My beloved Valco double all terrain stroller will be 8 years old in September.  I cried with joy when I got it, because with the booster seat and skateboard attached, I could leave the house for the first time as a mother of 4 under 3.  Just after I got mine, custom from Australia, Julia Roberts announced that she was having twins and ordered one.  See how I roll?  That stroller got me to the playground, the grocery store and eventually back and forth to Kindergarten every day.  It limped along serviceably after our move to the suburbs and carried my Irish twins, and it has been repaired several times, but it is now held together by duct tape and twist ties.

In other words, it’s time.

The world of strollers has changed a lot, and I am having a very hard time deciding what to get.  Here are my considerations:

-I can’t jog with a stroller anymore, because my two preschoolers will be too young to bike along, but at some point in the future I hope to be jogging

-When I walk, I often need all terrain capability

-My next youngest child will be 3.5 when this baby is born, so I don’t exactly need a double, in desperate moments I can probably wear the baby and let him ride.  Another baby soon is unlikely but not impossible.  However, my babies get big fast, so after age 1 I can’t usually wear them often.  So, it needs to be a stroller that an 18 month old could nap in and stay in for an extended time, like an entire little league game, which as you may know, is endless.

-I am willing to pay a little more for something that will last, and also, sorry to admit, for style points.  I have so few accessories in life, I count my stroller and diaper bag among them.  I don’t need the trendiest stroller in the store, but I would like a fun color.

-I would prefer something that opens and closes easily.

-I need a good canopy set up for shade

One thought is to get a snap n go for now to put the car seat in, and wait until the fall to buy a stroller, would you do that?  Or should I go with a system that the car seat can fit into?  I don’t have a car seat, either, so if you have strong opinions on that, feel free.

Right now, I am looking at the new Britax strollers, which are made by BOB, but I have not seen them in person because they are not sold near me.

I am going to operate on the assumption that I do not need to defend, to this particular crowd, the value of Ann Romney’s life’s work in raising her children, being an attentive and available spouse to her husband, contributing to her church, local schools and community.  All of us here know that this is hard, and valuable work.  Other people have said enough to defend this work in the last several hours to fill a book, or more.

I would like to consider this Hilary Rosen \ Ann Romney controversy in another light:  I think that we can all agree that Ann Romney’s experience as a mother, whether we call it working or not, is not the “typical American experience.”  I think that what is being missed here is that Rosen’s comment was a backdoor entry to the tired refrain – The Romeys are rich, super filthy rich, and therefore they don’t understand what it is like to be an American.

Should wealth disqualify someone from politics? Should it matter if that wealth is self made or inherited?  George Washington was one of the richest men in America.  Frankly, I don’t think the Obamas are sweating the price of their organic vegetables, either.

Should having an a-typical experience disqualify someone from politics?  Can we even say that there is a typical American experience?  America is extremely diverse, and I think we do ourselves a huge disservice if we list being “like me” as a high qualification for elected office.

What is the role of family in politics?  The White House was quick to distance themselves from Rosen by saying that “family is off limits.”  I don’t think that is quite the point, because Rosen’s comment was in response to something that Romney himself said about the importance of his wife’s advice and perspective.  Now, back when Bill Clinton’s wife was heading up Health Care reform, we were torn, as a nation, about the concept of the “two for one” presidency — some thought it was great to have a president who leaned heavily on his highly capable spouse, while others thought that she had not run or been really vetted for office.  Nancy Reagan played it differently, but history is revealing that she had a very strong influence in the Reagan White House.  JFK used his brother as a sounding board during a time of military crisis, and I am not sure that the Attorney General would be typically called in to consult on those matters.

Here is where this ties back in to the themes that are important to us at Building Cathedrals.  I believe that your family has a strong and important role in shaping you as a person.  How Mitt Romney and Barack Obama will think and about and relate to women, what sorts of “women’s issues” they will prioritize, these things are certainly deeply influenced by their experience with their wives, their mothers and their daughters.

Your parents shape you, your spouse and children shape you, your church and pastoral leaders shape you, your experience in wealth or poverty, your level of education, all of these things shape you.  If you are broad minded, they shape you in ways that go beyond the things which have actually happened to you or them.  I don’t need to have had a parent who worked in a mill to have empathy with those who live in towns which have lost their major industry.  I don’t need to be a working, single mother to understand how complicated it must be to try to juggle all of that on my own.

If the real complaint is the Ann Romney is not an appropriate adviser on economic issues relating to women, I think that is probably fair, but it would be true even if she were a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher or a maid.  I took Economics 101 at Princeton from Alan Blinder, and my brother took a tax seminar from Harvey Rosen. I might give one of them a call, for a start, to get some good information about how our current system of government and economy impact American families at various levels.  Then again, they seem to really love what they do, both the research and the teaching, so some might say they’ve never worked a day in their lives.

I was the last person to use the computer, googling pool cleaners, and then my son told me that all of my children were in the car ready to go, so I got up and we walked out together. We drove to the religious goods store, where I bought a communion veil and a miraculous medal. While I was out, the Devil used my computer. I don’t know how, but when I came home and opened my browser, I opened to a really, really graphic and horrible series of images.

I grilled my son, who reminded me that he came in and got me off the computer before we left.

I am saying prayers of thanksgiving that it was me who opened the browser, because any one of my children could have been the next to move the mouse, heading to Starfall or PBS kids, or just to write a Seton English paragraph about St. Josaphat.

I am praying that the Lord would scrub those images from my mind, and also hoping that you can help me to find the best technology to make sure that this never happens again, by accident or through temptation as my children get older.

I thought I didn’t need to lock down my computer yet because my children were too young, but now I think that we all need to do it, immediately. I’m sorry to be alarmist, but no one should ever, ever see what I just saw.