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Allergic vs. Not
I have an acquaintance who likes to tell everyone that he is allergic to fish. In point of fact, he doesn't care for fish. When he proudly told the crowd at the restaurant about his ploy never to have to deal with fins, I told him he was silly not to just admit that he has this particular dietary foible. I won't eat mayonaise and cilantro makes me want to spit, but I wouldn't hide behind a medical excuse to avoid them.
The reason why this rubs me wrong, I suppose, is that people who proclaim allergies that are really just preferences (albeit strong ones-- no one hates cilantro more than I) do people who have real deadly allergies a disservice. A recent article on Babble talk about some of the social issues for people whose children have deadly food allergies, and offers some useful information about places to go for support and coping strategies.
posted by Elise at 11:13 AM
7 Comments
Mr. Bergman and the Maternal
I was very sad to read of Ingmar Bergman's death this morning. Deeply and often hilariously parodied, his movies did manage to illustrate a lot of the ins and outs of family life -- quotidian and abnormal.
Among my favorite of his pictures-- and this is something I saw before having children was even marginally in my mind-- is a 1959 film called Brink of Life about the experiences of several women in a maternity ward.
It's a movie that can be sort of devastating so for the knocked-up and sensitive (or superstitious), I'd stick with something lighter like Smiles of a Summer Night.
But if you're at all conflicted about your family life, a visit with Fanny and Alexander or Scenes From a Marriage can provide you with the not-un-comforting perspective that things can always be worse, while still being fascinating.
posted by Elise at 6:30 AM
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Arbitrary Line Drawing
I don't know if the Junie B. Jones books will ever become an issue in my house, but I read this article in the New York Times about it (by, full disclosure, a friend of mine) with some interest. I suspect if Junie does raise her little head, I might not be able to roll out the welcome mat. Why, you ask? She sounds too annoying. I feel the same way about Elmo. Felix doesn't care for television as a general matter, but if he did, Elmo would still be out of the question because that voice makes me want to do something terrible to someone, probably myself.
As for Miss. Junie, from the sound of it, I would be irritated by having to engage in countless readings and re-readings of excessively cute antics and the charm of the little girl who thinks the green summer squash is called "Sue Keeny". Just that tidbit alone (gleaned from the article-- I haven't read the books) makes my teeth itch. Still if Felix wanted to read the books himself, I'd let him go to town.
This was generally my parents approach, I realize. A certain amount of stupidity was all right as long as they didn't have to partake of it as well. In grammar school, my sibling was a sucker for reruns of a truly unfunny sitcom (which shall remain nameless to preserve threatened dignity) and my mother would listen to gales of laughter from another room and say: "As long as I don't have to watch it."
Apparently some people also object to the fact that there is a certain rebellious streak in young Junie, that she is often anti-authoritarian and talks back. This is, if you ask me, a dopey problem to have and suggests to me that these parents would prefer that their kids never enjoy anything more fun or subversive than one of those William Wegman alphabet books (don't get me wrong-- they're great and gorgeous but hardly edgy). One hates to see what sorts of angry letters these people would write to Jane Austen if they saw how snarky and mean Elizabeth Bennet can get-- especially to her elders.
But then again, this probably says worlds about the critical values instilled in me: subversiveness is one thing, but stupidity is unacceptable.
And no one ever thought I would absorb bad behavior from what I read any more than they believed that my sibling would try to fly out the window after putting on a Superman cape.
posted by Elise at 8:10 AM
3 Comments
Red Velvet
For a recent birthday (not mine) Felix demanded that we make a red cake, so I trotted out my recipe file (mostly neglected) and found an old photocopy of a Red Velvet Cake recipe. We shopped. I stayed up late making an enormous mess with red food coloring and ignoring all the best advice about making even tidy layers for layer cake and in the morning a fresh enormous mess was made in frosting creation.
Red Velvet cake doesn't taste like much, does it? It doesn't really taste like vanilla cake or chocolate or even cocoa. And this was one of those super authentic recipes with buttermilk and a final hit of baking soda mixed with cider vinegar that is supposed to make some kind of alchemic magic in the oven.
But it really didn't taste much. Even the Felix only wanted to eat the (buttercream) frosting to the point where he began requesting "more white" and leaving the red on his plate. A discerning kid. So my question to you is this: is it me or is it the nature of this red beast?
No no there are no pictures. The mess was much too much.
posted by Elise at 1:35 PM
2 Comments
Playtime
My husband passed this intriguing article about parents playing with their children to me. For my part, I'm getting a bit weary of hearing recommendations about how much time toddlers should spend playing or how much and what kind of direct interaction one needs to have with one's infants or babies or preschoolers or what have you. I find I don't really handle behaving according to protocols very well. I keep wanting to buck them or feeling horrible if I can't really live up to the suggested standards because I have work and dueling child needs and interests that I really feel compelled to entertain.
So take comfort all of you who keep up your email correspondence while watching a Lego tower evolve and devolve with one eye, who let the stuffed animals participate in the tea party while mostly reading a magazine. You aren't being neglectful and your child won't wind up understimulated and silly.
But I have to admit I am thoroughly sick of trying to seek validation by looking to what other cultures (especially ones that are deemed more "natural" and "real" by virtue of their being in undeveloped countries). Sure in some cultures babies are carried everywhere ("worn" in the words of the annoying Ergo packaging), but that doesn't mean that not wearing a kid makes you inauthentic or inattentive. But mine isn't always the popular view. I'm of the "who cares if you have an epidural or not" school, whereas lots of people I know think that anesthesia during childbirth will create some lifelong bonding problems with the child. I think bonding problems are not the fault of the painkillers.
But I digress. The article lets you off the hook for the next few sandbox tea parties, and that can't be all bad.
posted by Elise at 11:00 AM
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Little Joan Crawford
Occasionally I have these moments where my misanthropic side comes into rather unpleasant contact with my marshmallow underbelly. This happened in the playground.
Felix had been eyeing a scooter. He's seriously interested in wheels of all sorts (he sits and watches the superannuated skateboarders slowly practicing on local loading platforms promising everyone who passes that he will "do that someday") so I was hardly surprised. But since the scooter wasn't his, I redirected his energies to climbing.
Then Sebastian needed some attention (you see where this is going, don't you?) and a moment later, there was Felix on the previously abandoned scooter. With Felix was the scooter's owner, a devilish little girl in pink and her friend, an androgynous child (girlish haircut, boyish clothes, but those things don't mean anything- in my neighborhood people love to dress their children in ways that would keep you guessing if you cared). Little Pink was wielding a pair of blunt craft scissors while gripping Felix's hand. I didn't hear the beginning of her threat, but it ended with the words "because I'm bigger and stronger than you are and I always will be" before I interrupted by plucking my completely nonplussed kid away. (If I recall Mommie Dearest correctly, and I might not since it has been decades since I read it, this is something that Joan Crawford says to her daughter Christina when they have races in their Hollywood swimming pool.)
On the one hand, Little Pink and Gender Neutral were sort of fascinating for me. I've always been kind of intrigued by horrible children. I've never wanted to deal with them, mind you, but they're fascinating and I would love to harness some of that aggression and focus for my own non-nefarious ends.
But my marshmallow guts are stronger than my raised eyebrow. Felix might not have minded but I truly hated Little Pink. I'm used to playground power struggles but this one felt nastier. Perhaps it was the scissors; perhaps it was the attempt at psychological warfare.
This is, I'm guessing, going to be the way of it for a while. Felix is going to have nasty little social interactions that don't make him blink, but which will trigger a hideous mean streak in me.
No, no. I didn't say anything or do anything (though I was subsequently told I should have told her mother to take the scissors away from her, for her own safety if nothing else), but I would have loved to. So here's hoping I'll either come around and toughen up so that I can ignore little nasties as well as Felix does or that I'll develop a withering talent.
I'm actually sort of hoping for the latter.
posted by Elise at 7:51 PM
0 Comments
Take Heart, You Knocked-Up Sushi Fans
Steven Shaw, a man whose writings directed me to the most sublime kung pao chicken and other assorted super spicy Szechuan delicacies, writes quite reasonably about why pregnant women don't have to fear the sushi they crave (if they crave it and are not salivating over, say, pasta or meringue). My doctor actually offered me the same reasoning with both of my pregnancies so I indulged, but here it is spelled out with charm.
posted by Elise at 6:28 AM
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Generic
Those who know me know that I really love movie genres and I'm pretty catholic in my tastes except that I don't much care for the "arms in the air triumph movie" or the "girls sitting around the table talking until they dance around it" pictures. I love melodramas, old movies, films noir, swashbucklers, screwball comedies, westerns, blockbusters, even the rarely discussed mountaineering movies.
Slate, this evening, ran a piece on its new "Slate TV" feature and managed to hit on some kind of weird movie subgenre that even I failed to have experienced. I haven't even heard of this guy and his weird mission to bring terrible, terrible redubbed Mexican "horror" movies to weekend matinees.
Witness the guide to The Worst Cinematic Crap That's Ever Been Made, Kiddie Flicks, part 1. (The link takes you to the "Arts & Life Channel" where the face of the Evil Queen from Snow White will guide you to the piece). A quick glance at the excerpted scenes will put all kinds of kid video into a new perspective.
I must say it is remarkable.
posted by Elise at 4:33 PM
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Bossytime
It's a sign that I'm getting old, I suppose, that I'm increasingly cranky about being told what to do. When I was younger I used to like it in work situations because it meant there was a good chance of pleasing people, but now I just get irritated.
And frankly, the Green movement isn't helping. I am so sick of everyone everywhere being so bossy and self-righteous about the environment (and everything, everything can be related to the environment- someone scolded my husband for letting our dog pee within ten feet of a tree on the sidewalk because the tree's roots extend over 40 feet). A thought about the irritating eco braggarts had been blossoming in my mind but Emily Bazelon (again!) wrote about it in Slate this week. She is wrestling with the problem of raising eco-savvy, actually generally savvy, kids without making them people you want to punch in the teeth. In the transcript of an online chat about the piece, Bazelon is graceful when she has to deal with some more self-righteous types who tell her the ways in which she is off base and not really timely (I certainly had "green" projects in grammar school) but I think those people miss one of her points. She is talking about how to raise children who are aware and careful about the world but who also have a sense of irony and who are not, frankly, awful to be around. I suppose she could also be talking about how we could teach ourselves the same things, while we're at it.
I think about this a lot. I forgot how having an infant hanging around you, sometimes hanging off of you (and you're certainly familiar with my feelings about the self-righteous babywearing police), leaves you open to all sorts of bullying. (Once Felix became a toddler, I find I either am talking to him on the street or else people who try to say something to me have to go through the Toddler Monologue Felix offers up, which happily deflects them.) Yesterday on my way back from the dentist (Sebastian had to go with me) my taxi driver started up:
Taxi Man: How many kids do you have?
Me: Two.
TM: Both boys?
Me: Yep.
TM: When are you having another?
Me: Never.
TM: You have to have another?
Me: How does that figure?
TM: All mothers need sons but all father need daughters. You have to do this for your husband!
Me: Well, what if I were to keep having boys? How many tries do I get before I can give up?
TM: Four.
So clearly he's got it all worked out.
Frankly I can't even handle compliments these days. On one recent occasion when I was wearing Sebastian, and I had jammed a hat on his head, a woman approached me and told me I was so good to put a hat on my child. I told her that my child hadn't yet figured out how to pull it off. She said that SOME PEOPLE just don't know or care enough to have their children wear hats.
This was rather annoying since on other days I am absolutely one of THOSE PEOPLE because the Felix doesn't really take to headgear so much. I told her that she didn't know what she was talking about and that some children aren't hat wearers and at a certain point (for me that point comes much sooner than later) you have to give up and just live life eve if it means putting a bit of extra sunblock on your kid's head which makes him look unwashed.
I love my children and I love having them, but the one thing I miss a bit from my pre-kid days was the ability to walk around and not somehow be so easily prodded. I'll just have to do my best to raise children who don't rag on people who don't ride bicycles everywhere.
posted by Elise at 2:37 PM
1 Comments
City Kid
Say what you like about the city, but there is something remarkable about being able to grab snapshots of your child frolicking in historical landmarks.
Yes, yes, he had a bath.
posted by Elise at 12:18 PM
0 Comments
Caving
So, an upcoming trip to the Bronx Zoo made me cave and I did, indeed, on the advice of many, order the famous Ergo baby carrier. Yes, indeed, it works very well. Everything I've heard about it is true.
And yet, I suspect you hear a touch of regret in my tone. Where is it coming from, you ask? I made the mistake of reading the literature that accompanies the Ergo.
One of the things about being a parent that makes my teeth positively itch is that everything is associated with one movement or another. Never can one just claim to be getting by. One is either a "glamour mom" a "high maintenance mom" an "eco mom" "organic mom" "attachment mom" "cry it out mom" on and on and on. I got the Ergo because sometimes it is easier to carry the kid. I am not and will never be a card-carrying "babywearer". In the first place, I can't stand that word and all the self-righteousness I feel bubbling underneath the obviously recently invented term. The Ergo literature is very strong on babywearing and insists that it is what babies prefer. Being worn and facing inward are the de rigueur attitudes for babies, the Ergo experts say.
My current baby and the toddler that once was a baby don't really like to be carried. They don't like to be hot, which is a universal side effect of all carriers (since their mother maintains a normal human body temperature). Also contrary to the literature, my kids don't like facing me very much. They are plainly sick of me and want to look out. Carrying Sebastian around is like chatting with someone you want to impress but can't at a cocktail party. He's always peering around me trying to find someone more interesting to rescue him.
Anyway, many thanks to everyone who recommended the Ergo. It will make various activities much more manageable. I just wish reading the instructions didn't wake up my not so latent contrarian and make me want to Ergo Sebastian into the closest bar.
posted by Elise at 10:59 AM
1 Comments
Topic of the Day: Boundaries
A meeting at Felix's intended preschool yielded a conversation about boundary setting between parents and children. I wasn't surprised that it popped up. Everyone is talking about it in different ways, mostly with reference to children older than Felix.
Last week's New York Times Sunday Style Section ran a piece called "Mommy Is Truly Dearest" about grown women who count on their mothers to listen to and comment on the intricate details of their sex lives, among other things.
Jamie Lee Curtis recently wrote a rather scathing piece about the bad parenting that created Paris Hilton's whiney plea to her mother that having to do some time in the clink for breaking the law wasn't fair. Her point is that people should be more interested in being parents to their children than friends with them. As I said, this is not really an issue for me yet. If I tried to be Felix's "friend" as opposed to his mother, he and I would be wandering around in the living room, lost endlessly in a pile of books and Lego.
Is there a particular appeal in abdicating parenting in favor of being child's buddy? It seems a bit odd since one only gets to be a parent with a very small number of people whereas one has the potential to be friends with scads and scads of folks. Misanthropists excepted, of course.
Anyway, what did my conversation about all of this yield, you ask? Once again I have been told that I should really take a look at The Blessing of the Skinned Knee.
Parenting texts. If only I could glean this information from my pile of mysteries.
posted by Elise at 8:32 AM
16 Comments
Sizing
Why is jean size the index of achieving some sort of post-partum triumph? I appreciate that there is great reward in being able to fit into pre-pregnancy clothes, and I am embarrassed to admit how soon I began tormenting myself by trying things on after Sebastian was born.
But what is it about jeans? Are they really so unforgiving? I find all the popular dresses made of clingy jersey much more daunting, and I don't even own any to make me depressed. Do we think in terms of jeans because everyone has a pair or two? Since jeans aren't particularly flattering on me, I know that any sense of reward at being able to wear them is tainted by the sense that they can make me just as slobby as I was in maternity clothes, just differently so.
And really, there are things that jeans can't help:
- Weird new bra size
- Having to use nursing pads (and the converse- FORGETTING to use the nursing pads)
- No white shirts for me (see above)
- Having to think carefully before putting on anything that needs dry-cleaning
- Having to decide if a dress will permit breastfeeding and taking the measure of how big a problem a no-feeding-without-nakedness dress could be
There's a terrible emphasis put on getting back to normal and getting into those old clothes, and since this is my second time around you'd think I'd know better, even though I'm wrestling with it all the time.
Here's the thing, all of you out there contemplating your closet: don't worry about the jeans. There's a lot of other stuff going on.
posted by Elise at 7:57 AM
0 Comments
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