This giveaway is now closed. Stay tuned for the winner announcement. Thank you all so much for entering!

Note: I'm now allowed to post giveaways on Hobo Mama, so I'm cross-posting this giveaway from HoboMamaReviews.com here. It's the same entry form at each, so enter at either site. Thanks!

I am happy to be giving away three books of poetry in honor of National Poetry Month to two winners.

Both winners will receive a copy of my own book, Poetry of a Hobo Mama, by Lauren Wayne, which focuses on the realities of attachment parenting, and the grand prize winner will also receive Mother Love, a collection of poems on the mother-daughter relationship, by Rita Dove.

The Big Poetry Giveaway 2011 is hosted by Kelli Russell Agodon of Book of Kells, and I am happy to be participating! The idea is to give away at least one book of your own poetry and one book from a favorite poet.

Read more about each of my selections below, and then enter to win by leaving a simple comment in a Google form! (See the Win It! section for details.)

(By the way, I have a sister giveaway happening at Natural Parents Network, featuring Poetry of a Hobo Mama and Rose, by Li-Young Lee, and you can enter at both sites to increase your chance of winning some fabulous poetry.)

I am busy as a bee on our business taxes — but not in quite the same fashion, because then they'd be sticky with bee goop (aka honey) and harder to file. Especially electronically.

But I took a slight break yesterday to post this fabulous (fabulous! yes! believe it!) article on "Blogging and taxes" at LaurenWayne.com.

If you ever had questions like the following (or never did but if you will now), pop on over for my (inexpert) answers:

• Is my blog even a business at all?
• Do I have to report income if I make only a weensy bit?
• Do I have to report giveaway wins as income?
• What about items for product reviews, or barters of services in exchange for blogging?
• How should I structure my business?
• Do I need a business license?
• Do I have to collect sales tax if I sell products?

And more!

While I was looking through my archives for other things I'd written about taxes, I found this article from three years ago, "The voice of authority."

My sister-in-law came over this past weekend and helped us out with a family maternity shoot on the beach. Mikko was doing his best impression of a whirlwind, but Natalie gamely kept snapping away, so we were able to get some good ones after all!


Mama and son (and ?)


He insisted on the piggyback pose — Sam and I each got a turn.


Trying to convince him photo shoots are not boring.


Might as well take advantage of the fact that Mikko had run away at this point.


And…he's back! Aw. This is my favorite of the four(ish) of us.


Touching the baby.


Tackling the baby. A glimpse of things to come, I'm sure!

Welcome to the April Carnival of Natural Parenting: Compassionate Advocacy

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have shared how they advocate for healthy, gentle parenting choices compassionately. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

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The cutest know-it-all ever

Recently, I was raiding my family's personal blog for some of the pictures we put up during my pregnancy and birth with Mikko. I had a thought I could post my birth story with him on Hobo Mama as well, since I strangely never have.

So I was glancing down the birth story I'd published and sent out to all my friends and family a couple months after Mikko's birth, and I almost choked. There at the end was a list of "tips" for birthing and new parents.

They were obnoxious.

I seriously wanted to reach through time and the computer screen and slap myself.

It wasn't the subject matter: They were about natural birth and breastfeeding and staying home for most of the labor (if not all), and I still agree with myself on all the points. It was my way of presenting it, like a snotty backseat driver who had just gotten her license two months before. There was this air that I knew better than everyone else, despite not knowing their stories, their struggles, their particular guilts and regrets and the forces working for or against them.

For instance, the one person who sprang to mind when I was rereading my assertive condemnation of formula feeding as inadequate was my cousin, who recently adopted two sweet boys after a long bout with infertility. I know she babywears, so it's quite possible she would have breastfed if possible. I'm ashamed to think she read my words and now feels like I think she's inadequate for feeding her babies formula, when human milk donation and — heaven forbid — cross-nursing is still extremely uncommon in this culture. Because: I don't.

Welcome to the Sunday Surf! Here are some of the best links I've read this past week.

Sam and I have been spending time with our heads in the books … the accounting books. It's that time of year again!

Generally speaking, I absolutely love being in business for ourselves, but at tax time I have to admit to envying all those of you with a simple W-2 and the option of using the free filing. Sigh.

Before I get back to my multiple Schedule Cs and trying to locate my unfortunately misplaced mileage log (gah!), I will share some reading for those of you with more time on your hands:

• "'Continued Breastfeeding' : straight from the mouths of babes" from Adventures in Babywearing: Aw! The toddler speaks for all nurslings.

• "Sound Bites from a Miscarriage Journey" from I Thought I Knew Mama: Raw & powerful. If you also are grieving, you're not alone.

• Up, Down & Natural is hosting a fabulous blog carnival called IF We Believe! The Stories & Faces of Infertility. You're invited to post on your own blog (or submit guest posts for Arpita to post) your stories, experiences, heartache and hope. Have you been going through infertility, or do you have a history of struggling to conceive? Or maybe you can share a story from a friend or loved one. The first carnival will take place during National Infertility Awareness Week, April 24-30, so see the post for details.

• "The Most Effective Tool you’ve Never Used to Tame your Temper" a guest post by Meredith Barth from The Positive Parenting Challenge at Authentic Parenting: I'm scared of this but so need it — phrases to give your child to stand up to you and your anger:
  

  "I told him that no one, not even Mommy, was allowed to treat him with disrespect. I gave him permission to stand up to me and the tools to make it possible, even at his young age."

• "Authentic Parent, Inauthentic Birth?" also from Authentic Parenting: I think the best way I can sum up how I feel about this post is to point you to my Wordless Wednesday from this week: "Birth poetry." (Via Kelly Hogaboom.)

• That WW post shares my poem "Hindsight," from my book, Poetry of a Hobo Mama: The First Three Years. And I am so very pleased to share this fabulous review (my very first!) from Dreaming Aloud:
  

  "Some of the shortest poems are the most touching, and will stay with me a long time. The images and words from others now frame my own experiences. She has a compelling poetic voice. Mothers, all mothers will recognise their lives, their hopes, fears, longing, frustrations and deepest love writ large in these poems."

Thank you so much, Lucy!

Let's call it Wordful Wednesday for this week, ok?

The week's theme at Natural Parents Network is Parenting in Poetry and Prose, so for Wordless Wednesday over there we're sharing our poetic and prosy pictures.



I quoted part of this poem from my parenting poetry book, Poetry of a Hobo Mama, at NPN — here's the whole poem, with some extra pictures as well.

Hindsight



Did we make the right choice?
The drive in the car,
contractions bucking me off the back seat,
buckle untethered around my bulk,
pressing with all my might onto my own fist
at the small of my back.

Parking in the illegal spot in back
and wheeling in through the automatic door,
the smells hitting, that smell,
that hospital smell,
of stale and clean, boxy and blank.
The smell of empty,
the smell of bright.

The voices began,
not like the murmur of midwives,
but questions lobbing and pencils scratching
and orders barking, to me, to themselves,
and my voice ignored
like a whine by a child in the dark.



But out you came,
for out you were coming,



and I grieve for you,
that you did not have the birth I wanted,
the peace I would have wrapped for you with a bow,



the hands that would have been gentle,
the voices that would have been hushed,
the lights that would have been dim,



and the you who would have snuggled to my breast,
unaware still of that bright sterile world



beyond the calm
beyond the womb
beyond the pressure of one heartbeat
one body
who loves you.