Cynical Mom

Mark Morford speaks for me

...in "Keep Your Foul Paws Off Aslan", about the upcoming Lion, Witch & The Wardrobe.

Girls, Boys, Laundry.

Warning: Rambling ahead.

I went out with a bunch of mom friends last night. So picture a gaggle of 7 mothers sitting around a table talking and laughing a bit too loudly as they sip their lemon drops (oh hush, I had a virgin daiquiri).  I rarely feel like much of a girl, except when I'm with these women. And naturally the conversation went along traditional lines: our kids, our husbands, what we read in People magazine. And then of course, separation of household duties and the never-ending nature vs nurture.

I raised the subject of family laundry responsibilities as it's been a recent curiosity of me to see how others split this up. David and I consolidated checking accounts when we got married yet we didn't merge the laundry; we each have our own dirty piles and take care of washing and drying and putting away our own clothes. I didn't realize until last night that this makes us complete freaks. Every other woman at the table, whether or not she worked, did the laundry for the entire family. Yikes. So chalk that one up to "Didn't know how good I had it until I knew what it was like for others." They all thought we were weird.

Of course, there are a variety of reasons why we haven't merged, probably the main one being that my standards are much lower than my husband's (the man folds his t-shirts into perfect squares!) and I am a firm believer in the "If you don't like the way I do it, then do it yourself" rule for determining separation of household responsibilities - assuming of course that neither side purposely does a bad job in order to avoid the responsibility ;-).

Another topic where I was the sole voice on one side was nature vs nurture. Half-Changed World mentioned this recently, linking to an interesting post on Jo(e) discussing this as well which again lead me through an interesting romp on the blogosphere (On a side note, I love finding new bloggers through links to topics in which I'm interested).

Myself, I am firmly in the nurture camp - not that I deny that nature plays a role in the development of a child, but I tend to disagree with the specifics that are often attributed to the genders when this issue comes up. I.e. I don't believe that there's a part of our genetic code that says XX like jewelery and makeup and XY likes throwing dirt, or that girls tend to talk more and boys tend to hit more. I believe that in general, we train our children to act that way starting from the way we treat them even before they're born (here's a short summary of some related studies and this is interesting as well).

There has always been and will continue to be tomboys and sensitive men, and each generation does modify its stereotypes, of course. Now to be clear, being in the nurture camp does not mean that I believe I can change my child to be what I want him to be. He's a sponge; he soaks up an amazing amount of information each day from the world around him. If I were the only person he ever interacted with or ever saw, just maybe I could have significant influence... But that's never going to be the case.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard moms-to-be who knew the gender of their babies describe their in-utero boys as so active, kicking all the time, and yet according to the mothers, the in-utero girls seemed to be much more quiet and reserved and gentle. Yet somehow when they come out, all babies cry a lot. My son's current favorite color is pink, and so I made sure one of the trains in his birthday cake had pink frosting; a three year old boy at his birthday party wanted the pink cake out of all of the cakes, and his father tried to convince him otherwise. Before Jared was born (we didn't find out the gender for him either), several members of my family kept trying to convince me to find out the gender so they knew what color baby clothes to buy; I insisted that I didn't like pink anyway so they could buy whatever and the baby would wear it.

Side note: I have to admit that I get a small thrill out of the fact that he loves pink, as if it is a meaningful milestone in my attempt to minimize the amount of socialization I myself do (it's not - but I still like it :-). Recently, Jared and I went to the local thrift shop to buy a toy; Jared picked a red truck out of a pile and we were on our way to the cashier to pay for it, and then he saw the pink car and kept saying "pink car! pink car!" I gave him a choice and he chose the pink car.

I like to think that I'm always open to changing my opinion based on new information, so I'm looking for some good books or articles to read on this subject... anyone have any recommendations? I've run across this one, but it's a wee bit pricey, much of the books seem to be more of the textbook variety. In the meantime I'll browse the blogs...

Why must I get these kinds of referrers?

http://www.google.com/search?q=maisy+mouse,+naked

At least I'm not number one (yet). But I am enjoying reading the other blogs that talked about Maisy, such as this one. Every time I read the "Maisy takes a bath" book - i.e. every night before bed - I snicker at the part where Tallulah runs upstairs and takes off her clothes.

I really must stop snickering by the time he's old enough to figure out what's funny.

Gut-based parenting

When Jared turned a year old, I started to get 'friendly advice' or questions from a variety of people along the lines of "So is he still on a bottle? He is? oh...". No one spelled out doomsday for the 18 year old still on a bottle, but it was obvious that I wasn't "following the path" that was expected. I hadn't planned on getting him off a bottle anytime soon as I knew that there were no dental issues to worry about for quite a while. But at 15 months, I caved. Over the period of a few weeks I changed bottles to sippy cups. We still had milk with our nighttime routtine, but it was in a sippy and not a bottle.

Well guess what... he didn't drink as much from a sippy as he ever did from a bottle. Still doesn't. And over the last year he's been gaining weight much more slowly than I would like. I'd be happy with him at the weight he's at, if he would just stay in a roughly consistent percentile... what concerns me is that when I don't specifically watch for it (and spike his milk with cream, encourage high-calorie eating, reduce filling carbohydrates, etc), his percentile drops with each doctor visit. So here we are, at two years old, and he's drinking 6-10oz of milk per day, when it's "supposed to be" [i.e. if you follow all The Rules which we don't, but it's still good to have as a general reference point] several times that. I'm considering re-introducing the bottle, perhaps the familiarity and comfort will make him want to drink more.

At any rate, the reason I ramble on is that we are now at the age where people are starting to ask "Is he potty trained?".

...I need to interrupt myself here to tell what I think is an amusing story that will likely not even cause you to crack a smile if you don't know the little boy in question. My now 5.5 year old nephew had many difficulties with potty training. I remember one thanksgiving dinner when he was in the middle of the long process, his dad picked up a play phone and said "Oh hello Kelsie... What's that, Kelsie? You're going POOP on the POTTY? Wow, Malcolm, did you hear that? Kelsie went POOP on the POTTY!" and then handed it over to my nephew. When Jared started to play with toy phones, David and I got no end of giggles out of each other by pretending that Kelsie was calling us as well from the potty, or immediately after the potty. See, now wasn't that funny?...

We own a potty, we think he knows what it's for, he sits on it clothed sometime which amuses him to no end, he's often good about telling us when his diaper needs changing, etc... many of "The Signs" you're supposed to watch for are clicking into place... but we're just not forcing the issue. One reason is that we've got another babe coming later this year, and I:

A) don't want to potty train a youngster while 6+ months pregnant or with a brand-spankin'-newborn around
B) don't want to deal with the inevitable accidents once he's no longer wearing diapers and
C) I figure he's going to regress as soon as the baby comes and demand diapers anyway, so why bother? [on a related note, I have been using this as an excuse for a lot of things recently.]

My gut tells me there's no need to rush it. He's a reasonable kid. He'll let us know when he's really ready. And three years from now, if we're still struggling with it, I may look back on this and say "you fool!"... but at least I will know that I went with my gut. I think I can handle being wrong; I just don't like feeling like I was untrue to myself and didn't stand up for what I felt was best for my kid.

And on a related note, I think we're going to be a two-crib family for at least the next year. Why rush the transition to a Big Boy Bed? There are so many nice perks to cribs, not the least of which is that mama doesn't have nightmares about her boy frolicking around his room or the house in the middle of the night, unsupervised. I do admit that I really want to get him this bed, that I know he would love:

But it just doesn't feel right in my gut.

POTUS

I decided on a fetus name: POTUS. Phaetus Of This UteruS. POTUS the fetus. It has a nice ring to it, don't you think? I just put those letters together randomly, indeedy doo.

And along those lines, I thought I'd share the most recent photos of POTUS. Here she is at 13 weeks:

And here she is a couple of weeks ago, at 20w:

Isn't it amazing? You can see her face. You can even see much of what she will look like in 18 more weeks (please let it be 18, even 16 would be OK, just not 20!).

OK I say she, but I don't know for sure. Like with Jared, we decided not to find out, we like the surprise at the end (David was the first person to say "It's a boy!" for Jared, which I think is neat-o). But before the ultrasound, I just had a hunch it was a girl for a variety of reasons, based on how this pregnancy has gone compared to last time. (Of course as my sister, the mother of two boys, says "With my second, I knew it must be a girl because it was such a different pregnancy from the first." But I swear, this is different :-) And during the ultrasound, although he didn't linger around the relevant area, as he scanned the body I am pretty sure I saw a glimpse of nothing where something should be.

So I choose to think it's a girl for now. If it's not, that's cool too, and then the surprise will be even more of one. During Jared's pregnancy I had a hunch it was a boy as well, and hey I was right - what are the odds? 50% you say? Oh.

At any rate, this is my virtual stake in the ground. In four months I'll know if I was right.

Doesn't she have a beautiful face though?

Open mouth, insert sap.

I am generally not a huge fan of holidays other than birthdays and major events like hannukah and christmas... partly from the hallmark-created aspect of many of them, partly from the "What are the rest of the days of the year for?" aspect, partly from just pure laziness (I really hate cursory "I'm expected to call on this day" phone calls, plus I'm just no good on the phone). I didn't make a big deal out of Mother's Day (actually we were in Hawaii, childless, but it was just a coincidence that that happened over mother's day) either. So today was Father's Day. I didn't do anything particularly special for David, because I knew the holiday wasn't that meaningful to him either.

Tonight I was reflecting on this holiday and I realized what a gem I captured. We started dating about 9 years ago. I brought him home for thanksgiving in 1996, and I smile now thinking about what my mom must have been thinking when this guy walked in the door with me. He had short hair, was wearing khakis and a collared shirt, ate dinner with us including the vegetables (which I certainly didn't do that at the time) and thanked my mom for the great cooking. Compared to the last serious relationship I'd had ("That's a nice haircut dear, what is that, a Daniel Boone?"), my mom was probably in heaven. He also flew me to Seattle to meet his parents a couple of months after we started dating; he wasn't scared of commitment or talking about the future and three years later we were married.

So first off, he cooks. Pretty much every night. Now admittedly, this is partly because I used to cook more often and well, I'm not a very good cook and he actually is, and so he took over more of that role. But still. The man cooks. How many women can say that about their husbands? One night last week I actually made dinner for us (garlic chicken, mmmm) and I was so proud of myself that I  brought it up in conversation at work the next day, like "look at me! I made dinner!", all proud of myself. The guys at work thought I was insane because of course all of their wives cook dinner for them every night.

Secondly, he does his own laundry. A couple of weeks ago I wouldn't have thought this was that amazing, until a lunch discussion with some male coworkers where I found out that this is not universally the case, that many wives do their husbands' laundry. This blew me away.

Third, he cleans. He's actually much more clean than me (I belong to the "life's short, who wants to spend it cleaning?" school of thought). A couple of days ago I saw him dusting. DUSTING! He also vacuums. I hate vacuuming. My version of cleaning is decluttering, putting things in categorized piles. This man actually sees and removes dirt.

Fourth, he can fix anything. Whether it's fragile software that needs hacking around or wires that need soldering or a watch that needs an adjustment or a sprinkler pipe that needs to be rerouted, he knows exactly what to do (OK OK I'm onto him here, sometimes he just reads up on it in advance, but he does know how to research), what is needed in order to do it, and then he does it. Meanwhile I buy our son a Sit & Spin and get to Step #1 in the instructions that tells you to insert the pole into the base. I spend 2 minutes huffing and puffing and trying to fit the pole into the base, double and triplechecking the directions to make sure I'm doing it right, before I give up and wait for David to get home. David gets home, spends 10 seconds doing the same huff & puff before realizing that something's wrong, reads the instructions more closely and realizes that I was trying to jam the wide end of the pole into the top instead of the actual base, i.e. the part you sit on.

Fifth, he usually takes Jared in the morning and lets me sleep in. Nearly every day of the week. On the weekends he'll take Jared down and make him waffles or pancakes and sometimes I even wake up to breakfast in bed for no special reason at all. On the weekdays I get that precious extra 30-45 minutes while he plays with Jared downstairs. To someone who is a parent and not a morning person (i.e. me), this is one of the greatest gifts you can receive. He is actually a morning person (I just don't get how someone grows up to become a morning person, when exactly do you stop sleeping in until 11AM? Outside of having kids and a job of course), but I still give him full credit for this one.

Sixth, he helps me improve myself. I mentioned vegetables before... over the course of our 9 years together I have actually added (a few) vegetables to my diet. OK, OK... I'm no vegetarian and am not that big a fan of meat either (I probably qualify as a "cheese-and-pastatarian"), I admit, but I will no longer gag at the smell of green beans, have been known to get second helpings of broccoli and will even order certain kinds of fish in a restaurant. He hasn't managed to shake me of my "cereal and mac & cheese is a perfectly appropriate dinner" attitude yet but I suspect some day he might.

Seventh, he not only always puts the toilet seat down, but usually the lid. Where did this guy come from???

I love you, David.

</sappy blog post>

On negativity

A while back, I read "The mask of motherhood: how becoming a mother changes our life and why we never talk about it." I very much enjoyed it, identified with many of the struggles described therein and overall found it thought provoking, well written and well, validating. It's nice to know you're not alone, regardless of the issue.

So while looking for more related books to check out, I was looking at the "if you liked this book, try..." on Amazon, and on a whim decided to read the reviews about the mask of motherhood. Pretty much anything below 4 stars called out its negative tone:

"Mixed bag...bold ideas but is she unhappy mother"

"The book was somewhat interesting, but I came away from it with such a bad feeling. The author just struck me as being so very bitter! I would hate to be her daughter and read this book. She and her partner didn't seem to find any joy in parenting at all(except as a topic to write a book about?) I realize the focus of the book is supposed to be on the negatives, but still!"

"The material is presented in a very negative way, and tends to be more biased towards the bad experiences when discussing examples."

"I found the Mask of Motherhood to be a really negative read and wondered quite a bit why Susan Mausart bothered to have three children if it was all so potentially and personally disappointing"

This reminded me of Chocolate & Peanut Butter's post, Mind Control for Mothers, and one of the lines in particular from that post that really stuck  with me: "Or do we have to candy everything into an Everlasting Gobstopper of motherly sweetness?"

As someone who's been accused of being overly negative myself about parenting issues (and blogging overly negative things as well), I am going to reread the book to see if I walk away with any additional or changed impressions. Chances are, I won't. And I will probably then post something negative, or agreeing with the negativity in the book, or whatever. Ah well.

I guess I just don't need my literature to be positive; I will seek my happiness in being a mother from within and don't need that happiness to be played back at me in this specific form of media. Now, movies... I have a tendency to only like movies with fairly happy endings or resolutions. I blame this on the fact that I so easily get wrapped up and emotionally involved in movies that I end up feeling depressed if the movie ends on a down note.

With books, it's somehow different for me; when reading negative literature, if I identify with it, when finishing the book I feel empowered and validated. If I don't identify with a book that happens to be negative, it just doesn't affect me. I read Faulkner Fox's Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life : Or How I Learned to Love the House, the Man, the Child last year; while it also had a negative tone, I didn't identify with it or feel like I truly understood the author by the time I was done. But it didn't stay with me after I was finished and I don't consider the negativity to be a reason that I didn't like the book. I just plum didn't like it. :-)

I read Naomi Wolf's Misconceptions about five months along in my first pregnancy and it made me question a lot of the "just go along with the flow" thinking about pregnancy and birth that I'd been doing. I used the information in the book to do more research and subsequently had a great visit with my OB where I peppered him with questions about how he feels about episiotomies, "failure to progress" in labor and the other pitfalls Naomi outlined. I ended up staying with him because I was satisfied with his answers.

I did it, and it didn't suck.

I think it turned out quite nice, actually:

I'll never learn

You'd think that after this, I would have learned. But I'm just not that smart.

To my credit, I did go to safeway last week and order their thomas the train cake. I did, I swear. But then my sister sent me a link to this cake:

She said she did it for her son's birthday a few years ago and it turned out great and she really loves the memory.

So, I caved. But only partially. I told myself I'd practice again... and if I didn't fuck it up, then I'd do it and cancel the safeway cake. Fortunately I have an audience of coworkers that is happy to eat mistakes as long as they aren't of the "tastes bad" variety.

So a few nights ago, I practiced - fortunately with this kind of cake, you can do it in small increments, so I made only one mini-loaf. This meant I had to take a shortcut in that I didn't have the other loaf to cut up on top. I decided this was acceptable, and that I'd cut off half the top of the one loaf I did have. So that's what I did:

Fortunately, Jared is also really into pickup trucks, really any form of vehicle. As to why my pickup truck has a smokestack, well, it's steam powered.

I should also note that I didn't put the yellow headlights on until after I realized what I'd made.

But I still decided to cancel the safeway cake and am currently in the process of baking the cakes. Perhaps he'll end up having a 5 truck pileup rather than an engine and 4 cargo cars, but man the cake itself and the frosting is goooooooooooooood.

[Note: My coworkers' responses when I explained the reason for the truck ranged from "If only my mom loved me that much to make me such a cake when I was little, perhaps I wouldn’t be so angry at the world." to "This is awesome.  I am still giggling." Yet they all really enjoyed the taste.]

The bad news hairs

Good news: I finally got a haircut this week, after probably 5 months of just letting it sit around, eat junkfood, watch tv and grow unruly.

Bad news: I call this haircut The Laura Bush. And I'm not so much a fan of her hair.

Better news: Well, at least it's not The Barbara Bush.