I am *that* mom!

I am that mom
I’m the mom who is constantly meddling, and thinks my special snowflake needs to be dealt with with sensitivity vs. brute force.  It’s true.  Honestly, I’ve tried the brute force stuff with her and it just. doesn’t. work.  She doesn’t respond to it, just shuts right down.

So last December when her preschool teacher put her in time-out after she had a meltdown over sharing, her meltdown got exponentially bigger.  I wound up having to come get her from the class because she was quite literally hysterical.  Once I got her out, we talked about what happened and she calmed right down.  She was able to return to the class, apologize to her friends, and continue, and the behavior was not repeated.

Different things just work for different kids.

So.  I currently have The Rage because she has been hit by a little boy in her class twice.  Last time, the teacher brought L over to her after class and encouraged him to apologize.  This time, the teacher did not mention it to me (to be fair, she was busy when we left).  My daughter says the boy hit her back while they were all singing a song, and the teacher told him “no hitting.”  But did not put him in time out or initiate any further consequence for hitting.  Later, though, threatened the boy with a time out for using the word “poop.”

What.  The.  Hell?

So, physical violence is not a time-out level offense… but freaking out over sharing, or saying “poop”  are time-out offenses?

Please tell me I’m not the only one utterly perplexed by this bizarre-o concept of discipline.

I’m sure it doesn’t help that the mom of this little boy is one who told me recently that when kids knock each other down, it’s no big deal, because they are “just kids.”  Well, yes, they are just kids, and they don’t KNOW a thing is wrong unless we explain it to them.  I can’t help wondering if the kid hasn’t picked up on his mom’s blase’ attitude about physical contact with other kids, and now is picking on my LO.

Being hit and/or bullied by another child is NOT something I am willing to allow, and that is a dealbreaker for me.  I am sure some people would consider this overreacting, but I really am THAT MOM who is willing to make waves for her kid, and who will stand up for her now and forever.

I’m having to vent all this before I speak to the teacher about it.  I know she will work with me on this, but right now I’m too rage-full to talk calmly!  Someone HIT my BABY.  TWICE.  ANNNND… she said to me… “He will hit me again and again, Mommy.”  RAGE.

Posted: March 22nd, 2010 under Uncategorized - No Comments. Tags: preschools, teachers, toddlers

Polly Pocket…

These dreaded little dolls with their infuriatingly teensy tiny little shoes and rubber clothes… argghh!!!   Yes, my daughter adores them.  I noticed, something though… check out this photo:

From left to right:  Polly Pocket doll, the first Cinderella polly we got, and then the most recent Cinderella polly we acquired.

Notice anything?

Posted: March 2nd, 2010 under feminism, musings... - 1 Comment. Tags: body image, dolls, polly pocket

The Princess Thing, Again…

If you’ve read any of my other posts here, or even just by the description of this blog (feminist mama), you can imagine that I am not generally a big fan of the Disney Princess’s.  I’m most especially not a fan of the idea of the helpless but pretty heroine, reclining gracefully on a pink pillow until her Prince Charming can conquer the scary dragon and save the day with his oh-so-wonderful kiss.  (I’m looking at you, Sleeping Beauty!)

So it’s with some trepidation that I tell you that I’m currently in the throes of All Things Princess, with an adorable Princess-Obsessed dictator running around in sparkly high heels and Cinderella dresses.

Trepidation?  No, that’s not even really true.  The truth is that I am having a BLAST with it.  I feel pretty good about the fact that I’ve given my daughter a female-positive background to play out these fairy stories against.  I feel joy when she switches in a beat from being Cinderella to being “Super Bella, saving people from mud!”

I have come a long way in my thoughts on princesses, from hoping against hope I’d be able to avoid the issue entirely to looking at it more critically and talking to lots and lots of other moms about it. I realized that one of the primary things which bugs me about the Disney princesses specifically is the heavy-duty marketing aimed at toddlers, the pervasive presence of those damsels in distress, and the way the people in our society reinforce those images again and again and again.  The other thing I don’t like is the false body-images presented, but honestly that is less of an issue for me… right now.

It came crashing down on me that I would not be able to avoid the issue entirely when anytime Bella saw a princess, anywhere, she’d ask me the name of the princess.  At first I would try to distract her from it, or say I didn’t know, but finally I just gave up and gave her the information she wanted.  I thought a few times about telling her that I didn’t like those princesses and why, but that felt *wrong.*  She is not old enough to understand my reasons, but she is old enough to feel badly that mama doesn’t like what she likes.

I realized quite quickly that she was getting about 90% of her Princess exposure from her preschool teacher.  A woman whom I adore and think is, in most ways, lovely.  But she also happens to be an *excellent* Disney marketer, whether she knows it or not, providing her classroom with things like Disney princess tents, laptops, tea sets, the princess dolls themselves, and one night when Bella told me she’d mixed a potion to “take away her voice,” I knew she’d been telling them princess stories.  Even though they were not (are not) listed on the class syllabus.

At the time I found myself trying to decide what to do.  Unfortunately my options for preschool here are pretty limited, and I love this school, love 95% of the things about it, and my daughter adores it. So I decided to try to take the negatives in stride.  Besides, she’d be exposed sooner or later, right?  The Disney Divas are *unavoidable.*

And so it goes.  It has grown from there.  Thus far I have stood by my original resolve to take it one step at a time and not, for now, let her see the movies.  For Christmas, Santa brought her a Cinderella dress, an Ariel bath doll, and “Ariel’s Beginning,” a princess movie without a prince that I thought might be mild enough to capture her imagination.  Mild?   Ummmm, no.  The mermaid mom gets crushed by a pirate ship in the opening scene, after which the poor mermaid dad is just angry forever and I’m not sure I can blame him.  Bella was terrified of the cackling, mean mermaid assistant and I wound up forwarding through most of the movie.  So when I tell her truthfully that the princess movies she asks about are too scary for her, she believes me.  Sleeping Beauty would give her nightmares for ages!  Ursula in The Little Mermaid would terrify her.   She is just a sensitive little soul.

One of the other things I got her for Christmas was a set of Snow White figurines.  She was having such a hard time sharing the princess figures at school that I figured if she had some at home, maybe it would be easier.  (No such luck.)  So we got a set with Snow White, the prince, the evil queen, the old lady with the apple, and the seven dwarves.  It’s really a lovely little set, I have to say, with beautiful details on the figures.  I didn’t give her the evil queen and old lady at first thinking they might be too scary, but as she has gotten more drawn to good/evil battles I got them out for her… and she has her fairy friends bewitch them so that they can be nice.

She has such a good heart.

I’m going on and on and on, and I really could talk about this for days, and probably will if I ever get a single quiet moment in the house again.  (B. is out with her Daddy right now… blessed quiet!)  But I had to post something because I posted a picture of her in her Cinderella dress on my facebook, and someone replied “I thought you weren’t going to let her do the princess thing!”  That is actually not what I said, ever.  I said I’d hold off on it for as long as I could, and I have.  I said that I don’t want to show her the movies, and I don’t.  I said that many aspects of the Disney empire bother me, and they do.  But ultimately I’m a mom who loves sparkles and dresses and happy endings myself, so it is no mystery that my daughter would be the same way.

Right now her favorite color is blue.  Cross your fingers that it stays that way!

Posted: February 21st, 2010 under Uncategorized - No Comments. Tags: feminism, gender, princess, say yes

Awesome iPhone apps!

Well I know I haven’t been around for a while.  Things have been overly crazy here and I have not had a free second to blog in, much less to think about things to blog about!  But I’m back, at least sporadically.

The iPhone has been the very best toy we have ever had.  Of course it’s not a toy, really.  But it is!  I keep a solid case on it to protect against drops, put some fun games on it for my daughter, and she love love loves it and is a total pro at swiping and moving things around on there.  There are tons of apps in the app store for toddlers, but some are more worth the time/trouble/cost than others.  Here are some of our favorites.

Adam’s Game:  Toddler Flash Cards
This game is really cute, and good for iPhone beginners.  My daughter (almost 3) is bored with it now, but loved it for a long time.  It shows 3 pictures of things, and says “find the ____”.  Find the apple, find the triangle, all different kinds of things.  If the child doesn’t get it right, a little kid’s voice says “Uh oh!”  If they do, lots of kids say “YAY!!!”   You can also program it with your own voice and pictures, which is a really cool feature.  Lots of fun, and only $.99.

Sid’s Microphone
By PBS, and free!  This game is exactly what it sounds like.  The screen turns into Sid’s microphone with all the buttons Sid pushes on the show.  Children can record and play back their own voice.   Cute!

Preschool Arcade
One of our very very favorites, this game has 3 little games reminiscent of our own arcade games from our youth.  One game is kind of like space invaders, except that a voice announces a letter, the child touches the right letter, and the space ship flies there.  It is so cute!  Another is like one of those claw games in arcades, except it is shape matching.  So it shows you the shape of a truck, you have to touch the truck, then the claw reaches down and grabs it.  Very, very cute!  I wish they’d come out with more games for this one.   The pinball game has not been as big a hit with Bella, but this one is worth the price for the other two games.

Preschool Adventure
Also by 3DAL (makers of Preschool Arcade, above), this one is a great first game.  It doesn’t require the child to do anything more than touch things and enjoy.  The voice that goes with the game is lovely, sweet, friendly, clear and easy to understand.   The numbers (dot to dot) game is a bit more challenging for those children who are ready for that.  This company also makes Make a Martian, which is really fun, and Preschool Music.  But Arcade and Adventure are IMO the best!

Peekaboo Barn
Peekaboo Barn (and now Peekaboo Wild) are absolutely adorable, easy, enchanting for little ones.  Lots of fun and very simple.   The barn sort of wiggles, and you hear an animal sound.  Tap the barn and the view zooms in, the door opens, and you see the animal making the sound.  Then it does it again with a different animal.  At the end all the animals are asleep.  Cute!  There are free versions of both Barn and Wild that you can try out.

The Little Red Hen
This is a story that can be read to your child or they can read themselves and it is ADORABLE.  The voice reading is a child herself, and bonus for us Americans who love accents… she has an English accent.  The story is timeless and lovely and the animals all make sounds if you touch them, including the mouse who says very quietly… “Squeak, SQUEAK.”  It is seriously so cute.   Bella loves this one!

First Words:  Animals
Well, we have Animals, but they have several other versions.  This is great.  There is a picture of the word, for example a picture of a Fish.  Four boxes for the letters to go, with a shadow of each letter for the child to see.  The letters are jumbled up at the bottom and the child needs to drag each letter to the correct box.  The narrator reads the word at the end.

ShapeBuilder
This game is *awesome.*  It is so simple, and yet is the single game that has held Bella’s attention for the longest.  But she loves puzzles, so if your child is not into puzzles this may not be a hit of the same magnitude… they have a free version so it is worth trying to see!

There are lots of other games we’ve tried, but these are our favorites so far!

Posted: November 20th, 2009 under toddler talk - No Comments. Tags: iphone apps, toddler games

Haunted House update…

Well it’s coming along… I really need to buy some teensier tiny paintbrushes to get better details, and obviously I am no artist.  I am having a very hard time doing cute faces for the little ghost people so if anyone has any advice, it is welcome!

Spoooky haunted house!

Posted: September 30th, 2009 under crafty stuff - No Comments. Tags: crafting

A spooooky work in progress…

A spooky mess!

Right now it’s kind of a mess, but what it’s going to be … hopefully, eventually, hopefully soon!  Is a ghostly, spooooOOoOOooky haunted house playset for Bella… complete with a family of little white ghosts!

She is very excited about this project and was determined to help paint.  She helped paint the actual house for 5 seconds flat before she was covered head to toe in black paint.  She painted the little wooden ghosts with gobs and gobs of white paint (for that 3D effect!) and when I told her how well she was doing, she kindly said to me:  “I can teach you Mommy!”

More pictures to come when the spookiness has progressed a bit…

Posted: September 25th, 2009 under crafty stuff, just for fun..., toddler talk - 1 Comment. Tags: crafting, halloween, toddler talk, toys

Sexism is dead. Or, not!

So yesterday Bella and I stopped by a bookstore. There’s a nice, if small, area for children, complete with a train table and lots of toys for sale. When we arrived, a little boy of about Bella’s age (late 2, early 3) was also playing. Bella went straight for the train table, then a bit later got bored and headed over to grab a ride-on horsey. She pranced around on her horsey, and of course this got the little boy interested, so he too ran over to grab a horsey.

Unfortunately for him, he grabbed a PINK horsey.

I was honestly bewildered to see his young, hip-looking, pierced mom, sneer at him “You don’t want a horse like THAT,” before she grabbed it away from him. Before I knew it she had whisked the little boy away. One aisle over, where she could angrily put him in time-out for being “bad.” The little boy was, of course, crying, his mom AND dad were now yelling at him, and Bella looked at me all concerned saying “Mommy, that boy is sad!”.

So. What kind of horse do you think the boy will choose next time? And then his mom will tell all her friends, “He is SUCH a boy, he just has NO INTEREST in pink things at all.” Some mystery there, huh? Genetics? Or Mommy goes HULK SMASH if you touch something pink?

I can’t help but wonder what the mom was so concerned about anyways. Did she think the little pink horsey would …. give her son Teh Gay?!?!?!

I suppose I looked pissed-off to hipster mom.  In fact, I was fairly pissed off.   She communicated in that moment utter disgust for a boy choosing something pink, not only to her son, but to me, and to my child.

So much for the idea that sexism is dead, huh?

Posted: September 17th, 2009 under feminism, liberal bias, rants... - No Comments. Tags: boys, feminism, sexism, toys

It could happen to you…

How likely is the following scenario?

A few days ago I took my daughter with me to Michael’s. While there, she happened to spy one of those little cardboard houses to paint and make into a Christmas ornament. She wanted it. It was like $.50, so ok. She told me she wanted it to be blue. So we went and picked out the exact shade of blue she wanted together too.

That night, after she was asleep, I sat down on the floor watching Dexter and painted the little house. I had my two little tiny reused bottlecaps of paint inside of a deep reused take-out tray. That way, no worries about spills, right?

I finished, took the whole business into the kitchen to let the little house dry so that I could later add some glitter accents.

Later, added the glitter accents.

That day, idiot me left the house with the tray with the two TINY bottle caps full of paint on the counter. What could go wrong???

My dog, that’s what. !@(*&@#$! Now my dogs paws are each at least twice as big as one bottle cap, but still. He managed to get the tray down, knock it over, and somehow then STEP INTO the bottle cap (the one with teal BLUE paint, of course, not the one with WHITE paint) and proceeded to leave teal blue paw prints All. Over. The. House. Every single step leading to the basement, the beige carpet.

The weirdest thing is that he literally did not *spill* a drop of paint. The paint was still in the darned bottle caps! He STEPPED IN the cap and got the paint on his foot.

I would just about kill for a video of this thing so I could laugh at it.

Meanwhile, I’ve been googling how to remove acrylic paint from beige carpet and found one lonely tip out there in the interwebz, to use rubbing alcohol. So in case this ever happens to you (likely, right?!), here’s the scoop. Dump the alcohol directly onto the stain, then scrub like crazy with a very absorbent towel (that you don’t mind chucking afterward). The stains are coming right out, but the fumes have me a bit dizzy. On the bright side, my floor is going to be So Clean!!!!!

Posted: September 12th, 2009 under rants... - 1 Comment. Tags: crafting paint cleaning disaster doggy

You got to move it, move it!

I’ve talked to many moms who have said that babywearing hasn’t worked for them, for one reason or another.  I always kind of want to point out that, like anything else, babywearing is a tool.  It’s meant to help make life easier for you, but you may have to explore ways to make it work.  Babywearing is not necessarily a magic bullet (although for some babies it may be), it requires a little tweaking to figure out what works for you and your baby.

Babywearing has literally saved my life, so I’m a bit of an evangelist on the subject, and I know I am, and try to watch it.  Still, I’m just so enthusiastic about it, and while I don’t judge someone for giving up on it, I always find myself wanting to troubleshoot and figure out how to make things better for them.  Because it is a *tool*, meant to make your life *easier*!  I’m all about making everyones lives easier.

The number one thing that I think people don’t know when they first start babywearing, is that babies being worn want to MOVE.  I was able to wear Bella a few times while doing dishes or cooking, but mostly, that was too static for her.  I needed to move.  So while I was able to get some things done, ie: get her to sleep without losing my sanity as much, it wasn’t like I was Miss Chore-Accomplisher while she was on my back.  Mostly I was usually focused on getting her to sleep.  Sleep, baby, sleep!

That’s how I started vacuuming.  I probably also read this tip on The Babywearer (which is an excellent, amazing resource for moms interested in wearing their babes!), about vacuuming.  Vacuuming while the baby is on your back does a couple of things.  It makes you move, it provides rhythmic movement, it provides sound, and the babe is “swaddled”  (held tightly with fabric) to your body.  It reminds me in many ways of Dr. Karp’s method of the 5 S’s, for soothing colicky babes.  Suck, Swaddle, Side, Sway, and SHHHH.  Well, they don’t get suck or side, but they do get swaddle, sway, and shhhhh, plus your heartbeat, your closeness, your calm.

Some other ideas for moving:  walking the dog, walking up and down stairs (especially if they are squiggling, wiggling, seem uncomfy), walking back and forth in a long hallway (I’ve done this successfully in hotels), and a simple sway, especially with music.  I’ve also done this in hotels, where I’d just darken the room completely, put her on my back, and then stand in the darkest part of the room and sway back and forth.

It’s *saved* me.  I really really mean that.  So if you are a mom at your wits end with a child who won’t sleep, I really recommend giving it another shot even if it hasn’t worked out for you before.  Some things take a little practice, and take some effort, but it is so worth it in the long run.

Posted: September 10th, 2009 under babywearing - 1 Comment. Tags: babywearing, sleep, toddler

Sleep woes…

Bella is currently in a sleep-less cycle.  We go through phases, some she sleeps better, some worse, right now it is definitely in the “worse” phase.  She goes to bed late, gets up early, and tries to sleep horizontal all night long, kicking mama and pushing on Daddy.

So, what to do?

If past experience is any indication, just wait it out.

She goes through these phases, and when she is sleeping well, she sleeps very well.  She goes down easily, sleeps soundly, and sleeps a reasonable length of time.  When she’s not sleeping well she just isn’t, and it hasn’t seemed to matter what I do.

I confess that there are moments when she just won’t.  go.  to.  sleep.   When I get so frustrated, and I snap at her, “JUST LAY DOWN!”   Every once in a blue moon, that actually works, she lies down and goes to sleep!  (A miracle!)  But most of the time, it just makes her feel crappy.  Then it makes me feel crappy.  Then I remember being little, and scared, and unable to sleep, and my mom yelling at me, and then I get all upset with myself for snapping.  Getting her to sleep a few minutes sooner just isn’t worth making both of us feel awful.  The truth is that I wasn’t a very good sleeper either, and had many battles throughout my life with my mother, and having her anger directed at me when I was already desperately tired didn’t help things at all.

So, I wait it out.  I wish I had thought of it more this way when she was littler, because I stressed over her sleep *so* much, and honestly nothing I ever tried really accomplished anything.   I wish I could have talked myself through it a bit more, reminding myself that these are phases, many times sleep disruptions occur during developmental leaps, and ultimately:  this too shall pass.  It would’ve saved me a lot of useless anger.

Posted: September 8th, 2009 under co-sleeping - No Comments. Tags: co-s, sleep