Maclaren recall: is there nothing safe?

The blogosphere is alight with the news that Maclaren is about to go public (Tuesday, Nov 10th) with a recall of every single stroller they have made for the last ten years, due to twelve cases of fingertip amputation among children when the strollers were opened.

Let's stop right there. Fingertip amputation? And they had to get to TWELVE cases before they issued a recall? I'd say two cases was probably enough to establish a pattern. As always, I am outraged at how many kids have to be injured before a company will own up that their product is dangerous. And now you, Maclaren? I have had my $99 Volo since Connor was born seven years ago, and while it has never been my primary stroller, it has been invaluable whenever I had to take my little ones on the subway or bus or on vacation. Only a Maclaren folds like a dream and, slung over your shoulder, weighs 7 pounds, yet is still durable enough to last you through three children. And now this? I'm not ready to break up with you Maclaren, but I am REALLY pissed off.

Here's what you need to know: starting tomorrow, Maclaren will provide free kits to cover the strollers' hinge mechanisms. The quickest way to obtain the kits will be to order them through www.maclaren.us/recall or by calling 877-688-2326. Both are currently not functioning but presumably will be tomorrow. Get the hinge covers-- and until then, make sure your child is nowhere near your Maclaren when you are opening or closing it.

The Quarreling Book

Have you ever read a book to your children and thought: the message of this book may be going way over my children's heads, but holy cow, this was a one-two punch to their mother? This weekend we visited my parents' house because the cousins were around, and to calm down the three five-year-olds, three two-year-olds, and two seven-year-olds while we were waiting for the very late pizza guy to arrive, I pulled some random and dusty old books out of Nana's collection.

This one looked kind of cute: a slim volume, originally from 1963, called The Quarreling Book, by Charlotte Zolotow. "What's quarreling?" Seamus asked as they all clambered around me on the couch to take a look, and none of the other kids knew what it meant either, and that seemed to be a clear sign that this book would be quaint but perhaps not too relevant.

Then I began to read.

It was a rainy gray morning, and Mr. James forgot to kiss Mrs. James good-bye when he left for the office. Mrs. James felt quite cross because of this... So when Jonathan James came down for breakfast, she was sharp with him. "Oh, for goodness' sake!" she said. "Why did you wear that shirt again today? It's filthy!"

In other words, Jonathan James' mommy was having a shitty morning and took it out on her kid. Wow, did that sound familiar.

The book goes on to show how our behavior towards our loved ones is all too often shaped by things that have nothing to do with them. Jonathan James, in a bad mood because his mommy wasn't nice, is nasty to his sister, who is nasty to her friend, who teases her baby brother, who pushes the dog.

Only the dog can turn things around. Thinking the baby wants to play, he licks his master's face until he giggles. Then he's nice to his older sister, who apologizes to her friend... and before you know it, Mr. James is home to give Mrs. James a great warm hello kiss.

The kids liked this book just fine. I find it incredibly powerful. The next time I am being snippy or snappy or sarcastic or nasty with one of my children, I am going to try to take a moment and consider if, perhaps, there might be a reason for my reaction that actually has very little to do with my children's behavior. I have a feeling I will be seeing a lot of my impatience with my children in a new light. It looks like this book is still available on Amazon, and even though the dad goes to work while the mom stays home and hangs out the washing, and the big sister calls her little brother a "sissy" for playing with dolls, which might merely give some kids a new avenue of teasing possibility, its overall message means I can still recommend The Quarreling Book most highly.

bring back Daylight Savings Time

Today, an immodest proposal: let's stop with the Daylight Savings Time back and forth. Every autumn, I see some talking head on TV saying how I'll get an extra hour of sleep on Sunday morning, when the clocks fall back. I used to feel that way. Then I had kids. For the last seven years, all "Fall Back" Sunday means for me is that I have to get up even more Ungodly Early then I do every other day.

This past Sunday, all three of my children were up by 5 a.m. "The new five," my husband calls it, and admittedly that was a mitigating factor. Last weekend. Five was really six, and as long as I looked at the un-reset microwave clock, instead of the cable box, I actually felt OK. But this morning, six days after the time change, two of my children were up by 5 a.m., as they have been every day. And it no longer felt, in any way, like six. It felt like five. It felt like the middle of the night. I have been so tired all day that I can barely function. And there is no end in sight.

Seriously, should parents bond together and stop the madness? I agree that kids shouldn't be waiting for the school bus in the dark, but if we never sprung forward onto Daylight Savings Time in the first place, it wouldn't be an issue. I think. Or maybe I'm just really tired.

teeth are busting out all over

After waiting nearly seven years to lose a single tooth, Connor has now lost two teeth in two days.


He came home from school yesterday with the other bottom middle tooth at a jaunty angle to the others, like the feather in Robin Hood's cap. I would have just left it.
But our babysitter was quite focused on getting it out, and together, she and Connor decided she should tie a piece of thread around his tooth, and tie the other end to one of his Shake 'n Go Racers. Connor would shake the car, set it down, and it would race off with his tooth. I had my reservations about this plan but stayed out of it, because I wasn't pulling it out, that was for sure. In the end, the race car did not even have to be shaken for the tooth to be gone.

Before our babysitter left I threw my coat on and ran out to the bank with Maggie under one arm. I would not be unprepared this time! I got ten gold Sacajawea coins, set aside three to go under Connor's pillow, and safely stashed the rest for future use. Then I took Connor's tooth from where it sat on my desk, and handed it to him to put under his pillow. I was very proud of myself indeed, for having my act together for once.

Connor stared at me. "My tooth already IS under my pillow," he said.

Gulp.

"No it's not!" I said, idiotically, buying time.

"I just put it there," he said, quite sure of himself.

We go in his room. There is a tooth under his pillow. I have just given him the one the Tooth Fairy supposedly took LAST night. I try to pocket the pillow tooth, but Connor is right at my elbow. "You had my other tooth that fell out on your desk?" he said. "That's so weird. That's so weird I like, might not even BELIEVE in the Tooth Fairy now."

I decide to dig myself out of trouble by vehemently agreeing with him. "You're right! That's bizarre!" I said. "How did your tooth from last night end up on my desk? That makes NO SENSE." When David came home, I met him at the door to head this story off at the pass. "Isn't that WEIRD, Daddy?" I exclaimed. "Why did the Tooth Fairy leave money and not even take Connor's tooth?"

"Because she's magic," Daddy replied, without missing a beat. "And she can see the future, so she knew she'd be back here tonight anyway. Tonight she can pick up both teeth at once."

Sometimes I really love my husband.

big news

How quickly things change! The day before yesterday, Connor was despondent. And then yesterday was one of the greatest days of his life so far:



Connor is nearly seven, and this was the first tooth he has ever lost. He was the only kid left in first grade who had not yet lost a single baby tooth, and when I tell you that was eating him up inside I am not exaggerating. He had been wiggling this one loose for some time, and by last night at dinnertime, it was hanging by a thread. A blue one. It made me gag just to look at it. Daddy was at the Yankees game, and my stomach churned at the thought of having to pull it out. Thankfully, just one bite of Annie's Bunny Macaroni did the trick, and Connor had become a man!

I ran and checked my wallet while Connor called the grandmothers. I had two ones, and a ten. Ten bucks seemed a little steep; two seemed insufficient. I went directly to Facebook and posted to all: "What's the Tooth Fairy paying out for a first tooth these days?" Here, a smattering of the responses I quickly received:

--three gold Sacajawea dollars
--100 shares of Bear Stearns
--$5 for first teeth and/or center uppers, which are particularly exciting
--$5 plus one tube of High School Musical toothpaste

Good suggestions all. But it was 7:30 pm and I had neither shiny gold coins nor stock certificate nor glittery Crest around the house. Heck, I didn't even have a fiver. So I asked Connor, trying to appear casual.

MOMMY: What have kids at school been getting from the Tooth Fairy?
CONNOR: Ten dollars.
MOMMY: Wow! Really? Are you sure?
CONNOR: (pondering) Well. Emily got one dollar, but she also got a coloring book.

He returned a few minutes later to elaborate:

CONNOR: It was an animal coloring book. And Emily likes animals more than anything.

And more, a few minutes later:

CONNOR: I think Emily's coloring book was so good that like, the animals were almost going to COME TO LIFE, it was so good.

I certainly didn't have one of those lying around.

And so I sneaked into Connor's room last night, heart pounding lest I be discovered, retrieved the teensy tooth, and left the ten. Connor came running into our bedroom at 6:02 a.m. to show me.

CONNOR: Mom! The Tooth Fairy brought me ten dollars!

By now, I was certain that had been completely excessive.

MOMMY: Wow! That's a lot of money. That's probably just because it was your very first tooth that you lost.

And then Seamus popped his head around the doorway.

SEAMUS: Nope. It's ten dollars every time, Mommy. When am I going to lose a tooth?

Looks like I better get looking for that magical coloring book, or else I'll be out several hundred dollars by the time this is finished.

a sensitive male

If you are a fan of the Louise Bates Ames series of books on youngsters (and if you're not familiar, I recommend them), you know that Your Seven Year Old is subtitled: "Life in a Minor Key." I do not have said book at my fingertips as I write, but it explains how, once the average child turns seven, they enter a moody, taciturn (and temporary) stage where they are certain they are getting the short end of any stick.

Connor will be seven in a month and three days. Yesterday evening, at the time of day when first-grade exhaustion usually makes him weepy for one reason or another, he came to me and said he needed markers and paper to "work on something private." Off he went. Ten minutes later, he came and stuck this card in my hand:



and ran away to hide.

How cute! I thought. A little surprise for Mommy. Not sure why he didn't sign it, but whatever. Then I open the card, and this is what it says inside:



I went looking for him through the house, and finally found him hiding in the corner of the kitchen, shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs. I scooped him up into my lap, and he cried to me, for several minutes, about how he does not "get the respect he deserves" in our household, and how I pay much more attention to his two younger siblings than I do to him, and that no one, ever, is nice to him.

I decided not to argue. I decided to just hug him and let him get it all out. I have to say, I was so very proud of him. I thought of how my husband lets me know when HE is not happy, by sulking for a week or three, and how much more productive it would be, and how much more receptive I would be, if he would just make me a little greeting card with sad faces saying so. If he didn't wait for me to notice, based on his cranky behavior. This goes for me too. What if I made my husband a card with talking socks saying "We are sad when you leave us on the floor," rather than picking a fight about it every month or so? Would that not be WAY more useful? Who can resist homemade sentiment and words with facial expressions?

I hope Connor is always like this. He is my sensitive one, I tell him, and always let him know that that is a wonderful thing. Now I just have to find a way to give him more attention this week, and while my babysitter is out sick. Hmm.

the contagious ambivalence on H1N1

Yesterday my kids' school sent home a questionnaire asking parents if we would want our children to be vaccinated for the swine flu at school. This was requested by some parents after the NYC public schools offered swine flu vaccinations to all children this past week, although in the end, just less than 50% of eligible families gave permission for their children to get the vaccine.

The form my oldest came home with yesterday made no promises that the vaccine would even be made available at my children's school, just that attempts would be made, based upon the level of interest among parents. "This form needs to be returned immediately for your children to be put on the list," the school warned, and so this morning, the hallways were abuzz with mothers asking one another the same question: are you signing up, or not?

I can't remember a parenting issue about which I have seen such deep and unsettling ambivalence. I know plenty of mothers who want their kids vaccinated, and I know plenty who don't. I don't know one mother, however, who is certain that her decision is the right one. Those who fear a rushed and untested vaccine still shudder at the nightly news stories of kids on respirators. Those who want the vaccine for their children are still second-guessing themselves, wondering whether all this anti-vaccine sentiment might be worth considering.

I have been getting daily emails from a friend, warning parents against this vaccine in the most urgent language imaginable. which I have been erasing without reading because these particular emails are written by a charlatan. But that doesn't mean I think the whole argument is without merit. It doesn't mean that I'm not worrying.

Ironically, I know as many mothers who had the swine flu available, and decided against it, as I know mothers who desperately desire it for their children, and have pediatricians who cannot promise they will receive any vaccine at all.

I returned the form to my kids' school. If vaccine becomes available, I want it for my children. I think. How about you?

my tummy hurts

We came home on Halloween night with three groaning bags of candy. "Take as much as you want!" all the moms kept saying, at every door we knocked on. "I bought way too much." We came home to discover that I had also bought way too much; the bowl we had left out for trick or treaters, in our absence, was still nearly full.

This means we have, at the moment, about five pounds of candy loose in our house. And my kids are amazing about it. They each had only three pieces yesterday, and the crazy part is, they actually ASKED ME FIRST. (OK, Maggie grabbed a Dum-Dum lollipop while I wasn't looking, but she's my baby and she knows she can get away with it.) I am not totally dictatorial about what my kids eat, but we do talk a lot about making healthy choices, and I guess it's getting through to them. In another day or two, they will have forgotten about their candy stashes altogether, and we will have dodged the latest threat to juvenile obesity.

The problem is, their mother will NOT have forgotten about the candy, and I will continue to eat my way through it until I hate myself, at which point I'll give the rest to David to bring to work. I mean, I had a fun-sized Nestle Crunch bar this morning before 6 a.m. And it was fun, while I ate it, but it was not worth the morning of self-loathing I am now having. Why can't I have the same willpower I expect of my children?

I think this is a nearly universal phenomenon. I have a friend who is completely on top of every bite her four children eat. Their home is vegan and macrobiotic. On Halloween, her children come home from trick-or-treating and trade in their candy score with their mother, for gummies dyed with beet juice and dark chocolate antioxidant squares and other preservative and artificial ingredient-free choices. "And then what do you do with the other candy?" I asked my friend. She paused. "I, um, eat it," she said. "All of it. OK not all of it. A lot of it."

Am I a bad person for having convinced my three children, yesterday morning, that Almond Joys are "grownup candy that doesn't taste good to kids," so I get everything with a blue wrapper? Do you let your kids finish all their candy? Or do you, like me, do it for them?

a bloggy November

Today felt like one long hangover. Between the post-Halloween crash and rolling the clocks back so it's dark at 3:30 p.m., all five of us were cranky all day today. But here is one thing to look forward to: it's NaBloPoMo! For those of you who have never celebrated this holiday, that's short for National Blog Posting Month, and as of today, we are in it. All you have to do to take part is say that that is what you intend. Kind of like an Islamic divorce. And so I have resolved to post every day for the next month, and am actually going on record here with that resolve, which I am sure I will regret. But blogging has been such a great experience for me, such great fodder for my writing AND such a wonderful record of a time in my life that is flying by, that I hope this will help me blog more often all the time going forward. OK maybe not every day. But better than I am doing now. I'll probably post shorter things than I do now, but I tend to write such epics when I do post that that is probably, also, a good thing for my blogging style.

Halloween 2009: we had a kitty cat, a Transformer, and a rebel commando, aka "a bad guy from GI Joe," which is what Connor's friend claimed Connor's costume made him. Connor himself had no idea. This was an example of the tail wagging the proverbial dog; my son selected his costume specifically because of the giant plastic Uzi that came with it. Yes, I once banned all toy guns from our house, but time has weakened my resolve. At least half of Connor's class was either Harry Potter or Hermione, which made me wonder if all these kids were either 1) geniuses or 2) children with masochists for parents. Turns out, some of each. "Oh yeah, I've read her the first three Harry Potters," one mother said, like it was no big deal. We've been working on "Little House on the Prairie" at our house since August. Oh well. November is for daily blo po's, and December will be all about reading aloud!

maddening and vomit-inducing

You may have missed this one while you were pumpkin picking this weekend: according to the New York Times, the Disney Company, parent company of Baby Einstein, will offer refunds to any consumer disgruntled that their babies have not actually become geniuses.

"The unusual refunds appear to be a tacit admission that [the videos] did not increase infant intellect," according to the Times, and this is much to the delight of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, which had been pushing this issue for years with the Federal Trade Commission.

Let's leave aside, for the moment, the fact that the Baby Einstein videos would seem to enhance, rather than contradict, this organization's stated goal of a "commercial-free childhood," since unlike, say, the surprisingly ad-riddled PBS Kids, the Baby Einstein videos did not HAVE advertising. OK, all the DVD's did begin with somewhat annoying pitches for the videos themselves. But they weren't hawking Chuck E. Cheese or anything.

My question is, did anyone REALLY think that these videos were going to make their kids smarter? Are any of us that idiotic?And how does something that is"not educational" become, in some experts' minds, something that is actually harmful? Vicky Rideout, of the Kaiser Family Foundation, had this to say in the Times article:

My impression is that parents really believe these videos are good for their children, or at the very least, not really bad for them.

You know what? That is EXACTLY my impression. The Baby Einstein DVD's are, at the very least, not really bad for my children. Not compared to a lot of other stuff out there. And there are other marketing pitches I have much greater problems with.
But should we all storm Moose A. Moose's office because nick jr., nee Noggin, despite their cheery claims, is nothing “like preschool on TV”?

Can I take the Diaper Genie to court because I spent $109.99 on it and my baby's room still stank?

Heaven knows parents are on the receiving end of more unnecessary but slickly marketed crap than any other consumer group. (If you want to read more about that, read Pamela Paul’s excellent book, Parenting, Inc.) But I think these experts are just being silly when they suggest Baby Einstein was somehow especially fraudulent.

In fact, I am going to go on record and say that “Baby Neptune” was THE BEST $12.99 I HAVE EVER SPENT. It’s old-school (on VHS) but I keep the old VCR around at my inlaws’ house just so I can pop it in when Maggie gets up way too early, due to being in a strange bed, just like she did this past Saturday morning. And when I took a nine-hour flight with all three of my children last year, I’m not sure we would have survived without “World Animals" on repeat. Have your kids watch TV, or not; but if they are going to watch TV, they could do a lot worse than Baby Einstein. My barely two-year-old watches “Ni Hao, Kai Lan!” on my bed while I get dressed in the mornings, and it makes me want to stab my eyes out. Her brothers prefer the ultra-violent and occasionally racist “Tom and Jerry," and sometimes she manages to catch a few moments of that as well.

When my oldest was a baby, I didn’t know a mother who didn’t have a Baby Einstein video around, or a baby who didn’t enjoy them. I also didn’t know a single person who thought she was creating a future genius with these things. Whenever my kids watched one of these videos, I would be reminded of an avant-garde theater writer I studied in college named Antonin Artaud, who, in one of his texts, called for a beetle to lower itself onto the stage with “maddening, vomit-inducing slowness.” That was Baby Einstein’s pace: slow to the point of making you vomit. But my babies were transfixed. It's the idea that we parents are idiots that this mother is finding maddening. And vomit-inducing.

is shouting the new spanking?

This morning in the NY Times, an article by Hilary Stout on the new parenting taboo: yelling at your kids. Sure, we all know better than to hit our kids. But how many of us mothers yell at them? Often? And might that not be nearly as bad?

I was interviewed for this article, after the reporter read my own confessions of having Lost It right here on this blog: after one particularly yell-y Martin Luther King Day weekend, and again last spring, when I attempted to give up yelling at my kids for Lent. I yelled less. I cannot say that I yelled none, and I hope the good Lord forgave me those few transgressions.

I am a yeller. Rare is the morning that I can get my three kids and me out the door by 8:00 a.m. without yelling at one of them, for having ignored me the first eighteen times I told him to put his shoes on. Or something like that. It feels great in the moment. Effective? Kind of. Especially after you've asked nicely eighteen times. But then I look at the clock, and think, oh great, I only made it until 7:21 today, and give myself another demerit on my internal mommy report card.

What I have found to be most useful (and acceptable) is to, when necessary, raise my voice WITHOUT anger. Like I'm talking to a cartoon granny with one of those old-fashioned ear horns. After saying "What do you want for breakfast, Seamus?" six or seven times without getting a reply, I might say very loudly, "SEAMUS, WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR BREAKFAST?" If I do it without blame or anger, just volume, he looks up and calmly says "Mighty Bites" and we can all move on. (That's when things are hectic and I don't have time to keep being ignored, or to spend the next fifteen minutes continuing to ask the same question in modulated tones.)

Anyway, it's an interesting article, and raises some pertinent issues: what other disciplinary techniques do we have? Should we be troubled by our own yelling? Are there costs to our children for it?

There's only one expert opinion that made me roll my eyes: according to Dr. Ronald P. Rohner, director of the Ronald and Nancy Rohner Center for the Study of Interpersonal Acceptance and Rejection at the University of Connecticut, yelling "is a risk factor for families." A risk for what, Dr. Rohner does not say, but I am fairly certain that the MALE Dr. Rohner never stayed home with three children under five. And so I would like to conclude by quoting me, Amy Wilson, director of the Amy Wilson Center for the Study of Whiny Children and Overtaxed Mothering at the University of My Apartment:

Do the best you can. If you yell at your kids, tell them you're sorry and give them a hug. Then, try to do the best you can.


(photo taken from NYT article: Jamie Grill, Getty Images)

I cannot tell a lie

With the ongoing compression of our news cycle, I have already reached my limit on Balloon Boy before I even had a chance to post about it. I'm sure you have too, but if you haven't watched the actual moment when wee Falcon Heene blows his parents' cover on live television, it is really worth taking a look. Here's a partial transcript:

DADDY HEENE: Falcon, did you hear us calling your name out at any time?
FALCON: Mm hmm.
DADDY HEENE: You did?
MOMMY HEENE: (nodding frantically to elicit correct response) You did?
DADDY HEENE: Then why didn't you come out?
FALCON: Um. You guys said... that... um... we did this for the show.

Daddy Heene craps his pants.

DADDY HEENE: ...Yeah...
MOMMY HEENE: ...Nooo...

Even Wolf Blitzer isn't sure what to say next.

I am very happy that I did not know about these events as they were unfolding, else I would have been glued to the television, sobbing for this terrified six year old boy and his terrified parents. But I have watched the CNN cover-blowing moment about eleventeen times. I love it because it's so pure. A six year old is just not that good a liar, yet, and I can't believe his parents didn't factor that in to their maniacal schemes. Still, It's not like Falcon tells the truth out of pure, youthful innocence. He gets this devilish smirk on his face first, like, I'm going to be a naughty boy now. Of course, by blowing the whistle on the whole shenanigans, he was just the opposite. After watching the look on Falcon's face, you have to know this is a hoax, just because this kid is clearly not afraid of his parents at all, let alone afraid enough to hide from them in a crawl space for five hours.

I still don't really get what Daddy Heene thought they were going to get out of this. If the balloon landed, his kid was hiding the whole time, and the setup was never revealed, was that somehow going to be some amazing event? Not really, right? It is the unraveling, the revelation of the hoax itself, that has kept us all watching.

Of course, the really childish one here is Daddy Heene, who thought he could cry wolf and get away with it. How fortuitous, then, that his son has already internalized the example of George Washington and the cherry tree: he could not tell a lie.

back to the ol' typewriter

I am working on one more essay for my book, to replace my ruminations on Cookie magazine. I wrote most of that essay before the announcement that Cookie was going out of business, but while those thoughts are very pertinent at the moment, they will be ancient history by next spring.

So this week, I'm working on a chapter about "Mommy and Me" classes. I took Connor to eight different classes before he was two years old. Seamus, two or three. Maggie? Her babysitter takes her. I assume this is a quite ordinary progression for families with more than one children. But I am wondering if the "Mommy and Me" class landscape looms quite as large in places that are not New York City. Here, there are hundreds of offerings, many just a short walk from our door. Some are great, some are pretty lame. But what they all offer is an overpriced way for a mother and her baby to get out of their cramped, dark apartment for 45 minutes on a wintry Tuesday morning. Mothers in New York City go to tons of these classes with their babies, but we don't have yards, or basements, or dedicated playrooms. (We eventually created a playroom in our apartment, but that meant giving up a den.) We don't even have superstores to drive to and wander the aisles thereof. Mommy and Me classes are where we have to go.

So I'm wondering: where you live, are Mommy and Me classes popular? Do you go to them? Do you feel the pressure to sign up so that your baby can keep up with the rest? Do you love them or dread them?

change is bad

Today was another big day for Connor the Grader. Starting today, he will have to change out of his uniform each day and into his gym uniform for PE class. Yes, my son's school has PE every day, and once his teacher has gotten 17 first graders down three flights of stairs, into the locker rooms to change, into gym class, back into the locker rooms, sorted out 17 identical white polo shirts and 34 white socks, and straggled them back up three flights of stairs, each day, I am not sure when she will be working in the whole teach them how to read part.

Connor has had PE every day so far this year, but this post-Columbus Day week is the first day he will have to actually change into his gym uniform. And this morning, he was a wreck.

CONNOR: I don't want to GO. I don't want to WEAR a gym uniform or even GO to gym or school. (sniff)

MOMMY: Why not?

CONNOR: Or karate. I never want to go to karate again.

MOMMY: Buddy. Why not?

CONNOR: Cause I don't want to.

MOMMY: WHY NOT?

CONNOR: C-c-cause... (breaks down sobbing)

MOMMY: Sweetheart, you have to give me a reason besides you don't want to go because you don't want to go. Maybe there's something I can help you with.

CONNOR: Just let me stay home.

MOMMY: Not an option.

At this point, Connor ran to his room and threw himself on his bed, sobbing that no one in our house understood him.

Am I in big trouble? Because he's not even seven. What can I say? Transitions are very, very difficult for my sensitive oldest child, though this one seems a little ridiculous. If he were overweight, I could see some anxiety, but he's as tall and bony as all the other boys in his class. I think he's just anxious because he is a classic First Child. Which means, I guess, that it's my fault.

I managed to calm him down on the bus to school, and by the time we got there he ran in with two pals without an apparent care in the world.

"Guess what, guys!" his teacher boomed as his little gang burst into the classroom. "I've moved your desks! Today, you're all going to sit somewhere new!"

I look at Connor. His eyes widen in abject panic. Thanks a lot, Ms. B.

welcome babblers

Today, I had an article published on babble.com called Why Cookie Crumbled: the rise and fall of the unattainable and irresistible parenting magazine. As of this writing, it's right there on the home page, which is very exciting.

Let me just say that I loved Cookie magazine, really I did, despite my somewhat snarky tone in this article. It made me feel bad about myself, but I read every single issue nonetheless. Babble lopped off my article's original ending, where I admitted to having saved every back issue, and surmised that I would therefore be continuing to gorge on Cookie well into the future.

It would be nice if other parenting titles, or, say, babble, picked up some of Cookie's better features, like the sex column and the "if you have rotisserie chicken, you can make these five things" recipes. But we, as a society, might have moved beyond the $275 designer jeans, size 2T. And that is a good thing.

If you're here because of the article, welcome! I would love to hear your thoughts.

farewell, Cookie magazine

Say it ain't so, Conde Nast. As of yesterday afternoon, Cookie magazine will cease publication. This came in the same week that Noggin changed its name to Nick Jr., and it feels a little bit like losing Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson on the same day.

I had a very complicated relationship with Cookie. I was a subscriber who eagerly devoured each issue. I also found it depressing, in that the lifestyle it represented was one I never had in the first place, let alone one I could dream of reattaining now that I had three kids. But the moms in Cookie made it all look so simple, and that was the worst part. I would tell myself that if I just worked a little harder, I might be like them-- then I would remember that to be like them, nothing is supposed to seem hard. Every time I read Cookie I felt less relaxed, and then I felt even worse about myself because if I ever wanted to be a Stylish Parent, nonchalance had to come first.

How about you? Did you read Will you miss Cookie? Will you mourn the passing of the glamorous, acquisitive "new mom" that it profiled?

thanks? I think?

Readers, I am curious. How do we mothers feel about signs like these?



A teacher friend of mine (male) posted this photo on Facebook this morning, saying this made about as much sense as the "Free Speech Zone" sign at his university. Assuming that sign actually exists, I would be deeply ambivalent about it, just as I am about designated nursing mothers' areas. On the one hand, I think that they are a lovely gesture, and when I visited SeaWorld a year and a half ago, I called the room pictured here "a mother's dream."



I was out of the Orlando sun, in a clean and air-conditioned room, nursing Maggie in peace while Connor and Seamus ran their grandparents ragged. Maggie only nursed for two minutes that day, but I confess I was in that room for a good bit longer, enjoying the respite. I think there should be rooms like this for mothers at every amusement park, and you should not have to be lactating in order to gain entry, either.

On the other hand, I think that a "nursing mother's lounge" is less about a breastfeeding mother's comfort, and more about the comfort of everyone else. Please, mommy, go nurse your baby somewhere we can't see you. If breastfeeding were truly accepted in our society as it should be, there wouldn't be a need for designated boob-out areas. There aren't designated bottle-feeding areas, and I think that's because no one gets skeeved out when a mom pulls out a Dr. Brown's.

Here's what one Facebook responder to this photo had to say:

Like the Free Speech Zone, these areas are condescending and limiting in their designation. The whole U.S. should be a free speech zone, much as any chair or lounge should feel suitable for a nursing mom. Shouldn't be a question.

I totally agree with her. On the other hand, these rooms are kind of nice, as long as they're not filthy.

So I'm curious as to what you all think. Are these rooms pro-nursing? Or are they counterproductive, because they perpetuate the idea that nursing is something that should not be done in public?

I'm flip flopping

A brief note: a year and a half ago, I announced that I was going to change the names of my kids on my blog, in order to protect their privacy. They might not want their poop stories showing up on Google, I imagined.

But I have found this increasingly unsustainable. Whenever I perform, I call them by their real names, because I would just not be able to call them their fake names consistently. And when my book comes out next spring, I'm calling them by their real names, because that's how I wrote it and it seems silly to change it all now. In that case, changing their names on the blog no longer seems worthwhile.

If I really wanted to protect their privacy, I guess I wouldn't be writing about them at all.

I'm telling myself that there will be no shred of privacy left by the time they grow up anyhow, and I think I'm right, based on Maureen Orth's story in Vanity Fair this month about how the Craigslist killer was caught. (Read it for a most sobering look at how little privacy any of us have online.)

From now on, I'll be calling my kids by their real names, which are like two letters different than their fake names, so it will be easy to keep up. Sorry for the flip flop.

Why, Nickelodeon? Why?

I would not have believed it if I hadn't heard it from Moose A. Moose himself.

"Mom! Come out here! You're not going to believe this!" Cooper called, as I was getting out of the shower. I grabbed a towel and ran into my bedroom just in time to hear the end of Moose A. Moose's explanation that "Noggin" will henceforth be known as "Nick Jr."

"They're changing Noggin!" Cooper said, in utter shock. Maddie looked from her older brother to me, trying to understand the import of what was clearly an earth-shattering moment in her young life. And I almost threw up.

But hold on a sec, we might not need to panic here. This press release makes it clear that exactly nothing is changing, except the name. Moose A. Moose will still be there, singing his annoying song about how jokes are the funniest and troubles, they're the none-iest, everywhere he goes; although they're going to have to change that other one. He can't really sing with conviction that he "used his Nick Jr today."

So if nothing is changing, really they swear, except the name, why bother? According to the press release, they wanted us all to understand that Noggin's programming is part of the Nickelodeon family. Apparently a few of us weren't clear on that. I was. Before taking this drastic measure, they did try to get us all to say "Nick Jr's Noggin" for a while and that didn't really take. It could be worse. "The N," which was the teen channel spun off when Noggin went 24 hours with their programming (a day that will live forever in my fond memory), will now be called "TEENick," and "The N" was certainly a lame title but at least I can tell how I'm supposed to pronounce it.

What the Nickelodeon people probably have yet to discover is that moms liked Noggin precisely because it seemed so separate from Nickelodeon, or the Disney Channel, both of which start their annoying tween programming way too early in the day. Moms of little kids dread Nick, with its seizure-inducing cartoon pace. Moms of little kids like Noggin. As the blogosphere is making clear. I think Noggin as a brand name was more valuable than the good folks at Viacom realize. This switch might eventually help improve the negative, commercialist connotations some parents have about Nick, but they might have been better off renaming Nick "Noggin Senior."

If Noggin-- sorry, Nick Jr.-- really was as "like preschool" as they claim, they would have understood that randomly changing the name of their channel one morning, without warning, would be deeply upsetting to the preschoolers who watch-- not to mention their mothers, who count on Ni Hao Kai Lan! every morning as 22 minutes in which to apply makeup and blow dry their hair. It's all good, Kai Lan will still be around, but they sure scared me for a minute there.

Just the latest example of fixing stuff that doesn't need to be fixed, which I can say from personal experience is the raison d'etre of the broadcast television industry. Boo! Viacom, you did NOT use your noggin today.

our weekend with Chocolate Chip

This past weekend, we were scheduled to celebrate Fergus' 5th birthday on Friday afternoon, my (guess what milestone) birthday on Saturday night, and host fourteen for brunch on Sunday afternoon. Let's just say, our dance card was full, and so I couldn't believe my bad luck when Cooper greeted me at the first grade door with the news that we were also in charge of his class mascot for the weekend. I did NOT have time for this.

Mind you, this mascot is not alive. He is a stuffed bison answering to Chocolate Chip. But do not let that fool you: weekends with the class mascot are exhausting, as I learned the hard way when we hosted Penny the Pig for the weekend just this past May. You're supposed to show this stuffed animal a gay old time, and then render the memories in adorable scrapbook format by Monday morning. This is a tall order for a mother whose own family photos have been piling up on Shutterfly and in shopping bags stuffed in high cabinets since about 2003. And an even taller order for a mother who had planned to celebrate her impending mortality with a few cocktails and sleeping in the next morning.

But there Cooper was, handing me this journal, and so excited that we were the privileged family for the weekend. I am ashamed to say that I did not react in kind, at least until I opened the journal and saw the new rules, now that Cooper was in first grade:

1) the student had to do all the writing;
2) it could be as brief as three sentences;
3) drawings (by the student) were an acceptable substitute for actual photos.

If these rules had been in place in kindergarten, I'd have seventy two hours of my life back. That's not so bad, I figured. Cooper would do all the hard work! Of course, I was forgetting that getting a six and a half year old boy to sit down and write three sentences would require so much haranguing on my part I could have finished it myself eighteen times.

But I did find the end result particularly pleasing, and so here it is: our weekend with Chocolate Chip.



On Friday, Cooper's dad and grandfather were both on hand to pick up Cooper and two of his friends and deliver them to Fergus' birthday party. As you can see, this is a very long first sentence, and I had to work to whittle it down even that far. Cooper balked at writing out "Chocolate Chip," and so came up with the "c.c." nickname on his own.

Above is a photo of Chocolate Chip lying on Cooper's bed. I am sorry to say that is a quite accurate representation of where he spent the weekend. Note his horns and goatee.



Here is an example of invented spelling gone horribly awry, although I did like the idea of me not having to sit there while Cooper wrote it all. (I was putting on makeup for my own birthday party at the time). Here is a translation:

"C.C. Was Being Bad So I Had To Put Him In My Back Pack."

That's a little six and a half year old humor. Cooper came up with that on his own, as well as the idea that every single word should be capitalized. I tried to give some gentle constructive criticism on that part and brought Cooper to tears almost immediately, so I dropped it. It's very A.A. Milne, don't you think?

"On Saturday We Went Ice Skating."

This morning I brought the journal in to Cooper's teacher. "Would you like me to tell you what this says?" I asked. "No, I'm good at translating," she said, and she was, right up until this sentence. "Iies Sguadiegn" would stump the best of us, I am sure. Let's give Cooper some credit: he knows the "ing" sound, it's just that he thinks it's spelled "ign."

And then, in the last sentence, we go completely off the rails. Give it a shot on your own before reading translation below.

"On Sunday Like 11 People Came Including My Uncle Mike."

"Including" is spelled "In Cklotgn." I think I'm going to stop trying to generate humorous material and just post Connor's work from here on out.

"But cc. Just Sat On My Bed. Connor."

Strong finish wouldn't you say? Somehow he got every word in the last sentence right.

I'm thinking there is probably an interesting psychological study on why every word in the whole story got capitalized EXCEPT the ostensible subject. Poor c.c. Anyway, the rest of us had a fun weekend.