Cynical Mom

Are you there, God?

It's me, Margaret. I freaking hate what you've done to women, that we dress our girls in this, this or this and ourselves in this (hey ladies, Friday is "Dress like a Ficus" day!).

This is asymptotically approaching cute, but on my way to purchase it I ran across this and vomited into my grocery cart, so I had to start all over again.

Can someone PLEASE go make baby girl clothing that is not COVERED in PINK and FLOWERS?

I think I am going to convert our extra bedroom into an Angry Dome for me to pace around, flailing my arms wildly in the air and muttering under my breath about Society and The Man and Socialization. With lots of extra garbage cans in case I cast a wayward glance at something like this and need to "express myself" by voiding my stomach.

BLECH.

All quiet on the potty front

Today, he didn't poop on the toilet... but he farted on it.

Hey, that's progress.

Actually, today really was quite an accomplishment: I've mentioned that his previous two "successes" were when he peed on the floor of the bathroom. Today he sat on the toilet... and peed... in the toilet! He himself recognized this as quite an achievement as he proudly said: "Mama, I peed on the potty! Not on the floor, in the potty!"

P.S. A friend just told me that when his daughter was going through potty training, he instituted a "Peeps for poops" program. We've just been using normal marshmallows... maybe our problem is that we're not creative enough. :-)

The only popup ad I've ever been tempted to click on

Semantics

I swore, swore to myself that I wouldn't force the potty training issue. Plenty of preschools these days don't require it, he didn't seem interested or ready, no need to rush.

Then I found a preschool I reaaaaallllly wanna go to. Er, I mean I want him to go to. And guess what they require?

So we've been pushing it a little. Stickers for every time you sit on the potty with your pants off, presents for every pee and poop (for the record, he got two presents for pee... but really we shouldn't have given them to him since both times he peed on the floor and not in the potty. But that's just semantics).

Yet you ask him if he wants to go on the potty, he thinks for a minute, furrows his brow, and then looks up at you and says "No thank you... I'll do that later." Later never comes, of course.

So finally I decided to give in and use food. Little marshmallows for pee, big ones for poop. Hooray... here I am setting up a lifelong history of Food Issues. We've been talking up the "mallows" for the last couple of days in preparation for this weekend.

At one point this afternoon I started to Smell It Coming. So I rushed him to the potty, tore off his pants and diaper, only to find it halfway out. OK fine let's just grab that part off and see if there's anything more.

Sit... sit...

tick, tock, tick, tock

OK I give up. <lift kid off seat AND SMEAR POOP ALL OVER SEAT>. He had major klingons.

Who needs toilet paper when you have a perfectly good toilet seat to use?

So he did not poop in the potty. He pooped while on the potty and he pooped on the potty.

But the boy got his big 'mallow and his present because well, he was so damned cute when he said "I'm going poop on the potty! This is FUN!".

Also, at one point today while I was changing Audrey's diaper, His Eloquence says to his little sister: "You sure do poop a lot. I'm making poopoo also!"

Ahhh yes. The poop blogs have started. Every parent of a toddler does it.

Cute shit as of March 12, 2006

David: "Want to go to the park?"
Jared: "No."
Me: "David, we could go outside and [spelling] B-L-O-W  B-U-B-B-L-E-S..."
Jared: "No, there's no letters outside, mama."

The Smith Family vocabulary

Anyone who spends a significant amount of time around my siblings and my parents and I learns that we are not simply a bunch of boring old monoglots. Our Smithiness is a rich tapestry with a culture and language entirely our own.

Here I offer a peek at the upcoming Smith-To-English dictionary (straight to paperback, or more specifically the back of a piece of paper) for any soul who has not yet become fluent:

• "Uvil": Adjective. Refers to a type of food, of which it is imperative that you eat. An individual dish can become uvil through the course of the meal as it is left neglected (uninspiring mashed potatoes), or it could have been a known uvil from the beginning (e.g. brussel sprouts) E.g. "This is uvil food... YOU VIL EAT IT!"[1]
• "Good": Adjective. When applied to a noun, means "The [noun] that I am looking for right now." e.g.: "Have you seen the good tape?" When in discussions with a person who values precision, avoid using this term as it will only result in marital strife.

[1] I couldn't think of an example for the first one, so I asked my husband "What's an example of a uvil food that only becomes uvil because no one touches it?" and he knew exactly what I was talking about. I guess he's "gone native".

I am an elbowfeeding activist

Blogging Baby posted last month about a woman breastfeeding her eight year old. What's most interesting to me isn't the actual content, but the comments on BB, specifically the "Sick", "Wrong" and "Freakshow"-type comments.

I keep thinking "Yep, pretty grody... but why are people freaking out about this?" Both the mom and the kid want it. It is not physically harming anyone. You could argue emotional harm, but that's pretty much par for the parenting course (and really, let's be honest - part of being a parent is about emotionally harming our kids, just not in the same way in which our parents harmed us).

What it really comes down to is that we can't let go of the breast as a sexual object. As a society, we're starting to move back to breasts being OK for feeding... up to a certain arbitrary point.

To put it another way, if it was elbowfeeding instead of breastfeeding, would anyone get this up in arms about a mother who elbowfed her eight year old? The idea of breastfeeding an eight year old is totally squicky to me... but let's take that time and energy spent ranting at this woman to ranting about child abuse and domestic violence.

What exactly are you trying to tell us, Safeway?

While grocery shopping today, I went to Safeway's "Shop By Aisle" menu, where they have icons for each aisle:

Notice the icon for the "Health, Beauty & Family" aisle:

There are a variety of products in that category, from mouthwash to pain relievers to lotions to vitamins to incontinence products. And yet Safeway chose to use the incontinence product as its banner. Allrighty then.

And while I'm at it, can someone please tell me how to find (*%($# salad (*@#( dressing on Safeway's site? And can anyone explain why the first hit when I search for "Garlic" is Hot Cross Buns?? I'd be pretty cross if my buns were garlic, I suppose.

More evidence of his brilliance

Jared has a poster with a map of the world on it in his room. Along the bottom of the map there are many flags from the countries. Recently he's gotten into counting them, and as he ran his finger across the flags for Tunisia and Turkey which are right next to each other, he said:

"A puzzle!"