Cynical Mom

What are you judgmental about?

I've written often enough about the various parental debates and how we all judge each other, blah blah can't we get along etc etc warm fuzzy I'd like to teach the world to sing. But I carry around a dirty secret. As I posted on another blog a few weeks ago:

I used to pride myself on my non-judgmentalness, if there is such a word. How I'm all "whatever works for you" and whatnot.

Then I found out about elimination communication (i.e. newborns without diapers) and I just... well... I judged.

I've come to realize that I really am not as laid back as I'd like to think, and that I do have strong opinions that I think are "right" and that there are other opinions that I think are "wrong". Namely, I judge.

My only solace is that I am capable of changing my opinions and feeling remorse, and recently I've found myself coming around on a few issues I used to be more judgmental on. The reason I bring this up now is that while rereading a recent post from Half-Changed World about sleep today, I realized that the area I am a strong judger is about sleep.

I read many sleep books when my son was young, and the one that stuck with me the most was Weissbluth's Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. And the most important takeaway from that book (which really could be much much thinner, it gets repetitive) was how important sleep is to health. I saw this in my son and myself: the less sleep I get, the less human I feel. The less sleep he gets, the more annoying he is.

So whenever I hear a parent say that their six month old just won't nap, I have a knee-jerk reaction of concern, because I truly believe in the importance of sleep to health (both mental and physical, of the parent and the child) and that surely, nearly every child is capable of getting more sleep, you just have to find the way to encourage it that works for your family.

But what I don't know is where to draw the line of what is me having an opinion and what is me being judgmental of others' opinions? Is it possible to disagree without judging? If you believe the dictionary is a useful tool in defining the meaning of words, judging is merely the forming of an opinion, so you can hardly avoid it. Or is the important thing not what I feel but what I say - keep your mouth shut unless you're asked for your opinion?

Of course, as a blogger, that whole "keep your mouth shut" thing is a mighty tricky balance... :-)

If you liked this, then what about this?

According to Sensational Beginnings, if you enjoy this fine Hannukah playset:

Then you may also enjoy this wonderful advent calendar!

Even Amazon claims that customers who bought the Little People Hannukah Play Set also bought the Little People Christmas Village? I realize there are many families who celebrate both, but enough to show up on the "if you liked this, try this" lists?

P.S. It has removable flames on the hannukiah! Yes, we bought it. So freakin cute. I'm really looking forward to getting into the holiday with him this year.

The top baby names of 2004, according to the SSA

"Baby" is #807.

But only for boys. It doesn't even show up on the girls' list.

Hrm.

Idle hands

Today has been a standard, dull weekend day, punctuated by an hour or so's worth of painful contractions that went... nowhere. Textbook definition of false labor. Bummer.

So naturally my data-driven mind starts making me wonder, what is the statistical likelihood that I would go into labor at 37.5 weeks? I found a few interesting resources:

From http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr54/nvsr54_02.pdf:

(There's a ton of other interesting data in this study, such as the 'day of week' table that indicates that Tuesday is tops for baby-birthin' - is that just from parents who don't want their children to be born on Wednesday and thus full of woe? Full disclosure: I was born on a Wednesday.)

And given that this study also points to inductions and c-sections for a general trend of births happening earlier rather than later, my takeaway is: calgon, take me away, because it's apparent that this baby isn't going to come just yet.

Google Answers also has a post with pointers to a variety of interesting info which maps fairly well to the above.

We are good parents who help our kid learn new things 24/7

I'm not afraid to brag. We have done a very good job of teaching Jared about the colors of the traffic lights and what they mean:

Red: Stop
Green: Go
Yellow: Punch it!

...just kidding. But man, we are soooo tempted to teach him to say "punch it!" every time we drive through a yellow light.

Why am I unable to buy him a pink shirt?

He likes pink. I am pretty sure I did not push him in that direction in some feeble-minded attempt to prove something to myself or others[1], but that I merely supported his enjoyment of the color when he expressed it.

The first time I remember it coming up was when we were walking through a local thrift store, that has piles and piles of toys on top of the clothing racks. I told him he could have one, and he'd chosen a big red truck which he was clutching in his lap as we moved through the store. Suddenly, he stopped - "pink car! pink car!" and lo-and-behold, there was a pink car, as pink as you can get sitting next to us. I told him he could have one toy, did he want the red truck or the pink car? The pink car won.

So we took the pink car home, where my husband to this day still grumbles about it being a barbie car. He doesn't play with the pink car very much anymore (although I can't bring myself to give it away) it's Just Another Car (as it should be, since colors are not inherently anything, let alone gender-specific). Since then I have done some minor things like made sure one of his train birthday cakes was pink. He continues to express an interest in the color pink, nothing obsessive though.

Recently, I commented on Bark/Bite about my son and pink. After writing that comment, I resolved to soon purchase my son a pink shirt.

Well, Internet, I am here to tell you that I failed. I was at the store today and had in-hand a pink turtleneck whose only "fault" was that it was pink, it had none of the other failings of the usual girly clothing (the frilly edges, lace and all that other crap that drives me nuts from baby/toddler girl clothing).

It was Just A Pink Turtleneck. But I couldn't bring myself to buy it. I'm not sure why.

I think my main fear was that I would bring it to him and he would hate it, and then I would have to admit that he has many stereotypically/cultural "boy" interests and that the pink thing was a passing fancy and not an indication that my two year old would grow up to be a new-age, sensitive man who was able to talk about his feelings.

So basically, it is about me. Dang.

Bark/Bite has some more words on a related topic.

[1] I have this ongoing "joke" with some friends (and well, the internet, since I've posted about it) that I want my son to be gay. I attribute this mainly to my already existing fear that he will one day "leave" me for some other woman and end up being closer to her parents than they are to us and that perhaps if he's gay and his boyfriend's parents suck, we can be the parents who not only don't freak out but are thrilled that he's found someone important to him, and also that I don't know how I would handle being the mother of a stereotypical jock or a social conservative or a guy so incapable of talking about his feelings that he is never able to form a long-term close romantic bond, and based on my admittedly limited and completely un-scientific sample, gay men tend to be less likely to have those qualities than straight ones.

It's quite easy to see that this little 'joke' is entirely about me and my own insecurities, but it does make me wonder - what can I as a parent do to raise a child to never call someone 'fag' as an indication of hatred, to never be a bully, to not be shamed or pressured into fitting our society's expectations of his gender if it is contrary to his internal desires... and of course, most importantly - to never reach an age where he's embarrassed to hug or kiss his mom in public?

Just kidding on that last one, I know that's a given. Ah, well.

Thanks, Albertson's!

A while back we ordered groceries online from Albertson's and the delivery guy dropped off a few extra special items as well... a box of "Tiger Power" cereal (theyyyyyyyyrrrree's gggrrreatly sugary!) and a "chore chart game" to encourage kids to help out with chores.

Well, at least help their mom. The game was laid out like a board game, with various stages along the way, several of which fit a certain theme:

(Yeah, I realize I didn't hold the cameraphone steady, in
case you can't read it says HELP MOM CLEAN THE WINDOWS)

No, there were no chores that dad needed help on on this 'game'.

I just don't get it. Was there NO MOTHER or "new age sensitive father" or husband or friend of a vaguely feminist woman OR ANYONE WITH A BRAIN involved in the development of this product?

Reading too much out of the tiniest things

I had my 36w checkup today. We've been clear throughout the pregnancy that we didn't want to know the gender, but I wasn't 100% sure that the gender wasn't on my chart somewhere. I know that with my firstborn's chart, my OB didn't know his gender until he was born, as the sonographer specifically didn't put it in the report from our ultrasound; this time around we went to a different place for the ultrasounds and they didn't specifically say it wasn't in the chart...

Anyway, the nurse was taking my blood pressure (I nailed that test! A+ for me! Wahoo! I rawk!) and checking the baby's heartbeat. I was chatting with her and I used 'she' to describe the baby a couple of times, such as "She's very active" and "Do you think she's sunny side up?" when she was finding the heartbeat. I just get tired using he/she or "the baby" or "it" all the time so I swap between he and she randomly.

The nurse then said something where she also described the baby as 'she', and then she covered her mouth and said "Oh! I didn't mean to say she! I mean... I don't even know!"

So now I'm wondering. Was that last bit a coverup? Why would she have been so upset at calling the baby she, since I used the pronoun first?

Ahhh, the 9-months-pregnant-brain and the completely useless things it chooses to obsess over!

P.S. Although I know there is no true meaning in my dilation, effacement and station numbers, it is comforting to know that my body is actually making progress. And I choose to believe that these numbers (1.5/50%/-2) and the differential in them from two weeks ago (0/0/-3) mean that I'm going to have an October baby. So maybe I will get to use those (two!) halloween costumes I have in the 0-3 month size and have that photo shoot I've been planning for six months of the two of them.

P.P.S. Except it occurs to me that earlier this evening, I promised Jared that we'd go trick-or-treating later this month, and now I'm worried I won't be able to live up to that commitment.

P.P.P.S. Screw it! Jared will live. Get this baby out!

P.P.P.P.S. Except not for two more weeks, I have some really important things at work to get done first.

Reflection of who we once were

This post on blogging baby about one woman's lust for a stroller that would help her maintain her old image of myself set me a-thinkin'.

When I'm out and about with my kid, I do catch myself looking at younger, obviously child-free folks with a twinge of envy. They roam the mall with no apparent "Must be back before toddler is up from nap"-type deadlines. They drink caffeine with abandon, not worried about the risk of not being able to sleep until late and thus being more exhausted than usual when baby wakes you up at 6 the next morning.

It's hard sometimes to not feel jealous, to not wish I could return for a day or a week or a month to when that was what my life was like. But by that same token, I can't help but feel glad that I'm beyond that age. I have a good career with coworkers I respect and whose company I enjoy, a stable marriage, own my own home and while I don't have as many friends as I once had, I have enough to make me laugh and to make laugh in turn. Plus there's this really freakin funny little bundle of energy and cuteness to remind me how fast time passes and not to take things so seriously.

I don't mean to say that those things are goals everyone has or should have, but they were something I had envisioned in my future ten years ago. Reaching each one of those involved a long journey, with a variety of painful stops along the way. Since I'm through them now, I can acknowledge that I learned something important from each of those stops -- yes, even The One That Totally Sucked. And this helps give me the perspective to realize that the next time I hit a painful stop, I can look beyond it to see how "This too shall pass".

And for all I know, those people are looking at my insufferably cute toddler and looking forward to some day when they might have their own.

<snicker>

Suuuuure.

Might as well put the results here while I'm at it

Using iVillage.co.uk's list of tests:

• It's a girl because I had morning sickness.
• It's a girl because her heartbeat was exactly 140bps at the last appointment.
• It's a boy because I'm carrying the weight out front.
• It's a girl because I'm carrying high.
• It has no gender because I can't decide if my belly is more like a basketball or a watermelon.
• It's a girl because I crave sweets (By the way, this is the funniest one I ever heard. Yes, yes, it's all the pregnancy's fault that I crave sweets. It has nothing to do with the fact that SWEETS ARE YUMMY.)
• It's a girl because I crave fruit and orange juice (I'm stretching the truth a little here, it's just been cranberry juice & apples, really)
• I refuse to choose between "Pregnancy has you looking better than ever" and "You don't look quite as good as normal during pregnancy" as I don't trust my objectivity.
• It's a girl because Dad isn't gaining weight. In fact, he's started working out regularly and losing weight. The bastard.
• It's a girl because (my age at time of conception + number for the month) = an odd number. Apparently this is the math used in [this site's version of] the chinese gender chart. Of course, this same chart claims that my existing son has some extra parts.

Well, there you have it then. My guess is right, it's a girl. But then what's a mom to do... on this quiz I got a 50%. So apparently that means it's a boy? Do you round up?

Of course, the reason I think it's a girl is because:

#1) I figure ya gotta think one way or the other and I'm guessing girl (FWIW I guessed boy last time, so I have a 100% success rate so far)

#2) This pregnancy is totally different from last time both in the type and timing of the various maladies as well as how I'm carrying. My sister, the mother of two boys, agrees with me that this is a telling sign, since her boys' pregnancies were like night and day.

Well, I'll either post in a month and eat some crow or crow from the rooftop that I was right.