I love ice cream. Doesn’t matter if it’s ninety degrees out or nine - I’m always in the mood for ice cream.

I’m guessing that my love of ice cream is inherited. My father, who’s not big on sweets, loves ice cream too. Growing up, we always had ice cream in the freezer. He’d scoop it into cake cones for us to eat on the patio in the summer, or into dishes for us to eat at the table before bed - as long as we didn’t clang the spoon endlessly against the bottom of the dish, trying to scrape up the last few drips.

My love for ice cream was well-known among my friends - and my friends’ mothers. When my friend Jamie’s mother made out her grocery list, she asked Jamie what MY favorite ice cream flavor was.

When my parents told me to get a job the summer before I started college, I headed straight for Friendly’s and got a job scooping ice cream. Read on …

At the risk of sounding like Jerry Seinfeld, what’s the deal with trucks?

I realize that I’m practically inviting hate mail by posting this here at Mile High Mamas, where I’d bet more than two-thirds of our audience owns a truck, but it’s been a while since I stirred the pot, so I figured it might be fun for all of us to scuffle over the merits - and demerits - of driving a truck.

If your line of work requires you to haul stuff in the bed of your truck on a daily basis, that’s one thing. But if you drive a truck because you think it makes you look like a honky tonk bada**, then I can’t help but snicker at you.

Trucks aren’t quite as off-putting to me as motorcycles with those decals of naked ladies in silhouette. You plaster those on your ride, and you are setting yourself up for failure - practically guaranteeing that no chick will ever wrap her arms around your waist and press her cheek to your back. Sorry to break it to you.

But trucks do run a close second (and they’re right on par if you’ve installed naked lady mudflaps). Simply put, they’re a waste of space. Since most people don’t use the truck bed on a daily basis, they’re hauling around a lot of extra vehicle weight unnecessarily. The extra space is in the truck bed, where no one - not even a dog - ought to be riding. They’re just plain illogical for both families and single people.

I’ll admit that I know a few women who drive trucks Read on …

Last January, I posted a piece about The Anti-Gym here at Mile High Mamas. The feedback from readers ranged from disgust at the “in your face” approach to praise for the very same.

Then, about a week and a half ago, I received a most unexpected comment on that piece–from one of the actresses in the commercial herself:

“Glad to hear that you enjoyed the commercial. It was an entertaining expiriece to say the least… but uhhh… You got it right with me… in the commerical I am a shoe in for Jabba Da Hut look alike:O) But the other chick was like 5′1″ and NOT long by any means! Hahah Michael kept telling her how fat she was during the shoot… can you believe that??? He’s got that brainwashing thing down! When I asked him if I could do the commercial for a gym membership instead of money… He told me no, because I’m worth more to him Fat. That is about the only thing that pissed me off… but hey I guess it got me some exposure… too bad he refers to me as Julie in his interviews… I was 3 months prego in that commerical with my 2nd child and have a hubby of 5 years… and he’s HOT! Hahah so I guess chubbies do sometimes come out on top!:O)”

I emailed her to thank her for her comment and to ask if I might ask her a few questions about her experience working with Michael Karolchyk. She cheerfully obliged, and now I have the privilege of presenting my interview with this local mom of two, Sophia Ayala Gettys. Read on …

A few weeks ago, the evening before Take Your Child to Work Day, we received a call from my daughter CJ’s speech therapist, asking whether we’d mind if she brought her daughter to class the next day.

“Why would we mind?” I asked Kyle after he got off the phone.

He shrugged. “Privacy issues. Some people don’t want anyone to know their kid’s in therapy.”

Considering that we announced CJ’s entry into speech therapy in our holiday cards, we obviously don’t care about keeping that information private. In fact, if you give me half a chance, I’ll spend twenty minutes talking about how much speech therapy has helped her and what a pleasure the process has been.

CJ didn’t speak as early or as clearly as her sister Tacy did, but we didn’t start to wonder about it until she was about eighteen months old. When Tacy was eighteen months old, she could recognize (and say aloud) all of the capital letters, and she routinely spoke in complete sentences of four to six words. CJ, on the other hand, had a total vocabulary of a couple dozen words, none of which were easily understood.

We were concerned, but we didn’t want to be alarmist. So we waited, hoping that the fabled “language explosion” would happen any day. Read on …

I’ve heard from others (and found it to be true myself) that there’s something magical about reaching the three-month milestone. Making that transition from newborn to baby - from a squalling bundle of constant neediness to a tiny little person who smiles, gurgles, and even exercises intermittent control of his limbs - it’s exhausting but rewarding.

We’re closing in on that milestone; Oliver will be three months old at the end of this month. Perhaps I’ve got the perspective that comes with having been through this before, or maybe he’s just a much easier baby than my other two, but it hasn’t been as much of a struggle. Conversely, this milestone doesn’t seem like as much of a milestone with him as it did with the girls.

He really is surprisingly portable. I’ve written before about how I’ve taken him out many places where I’d normally be reticent to take a newborn (and where I’d never try to take my three year-old). Last weekend he spent a good three hours at Chuck E. Cheese and didn’t cry once. I, on the other hand, was ready to cry “Take me home!” after the first hour.

He gurgles and coos so much it’s as if we’re having a conversation. I don’t remember either of the girls “talking” like this at the same age.

And he’s remarkably sanguine where it comes to being Read on …

Last weekend, we went hiking at Castlewood Canyon. It was one of those beautiful spring days that fools you into thinking that it won’t snow again. It was breezy and sunny, and we had a backpack filled with hot dogs and buns, and the makings for s’mores.

I carried Oliver in the Baby Bjorn and my husband Kyle shepherded the two girls as we made our way to the bottom of the canyon. There was still quite a bit of snow down there despite all the warm weather we’d had, but much of it had melted, and the creek was running fast. The sun was overhead, and the walls of the canyon cut the wind. It was practically balmy.

The girls ran ahead of us for much of the trail, climbing onto the boulders along the creek and pointing out caves. We all crawled out onto one boulder and had a mid-hike snack of bananas, cereal bars, and Gatorade while we watched the water rush past.

We pressed on, and only as we were reaching the end of the trail did CJ start to whimper Read on …

The brouhaha of this past week regarding a blogger junket planned by Johnson & Johnson got me thinking about where it’s appropriate to bring a baby, and where it’s not.

Last summer, when I was still pregnant, many of my fellow bloggers brought their babies to the BlogHer conference in Chicago. Some of them used the child care services provided by the conference organizers, but others carried their babies in slings throughout the days (and nights). I wasn’t disturbed by their presence at all, and even held one little guy on my lap while listening to Elizabeth Edwards’ keynote address.

Since Oliver’s birth, I’ve taken him out several times without incident. (Unless you count his bowel movement at Panera that literally echoed off the walls and ceiling.) We even dined with him at Jax Fish House in LoDo on my birthday. He nursed under a cover for most of the meal, then settled into his carseat next to my husband Kyle as I settled into a glass of port. Not a single peep out of him all evening.

And until J&J clarified that their plans for Camp Baby did not in fact include babies, I was planning for his first plane trip, hotel stay, and taxi ride at just over two months old.

But should I have been making those plans? Is it okay to take a relatively portable newborn places that I wouldn’t take a toddler? Or is it my responsibility to my fellow diners, travelers, and conference attendees to find care or else stay at home? Read on …