An Important Announcement - The All New Mommyfesto

I am so ambitious. Not only am I recommitted to blogging, but I am adding two regular features to the blog. The first (which you will notice has already appeared on the right side of your screen) is a monthly poll. I think you'll like it - we all appreciate being validated in our choices, even when they are bad, and taking and watching the poll can offer hard evidence that you are not alone in those choices. The second is still being worked out, but since we're so close I'll tell you anyway. I'm going to add an advice section, an "Ask Mommyfesto" if you will (should you have a better idea for a name, by all means tell me). Just like Ann Landers I'll listen to your parenting problems and tell you exactly what Mommyfesto along with an expert panel (thank you Wiki!) would do in your shoes. File that under "Coming Soon" and send me your questions in the meantime.

Overheard Outside of the Bathroom

Well actually in the front hall (which is where all the elegant people enter our home).



Preschooler (quite excitedly): "Mommy, Mommy, I couldn't get all the poop out when I wiped it so I just put my underwear back on!"



At least there's one problem-solver in this house.

Should I Call the Doctor?

DISCLOSURE: Dear Reader,

I was given the following product by a junior account manager at a marketing or PR firm who saw my blog listed in a mommy blog catalog. You and I both know they didn't bother to read my blog or else I never would have been asked to give my humble endorsement of the product below. In any event, I readily agreed to except their gift and tell my reader what I think of it. For me the biggest thrill in the whole exchange has passed - it was in seeing the FedEx truck pull-up outside my house and having a package handed to me (thereby giving both me and my neighbors the false impression that what I'm up to all day is both urgent and businessy). That said, since my emotional tie to this product was spent upon its delivery, you can trust that the review below is accurate and unbiased.

At this point, I don't think it's overly optimistic to assume that we're in for some serious and definitive changes in our health care system. And while try as I might to follow the discussions on such an important topic I couldn't tell you what exactly those changes would be - even if you promised me two hours in Target without my kids. I am pretty sure that no matter how the government addresses health care in this country, they're not going to change one of my own biggest issues with the system: calling the doctor's office.

As I have mentioned before, I have a sordid past when it comes to calling the pediatrician's office. And while the staff at my kids' doctor's office is by no means judgmental (as far as I can tell) I am acutely aware of just how often I call there and for what purpose. I have always believed that if I played my cards right and resisted calling the office for minor situations, then I would have a much better chance of getting prompt and considered attention when I really needed it. I think this dawned on me when I called in about a bloody lip on my then three year old (now nine year old) daughter. For the curious, the lip was split during a run-in between her face, a blow-pop and a slide...

So if you're also working on the "less is more" doctor-calling philosophy you'll be interested in the following product review (!). Here are two books to check before calling your pediatrician (or you own grown-up doctor). One of the books (DK's Baby & Child Health, edited by Jennifer Shu) I bought on my own; the other (Merck Manual Home Health Handbook), I got for free from the Merck publicist who values my opinion even more than you do. For this review, I checked each of the books for information on the three ailments that have most recently impacted my family: H1N1, plantars warts (I said family, not me), and laryngitis. I also looked up head lice in both books because information on head lice is the true measure of the worthiness of any family health book.

The Merck Manual is strictly for grown-ups, yes it discusses things that impact children, that happen to children, but it is in no way written for anyone under eighteen to read. It's a resource for parents (whereas I could give my fourth grader the DK book to look at if she were doing a report on strep throat or first aid). The book's H1NI section is quite good, it's long enough and gives more information than let's say the local county board of heath website. The sections on warts and laryngitis are too general to be of much help. The head lice section is pretty good though, its straightforward rather then alarmist and what's best is it doesn't make you feel any guilt for choosing chemical lice treatments over homeopathic ones. Merck's deficit for me is that it doesn't have enough pictures. No matter how good the text is in any medical book, you need pictures. Without pictures, the description of almost any ailment is easily interchanged with several others. If I can look at a picture of what's growing on the bottom of someone's foot, I can know in an instant what to do about it, whether to head for the drugstore or to call the doctor. Text alone doesn't give me that clear option.

Pictures are where the DK Baby & Child Health excels, they've got great pictures of rashes, infections, and even emergencies. And they've got great diagnosis charts too. The problem with those is that most end up in the same final box, "call your doctor." This book is by no means definitive, but it's a great starting point. I should note however, that the head lice section is not very good at all. But I'm ok with that because I now have the Merck Manual.

Bring It!

The free stuff that is. You may remember that some people in this blogging family take issue with bloggers receiving free stuff to review. And you may also remember that I handily dismissed any arguments against freebies for bored bloggers hooked on mail in a previous post (I could use some more soap Rand, as I'm still figuring out how I feel about it).

While free stuff has long been a staple of the blogging community (it's the SWAG for the stay-at-home set), the government has finally decided that giving people things and asking them to write about them (kindly) is somehow warping favorably the reputation of those things among consumers. In the name of consumer protection, the FTC is instituting a whole new and improved set of rules and regulations about blogging on behalf of products and more important, penalizing bloggers who fail to disclose that they might be getting something from the company whose product they have written about.

While I had heard these rumors for quite awhile, I never checked into them until today. A quick internet search led me to the rules and to this video clip explaining how the rules will impact bloggers. As far as I can tell, I mean according to Mary Engle who is on-top over at the FTC, as long as I tell you that I got something for free, I am free to discuss it as I see fit in my blog. Lucky for me, I've always played by that rule. But just to be safe I will from now on be employing the following disclosure near the top of every product review.

DISCLOSURE: Dear Reader (note that's singular, I'm a realist),
I was given the following product by a junior account manager at a marketing or PR firm who saw my blog listed in a mommy blog catalogue. You and I both know they didn't read my blog or else I never would have been asked to give my humble endorsement of the product below. In any event, I readily agreed to except their gift and tell my reader what I think of it. For me the biggest thrill in the whole exchange has passed - it was in seeing the FedEx truck pull up outside my house and having a package handed to me (thereby giving both me and my neighbors the false impression that what I'm up to all day is both urgent and businessy). That said, since my emotional tie to this product was spent upon its delivery you can trust that the review below is accurate and unbiased.

How's that work for you Mary Engle?

And for those PR/Marketing types out there, don't hesitate to contact me - we do (or pretend to do) all things that mommies do...

Overheard in the Bathroom

So it's been months since the last post and even longer since I've posted with any regularity. I've been meaning to do it, but... Anyway, for reasons I'll explain later, it's time to resurrect the blog. To do that, I turned to a website my girlfriend just told me about for inspiration. That site is overheard in new york - a catalogue of comments and conversations overheard on the streets of new york (they also have an overheard at the office and an overheard at the beach version). It's mostly funny although it does feel a little contrived at times (but when you're messing around on the computer at eight o'clock p.m. - because you don't want to go downstairs and find out about the mess your kids just made in the playroom that you cleaned from nine to eleven a.m. - it's not staged enough to bother you). The best of craig's list can also be perfect in this situation. Inspired by the notion of blogging as simply reporting/recording the conversations of parenthood, I decided to share the following:

Sunday night, 8 p.m., just outside the bathroom door
Me: Xavier, please get in the bath tub
no response
Me: Xavier, I really want you to get in the bath tub.
no response
Me: Now!
no response
Me: You need to take a bath, what is going on in there?
no response
Me: Please... get... in... the... tub
Polly (the three year old): Xavier just get in the fucking bathtub.
Me: Polly, go to your room.
Xavier: Why? What'd she say? Mom, what did she do?

Get Out of My Car! And Go Get Some Ice Cream...

By now you've probably heard plenty about Madlyn Primoff, the New York mother who, after listening to her tween daughters fight in the backseat, finally decided to drive in peace and kicked both girls out of the car. Primoff ended up in jail charged with child endangerment and with a temporary order barring her from seeing her daughters. Primoff, a lawyer, clearly has the mind of a legal genius!

If you were particularly outraged by this story and upset by Primoff's treatment of her daughters, you probably don't have children. Or you write for a mainstream publication and need to take the opportunity to elevate your own parenting skills in contrast to Primoff's. Or your children are still small and are cute and cuddly enough to counterbalance their bad behavior by eliciting parental reactions of guilt rather than sheer anger. Not so with a tween. Preadolescents and adolescents are defined by awkwardness -physical, social, and emotional - and within the company of their parents, this awkwardness often morphs into downright nasty, disgusting behavior - the very behavior that might trigger a parent to eject their ungrateful tween from the car three miles from home.

I would guess that many parents were less outraged and more relieved by Primoff's arrest. Most parents can completely identify with the Primoff's snap. In fact, many like parenting blogger mad black grandmother, might see Primoff's decision to throw her kids out of the car as a fair lesson in actions and consequences, a relatively safe way to get her girls attention. The relief that these parents might feel when they hear Primoff's story is two part. First, most parents will be relieved to find out that other parents are experiencing the daily rage, disappointment and bewilderment that comes with parenting children of all ages and pre-grown-ups in particular. Second, they might be relieved that their own struggles with these emotions haven't gotten them arrested.

If you don't have kids (why in the world would you be reading this?) you might think that I'm going a little too easy on Primoff. Let me be clear, I'm not condoning her behavior, I'm just saying I understand it's origins. And my sympathy for Primoff is based on the facts of the incident. Primoff told her kids to walk in the middle of the afternoon on a comparatively nice day. The hardships incurred by walking three miles are relatively few. She didn't drop them off in the middle of the street but in a parking lot. Her older daughter managed to get back onto the car, the ten year old was somehow left behind. Admittedly, this twist bewilders me. The ten year old then found a sympathetic stranger (called a "good Samaritan" in one news cast) who first took the kid to get ice cream and then dropped her off at the local police station. When Primoff went to find the girl, she was forced to call the police to lay claim to her child and subsequently be arrested.

In none of these facts do I see anything that tells me that the either of her children were at risk for anything more than learning a lesson. Except that now the lesson has been warped from "be respectful to your mother and each other (especially in the car)" or "don't piss your mom off while she's driving" to "go ahead and make mommy mad, she'll get in trouble not you" and "even if my mom is mean, someone will buy me ice cream."

Yes, that's irritation with the "good Samaritan" you sense from me. I do feel like that adult facilitated Primoff's troubles. I'm not blaming her or saying that Primoff didn't get herself into this mess. But taking the kid to get ice cream and the to the police? What about the option where you ask the "abandoned" child what her home phone number is and call her parent directly. Remember this child is ten not four. I'm not saying that intervening adults should return children to their parents bar none, I'm simply suggesting that this "Samaritan" could have applied some fact analysis to the situation. Did the well heeled child look undernourished, generally mistreated, abused? I understand that you can't always tell these things, but you can't just disavow them altogether. If you do, then a stop at the ice cream shop has no place in your rescue plan for the child. If you truly believe that a youth is at risk in their home, contacting the authorities, not ordering a twist cone, should be your first move.

And what of Primoff? Well aside from jail time, legal fees and notoriety, the fallout for her rash decision is going to be pretty ugly. After all, while her kids may now know for sure that she really is crazy enough to follow through on her threats, they'll also know that her hands are quite literally tied in all parenting matters. These kids hopped out of the car and into the driver's seat when it comes to the decisions informing their childhood. I can only imagine the damage that will be done by the total dissolution of Primoff's parenting credibility. On the upside though, Primoff's pretty much done with handling any carpooling and hosting anymore slumber parties.

Swine Flu

We don't have it. As far as I know. We have not been to Mexico, or even to the west side of town recently. However, I can not vouch for my husband's weekday whereabouts since last fall, so the door is not totally shut on potential exposure. But I should point out that if Daddyfesto has been sipping cocktails on a Mexican beach while I have been home minding his offspring, we've got more to worry about than a mutant flu strain.

That said, I would be lying if I claimed I hadn't entertained calling the pediatrician and just discussing the swine flu (you know, just to be safe) in the past 24 hours. I'm not entirely crazy, my kids are sick. My son has a nasty cough (it sounds just like he's been smoking two packs of menthols daily for all of his five years). And my girls both have their own manifestations of illness. The eight year old spewed her lunch all over the rec center doors on Friday after school (don't worry we still made the ice skating lesson) and then followed up with several more vomiting spells throughout the weekend. My two year old has been rockin' a 102.6 (under the arm) fever for three days.

Normally I wouldn't even consider informing their pediatrician of these circumstances. The thirty dollar co-pay, coupled with the requirement that we all be dressed, makes actual doctor's office visits pretty unappealing. Especially when I can save myself the trouble of putting on a bra by simply advising myself to alternate ibuprofen and acetaminophen and to make sure the kids get plenty of fluids. But with all this concern over the swine flu, I'm feeling slightly less cavalier about the situation.

I'm not sure why I'm hesitant to call the pediatrician and report the kids symptoms. Probably it's because I don't want to be grouped with the hypochondriac mothers who are undoubtedly already calling the office to check if Johnnie and Janie have swine flu because they sneezed and went to Dora Live this weekend (that's pretty much Mexico right?). Obviously, I'm a different, saner kind of hypochondriac mother. And I am not in the mood to be condescended to - "We recommend hand-washing Mrs. Festo" by some childless do-gooder ten years my junior.

I could try to call anonymously, but that never seems to go over well at the pediatrician (well at least our pediatrician's office). This fall I realized that I had forgotten to get some important forms and documents transferred from pediatrician to school - you know, the records that document that your kids aren't carrying something like, let's say swine flu. I was also acutely aware of the practice's strict policy about allowing plenty of time for the turnover of all medical forms. I hatched a plan. I called the office and posed an anonymous question. I did not immediately identify myself like I usually do and I sort of used a fake voice (deeper not higher). Thirty seconds into my question the receptionist interrupted with a question of her own, "Mrs. Festo is that you?" Busted! Obviously anonymous advice seeking won't work for me.

So short of actually calling my pediatrician and getting her thoughts on the possibility of my kids succumbing to the swine flu, what can I do to prevent the spread of disease and preserve life? Well obviously I've canceled all overseas and exotic travel plans I and my three invalids may have had for the near future. And I've gently reminded my kids to please cough in their elbows and wash their goddamn hands (especially after wiping - wait should they be washing my hands?). I also quickly recognized that the fact that we have been using the master bedroom as infirmary means that all the bedding in there is tainted. In order to guarantee that no germs are spread on sheets and blankets, I rushed right out and bought a fresh set of sheets (and a new down comforter). Yes I'm aware there's a recession, I'm not throwing out the old sheets, I just thought that buying new ones would ensure sanitation much more quickly than waiting to for the old ones to deliver themselves to and through our laundry room.

Other than that I'm not really sure what else to do about my kids and the swine flu. I could keep them all home from school, but coming off a five day stint with two or more sick kids at all times, I can say with certainty that house arrest will be more dangerous for all of us than any pig-bird-human flu mix.

Cocktails News

We will be attending the school benefit this weekend. Aside from the availability of alcohol and the obvious absence of my kids, I’m not overly excited. This type of thing requires way too much effort going in: buying tickets, finding babysitter, thinking of an outfit - laundering the outfit - applying superhuman willpower not to buy a new outfit, all this and the whole showering-shaving-make-up thing.

And for a stay-at-home mommy like me, it requires the additional prep of researching and readying myself for adult conversation - or "cocktail talk". I’m a smart girl but somehow I don’t think my fluent Spanish (“C’mon Vominos…”) or shape knowledge will impress the other benefactors with whom I’ll be mingling. So, in an effort to not look like a complete moron in adult company, I’ve been brushing up on current events. And I’ve even decided to go highbrow - I’ve put aside the US Weekly in favor of Newsweek. And in the course of my "studies" I came across two news items that I thought might be of interest to my reader (not a typo, I’m aware of what goes on here).

First, Sarah Kliff on the Newsweek health beat reports that kids’ proclivity toward healthy eating can in fact be easily influenced ( I’m practicing using big words for my big night out). Translation: new research shows that getting kids to eat their veggies is actually easier than expected. Obviously this is total hooey, but I’ll give you the details anyway. According to the Ivy League’s finest (researchers at Yale and Cornell), "the problem may not be the presence of junk food after all: it’s that the good food just isn’t appealing enough." Ah Ha! That’s what forty-thousand a year buys you! To combat the unappealingness of veggies, the scientists suggest using some creative super-power labeling. For example, when Kindergartners were told they were eating “x-ray vision carrots”, the kids ate 50% more. So that means that the promise of seeing through EVERYTHING, got kids to nibble the tops off of baby carrot doused in ranch dressing rather than two! Wow - that is the stuff of superheroes.

For those of you interested in trying this new and surely powerful labeling technique at home, I submit the following suggestions. First, try calling asparagus, “toxic pee asparagus” – if the promise of overwhelmingly fowl smelling urine won’t get your preschoolers to ingest the vegetable, nothing will. Broccoli is chock full of vitamins and has even been touted as one of the vegetable world’s most promising antioxidants, how about calling it “keep your hair broccoli” (awful I know). And finally what about a catch-all super-power for any vegetable that might land on their plates? Try, pointing out the veggie’s inherent force-field powers, as in “If you eat those brussels sprouts without whining, I won’t have to strangle you…”

In other health news, also from Newsweek (really did you think I could widen my net in just one night?), it seems that circumcision rates are decreasing. And it’s not just because snipping is no longer in vogue. Instead it’s because at $300 a pop (or chop) circumcision is becoming a luxury not a necessity for new parents whose insurance companies no longer cover the elective procedure. You can read the details here. On this I have no comment, other than I’m sure my husband is happy he had an extra $300 on hand when our son was born.

Maybe we’d all be better off if I stay home Saturday night.

Pimping My Blog or Mommyfesto’s Thoughts on Some EcoStore Products

In the unlikely event, that you actually only care about my thoughts on ecostore's baby shampoo, baby wash and laundry liquid, you can skip the following three paragraphs of this post.

Months ago, a certain blogger named Daddyfesto, posted his opinion on bloggers who use their site to review, link to or discuss certain products. His opinion of such bloggers was not at all kind. In fact, I think if he had to describe those bloggers as wearing any kind of an outfit it might be the very same one Dora will don in the fall. You know where I’m going with this… Anyway, its clear that Daddyfesto passionately believes that the connections made on blogs should be strictly non-commercial. Being true to his art, steering clear of anything remotely resembling product placement or personal promotion, probably works for Daddyfesto because he can afford to take this stance. I’m not talking finances here (well sort of I am, I do after all, have intimate knowledge of Daddyfesto’s finances) I’m simply referring to the fact, that Daddyfesto would never be attracted to the notion of using your blog to get free stuff, because he is not married to someone who is highly concerned with cutting household costs. I, on the other hand, am. So the moral dilemma of pimping my blog is irrelevant to me. What is relevant is the opportunity for free stuff.

Which is why, when I was recently offered the chance to try and review (at no cost to me) some fancy laundry detergent and baby shampoo, I easily shrugged off the inevitable chiding from Daddyfesto, and quickly signed-on to try and review the products. I did however, warn the publicist who contacted me, that while I would be happy to review the products, I couldn’t guarantee that I would say something nice about them. In the spirit of full-disclosure I should tell you that I was not selected to review these products for any particular reason, in fact I was hardly selected at all. I’m pretty sure, the publicist contacted everyone with a blog listed on the momblogs (I know he contacted Rachel at AReservationforSix), and I was just one of the mommy-bloggers running low on laundry detergent and baby soap.

I also did it for the mail, I mean, to get some mail that wasn’t a bill, or US Weekly or an invitation to a Silpada party.

So as promised, this is my review of the detergent and soap. First of all, the stuff is all natural (that’s good right?) and even better, its made in New Zealand. What Rand (the company publicist who sent me this stuff) didn’t know, is that I am a huge Anglophile - more like Anglowhore - and I dig anything that comes from any part of the original British Empire. So for me, that’s an irrational plus for any ecostore product. While the baby shampoo and baby body wash are labeled "aromatherapy" all three have a clean, albeit groovy kind of a scent. If you like something a little more fruity and a little less hempy, you might not like these. In fact, the scent of the laundry soap was for me its one defining factor. The clothes appeared to be as clean as they normally are, but who would really know, as clean clothes in my house are defined not by lack of dirt but by virtue of the fact that they are upstairs instead of lodged in the laundry chute. Anyway, my husband travels quite a bit and his long absences (mixed with red wine) have been known to inspire some paranoid thinking in me. This weekend when he came home, I noticed a decidedly different smell on his undershirts. I made a couple of silly remarks and we joked about it, but it wasn’t until I remembered that I had used the ecostore laundry liquid on his undershirts that I put the matter to rest. I know it has nothing to do with performance, but I did love the packaging on all of the bottles. The black and white, family snap shot look, just makes me feel like I’m a better mom (and a giant sucker). The only problem for me with the smell and packaging and exotic origins combo is that it gives me the feeling that these products are so precious they’re use should be carefully rationed. This makes perfect sense for a girl who only uses her $55 tub of Kerastase straightening conditioner for really special occasions (which by the way, works really well if anyone from Loreal is reading this and wants to throw a little my way). The bath stuff went unnoticed by my kids, which is better than the alternative of being flat-out rejected. In the end, what I liked most about all three products is all superficial - their look, their smell, their freeness. Obviously, I’d be willing to do further testing on these products to see if I could form some actual opinions, but that’s going to take a whole new shipment… So I’m not sure if that bodes well for my future in product review or freebie collection, but at least I’m honest right?

One more thing, I hesitated in writing this blog for a number of reasons, most of which were guilt-driven (obviously Daddyfesto rubs off on one after awhile). But then I watched this on the Today Show Tuesday morning. And I figured I’d go for it, because according to the two panelists (I would call them experts, but once you watch the clip you’ll see that’s a little too generous for these two), the advertising world may be watching my blog, just waiting to unload free stuff on me, for the chance to have me - very influential blogger with a single identified follower - weigh in on the newest products! Well, for me, a Today Show sanction is akin to a papal decree when it comes to absolving my guilt. So if you need my input, I’m here, ready and willing to pimp my blog. Mailing address is available upon request.

Dora the Whora Encore-a

I couldn’t help it.

Anyway, a friend called me yesterday. She wanted to talk about Dora. Her daughter recently celebrated her third birthday with a Dora and Diego themed-party (I’m assured there was no live monkey involved). Her family is firmly committed to Dora. And simply-put my friend is pissed about Dora’s pending transformation. As she told me, if she "wanted her daughter to play with a whore she’d give her a Bratz doll." Don’t worry, I defended the Bratz dolls, pointing out that they obviously lived in a much tougher world than Dora and her cousin and couldn’t be expected to shoulder all the blame for their poor choices. Anyway, my friend pleaded with me to "do something, anything, to make Mattel see that they can’t change Dora." When I finished laughing about the fact that my friend might be under the mistaken impression that I am a paid (and therefore powerful) journalist instead of a writer that returns from the mailbox empty-handed everyday, I agreed to try to do something to help Dora maintain her innocence.

My friend hoped I would start a movement. So this is my attempt at social activism. For now, we’ll hope people read this post and comment. I’ll put in a poll on the sidebar for you to vote on Dora’s change. After we get an overwhelming response, I’ll e-mail Mattel and let them know how we feel. Oh and maybe I’ll do a few news releases just for the practice (it’s been a while). So what can you do? Comment, vote, and e-mail this post to anyone you think might want to weigh in.

Who knows - if this works maybe I’ll have a Save Dora House Party Obama-style!! We could have margarita's right?

Dora the Whora?!

Ok so that’s not really fair, but it rhymes.

It seems Dora, my favorite bilingual four year-old explorer, is getting a makeover. And it’s much more than a new pair of shorts (or a shirt that actually fits over her belly). It’s a whole new look. This fall, Dora’s going from preschooler to tween. Mattel hasn’t released all the details yet, but there’s a silhouette version of the new Dora that’s taking the media by storm. It seems Dora will be spending the summer growing out her sporty bob (is that a weave?) she’ll be trading her orange shorts for a tennis length skirt. It also looks as if this is the summer Dora’s finally going to shake that baby fat and emerge a little longer, a little leaner, even a little sexier! Oh yeah, and she’s leaving the jungle for the big city. No more map, no more trips to Abuela’s house, this fall tween Dora will be using her garmin to head to the mall, or maybe to Javier’s house because his mami and papi won’t be home after school…

The first I heard of Dora’s big change was this morning on a Babble blog that linked to this celebitchy post. Clearly the post says it way better than I can. Take a moment and read it. Get all fired up and then come back to my post.

Ok, there are a lot of moms who are really angry about Dora’s new look. And rightly so. I’m not quite sure why (ok that’s a lie, I totally know why, it confounds me that when given the chance to remake Dora, the only thing Mattel could think to do was go slutty rather than the obvious choice which was shrink that girl’s head). And I’m completely on-board with their reasoning, if I wanted my toddler to watch a tween idol for her Spanish lessons I’d let her watch Hannah Montana on Telemundo.

Even though I already can tell from that racy shadow Dora that I don’t approve of her new look, I do feel just a little hypocritical criticizing it. After all, didn’t I just support Barbie (who in many ways is the ultimate doll slut) in all her varied sexy incarnations just last week? Didn’t I just applaud as I watched other mommy-bloggers and feminists unleash their wit and unassailable logic all over anybody who dared to call Barbie a bad influence?

So what’s the difference? Why is it ok, even empowering, for girls to play with Barbie at the same time that its obviously detrimental to let our daughters play with the new Dora? I’m not sure, but as I’ve tried to talk myself through it I’ve come up with a few reasons that the two aren’t quite the same.

First, we weren’t introduced to Barbie until after she was a fully developed adult. I don’t know what Barbie’s age is supposed to be, but I’m sure it isn’t four (or anything under 16). We didn’t even catch a glimpse of preteen Barbie until way after we met Barbie and even Skipper was in middle school at the very least. So although Barbie’s outfits may have morphed from comparatively conservative to downright inappropriate and back again, she always been an adult taking adult fashion risks. There was never any implication that Barbie’s mami was helping her to get dressed every morning.

Second, Barbie has never been overtly marketed to the preschool set. Sure nobody at Mattel ever lost a night’s sleep over a preschooler pining for a Barbie, but the doll’s popularity was never dependent on the napping demographic. The fact that Dora appears on pull-ups and disposable bibs should be enough evidence of this difference.

Finally, the littlest of girls are attracted to Barbie because she reminds them of their babysitters or like at our house, of their mother. But those same girls identify with Dora because she is their peer, a small screen version of their current selves, not who they might like to be when they grow up. This is how Dora has always been presented to her fans, if she suddenly ages eight or ten years she will shift roles. I see this as dangerous for Dora for two reasons. First, Dora won’t be the only tween out there, she’ll have to compete with all the Bratz and even the High School Musical and Hanna Montana dolls. And frankly, those guys already have the market covered. But more important as Dora leaves behind the preschool set, she’ll leave a big void. The reason Dora’s makeover is so scandalous is because she’s so popular with both parents and kids. When she ditches her roots for something a little more risque, she’ll leave behind a world filled with adult freaks (the wiggles, the imagination movers, yo gabba gabba), puppets (most of children’s programming from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.) and various animals. And an amazing opportunity for one little Chinese preschooler - Kai-Lan.

On the Octomom

It's true, I've been thinking about Nadya for some time now. I'm intrigued and confused by this whole eight babies, 14 kids thing. Maybe it's that I've never given birth to my own litter... but I haven't known quite how to explain my thoughts on the octomom thing, and then I read Raina Kelley's piece in Newsweek and that pretty much sums it up for me. Read it.

Now when I feel the need to say anything even a little bit mean about the octomom, I can indulge guilt-free because I've already acknowledged my inherent hypocrisy.

The Co-Sleepover

I have a friend who has a family sleepover almost every night. (Yes, it’s the same friend who doesn’t own a tv and yes, this friend also keeps chickens in our inner-ring suburb, but that’s neither here nor there). That’s four - two adults, two children - to her queen-sized bed. That may sound uncomfortable and almost crazy, but most parents I know end up sleeping at least three to a bed a couple of nights each week. The only real difference is, this friend saves herself from the disruption of bringing a little person into the bed in the middle of the night.

Co-sleeping - that’s the medical term for this kind of arrangement - has long been one of the most divisive issues among the great debates of parenting. Whether or not you’ll let baby into your bed is a decision akin to breast over bottle, nanny or not, and vaccinate or wait (strangely, oftentimes one’s leaning in one category is an excellent predictor of what side they’ll take on the other questions). The medical community continues to investigate the pros and cons of co-sleeping. I recently read a summary of just such a study (we know I don’t read the actual studies) on Slate.com.

Before I get to the study itself, let’s take a closer look at the issue. What’s the benefit of sleeping with baby? Well, as Sydney Speisel (pediatrician and summarizer) explains it "the people who favor bed sharing believe that it promotes successful breast feeding, strengthens mother-child bonding, and may even allow parents to detect and halt Sudden Infant Death Syndrome." On the downside (which is where most pediatricians come out on this issue), co-sleeping engenders significant risks such as strangulation and suffocation; baby can be trapped in pillows and blankets or tired parents may accidentally roll over baby. I’d like to add a few thoughts to the debate. While they may not have been explored scientifically, these points are so deeply rooted in anecdotal evidence and well, fact that they really should be seen as integral to any parents decision about co-sleeping. First, co-sleeping is perhaps the most potent and reliable form of birth control. Nobody is getting it on with junior in the bed. Baby-in-bed as insurance against any kind of late night action may not be a plus for most dads, but I can pretty much guarantee that it offers immeasurable bonuses for their wives. An even bigger plus for co-sleeping is the fact that it involves sleep. That’s right, co-sleeping allows many parents to get more rest than they would with baby tucked safely into his own crib (in his own room). And I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to argue that a well-rested parent is a much safer parent throughout the day than an exhausted one.

So when doctors looked at two decades worth of infant mortality patterns in the United States, they found that more and more babies were dying of accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed, and for a lot of those babies, death occurred in co-sleeping situations. Most of those babies died when sleeping mom or dad rolled over them. But, says Speisel, that’s pretty much all the study says, "it doesn’t really give us the answer about the safety or risk of co-sleeping - it just raises enough questions to make us very nervous" Or very tired.

So what should we do with this information? Speisel suggests that letting the baby sleep in an "outrigger" device might help (not a boat, one of those three sided bassinets that attaches to the bed). And warns that parents shouldn’t "even think of bed sharing if [they] have been taking any medication, including antihistamines, which might make [them] sleep more deeply, or if [they] have been drinking an alcoholic beverage.

That sounds reasonable, but it doesn’t tell us who wins, my friend who’s still sleeping with her kids, or me who strapped my firstborn into her infant carrier to sleep every night? Wait, that’s obvious right?

Except that my friend gets an uninterrupted seven hours of sleep on a regular basis and I am up every hour and a half shuffling between bedrooms trying to talk small people back into their own beds at least a couple of nights every week.

Herein lies the real problem with this study. It only accounts for the babies that didn’t survive co-sleeping. It tells us nothing about all the other infants, both the ones that snuggled with their parents every night and the ones that went to their own, lonely cribs. Except we don’t really need a study to tell us, that every single one of those kids winds up in mom and dad’s bed at some point… in the night.

Clean House, Good Reader?!

There are two women out to get me. My husband may or may not be a collaborator.

Under the guise of an academic article, these women (Anna Johnson and Anne Martin) have presented what appears to be actual scientific evidence to prove that I’m a bad mom. In the article - "Order in the House" - they claim that the cleaner your house is, the better reader your child will be. Well ladies, everyone knows that among mothers on the playground, a child’s reading ability is one of the top five indicators of good mothering (the others, in no particular order, are: clean fingernails, matching socks, total inability to participate in tv-tag, and a preference for whole wheat goldfish over regular or rainbow).

With the assertion that home environment is directly correlated to reading ability, these so-called researchers offer a painful send-up of my maternal abilities. You see - and you probably guessed this - as I write this, my house is a total dump. And my toddler still can’t read.

According to the research, reading ability isn’t influenced as much by how much time parents spend reading with their kids, rather it’s more related to how orderly their home is. The Evil-Annes (that’s what I like to call the authors) explain this relationship by positing that "household order taps a more fundamental characteristic of parents or households, such as maternal industriousness, planning ability or conscientiousness, that gives rise to both orderliness and better reading skills in children." That sentence is my primary evidence that my husband may be behind whatever grant funded this ridiculous study. I’m not quite sure what the measures of maternal industriousness, planning ability and conscientiousness are, but I’m fairly confident that all are sorely lacking in this house. Silly things like childrearing and self-preservation are bigger priorities than laundry and routines and an overall atmosphere of order.

This study comes out a bit too late to have a major impact on my home life or my childrearing two of my children can already read. I guess I have their super-orderly classrooms to thank for that. If it turns out that my husband did, as I suspect, spend our tax return money on funding the study, then I have this advice for him: next time hire a cleaning lady and order the Your-Baby-Can-Read system, it would work out better for all involved.

On Barbie

Barbie is everywhere this spring. And it’s not just because she’s super cute and perfectly accessorized (after all, so is Polly Pocket and most of the American Girl gang), it’s because she’s turning fifty! That’s right, the Barbie doll has been around for half a century. Which means that she has been at the very least an option for young girls (and boys) to play with for three generations. My mother had a Barbie - oh how sad and stiff she was! But her boyfriend, Ken, was even sadder, even stiffer. I had lots of Barbies. And while we have thus far avoided Barbie in our own home over the past nine years, her presence here is inevitable.

With her golden anniversary, Barbie offers fifty years of reflection on feminism, fashion and everything in between. And no, "everything" is not a stretch. In her time Barbie has covered relationships (Ken, Surfer Ken, and now Blaine), careers (cheerleader, executive, teacher, military personnel) home decor (dream house or beach house?), and even parenting (Barbie’s oldest friend Midge was at once pregnant and scandalous). Barbie has even been a political pioneer, bringing winking and feminine wile to the national stage long before Sarah Palin (my cowgirl Barbie was winking all the way back in the second grade) and running for President in both the 2000 and 2004 elections.

Barbie’s big birthday is ideal fodder for the stay-at-home mom-thinking-woman blogger. The Barbie-as-role-model debate has been all over parenting blogs and feminist blogs of late. It seems that Barbie provokes as much controversy as breastfeeding. This time, the daddies are weighing in just as often as mommies.

And yet, I find I don’t really have anything new to say about Barbie, no clever quips or feminist gripe with the little plastic lady. If I were more on top of things, I would have beaten Courtney Martin, author of "Barbie’s no threat to little girls," to the punch. In her essay for the Christian Science Monitor, Martin just about nails my view on Barbie. If I didn’t know better, I might even think Martin and I had played Barbies together in my bedroom. She describes the very antics, plot twists and relationships my own Barbie’s experience. Except I have a feeling that my Barbie’s were probably involved in a lot more "sexiness" than hers.

Most important, Martin recognizes that for all the debate surrounding Barbie and her influence on the American female psyche, she is after all, just a harmless plastic doll - "an empty vessel that we could fill up with all of our confusion and excitement concerning femaleness." Barbie, Martin implies, is simply a tool with which generations of girls have played out their fantasies, their visions of adulthood.

Even though Barbie is ridiculously thin and impossibly endowed (and incapable of walking on flat feet), she is not as detrimental as popular feminist rhetoric would have us believe. For most women I know, playing with Barbie did not result in an eating disorder or in an unshakable desire for a boob job and blonde hair. Most girls that spent afternoons driving Barbie and her friends around in her pink convertible (a LeBaron or a Corvette?), grew up to drive a sensible sedan - maybe an Accord - or more likely, a minivan. Nobody I know named their daughter Skipper (that’s B.’s little sister) or their son Ken. Most of us didn’t grow up and head to the mall and then to Malibu to toss around a beach ball. We did not quit taking math classes in high school because Barbie told us "Math was hard" (we already knew that anyway) and so we suffered through Calculus and either got out or moved onto Linear Algebra because we wanted to.

As a mother of two girls, I am terrified that my daughters will grow up to find that familiar self-loathing so many women I know endure. I am acutely aware that they may succumb to cultural notions of female perfection and tear themselves apart in pursuit of that body, that job, that family. I get that. But I don’t think that will happen to them if they play Barbies (or Polly Pockets or even Bratz). In fact, I know I have a far better chance of fucking them up all on my own, without the help of a doll.

When the party is over, and Barbie’s sparkly birthday gown is put away (we won’t know exactly what she’s wearing until March 9th), we’ll stop debating the impact Barbie has had on the lives of American girls. And hopefully we’ll come to recognize that for all her popularity, her common cultural clout, Barbie didn’t really matter all that much in the formation of our adult identities. Instead, we jumped through the hoops of childhood and adolescence and young adulthood and ended up here, as adult women who think of Barbie fondly, as a doll with kick-ass hair and shoes, rather than as an impossible role model. And we can do that, not because we somehow overcame the terrible cultural message of a doll, but because with the help of our mothers, our sisters, our girlfriends, we never needed to look to a doll for self-definition - we could however try a couple of outfits out on that doll first to see if they really did work…

"Expert" Advice I Can Get Behind

When I was pregnant with my first child, I read one parenting book, What to Expect When You Are Expecting. That’s not even a real parenting book, it’s a manual on pregnancy and it offers no substantial advice for parenting. During my pregnancy, I was so distracted by the horrifying "miracle" that was my incredible expanding body, that I hardly even considered reading-up on what to do with my child once she was extracted from the wasteland that once was my body. After my daughter was born, I was much too busy with or too exhausted by the task of actually keeping my child alive and minimally cared for to read any parenting books. Nine years later, I still tend to frown on parenting advice and the very notion of "parenting experts." The arguments against claims to parenting expertise are obvious: there is no standard requisite for being a parenting expert other than being a parent, and that’s hardly even a requisite any more; children are so vastly different in their personalities that any tips for managing their behavior must be reduced to generalizations; and similarly, the situations described in parenting advice books don’t usually match, or even echo, those I encounter (they do not involve bathing suits in 23 degree weather, or the mini shopping carts at Whole Foods, or 10 am birthday parties at Chuck-E-Cheese with a mother-child combination of hangover and sugar high).

And then there’s the other reason I don’t pay much heed to parenting experts (ok, the real reason), parenting experts make me feel guilty and inadequate. All their wisdom, their tips and tricks for successful childrearing only serve to remind me that I’m not much good at this and I’m not really trying that hard either. For an overachiever acutely aware of the fact that she’s underachieving, that feeling I get when reading what I should be doing with my kids is pretty icky.

Imagine my surprise then, when I came across this article "No, You Shut Up! What to do when your kid provokes you into an inhuman rage" on Slate. Although the author, Alan Kazdin, is billed as a parenting expert, the title alone was enough to make me think that just maybe this expert actually knows a little something about parenting. Not 20 minutes before reading the article, I had been provoked into an inhuman rage by my very own toddler! Kazdin gets me.

As its title implies, the article discusses that oh-so-common predicament we have as parents - the total loss of self-control (quickly followed by self-loathing, confusion, and an overwhelming sense of failure) that is so easily unleashed by our very own flesh and blood. Kazdin walks readers through the most common reactions to those times when your child does something that makes you so angry that you want to… well, you want to destroy them. As a psychologist Kazdin is equipped to analyze these responses - considering their immediate, long-term, and side effects - and recommend the most useful responses for parents who are experiencing an immediate need to manage (kill) their misbehaving child. He gets most of the response choices right. From "Shock and Awe" (full scale rage) to "The Mona Lisa" (approach your child’s behavior with the same disinterested skepticism that Daria would use) Kazdin accurately covers the gamut of reactions to bad behavior.

For my purposes, Kazdin’s reasons why most of those responses don’t work isn’t really important. What’s crucial is that he includes and acknowledges the total inefficacy of one response in particular - "The Rational Saint." According to Kazdin, "exhibiting inhuman restraint, go[ing] to the child and in a gentle voice explain[ing] why she’s misbehaving so terribly" is just as ineffective as screaming at your child until your throat is soar (which actually doesn’t take that long). This is the best news I have ever heard from a parenting expert. It confirms everything I have always suspected, but never quite been able to explain, about the mystifyingly calm and sweet mother we all know - she’s doing an equally shitty job raising her children and she has to smile about it the whole time!

I should thank Kazdin for the article (we all should), I’m a better parent already! The next time one of my children provokes me into an inhuman rage, which is likely to be any time after 3:15 p.m. today, I won’t waste any time gently explaining with fake smile and clenched teeth how "not nice" their behavior is or "what bad choices" they’re making. That way I’ll save my children from the complete disorientation that comes from seeing their mother channel June Cleaver - saccharine doesn’t go over well in my house. Likewise, I probably won’t employ any of the other responses Kazdin discusses. While the longterm effects may be better, a cost-benefit analysis of these techniques shows that they won’t really get me what I’ll need to navigate the immediate situation - if I give my kid a relevant consequence in response to their behavior, I’ll have listen while they whine about the injustices of that consequence which will likely catapult me into an even deeper rage. Instead I’ll probably yell like I always do (I just have to remember to close the windows first).

Just in Time for Valentines... What Women Want

My friends and I have been passing around the recent New York Times article, "What Do Women Want?" We’ve talked about it in the pick-up line and during pilates. We’ve whispered about it on playgrounds and in our driveways. We have been thoroughly intrigued and shocked by Daniel Bergner’s article detailing the scientific community’s forays into the enigma that is feminine sexual desire. Each of us has plowed through 12 pages of scientific data and anecdotal evidence in hopes of discovering what it is that will ultimately satisfy us. And we’re so flattered to know that science is even thinking about us, trying to figure us out and more important, how to get us off. But to tell you the truth, when we reach the end of page 12, and find out that scientists still don’t really know the secret to female desire, we can’t help but feel a little bit frustrated.

The article opens with a description of one of the more recent projects attempting to discover the key to female desire. Apparently Meredith Chivers, a leading sexologist, asked subjects (men and women) to watch video clips of all sorts of sexual (and non sexual situations) involving people and even involving apes (with other apes) and measured their physical and emotional sexual responses to the clips. What Chivers discovered is that men know when they are turned on - they can feel it, they can see it, they know it. Men are simultaneously emotionally and physically aroused. Women on the other hand aren’t, the thoughts in their head and the physical cues for arousal can be absolutely not in sync. If a woman’s head isn’t in the game, it doesn’t matter what her body is telling her.

According to Chivers (and consequently Berger) this idea is somehow a really big deal in the science of sex. It’s a discovery! I’m no sexologist, but I can tell you that the idea that women’s brains are key components in their pursuit of sexual satisfaction is no breakthrough. At least it’s now a scientifically established idea.

The problem is that’s all these scientists have. After years of research they can now confirm that women and men are turned on in different ways, but they still aren’t quite sure how it actually works for women. While I can’t speak for all women, I can offer a little insight into the subset of mommies (and maybe save us all from government-funded study on the sex lives of housewives). I am willing, for the sake of science of course, to offer up my own deepest desires for review. And we can skip the plethysmographs - a seriously ineptly named vaginal sensor (can’t you just imagine a lispy perve whispering that?) - altogether.

So this is it, a short summary of what gets women (or at least 21st century mothers) off. Before we begin though, here is the definitive list of what doesn’t do it for us. First, contrary to popular belief, we don’t want to be touched. We’ve been touched, pulled on and prodded, handled in every possible way you can imagine since the moment we found out we were even entering motherhood. It’s been hands-on ever since. And all this touching has completely destroyed any nostalgia for all the touching that may have gone on to get us there. No matter how you spin it, foreplay is touching. Second, we don’t crave emotional intimacy with our husbands and partners. We absolutely don’t want to hear their deep inner secrets and fantasies, they’re probably boring and will only make us feel worse about ourselves or mad at our significant others. Besides we spend all day with secrets and fantasies, we deal in the pretend and imaginary. And third, contrary to the myths perpetuated by Hollywood, we don’t want to take up with the pool boy or the landscaper a-la Desperate Housewives. We don’t want to share these post-baby breasts with anybody, let alone with a stranger in the garden shed.

Legend has it that for many men the ultimate sexual fantasy/sexual experience is centered on oral sex. Well you know what’s on par with oral sex for a woman, what makes me feel the same sweet ecstasy men enjoy? It’s when anyone, another mother, a grandparent, anyone tells me that they’ll take my kids for a couple of hours just so I can go to the grocery store without them. That’s right, that’s my fantasy.

Here are the dirty details: I’m in the grocery store, in the produce aisle and I’m pushing a regular cart - there isn’t one of those ridiculous car carts anywhere near me (which of course means that no one can give me a dirty look for pushing the monstrosity without actually having any kids in it ). Anyway, I’m in produce and looking at tomatoes and picking out the ones I actually want, there’s no toddler throwing tomatoes willy-nilly into a produce bag while I try to keep count of each tomato out loud. Gradually, slowly, almost seductively, this fantasy will take me all the way through the grocery store. And here’s the hottest part - it will all be uninterrupted, there will be no potty stops, no screaming fits about not being able to ride in the elevator. I won’t even notice the elevator. I’ll be able to sign my own name with the magic Jeopardy pen at the check out line. Sometimes in this fantasy (and this feels really dirty even just typing it) I imagine it so that some other woman is there, maybe in front of the deli counter, standing helplessly as her preschooler flails himself onto the floor because she will not him allow another sweaty cheese sample. And the whole time the only thing on my arm is my purse, I’m not carrying a child, or a giant bag with wipes, extra underwear, a sippy cup, a potty seat, mismatched socks, a book and a crumpled up babydoll. It’s just my purse. That’s what turns me on and takes me all the way. Talk dirty to me say "I’ll watch the kids, you go to the grocery store." Shit, my heart is racing already.

Maybe one day Chivers and the rest of the sexologists will solve the mystery of female sexual desire. Maybe they’ll map the g-spot and all the other hot spots of the female anatomy and somehow link them to perfect rationality and overwhelming passions that make the female mind. Maybe if they keep working at it, keep taking surveys and showing women (and men) animal porn and tracking their heart beat and swelling and blood flow, they’ll figure the whole thing out. And then what? We’ll still be at the grocery store knee deep in toddler and selecting tomatoes against the background of a temper tantrum.

Another Mini-Mystery

Why does it irk me that my daughter insists on pretending that her one baby doll (12-inch, bald head, mouth poised to hold a pacifier), is the mother of another baby doll (a smaller facsimile of the first)? I've tried to explain that babies can't have babies, but she's not buying it.

You’ve Been Tagged! - 25 Actual Reasons I Don’t Have Time to Play Facebook Tag

1. I’ve got three kids. Ok, so it’s not that good of a reason, because clearly I’m doing everything I can to avoid that fact. But on it’s face, and if my husband were to read this, three kids require way too much attention for me to be able to participate in facebook tag.
2. I need to clean my oven. Seriously, it’s on my list for this week. I even bought the Easy-Off.
3. I need to drive back and forth to Target 17 times for no particular reason but mostly because I forgot my list.
4. I have to go through the Sunday circular to cut out coupons that I will never use.
5. Then I have to file those coupons in a little envelope that I will loose until mid-September 2009, at which point any coupons I may have actually been interested in using, will be just expired.
6. I need to get myself LinkedIn, which will require me making up a career and adequately embellishing my education. I need to get LinkedIn so I can finish stalking the people I couldn’t locate on facebook.
7. I need to sort two laundry baskets full of socks, most of which are black gold toe dress socks, of varying weaves.
8. I need to check the lot numbers on the two economy-sized jars of peanut butter I got at Costco in July of 2005, to make sure that they’re not involved in the great Peanut Butter Recall.
9. I will then need to do some internet research to confirm that salmonella can not live for more than three years, so that I feel better about the fact that I made six peanut butter sandwiches for my kids’ lunches just this morning.
10. I need to clean the bottom left-side of the base of every toilet in my house, because my five-year old son does not believe in a hands-on approach to urination.
11. I need to check my facebook account every 12 minutes, to make sure that I haven’t missed any chances to snicker at someone’s status update.
12. I need to get up, walk to my refrigerator, open it, stare at the food and wait for something that is both delicious and magically thinning, to surface. I will need to repeat this action 27 times.
13. After 27 attempts at healthy eating, I need to go to the refrigerator and eat two polly-o cheese sticks in rapid succession, while standing in front of the open door.
14. I need to spend approximately 4 minutes feeling really annoyed that I ate those cheese sticks. Then I need to make myself feel better by returning to the refrigerator and eating another one.
15. I need to empty my dishwasher and then reload it with the same dishes after I realize that I never ran it last night.
16. I need to reassemble the playmobile zoo without the instructions.
17. I need to search epicurious.com for a wholesome kid-friendly recipe featuring one over-ripe granny smith apple, a giant bag of pepperoni, green beans, blueberry-flavored greek yogurt, and 2/3 of a cup of orange juice.
18. I need to catch up on four episodes of Top Chef (if you know who won restaurant wars, don’t tell me), finish season 2 of the Tudors, and figure out why Tamara got Gretchen so drunk on The Real Housewives of Orange County.
19. I need to check if my daughter’s mali uromastyx (that’s a lizard) is actually still alive. This requires more time than you might think, since the critter doesn’t visibly breath.
20. I need to search craigslist for a gently-used calico critters house, an ottoman, and a bench for small children to sit on and remove their boots before tracking slush all over my house.
21. After I look for those things on craigslist, I’ll need to spend a significant amount of time reading other posts, just to make sure I’m not missing out on anything really good.
22. I need to find all my missing sports bras. I would check the laundry chute first, but that seems so unlikely.
23. I need to quick run my vacuum cleaner long enough to make some lines in the carpet so it’s obvious that I "just cleaned."
24. I need to read my husband’s parenting blog to make sure he’s not taking credit for everything again.
25. I need to figure out how to poke all the people that tagged me. And then I need to figure out how to buy them lots of "drinks" and "gifts" and shower them with unwanted facebook attention.

Kids TV Mini-Mystery

Why, without fail, whenever any kid starts watching Dora, do they say "I want to watch Diego!"? When I go to your house, I don't expect your cousin to be there.

Milestones

We have strep throat. It came late this year. Usually, the first child complains of a sore throat and promptly throws up just in time to miss participating in the school's winter concert, or if we are really lucky, they'll hold out for a Christmas Eve onset making them equally cranky and hopped up on candy canes. We are more than a month behind our regular schedule, so I guess I should be grateful (I'm not exactly sure why though, I still have three kids with strep).

Anyway, strep is a pain in that for the six hours between the diagnosis and the amoxicillin taking effect you are forced to deal with a cranky, demanding, exceptionally whiny child who actually deserves to be a cranky, demanding, exceptionally whiny child (and therefore totally delegitimizes your urge to strangle said cranky, demanding whiner). But overall, compared to a lot of other childhood afflictions, strep really isn't that bad. And sometimes, something good can come of it. For example, I hit a major milestone yesterday that I may have had to wait just a little bit longer for and it was only because my kids had strep. For the first time in nine years of pediatric visits, I knew for sure that when it came down to me or the doctor - I had the upper hand.

A little background: I am the type of person who invariably acquiesces to medical authority. When it comes to anything medical, I tend to simply do what I am told. Wait a second, before you give up on me, assuming I am spineless or maybe even too lazy to question medical authority, think about this: I always work under the assumption that I didn't spend my most critical social development years locked away in medical school whereas physicians did, therefore while I gained an ability to relate to mankind during that time, doctors had to have gained something too and since it wasn't necessarily social skills it MUST have been a vast medical knowledge. This reasoning of course supports the related theory that you shouldn't really trust a doctor that seems too normal, too cool (which is why the Olivia Wilde character on House is totally unbelievable and why I would totally let Doogie Howser MD perform neurosurgery on me if necessary).

So what was so different about yesterday's visit to the pediatrician? Well for one, I'm pretty certain that the doctor that examined my children was, well younger than me! This hasn't happened before. When we first brought my daughter, now eight, to this office, we picked the youngest, hippest (use my above comments to qualify the adjective "hip") doc on staff. But she still had a good fifteen years on us and even if she weren't a pediatrician, as a mother of three she knew way more about kids' health than we did as parents of a three-day old. Yesterday, our regular pediatrician wasn't available and my children were examined instead by the practice's new girl-doctor (that's not rude, it’s accurate). As soon as she opened the door to our little examining room, I knew it would be important for me to seize control of the situation. I could tell for certain that, for once, I had more experience with children and common childhood illnesses than this doctor and If I didn't tell her what was wrong, who needed to be tested, and in what order they should be tested, I would be doing a disservice to both my children and the doctor. Moreover, if I didn't demand that -regardless of the test results- all three children would walk out with prescriptions for whatever antibiotic they hadn't had last time (because even I know it’s a good idea to rotate them), I'm sure we would have spent at least an extra hour in that office not to mention the two additional trips I would be making later in the week for the children who didn't appear to be afflicted but clearly were by virtue of their proximity to the eight year old ball of misery they spent most of their time with. Of course, I was as gentle as could be in guiding her to the decision that she would in fact be giving all three children throat cultures and we would not be waiting to confirm the results of the 24 hour test before starting medication.

And that special combination of gentle and firm, disarming and bossy that only mothers and awesome bargain sale shoppers have, really took hold of that doctor. In no time, she was offering me treatment options I never even knew existed. She said things like, "how would they like their medicine?" I tried to play it cool, so as not to give up my hard-won authority, but until that moment I knew of only one style of children's medication - the thick sticky bubblegum flavored liquid that you suspect tastes like earwax (but you would never, ever admit that to your kids.) The newbie also told me that if you wanted you could still have your kids take their strep antidote in a single dose, with a shot - just like I did at least once every winter of my childhood. This was incredible information, the pediatrics version of classified information, I have been inquiring about this shot for at least seven years and all of the older, experienced doctors had sworn it was no longer available. This girl was so new at this, she didn't even know what she was giving away!

In the end, we opted for the liquid version of amoxicillin, because I guessed it was better to spread the hassle out over ten days then to try to get three screaming kids out of the office, down an elevator and through an icy parking lot. And besides, my third grader was smart enough to have figured out that the shot wasn't in fact the only choice.

The gravity of the situation dawned on me on the way home from the doctor's office (just before I got totally distracted by the hell that is Target with three sick kids), suddenly I am older than someone. Suddenly, I have more experience than someone. Suddenly, I might know just a little bit more than an expert. And that expert someone isn't one of my own kids. I'm not sure if this is depressing or enlightening or both.

Probably I'll ask for our old doctor back the next time, afterall, she is our “old” doctor.

Pokemon Gone Wrong

We have a problem in our house, it's of the Japanese, anime style and it's called Pokemon (if you don't know much about pokemon, it's worth investigating if only so you can understand my pain and prevent the sickness from invading your house). It started with some trading cards - no actually I think it started with some playground discussions which evolved (pardon the pokemon pun) into the trading cards and then again into the TV show. At Christmas it showed up under the tree as a Nintendo DS and a Pokemon Diamond and Pearl game. Dammit Santa! Anyway, suddenly it's everywhere in my house. Which would be ok, if it were just me, my husband and the eight year old. And I would even be alright with it if it were the three of us plus the five year old. But the pokemon obsession has taken hold of my two year old - my sweet baby-doll loving, dress-up wearing, cuddly two-year old.

Focus here, this is my last baby, and she is obsessed with pokemon!

Anyway, this morning she told us that when she grows up to be "Dawn" - the girl hero of pokemon (not to be confused with feminist-type girl heroes, just the one of the three main human characters that happens to be a girl), she will have a piplup (a penguinesque creature). Actually what she told me first was that when she grows up to be a gym leader she'll have a piplup. Gymnasiums are where most of the pokemon battles take place and the gym leader is the top trainer at each gymnasium (for some reason this all reminds me of karate kid).

Yes, on its face this isn't all that disturbing, preschoolers pretend things all the time. But my little one isn't pretending to go on a picnic or ride a unicorn, she's deeply engaged in complex and imaginary battles in which she plays one of two roles. The first is the role of an unsupervised preteen wandering the Japanese countryside with a gang of other unsupervised preteens (one who is named Brock and is some sort of an oversexed, undersatisified chef) in search of a mythical city inhabited by ever-evolving monsters and their "trainers". I should be honest and tell you that these kids aren't entirely free of adult supervision. Every now and again they do seek the counsel of various professors, an army of sexy nurses named Joy, and sometimes they even skype with their parents back at home. The second role is that of an actual pokemon. When in this character she runs about making shooting type noises and holding her hand, palm forward, as if something were shooting out of it. She is helpful enough to explain these noises as she is making them by yelling things like "Piplup use bubblebeam!" in her tiny voice. Both types of pretend play are equally disturbing, but the latter is definitely more embarrassing when it emerges in such peace- loving- hippie-hangouts as the produce section of Whole Foods.

I've grown used to this behavior, although through this post I readily admit I have not completely accepted it, but today was the first day I figured out how to leverage the fantasy to my advantage. You see today was the last day of this semester of Little Gym (the $400 tumbling class that lasts for 20 weeks, but in which your child is terrified the first six, interested the next three and then utterly bored for the remaining three months). On the last class of the last semester the children put on a "show" and invite guests to come and watch all they can (but refuse to) do. My daughter had two guests coming this morning, her lovely grandparents, and absolutely no interest in going to Little Gym. That is until I pointed out that she would be going to a gym and not only would she be going to a gym, she would be bringing home a medal just like Dawn on pokemon. That kid was ready to go in no time.

Now I just have to wait until my daughter rejects Dick and Jane in favor of Manga.

Why TV is bad for kids (and worse for parents)

I have a friend who doesn’t let her kids watch any TV. She doesn’t even have a cable hook-up. She gets most of her news online and her kids get theirs, well frankly, they just don’t get any news. This no TV rule says a lot about my friend. It says that she is obviously a brave woman who lives by her convictions, we’ll see how this pans out for her once her boys reach middle school. It also says, quite obviously, that she is a better mother than I am (and probably you too). But it also says that somehow she knew something, something that the rest of a missed along the way and that is, Noggin and Nickelodeon and Disney and even PBS Kids are all in a brilliant conspiracy to screw us, the parents of their target audience.

I know it's a grand assertion and I don’t usually put much stock in conspiracy theories, but stick with me. I am confident once you read the following couple of paragraphs, you’ll agree that there is incontrovertible evidence that kids' television is designed to completely undermine parents in general and mothers in particular.

For years I have known that there is something inherently wrong with kids' television but I haven’t been able to put my finger on it. No it isn’t the bizarre mix of muppets and humans in walk-about costumes that defines shows like the Doodlebops and Yo Gabba Gabba. And it isn’t the absolute lack of any plot (or real dialog for that matter) characteristic of the Teletubbies or Boobah. It's something less obvious, something I could never quite put my finger on, but something that always just felt wrong about kids shows. And then it hit me earlier this week. These shows deliver unreal -no, poisonous -expectations about parents and mothers in particular!

This may not surprise you when I tell you that I came to this conclusion while watching the Noggin/Nick Jr mainstay Franklin. You know it's the one about the turtle with that insidious theme song "Hey it's Franklin, comin’ over to your house"? Here’s what I noticed, Franklin does a lot of really dumb stuff, including lying to his parents (or not telling them the whole truth right away) quite often. And I don’t mind that, that’s the part of the show that is real. What bothers me is that Franklin’s mother never, ever loses it on Franklin. She always talks to him in the same sweet turtle voice no matter what they are discussing. She never throws up her arms in complete exhaustion and then blurts out something she wishes she didn’t - hey I’m not looking for an expletive laden send-up of the little turtle's behavior or anything - but she never even says "Gee Franklin you’re acting like a complete brat right now and I can’t be held accountable for whatever happens next if you don’t get it together by the time I count to three." Franklin’s mother, in all her sweet, even tempered supportiveness, is misleading my kids into thinking that mothers like her exist in the world. That somewhere in a little paradise filled with talking animals and clubhouses, mothers don’t get mad at their kids ever, no matter what. This isn’t just a problem with television turtles. It's everywhere, think about it, the mother on Little Bear is the same way (even worse really) and it's just as bad on Clifford and Dragontales too.

And Dora’s mom never says "Take this map and go play with your monkey because mommy - I mean mami - has to clean up the mess you and the super babies left behind and then I’m going to lie down for a little while because I couldn’t sleep a wink last night because those damn babies kept waking each other up and your papi got pissed off because I haven’t washed any of his dress socks for the past two weeks so I’m feeling a little grumpy and underappreciated and overburdened this morning"

TV sets us up to fail. It lies to our kids convincing them that the rest of the mothers in the world are patient and comforting all of the time, that they always know what to do and how to solve whatever problem the kids might be having.

Children’s television isn’t bad for mothers only. Its pretty hard on father’s too. For the most part, the dad’s on kids' tv shows are strangely available, involved. I have never seen father turtle actually do any sort of work, except in the garden. He’s always around. Yes, the dad on Little Bear does travel for work sometimes, But he’s a sailor - daddy off to sea to fight the sea monster (and catch fish) is infinitely cooler than daddy off to work to look at the computer and talk on the phone (although my youngest would get a kick out of speaker phone).

The parents on the shows for older kids aren’t much more realistic. Hannah Montanna’s dad is, well he’s Billy Ray Cyrus for chrissakes! And the dad on the Wizards of Waverly Place is a wizard. On Corey in the House the father works in the white house. What’s a regular parent left to do when we’re not talented, magical or cooking for the President?

This isn’t even counting the shows where the parents are altogether absent. What kind of message is this sending to my kids? Is it saying "your mother is smothering you because she doesn’t let you go outside and rescue wild (and traditionally carnivorous) animals like Sra. Diego does?" Is it saying "your mother is a a total spoilsport because she makes you clean your room and practice piano instead of hanging out with your crew of weirdly matched bugs and animals in the backyard like all five moms on the backyardigans?" Or, "your mother’s a bitch because not only will she not let you have a giant dog the size of your elementary school, or even a wonder pet, she won’t let you have any pet at all?" I think the answer is all of the above.

I think its obvious. These shows, or there writers, are working together in some sort of underground movement to destabilize parenting in the United States. I suspect that the same thing is happening in Britain and the rest of Western Europe. The British imports I’ve seen - Thomas, Teletubbies, Jakers - all have no parents and an uncomfortable amount of autonomy for their main characters. And let’s not even go there with the Scandanavian offerings like Lazy Town. I haven’t figured out the hidden plan yet but I know there is something wrong with that show.

Japan is not even on the table at this point. I mean c’mon, pocket monsters?

Its undeniable - tv makes us look bad, really bad. The only problem is, it's so, so easy. I’ll risk my reputation and sell my soul for a couple of minutes (ok hours) of actually productive time.

Coming Clean

In the spirit of new beginnings, fresh starts etc., I am taking this opportunity to admit to the following (in no particular order):

1. I sometimes forget to feed my children breakfast. More often than not they are well fed and I always feed them on school days. But now and again, I'll find myself at 11 am on a Saturday wondering why the hell those three are so cranky.
2. Noggin is my nanny.
3. I subscribe to US Weekly. I also subscribe to Atlantic Monthly. I read every US Weekly cover to cover, I read the cover of Atlantic Monthly.
4. I can sing the Hanna Montana theme song.
5. Last week, I didn't get dressed until Friday (I did however potty-train one toddler, do 14 loads of laundry, clean a bathroom, feed my children roughly 3 meals each day, finish one article, play calico critters and puppy in my pocket, and load and empty the dishwasher no less than 25 times.)
6. I sometimes pretend I can't do things just so my kids won't ask me to do them. For example, my children believe I have no idea how to hook the wii up to the tv. Its a shame how long it took me to realize the power of playing dumb.
7. Once I let my stove stay broken for three weeks so I didn't have to cook.
8. If you have a new baby, I'm totally faking it when I offer to hold your baby (and if your kids are older, I probably don't like them either).
9. I don't care about the environment as much as I seem to, I'd just rather spend my money on a new anthro sweater than paper towels.
10. I buy Gap jeans because they run big and I can pretend I'm a size six and not an eight.
11. I "ran into" my college boyfriend on facebook and he pretended he didn't know me.
12. I am one of the people who will over analyze your Christmas card.
13. I actually think Kathy Griffin is pretty funny.