Cynical Mom

Product recall

Concerned parents, be warned: http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml05/05099.html

My husband's reaction: "Someone seriously thought that Flashing Pacifier Shock Baby Necklace would be a good name for their product?"
 

What's "fair" anyway?

I applied to join a stay at home dad's group today.

I joined PEPS when my son was born, and met with a group of other new moms while I was on maternity leave. Most of the moms in the group worked, but over the next few months several of the moms in the group quit their jobs because they decided they would rather be at home with their kids.  Others of the moms work part time and were able to fit playgroup in on a day off. No one has ever made me feel bad for continuing to work, but I haven't regularly met with the group for playgroup since my son was about 6 months old although I do still keep in touch with the moms and consider some of them good friends.

I read a bunch of parenting blogs, including daddy bloggers like daily yak, rebeldad, metrodad, zeroboss, etc. And through rebeldad, I found out about http://www.seattledads.org (which I promptly forwarded along to a couple of women I work with whose husbands stay home with the kids).

The point of this post (and I do have one, I swear) is that I applied to join the Seattle Dad's yahoogroup just now, asking if they allow moms and explaining who I was (in less than 200 chars since that's what yahoogroups gives me). I work in an environment with 95% men -- and honestly, tend to get along better with men anyway -- so I figured that it might be worth a shot (if they let me in) to see if I gel with any of the dads and make a new friend. I consider it a freak accident that I do get along well with a few of the women in my moms group, for the last 10 years all of my good friends have been guys.

I've heard anecdotally of moms groups that don't allow dads (I'd like to think my group would be open to it, but since it's never come up I don't know how the rest of the group would react to that idea). Perhaps the problem won't be the dads, but rather their wives who aren't comfortable with the idea of their husbands fraternizing with women (understandable but disappointing if so). I've certainly seen that at work, where it's difficult for me to get to a "sees each other outside of work" level of friendship with a coworker if he's married or in a serious relationship, whereas I have no such problems with women at work. (Granted that may not be the only issue at play).

I have always felt bad for dads when I hear about how isolated they feel due to their smaller numbers and the cold shoulder they get from some SAHMs. It will be interesting to see what happens.

For the Ali G fans...

East Side iz de best.

Does Margaret Spelling know about Maisy?

As Catawampus details, there is a conspiracy afoot to infiltrate kids' TV programming and eventually, kids minds with foul, devious behavior such as... being gay.

I'm concerned that Margaret has not seen the true horror of this. After all, has she read "Maisy Takes A Bath"? It starts out innocently enough, but soon delves into the deep dark horrors of... being gay.

Are you not familiar with the plot? Allow me to summarize:

Maisy wants to take a bath. So she starts the water and pours in the bubbles and puts her friend "Duck" into the bath with her (most likely some sort of pro-gay symbol, the sneaky bastards). Then... the doorbell rings. Ah, it's Talullah, and she wants to play. Maisy politely tells her to come back later, she's taking a bath right now.

But does Tallulah listen? No, as we find out in a few heartstopping pages. The innocent hetero (at least for now), Maisy, goes back upstairs and takes off her clothes. Then... the doorbell rings again. Notice, Maisy is now without clothing. She runs downstairs dripping wet, grasping a towel around her. At the door? Tallulah again. Maisy tells her quite firmly that she's busy and to come back later, but again, Tallulah does not listen.

Instead, she runs upstairs and takes off her clothes!!! And the book ends with Maisy and Talullah "playing" in the bath together! And as I have already mentioned, THEY WERE BOTH NAKED!

The worst part is that they have somehow managed to pass off this as harmless children's literature, when as you can see from my synopsis above, it is actually a pro-gay-agenda story about an innocent young mouse being corrupted by a lesbian bird.

And, perhaps worst of all... my son adores the book! Every time we finish it, he says "nudder!". Naturally I did not want any of this filth in my house, so I burned it (wouldn't want any innocent hetero child who peruses our trash to be corrupted as well). I just hope it was in time to stop the infiltration of those pro-gay-agenda messages. We have also since stopped watching Blue's Clues since we discovered that Blue is a girl and she does not wear proper clothing. I also banished all copies of Harold and the Purple Crayon from the house because the crayon is obviously a hidden phallic symbol. And "Pat the Bunny"? Oh, don't even get me started.