What to do on Mother's Day is always a little tricky. If you are like me, you may be of two minds about what you really want to do for Mother's Day. On the one hand, perhaps unrealistically, you'd love to spend an idealized day with your family sharing a sense of togetherness with your children who are acting like little angels just to make you happy on your special day. On the other hand, perhaps secretly, what you'd really love is to spend a day alone doing the types of things you enjoy, but have been replaced with kid activities...art, culture, strolling in pretty gardens...

In this post I've gathered up some events that I hope will be a happy compromise; family activities that are a bit more mom-centric, but have room for kids to be real kids. And if the kids don't cooperate...maybe you can send them off with dad.

With the panic of Swine Flu receding, we can go back to our regularly scheduled anxieties, like whether the quality of life for families in New York City is going to suck as the economy declines. With overcrowded schools, family-friendly businesses closing left and right, and the costs of everything from metrocards to taxes going up while salaries and savings disappear, is the recent age of New York's family-friendliness going to disappear also? On the plus side, news about some new playgrounds, and a new law that will hopefully help reduce air pollution. And on the side-lines, furor over a Consumer Reports finding that some parents saw as an attack on attachment parenting.

We think of New York City as the "real" world, but then there's that other real world: the one where our food is grown and our clothes are made. We can be fairly isolated from these everyday realities. But even in New York, there are ample opportunities to learn about where things come from.

This weekend is Sheep Shearing Weekend with a couple of events to learn about how wool is turned from a sheep's winter coat into the fabric that makes our clothes and other things. Find a sheep shearing event in the city or drive out for one in the 'burbs. For extra credit check out an art exhibit about felt that takes it to the next step to show how wool is made into felt and many beautiful objects made from felt.