Category Archives: Rants

Please don’t get C a blanket she can draw on for her birthday.

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This parenting thing is a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants affair for me. I’ve got enough maternal intuition to get me through the day with my child essentially unscathed. For instance, she narrowly escaped eating goose poop yesterday thanks to my stealthy ways. I’m a pro. But when it comes to the details, I am learning as I go and making decisions as challenges arise. I am not a child psychologist, and I am sure I will make some totally intentional weirdo choices during the next 17 years regarding C’s upbringing. In the last year, I’ve learned that you make concessions and just do what works to get everyone to the next nap time without crying too much.

I have caved and bought her Made in China, BPA-laced plastic trinkets from the dollar store against my better judgement. I have given her deceptively sweet Multigrain Cheerios because I didn’t want to cut up something more healthy. On uncountable occasions, I have forgotten to wash her hands – fresh from a trip to the playground – before she eats. These are my confessions.

I will make a lot of mistakes and I am no expert nor a mastermind. But there are some things I don’t think I’ll ever do for the sake of easiness.

Take this product I ran across today: it is a duvet cover that your kid can draw all over. The product reviews were glowing.

“I am for sure going to get this for Timmy!”

“We got it for my daughter and she loves it! Now she can express herself on her bed!”

“What a wall-saver!”

Something about this item left me a little uneasy. It seems like as parents, one of the things we should be doing is teaching our kids boundaries. I don’t have to tell you that I am all for creativity and teaching children to draw, read, color, create, and express themselves with their words. It’s their nature to do so and the best thing we can do outside of loving them and giving them security is fostering an environment for them to explore the world safely. But drawing on the bedsheets? Um, no.

Call me old fashioned, but I think duvets are for sleeping on. They are not disposable. Kids will make messes and some of them will draw on walls, but the idea of intentionally buying something for them to write all over and likely destroy does not sit well with me. I had one comforter growing up. It was purple and frilly. I picked it out at Goldsmiths when I was seven and it was not updated in my room until it was totally worn out when I was 13. I had ceased liking it when I was ten, but I knew that it was my comforter so it would be used to completion. It was my job to keep it clean and neat and not spill nail polish all over it. Our parents expected us to make our belongings last and to understand that the furniture and fixtures in our home were there to stay and not be used for whatever whim we thought up.

I realize I just got a little “in my day” there. But at some point “my day” was phased out. There are many, many advantages C will have by being born when she was, but I’m not too keen on the consumerism that is so prevalent now. It is way too simple to go out and buy a new item that will make yours and your kid’s life more fun and/or easy. But will purchasing your child a bedspread she can draw on boost her self esteem in a real way? Will it give her the edge on getting into art school when she’s older? How much time will it really buy you when your child is driving you nuts while you make dinner and you just need her to have a brief diversion? Is it really worth it to teach your kids that the possessions you work to provide for them can be appropriated for whatever purpose their minds can think up?

This is a tricky one, methinks. Thoughts?

Why Public Changing Tables Are the Bane of My Existence

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Let’s talk about going out in public with babies.

Let’s narrow it down and talk about changing the diapers of those babies.

Let’s get even more specific and discuss the changing tables provided by establishments when you have to change said babies.

Let’s get tangential and notice that I have selected changing tables as a topic for my blog. Long time readers will recall the fear I had about this becoming a mommy blog. It appears that I am there.

So back to the changing tables and how they make me want to stick forks in my eyes.

They had to use a cartoon because no one has ever been photographed looking so happy after using their product.

They had to use a cartoon because no one has ever been photographed looking so happy after using their product.

Most places will put a changing table in their bathroom. I’m grateful for this because C has reached the age where I’m scared to change her in the car. It’s hard to eventually sell a car with skid marks on the backseat. I’m not even going to dwell on the places that are marketed as family-friendly but don’t have a changing table in their bathroom. Their proprietors will eventually get what’s coming to them when they meet St. Peter at the Pearly Gates and get assigned bathroom duty to all the porcelain thrones. Fact: “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” was written by Belinda Carlisle because she is in tune with the bowel movements of angels.

I can’t even make this stuff up.

So you go into the bathroom – and voila! – you find the changing table. It will likely be of the Koala Bear Kare variety where you pull it down off the wall like one of those beds that the detective from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? had. Random references: I’ve got ‘em.

You pull it down and struggle to find the changing pad from your diaper bag so that your dear sweet baby won’t have to rest her brow on the hard filthy surface of the table. Apparently the child who preceded yours took a crap directly on the table and his mom felt no need to even spit clean it. On many changing tables, you will find a little slot that is supposed to contain paper liners for you to put down, but you won’t see any in there because only Starbucks made of gold on the moon provide them. More facts.

You place your child in the sink while you unfurl your changing pad, which is also spotted in poo because who remembers to clean those things? But at least it’s your own baby’s poo so she won’t contract cholera as quickly as she would if exposed to the previous baby’s poo. You plop her onto the table and search for the ends of the safety straps, which you must use or face certain death warns the diaper-clad koala. The only problem is that the straps are caught in the hinges of the table. And even if they weren’t, a pack of hyenas has previously strong-armed its way into this bathroom to mangle the clasps beyond recognition, rendering them useless. So you hold your baby down with your forearm.

Because you’re a good mom and do not want to place the diaper bag on the bathroom floor and expedite the certain death of your infant, you search for a hook where you can hang it. Some changing tables have hooks, and by “hooks” I mean 1″ nubby protrusions that would not be able to hold up a shoestring. The baby is getting restless so you grab the diaper and the wipes from your bag and get to changing. This is the part where her pacifier pops out of her mouth and onto the poo table and she goes after it by twisting her entire body like a boa constrictor killing its prey. You intercept the polluted pacifier, stick it in your pocket, and wrestle the now agitated child to lie flat.

She is having none of it. She sees through your half-assed attempts to entertain her with the closest thing at hand: a tube of Desitin. She needs the disgusting suck-toy to pacify her. But it touched the table! And the pacifier wipes you purchased for just this occasion are in the car. So you make yet another sacrifice for your daughter and stick the thing directly in your mouth to wash away the foreign nasties and replace them with your own. She breastfeeds, so this should be OK, right?

You’ve now been in the bathroom for about three hours and you’re doing well, until another mom with her kid comes in. Because the designer of this public bathroom is a staunch practitioner of the art of feng shui, he has placed the changing directly in front of the door to the only currently unoccupied stall, which this kid is going to get into without paying much heed to your precarious situation. His mom is just swell and doesn’t do anything to hold him back. But luckily, the last snap of your baby’s onesie is closed right when the kid starts banging the stall door on the changing table in an attempt to get it open. Ah, the stubbornness of impossibility. 

And so it ends. You get out alive. And it’s OK that your baby is naked waist down except for her diaper. It’s OK that you accidentally tossed the $35 clothe diaper you changed her out of into the trash. It’s OK that you have a smidgeon of diaper ointment on your forehead. At least it’s not poo. It’s OK that washing your hands is the furthest thing from your mind. You promptly get your gal a snack and a cup to start the process all over again.

Momming: you’re all over it.

The Virtue of Rawness

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A few weeks ago, I was listening to a news program that discussed the aftermath of Sandy. The specific topic that was addressed was that when disasters and tragedies like Hurricane Sandy occur, there is a huge push to help victims at the beginning. Money is given, food is donated, mental health services are provided to the victims. There is a ton of help provided – all of it appreciated – but it tapers off after awhile, even though the rebuilding of the entire destroyed infrastructure is still on the horizon. The irony is that that rebuilding is by far the most difficult and challenging, but there is less help.

Today we are all praying and thinking of the evil act that was committed yesterday in Connecticut. We will continue to pray and think for awhile. We will think about those families more and more as the holidays get closer, and we’ll reach out to them in whatever ways we can. We’ll voice our outrage and clamor to be heard. We will appreciate what we have and cry because our world is sick and broken. But then, before we know it, it won’t be the first thing on our minds anymore. We will sleep through the night and feel safe.

But we shouldn’t. As a country, as a human race, we gave up our right to sleep through the night the moment those shots were fired. How dare we become complacent now that the most innocent of innocents have been taken from us?

I felt raw yesterday. You likely did too. I cried at the store the way I did on September 11, 2001. I refuse to believe that this is only because I’m a parent now. You don’t have to be a parent to know that our country is broken and that we have run out of excuses to avoid confronting the reasons behind the filthy acts that now occur here on nearly a daily basis.

Do what you need to do to make yourself raw each day. Do not forget that our society is extremely sick this very instant. It is dying. Those shots that rang out yesterday were the death rattle. Let your outrage fuel you to defend what shred of goodness and innocence we have left. Do not believe for one second that time will heal the wounds of December 14, 2012. Those children whose lives were stolen will celebrate no more birthdays, will never fall in love, will never have children of their own. Their parents will never smell them again or hold them in their arms or rock them to sleep. That is forever. It is disgusting, and it’s the state of the world right now.

For all that is good and innocent and right, do not slip into complacency. Let’s rebuild our infrastructure. It will be the hardest thing we will likely ever do, but we owe it to all the life that was lost yesterday to defend what we have left.

The One Thing I Have No Patience For

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I can tolerate a lot. I’m learning to get over it when I don’t get around to the nineteenth vacuum cleaning of the day. (C’s rice cake granules can suck it for all I care.) I’ve blocked out the ridiculousness that abounds on Facebook during election season by unsubscribing to people. I’m well on my way to letting it go if I don’t get to shower until 1PM, if at all.

But I do not, under any circumstance, have any patience whatsoever for people who text while they drive. I’m airing my grievances. Hold on, kiddos.

Texting while driving is one of the most dangerous, inane functions of the modern age. Not only do people insist on proliferating typos all over social media while they’re in the safety of their stationary homes, but they also feel as though their stupid messages must be transmitted while they are hurtling through space in their vehicles. I can’t even. People will risk their lives typing a message about Burger King to someone they will see 10 minutes later. And we wonder if our society is in trouble.

Let’s break this down.

Your car is one of the most expensive things you own. Even if it’s not a super nice car, it was a sizable investment, kind of like attending graduate school. Graduate school often only takes one or two years, and the investment is roughly on par with that of a moderately-priced used Toyota. I can speak to this because I’m paying off both. So basically, texting while driving is the rough equivalent of drinking heavily and not preparing at all before your degree-conference exams. You may be OK, but the risk of completely destroying your car / jeopardizing all your work is upped dramatically when you text and/or drink heavily the night before your exams. Both your car and your degree will be negatively affected by you typing LOL, LMFAO, OMW, and “Asses! That’s so cute!”*

*A real Autocorrect misstep I made. Just ask Becoming Cliche.

car

Maybe you are made of money and the expense of destroying your car in order to text a bunch of wrongly autocorrected garbage is no big thing. Texting while driving still remains the most dangerous thing I can wrap my head around. If you are so important that you have to text someone about your comings and goings while behind the wheel, then why are you driving yourself? If you were truly as useful to our society as your progressive opinions on Kelly Clarkson and LipSmackers suggest, you’d have a chauffeur. The president may put hits on people for all I know, but he’s never going to off anyone by driving in to them.

People in my town are always driving around and texting even though it’s been outlawed here. Lawmakers that they put in place have spent time authoring and passing legislation  that hopes to save them from their partially-evolved selves, and yet they still insist on texting, especially when they’re breezing through a 28 lane intersection whose light is out. The way thing works, too, is that these people will end up harming pedestrians and other law-abiding drivers before they damage their own car. If we’ve learned anything from the stats on drunk driving, it’s that the worst offenders are often the ones who come out unscathed.

I had intended to write a light post on how ridiculous it is that we have to beg people to refrain from texting while they’re driving, but I’ve worked myself into such a tizzy that I don’t want to mince words. If you habitually use your phone while you’re behind the wheel, get a grip on reality and realize that whatever earth-shattering message you need to send can wait. Make it a habit during the holiday season to quit texting so that we can all have a safer 2013.

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christmas-badgeRemember that you have until Monday, Dec. 10 to get your Secret Santa presents in to Ashley and me at pressedivus@yahoo.com. Let me know if you write a Festivus post so I can share it on my Facebook page!