Perfectly Disgraceful

So much better than a Snuggie

It's still cold here. I need one of these.

Ranunculus

Doesn't it seem like the weather should feel like these look?

 

I cannot wait until it does.

Warping the children

This morning, while I was still mostly comatose, the Younger Child asked Rex to tell her about Easter. This may have been a mistake on her part.

Rex: The Easter Bunny is really just the Easter Rat with long fluffy ears. He ties his long rat tail up in a bun. He's just a more fashionable rat.

The Easter Rat brings little baskets of dirt-covered rocks, leaves them at your house and then stands outside your door listening to you break your teeth on the rocks.

The Easter Rat says, "Easter Rat rules this town! I do what I want!."

Younger Child: Daaaaad.

The case for moderate and rational opinions

I stopped reading the Atlantic Monthly years ago when it took a conservative turn. No, I don't go around seeking differing opinions, especially when those differing opinions are all about throwing bombs (I'm looking at you, Caitlin Flanagan) instead of persuasion.

But it seems I can't avoid the Atlantic's bomb throwing. It briefly invaded the pages of my beloved New Yorker (Caitlin Flanagan, again, although the NYer toned her down to little fire crackers) and now I find it in the New York Times. An Atlantic Monthly writer, Hanna Rosin, makes Flanagan-like sweeping statements about ambivalent upper-middle class mothers while pretending to include mothers of all classes in an article called "The Case Against Breast-Feeding."

Do we really need a case against breast-feeding? I guess if you, like Hanna Rosin, feel that it was forced upon you against your will. Ms. Rosin wants to be all contrary (contrary sassiness being a familiar conservative female pose) and opposed to breastfeeding. She attempts to proclaim that she did it only for her children's health. She says breastfeeding compromised both her work (this I believe) and the state of her marriage (I suspect an infant is more likely at fault here). Therefore, in her of statistical sample of one, she has determined breastfeeding is bad and has been revived to keep women down. However, please ignore her honest-sounding postscript that confesses to finding some pleasure in breastfeeding. Such admissions have no place in a polemic.

Where Rosin's bomb throwing comes in is statements like this: "So how is it that every mother I know has become a breast-feeding fascist?" Really. Every mother. Her circle must be quite limited. Because I know many mothers who have breastfed but I don't know one who would push it on anyone who isn't interested in it. I've heard stories, of course, but even the La Leche leaders I know aren't "fascists."

Rosin apparently liked to tell other mothers at the playground that she was thinking about weaning her infant. Soon after, the mothers would drift away and Rosin assumed this was because they were appalled by her callous parenting. As a mother of three young children, I think she probably understands that it's nearly impossible to have an actual conversation while chasing a toddler around a playground. I also think most other mothers would be more than sympathetic to an overwhelmed mother of a new baby and two small children. I find her point of view in this story hard to believe.

I am one of those crazy long-term breast-feeders, though I prefer to say nursing because I'm a bit of a prude. I liked nursing. I found it easy and enjoyable. While I was unfortunate enough to have to return to work when my first baby was six weeks old, I could use a locked office to pump, and work while pumping. I realize many jobs are not like this and I feel for mothers who want to pump but whose financially-necessary jobs make it impossible.

I've had friends who never breastfeed, or who tried it and didn't like it, or, sadly, couldn't do it. Like any good feminist, I think breastfeeding should be about choice. If you choose not to do it and are happy with that choice, great, if you wanted to do it and couldn't, I feel for you. And, if you are like me and love nursing, then I expect you to have good manners and not be pushy with other women. Isn't it so much nicer to be supportive and helpful? Yes. It is.

I think breastfeeding should be mostly for the mother. It should be something a mother does because she enjoys it. Because it makes her mothering easier. I was only too happy to not worry about bringing enough formula with me on an outing, or mixing it up in the middle of the night, or worse, running to the 24-hour CVS to buy more at 2:00 a.m. I am a lazy mother, breastfeeding was the easiest course for me, even combined with pumping at work. A nursing session was instant comfort for an upset baby. Whenever my babies were sick, I was grateful to be able to nurse them when they wouldn't eat anything else. It was the most useful and easiest parenting tool I can imagine. For me. Maybe not for you. I suggest giving it a good try, if you're up for it, but don't make yourself miserable.

I don't think this discussion should be about good mothering or bad mothering or judgment about mothers. Good parents feed their babies and comfort them. It doesn't matter if this is done with bottles and pacifiers or breasts. What matters so much more is giving parents the tools they need. Longer and paid parental leave, high quality affordable day care for those who need it and want it, pumping breaks and rooms in which to pump at work for mothers who want to. Judgment should be reserved for those who really deserve, like AIG bonus-takers. This is just more incendiary nonsense from the Atlantic designed to distract us from issues of real importance. I am so weary of this gambit.

Short bangs

Hard economic times call for cutting back on frivolities, like bangs.

A bad case of the I wants

My office is located in shopping central. Two blocks from the Banana, the Gap, Macy's, H&M, J. Crew etc. Four or five blocks from Anthro, another H&M, Zara, Sephora, etc., etc. It's almost sick-making. I like to get out of the office at lunchtime, stretch the old legs, get a bit of sunlight, but walking around this 'hood is dangerous in these recessionary times.

There is currently no extraneous spending in the Disgraceful household. We aren't down to rice and beans, yet (it would cause the Disgraceful children to starve to death), but we aren't eating out, we are getting almost no takeout (sob) and, worst of all, no new clothes unless absolutely necessary.

This is killing me.

Today I thought, well, I'll go take a gander at the Gap, I'm unlikely to want any of the grown-up clothes, but perhaps I could find another $5 skirt on the kids sale rack for one of my girly girls. Not that a $5 skirt is absolutely necessary, but a $5 skirt might satisfy my jones while being only $5.

I wandered through the women's section and saw some sandals in the style I'm partial to reduced to $14. I thought, well, I really could use a new pair of flat sandals, black of course, so they don't show dirt, although I also really need a neutral color, too, and for $14, I could get two pairs...

Then I wandered by the jeans and thought, well, I really want a pair of dark wash skinny jeans, only $40 on sale, maybe I should try them on....

Then I went upstairs to the children's section where there were no cute clothes on sale, but there were many, many darling dresses very much not on sale.

The whole expedition, from which I escaped without even trying anything on, let alone purchasing a single pair of sandals, gave me a bad case of the "I wants."

Having a bad case of the I wants is a little gambit I came up with for shopping at Target when the Older Child was tiny. So many cute and totally unneeded things, so little money (and space in our house). But we could wander through Target talking about all the stuff we liked and how it gave us a bad case of the I wants. Somehow being able to express that she wanted something without having any expectation of getting it cut way back on the whining.

I want some new clothes. I want to go out to dinner. I want to go on vacation. I want a new pair of glasses. I want my kitchen reno to be complete in my lifetime. I want this recession (depression?) to be over NOW. I don't care if I'm whining. I have a bad case of the I wants.

Michelle Obama party

The Younger Child saw the cover of the latest issue of the New Yorker and said, "It's Michelle Obama, with her Michelle Obama friends having a Michelle Obama party."

Censorship and the modern mother

The Older Child wants to read the Twilight series.

 

Rex and I have never censored her reading material. If memory serves, I believe we started reading the Harry Potter books to her when she was not quite six, toward the end of kindergarten. While there are adult themes in the Potter series (good v. evil) they are not adult themes.

I have not read any of the Twilight books, though I've read a bit about them, enough to have the impression that the subtext by their Mormon author is abstinence. Which is an idea that I'm not really down with as a life philosophy, though I will admit to a prudish preference for waiting until college.

If the subtext is abstinence, it seems the text itself is pretty steamy. The Older Child has never before evinced interest in steamy. As recently as this past Christmas, she was much more interested in acquiring another American Girl doll. In fact, if I made her choose between, say, a few sleepovers with friends and reading Twilight, I would bet that she would pick the former.

When the Older Child began her Twilight campaign, I tried persuasion. I tried to convince her that she would enjoy the books a lot more when she is 12. I actually believe this, it wasn't just a tactic. I think she would be much more thrilled by a book about all-consuming crushes when she actually has one, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't, yet.

Unfortunately, my gentle campaign of persuasion and delay met up against an unbeatable force: peer pressure. One of her best friends wanted the two of them to read the book together, chapter by chapter. The Older Child told me she'd try the first chapter and if it didn't hold her interest, she'd set it aside for awhile. A day later, she had finished the book.

And now she wants to read the rest of the series. Which, as I understand, grows more and more adult with each book. She tells me many of the other girls in her class have read the whole series, which makes me wish these other supposedly over-protective mothers would provide a little censorship for my benefit. I could read the books myself, though I don't think that will make much difference in whether I allow her to read them or not. And I do feel a bit like one of her other best friends, if everyone else loves these books so much, than I will be boisterously uninterested in them.

I'm not willing to censor my children's reading. I really do wish she'd wait until she's a little older to read the other Twilight books. I imagine I will be having a similar discussion with her in only too few years about a subject of greater import. But in neither discussion will I tell her she can't. I'll just try to persuade her to wait until she'll enjoy it a lot more.