors/joys of living on a farm. I was disappointed not to hear more about Marley the poodle in this book, but I know she has a different focus now that she has kids.

Another beautiful and touching collection of essays - great for anyone contemplating motherhood.
This collection of interconnected essays explored Laskas' adventures in raising her two adoptive children, Sasha and Anna. We get to be along for the ride through the family's adoption of Sasha from China, and her subsequent language delays and the triumphs she experiences as she develops.

The stories Laskas tells of the girls adjusting to each other and becoming fast friends, playing on the farm, and the adventures they have in the world are touching and sweet. Laskas also shares a lot of the emotional ups and downs she experiences as a mother, and explores the meaning and importance of family and culture through the vehicle of her own family's experiences.

This book had me alternately laughing and nodding in deep recognition of all the ways we form families. The stories of the girls on the farm had me rolling, and I immediately felt comfortable in Laskas' world.

You'd want to read books one and two before trying this one (Fifty Acres and a Poodle, then The Exact Same Moon), since they are enjoyable as well and provide the background for this story.

Erma Bombeck is Back
Being a male I can't totally emphasize with Ms. Laskas points of view about raising girls. But being the father of a girl I can say how surprised I was to find that raising a girl was basically a full time job for two adults. But what a blast. (Not that I'd want to do it again, I'm waiting for grandchildren to spoil.)

Ms. Laskas, however, has a writing style that I've never had. Furthermore, I think her stories also tend to have a happier ending than mine. For instance, in her story of the balloon that got away, daddy chased after the balloon (According to the daughter, 'that is my best balloon.') and after a delightful chase the balloon obligingly turned around and allowed daddy to catch it. In my case the balloon took off like a homesick angel.

I've missed Erma Bombeck. But it looks like she has come back to live on a farm in Pennsylvania.