Feature Story

In 1956, when more women than ever before were giving their babies store-bought formula, seven women in Franklin Park, Ill., decided to feed their babies the old-fashioned way. They called themselves La Leche League.
 

I love my mother, but she drives me crazy.
 – Every living creature
 
The mother-daughter three-act drama:

Many of us are lucky to have one wonderful mother. I have had three: my mom, my stepmom and former mother-in-law. While they lived very different lives, all of them were strong women who greatly influenced who I am today.
 
Worldly
 

The Kansas City metro area may boast a population of more than 2 million people and span across 15 counties, but the heart of Kansas City consists of neighborhoods that are as distinctive and unique as the people who call them home. We've compiled a guide to Kansas City, featuring fun things to do and cool places to visit to get a taste of our versatile Midwest culture.

The shovel beat-down that erupted out of our friendly neighborhood crack house that sunny Sunday morning cast a certain pall over brunch.
 

Katie Greer has seen it all in her neighborhood: crushed cans, plastic pop bottles, shards of glass, shredded and wadded paper, snuffed cigarette butts, moldy leaves and brush, dog poop, graffiti, and dumped tires. 
 

Whenever a new passenger slides into the back of Lo Demanche’s taxi, she can pretty much guess what they’re going to say. 

As a child, I didn’t want to have much to do with dolls. The only baby I chose to play with was a Cabbage Patch Kid name Jack Cornelius. Back then, my mother endured the lines and the mad rush to procure dolls for my sister and me, only to see me put Jack through the ringer once I brought him home.

Before I could peel off my Spanx as a first-time mother of the groom (MOG), whose traditional duties I’d heard were to shut up, sit down and wait for decrees from the bride and her mother, I became the punch line to cheap shots.

When Will, my then-boyfriend, proposed to me over two cans of cheap beer on our anniversary in the same dive bar where we met three years before, I said yes. The planning began the very next day.
 

When Rebecca Buford and Jeremi Lewis married in 2003 they did without the bells and whistles of a traditional wedding ceremony. Instead of saying “I do” in a church, the Lawrence couple recited their vows amid the fun and festivities of the Kansas City Renaissance Festival.
 

THE SCENE: Wedding reception hall, 7 p.m. A table filled with singles who are about to get to know each other very well. 
 
THE PLAYERS, IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE: 
REBECCA: The Bridesmaid/Single Girl Next Door

I wanted out of my tom-blike cubicle and into the sky. He, it turned out, wanted out of his saffron robes.
 

I shot this photo at the amazing St. Cecilia Hotel in Austin, Texas. Because I was there, I know how to read the collage of images. 

Our calendar is cruel. It tempts us to indulge for a month and a half at the close of every year, and we oblige. Then, like a swift backhand to the face at the dawn of the New Year, the calendar orders us to take inventory of all of our bad habits. 

Gift giving can be tricky or a cinch depending on who you’re buying for. The kids will give you, or send Santa, a detailed list of everything they want. Chances are your husband just wants a new TV or Blu-ray player that he’ll probably buy himself.

The holiday season in Kansas City begins each year with a quick flip of a switch on Thanksgiving night, as thousands of locals and visitors flock to the Country Club Plaza to witness the annual Plaza Lighting Ceremony.

Some people see moving as a chance for rebirth. I’ve always believed it to be more like purgatory. When rumbling along in a moving van, I don’t feel hopeful.

Jackie Stoaks, Overland Park, knows what it’s like to be a single mom struggling during the holidays. 
 

Six months ago I sat in a hotel room with my husband, Craig, in Guangzhou, China, and had my first meal with my newly adopted 11-year-old Cantonese daughter, Fong Chong. The main course of that meal was some explosively spicy pickled chicken feet, which Fong Chong had picked out earlier that day during our first shopping trip, only a couple hours after we first met her. I hadn’t come this far — 18 months of adoption paperwork and 8,000 miles — to not share in this first meal. So I ate the chicken feet. And I liked them.