Welcome to the Sunday Surf, a tour of the best blogposts I've read throughout the week.

I'd like to see you be this nonchalant about such stylish headgear.

A few links on body image this week:

17 minutes ago

#body image
#pregnancy
#breastfeeding
#weight
#weight loss
#birth
#postpartum
#art

I’m loving the musings in this article titled “How to Lose The Baby Weight in Just Three Lightning-Fast Years” at Jezebel about the postpartum body and how our culture doesn’t know how to deal with it.
It is a strange state, indeed: neither pregnant, nor out of shape, but showing a visible history of pregnancy. In spite of weighing more and looking different, I was never healthier than when I was pregnant and just after, in large part to the dynamic shift in lifestyle toward eating well and moving more. But we don’t connect health to physical appeal per se, as any healthy person who isn’t thin can tell you. And when a body shows signs of use beyond the sexual or athletic, we don’t seem to know how to respond to it.
In fairness, it’s worth noting that all this is just as shocking to the woman it’s happening to. Pregnancy is an intense transformation, childbirth an even more intense act. The recovery time is complicated and multi-layered. And what we are left with is a body that has created a child and often nourished it for a period of time afterward too. It’s easy to be proud of the act, but we follow that nod with an intense effort toward eradicating all signs of it.
(via Shannon/NatParNet on Pinterest)

16 minutes ago

#postpartum
#pregnancy
#breastfeeding
#weight
#body image
#art
View high resolution 
Via the Jezebel article on “How to Lose the Baby Weight in Just Three Lighting-Fast Years,” Michelangelo’s Night is also the figure of a woman who’s borne multiple children. I love that the postpartum body was at least at one time normalized and honored.

15 seconds ago

#body image
#weight
#weight loss
Fine and Fair: Body Image on the Playground: The Subtle Messages All Around →
When our children start hearing messages about body image starting in preschool or earlier, how do we instill a positive outlook?
So what do we do? What can we do? In a world where a Victoria’s Secret commercial asks, “What is Sexy?” and proceeds to answer its question with images of women who are all tall and thin with long legs and breasts that are somehow both large and perky, how do we teach our children that sexy is different things to different people, and that more importantly, sexy isn’t the only thing matters? Is it even possible to raise children, girls especially, who grow into adults who feel good about their bodies, even if they don’t fit the “ideal” image that is thrust in their face at every turn?

Carnival news:

Calling for submissions for the May 2013 Carnival of Natural Parenting: Emergency Preparedness
Here are the submission details for May 2013:

Theme: Emergency Preparedness: Have you ever lived through a natural (or man-made) disaster? Has your family stocked up on supplies to prepare for a future emergency? Could your family sustain itself through a long-term disaster? Share your stories and tips this month.

Deadline: Tuesday, May 7. Fill out the webform and email your submission to us by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time: CarNatPar {at} NaturalParentsNetwork.com 

Write along with the Weekly Parenting Poetry Workshop:

Join us for the Weekly Parenting Poetry Workshop!

We're nearing the end of our celebration of poems and parenting in one beautiful span of five poetry-drenched weeks.

We've had one simple mission in mind: 

Write some parenting poetry.

That's it. It doesn't have to be amazing (though you'll find that a lot of it is!). You just have to write, and then share — inspire, and be inspired. I hope you'll consider joining us for the final week of prompts and poetry — or get brave enough to join us next year!

We're each writing at least one parenting-themed poem a week on an overarching parenting theme, which I post on Mondays. On Fridays, I post a linkup so we can all share what we've been working on, and then we enjoy reading each other's work. 

For full details and to grab a badge, see the intro post.

Poems posted so far:

• Week 1: Prepare {prompts | poems}
• Week 2: Emerge {prompts | poems}
• Week 3: Hope {prompts | poems}
• Week 4: Trust {prompts | poems}

The final week's prompts post tomorrow!

Sign up for the joint newsletter for Hobo Mama, NPN, and Code Name: Mama:

If you've signed up for my email newsletter, you should now have received our first two issues — hot off the virtual presses!

(If you haven't received it and think you should have, let me know so I can help troubleshoot your subscription.)

Our fabulous NPN volunteers have stirred together natural parenting resources, inspiration, original content, exciting giveaways, and exclusive coupons and baked up a monthly newsletter! Dionna and I have our own corners in each issue, so you'll also get the latest Hobo Mama news as well. I'm excited to have this newsletter finally reaching your inboxes!

If you haven't subscribed yet, sign up now, because there are a lot of subscriber-only benefits to enjoy!

Contribute your natural parenting pictures to the NPN Flickr Pool for a chance to WIN:

Enter the NPN Flickr Photo Contest by April 30!

Recently, Natural Parents Network launched a Flickr Photo Pool and corresponding Photo Contest with over $1000 in photography-related prizes up for grabs for our readers!

Many of you lovely NPN readers have already submitted photos of your beautiful families, showing us what natural parenting really looks like for you in many forms. We are loving the many images that have been added and the opportunity to see the diverse faces of our readers and fellow natural parents. There are almost 500 images added already to the Flickr Pool, and it is turning out to be a very fun way to see and share images of other parents and families like yours!

The April 30 deadline is fast approaching!
Don't forget to enter for your chance to win a fabulous prize package.

Your photos in the Flickr pool might end up on NPN one day, but you can ensure instant (!) glory (!) by submitting your photos to our thematic Wordless Wednesday posts on Natural Parents Network each week. Topics are posted through July, so find your photos and start sending them in!

Surf with us:

We love following along with fellow Sunday Surfers. If you have your own post of reading links to share, please link up your post on Hobo Mama or on Authentic Parenting. The linky will go live every Sunday, and you can link up any day that week. You only need to add your post to one of the sites, and the linky will automatically show up on both sites.

You can get the Sunday Surf button by Jenna Designs and some code to add to your post from my Sunday Surf page.

Check out previous editions for good reading, and you can find more shared items during the week at my Tumblr blog, Hobo Mama's Shared Items.

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1. Hobo Mama = Dashing haberdashery & self-confidence about postpartum bodies

2. April 14-27: Education, Life, Parenting, "Pins"