Cranky Mommy

Busy Busy Busy.
Back in a week, or whenever.

Somehow a lot of the mommy friends I have acquired have girls. Not all, but quite a few. My son seems to get along fine with all of them, but when we go to their houses I notice more and more, that the toys have become, over time, more gender-oriented.
That’s not to say that there aren’t a few cars or dinosaurs or what not here and there, and the “gender neutral” stuff. But seemingly many of the “girl” toys fall into one of these categories: dolls, dolls you can brush their hair, ponies, ponies you can brush their hair, princesses you can brush their hair, furry cuddly animals that you can brush their hair, etc. Not much in the way of dinosaurs, but if they made dinosaurs “for girls”, I bet you could brush their hair, too.

If I wanted to make the most popular girl toy ever, it would be a pink-fairy-princess-baby-pony-kitty with dyeable, styleable, hair and makeup, and stylish clothes. With lots of rhinestones and glitter. OH and of course a crown (and what am I missing here).
Most recently I was at one of these little girls houses, and T was the only boy his age there, in surrounded by many a girl and their ponies. T just found a lone dinosaur and played right along. Dinosaurs can ride along in little princess carriages, too, with all the other little ponies.
And these ponies weren’t merely just regular My Little Pony ponies. I was informed that the ponies have antennas because they are - get this - fairy ponies (or perhaps all you mothers of girls know this stuff and I am just out of the loop). To me, that is not merely girly — it’s doubly girly. Kind of the girl equivalent of what would be doubly-boyish — a race-car superhero. Or, a dinosaur-truck.

I’ve always been a fan of the “gender neutral” toys. I loved my legos and I played with them until my early teens (although I am not as bad off as this guy who is still at it). T is a big fan of those kinds of “works for either” toys - bristle blocks, legos, animals. Given the choice though, he often prefers the dinosaur, truck and car, and all that other boy stuff, most of which I don’t “get” much at all. Every time I read another book that tells me the difference between a excavator and a back hoe loader, I read it but I am holding my nose on the inside. The dinosaur stuff isn’t so bad, at least for me!…It is a break from all that car and truck stuff which I am so bored with. Oh well, he likes it.
But when I was a little girl I did have my semi-sickly girly indulgences. I loved my model horses like many girls do, and my Barbies, (which I used to make clothes out of tissues and scotch tape for them). If they had had the My Little Ponies back then, I would have probably been into them.
With my grown-up taste, though, I now find them aesthetically displeasing. The strangest thing to me is reflecting back on that Slumber Party that I went to (the sex toy and etc. party) that some of the “toys” I saw there, especially the pink ones with the animals on them, kind of reminded me of the ponies.
Or maybe that is just my disturbed mind.
For me I think it is a tie… the “boy” toys and “girl” toys are equally obnoxious. What do you think?

If two of the kids in a preschool class have food allergies, and there’s a birthday party with cupcakes the allergic kids can’t eat, how hard is it to drop the parents’ of the allergic kids a simple email to let them know, so the parents of the allergic children can bring cupcakes in for their own kids?
I don’t expect every mom to bake a special way for my own son (although many of the moms have done that). I just would have liked an email so I could have brought something in — so my son and another kid wouldn’t have been stuck eating just fruit while everyone else had cupcakes.

I’ve been “tagged” by my friend Emma to reveal some deep, dark truth about moms. I am hard pressed to think of any real dark, deep truth about moms that hasn’t already been written about. Still here’s my stab at it, although it isn’t particularly deep and dark:

Moms resent the childless.
They resent how their feet still fit into little, fashionable shoes. And how they can still afford those little, fashionable shoes, and have somewhere to wear them to.
They resent their perky little T and A’s. And their nice, neat, not-extra-wide bellybuttons.
They resent hearing about how they slept in until 11 on a weekend.
They resent their unwelcome parenting advice… unless they’ve been a full-time nanny.
They resent their pre-pregnancy metabolisms.
They resent their spontaneous lifestyles, spending frivolous money on impractical, single-life things.
They resent the freedom they have to put those impractical, single life (and frequently breakable) things on low display shelves without little fingers getting to them.

Of course resentment sits on the shelf right next to envy, right? And we moms know how the childless don’t have little bedwarmers to crawl into bed with them on those weekend mornings, even if they do get up at 7.

One of my dear friends has a strange obsession with curtains… nearly a curtain fetish.
She is always looking for the “ultimate” curtains. She has gone through so many sets for her living room that they pile up in her basement. I think she has finally settled on a set of curtains for her livingroom… maybe.
As for me, I seem to have a problem for the color of my kitchen. Today I painted it, again. A nice unoffensive shade of off-white, kind of the color of melted vanilla ice cream. Vanillin, probably named that by some queeny interior decorator guy, as most of the colors have foofy names. Vanillin is a color that hardly anyone could argue with. But it has taken about 8 years to get to this point. That’s right, 8 years.
You’d think… I have been doing painting since the mid-90s; I have a degree in art; my husband studied art for years; he’s been a painting contractor for more years; we are both artists, we should be able to pick something for a kitchen, right?
Nope.
Of course my husband and I over the years have had very different visions for the house. His initial impulse is always to paint everything bright white. that is fine, but hey, I’m a woman and I want a little but of something to the walls here. Sure, artwork looks best on a white or gray wall, but let’s have a little homey ambiance, right? This is one of the few things I miss about being single — being able to decorate my way without negotiating everything.
My husband and I tried out so many colors over the years on one particular wall, that an archaeologist examining the wall 200 years from now would have a field day psychoanalysing our house’s former residents. It was bright blue. Cobalt blue. It was “Zendo” brown. It was orange. And we argued about it. We threatened each other with calling up an interior decorator about it.
Then we settled on a rosy brick color. That was a couple of years ago. And we got sick of it. There was something just a bit too… I don’t know… PeptoBismol-y about it? It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t… THE color.
So we decided to paint it white. But what white? That took days. I painted it white and didn’t like the shade of white.
And then my husband gave up and said “Whatever you want dear,” which made things a little easier and I picked a color that I liked and he could tolerate.
Vanillin.
He gets to pick the living room color. And damn I am not painting this kitchen again. I better love it for the next 8 years.

It was fun, I was highly entertained. It wasn’t that hard for me to conclude though, that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I ended up not buying anything.
However there are some sexual enhancement aids that this woman’s company didn’t have. Perhaps if I see her again I will have to suggest them to her:

1) Babysitter in a Bottle. Just pop it open, and there you are: a nice, nerdy, child-adoring, social-life-free babysitter who works for cheap and stays overnights on Saturdays

2)Early Bedtime Pills (infant and child formula): To insure you have an evening together with your spouse, giving these pills to your kids will make sure you evening gets off to a great start

3)Housework Genie: Just let ‘er out of the bottle, and all your work is done, so you can enjoy an evening of fun with your spouse

4)Instant Power Outtage: Because nothing gets you (or him) in the mood like having the TV, Computer, and video games off, with nothing else to do in the dark.

Perhaps you have some suggestions too?

While sitting at the opthamologist’s office again (clogged tear ducts… weird) I had too much time to browse the reading material but all of it was lousy, so I picked up a Family Circle. It actually wasn’t that bad, lots of cute craft ideas for things I will probably not have time to do. I did happen to notice one ad that kind of peeved me:

On the surface it looks rather innocuous, and a lot of people would have a hard time thinking why anyone would have a problem with it: A mom and a baby (some celebrity I don’t know); mom has a milk mustache like all those other “Got Milk” ads. Perfectly innocent looking; the print is too small for me to read here, but I remember what I read in the eye doctor’s office: It advocated milk products for weight loss for mom, obviously targeting the new mother who wants to lose the extra pounds that she put on during that pregnancy.
What the ad is missing, in my mind of course, is a big warning. The fact that milk doesn’t always do a body good. Never mind the fact that it can be difficult to digest for some adults; it can be terrible for the nursing mother who is passing on allergens to her baby. That milk ingested by the mother is passed on to baby and can be a very (more than you think!) common cause of “colic”, “reflux” and digestive problems in infants, and that many babies are allergic or intolerant of milk. That by consuming milk while nursing or feeding dairy formula to your child, you may be causing stomach problems or allergy problems for your child.
Consider this: of the playgroup that I was in when my child was an infant, 2 of the 7 or so babies ended up being allergic to milk, one of which was mine. Nursing mothers these days are frequently told not to consume peanuts and nuts, but you rarely hear that nursing mothers are supposed to stop eating dairy.
I know of one baby (friend of a friend’s baby) who almost died last year because of it!
Don’t get me wrong, for the majority of infants it fine. They aren’t bothered by it in breastmilk, they tolerate dairy formula. But for a number of babies, it is not.
I do like dairy products. I don’t consume them as much; we don’t keep that much of it in the house. And hopefully my son will outgrow his allergy by the time he is twelve. (If I am lucky!) Had I been a little better educated on the subject, I would have saved my son some digestive suffering he had as an infant - rash, colic and diarrhea the tests could not find cause for, and now in retrospect seems so obvious what was causing it.
When I rule the world (no time soon), ads like this would have a little asterisk on them: *consuming milk while nursing may cause colic, diarrhea, reflux and give your child a dairy allergy, if your infant experiences these symptoms discontinue use and consult a physician. And remember, millions of Asians have done fine for thousands of years without it!

This coming weekend I will be attending something a bit out of the ordinary for me. I’d read about these kinds of parties on other weblogs, but I’d never been to one. It’s a Slumber Party, and no, it’s not like those childhood slumber parties you went to as a kid, except the fact that it is all girls. I think it is more like a tupperware party, except the products are X-rated and don’t keep your food fresh.
Really this not my thing so much, I’m such a vanilla person. I really have no need for a $90 vibrator shaped like a dolphin, or creams and potions. But as one of my friends said, “It will be a hoot”, and this person begged me to go. So I will go, and probably have a good time. I imagine I will be sitting around with giggling gaggle of geese, passing around the Tickle His Pickle Book and snickering along with the rest of them.

(While watching a pack of crocodiles violently tear a wildebeest apart)

“Daddy, what are the crocodiles doing to the wildebeests?”

“They are eating them.”

“No, daddy, I think the crocodiles just want them to come in the water and swim with them.”