Lacey Buchanan, 26, lay behind a screen on a stiff delivery bed waiting for that first glimpse. To her relief, she heard her son’s initial cry after his C-section birth. But then her husband, Chris, disappeared with their baby and a host of medical staff. Nine hours later, a doctor finally asked Lacey, “Do you want to see your baby?”

A longtime Santa Clara, Calif., employee was reprimanded last month after a co-worker overheard her critiquing Obamacare’s problematic rollout during a break-time chat. 

Last week at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, Calif., 120 homeschoolers launched rockets, created solar etchings, and mixed moon sand. From a second story deck, they dropped “lunar landing modules” made with shoeboxes and bubble wrap enclosing raw eggs.

“I got a little flack about the egg drop from our facility director, who had to power wash dried egg off the pavement. But it was worth it,” said Jessica Ruskin, 44, the museum's education director.

Concerned parents and teachers have launched a petition drive to qualify a ballot measure that would repeal California’s controversial “co-ed bathroom” law, which requires schools to make accommodations for K-12 transgendered students.  

Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill in August, making the state the first in the nation to allow students to choose bathrooms, showers, locker rooms, and sports teams based on their “perceived” gender identity rather than their biological gender. 

On most weekday mornings 1-year-old William Niles wakes to his mother’s smile. His mother, Kristen Holt, 32, changes and feeds him before leaving for her job managing a clothing boutique. Instead of being rushed to day care, though, William spends early mornings in the family room where his grandfather plays guitar and sings worship songs. He routinely goes with his grandma to water the deck plants and then across the grassy backyard to pet the neighbor’s sheep. 

Golden state warriors

by Mary Jackson

Buena Parks, Calif., teacher Rebecca Friedrichs is married to a college professor and has a long list of family members who are educators, including her husband’s 96-year-old aunt who once taught in a Minnesota one-room schoolhouse. Even as her love for teaching runs deep, Friedrichs, 47, has voiced concern over her union’s one-sided politicking, its resistance to education reform—and its forced membership dues.

Many moms remember on Mother’s Day how they gave birth. Debi Beasley remembers driving with her husband Kent for seven hours from Los Angeles to Santa Rosa, Calif., in 1997 with seven frozen embryos in a tank in the backseat. They blasted the air conditioning in their teal Astro van as they drove nonstop through the Central Valley’s 100-degree temperatures: “If the car temperature went over 70 degrees, the embryos would die,” Debi said. Upon arriving home, they placed the tank at their bedside. “We laid there praying and wondering if any of them had survived,” she said.