Aug
3
After a bunch of hemming and hawing, I finally decided to say goodbye to ParentDish. Considering our increased household expenses (groceries! gas! Similac with Iron, which is apparently manufactured from pulverized Hope Diamond, uncut cocaine, and space meteorite particles, based on the per-ounce cost!), I worried that it would be irresponsible to give up any paying gig right now, but after listening to some of your feedback and thinking on things for a while it felt like the right thing to do. It wasn’t so much that the occasional negative comments directed at me were too difficult to deal with (although I won’t lie, they sometimes lingered in my brain for hours after reading them), it bothered me more that the environment can be so consistently hostile over there, about every ridiculous topic you can possibly think of, and being a part of the conversation was starting to feel like supporting a perpetually angry mob, their pointy rocks and Caps Lock keys aimed to fire at whoever crossed their path. It felt icky to ask you to join me there. It felt icky that I was sharing stories about the most important part of my life there. And the job was taking the subject that gives me the most joy to write about and making it an unpleasant, often unrewarding chore.
Despite how it sounds, it’s not true that I only have bad things to say about ParentDish. Writing for PD was like therapy while I was on maternity leave and tasked with churning out two posts a day — it was a lot of work, but helped me maintain a feeling of having accomplished some little thing (ANYTHING) other than the endless cycle of feedings, laundry, and cleanup in the early days after Dylan was born. There are a group of insanely talented writers working for that website (whether or not you enjoy reading celebrity stories or news items, consider the effort it takes to constantly search and report with skill on these topics, often without about five minutes’ lead time), the editors I’ve worked with have been unbelievably awesome, and there really are a ton of smart, cool, friendly people reading, fellow parents I wish lived down the block from me so I could stagger over with my kids in order to bleat over their fences: HELP HELP NEED ADULT COMPANY IMMEDIATELY ALSO CHOCOLATE.
I don’t know if there is a way to drive ParentDish towards developing a more positive environment without, at the very least, enforcing some comment moderation guidelines, but it would be nice to see it happen someday. There are missed opportunities when a community becomes so, well, cannibalistic, you know?
Okay, jesus, more than you ever wanted to hear on the subject I’m SURE, so anyway, how was your weekend? Mine was fairly vigorous: JB’s birthday, visiting grandparents, roseola-inflicted toddler, succumbing-to-another-mucusy-illness-just-as-we’re-wrapping-up-the-fucking-10-days-of-amoxicilin baby, a lengthy meandering train of thought which led me to this (that video is so totally why JB and I have been saying “WTF mate?” for about 5 years now).
Birthday presents with the inevitable zombie invasion in mind. WHAT?
Cake preparation, with extra contagious saliva.
Suspicious damn kids.
Random cute baby photo, because SMOOOOOOOOSH.
Jul
29
Riley had a bad day yesterday, the details of which were fuzzy but seemed related to the two accidents he had at daycare, one resulting in a pair of underwear that came home in a sealed plastic bag and went directly in the trash if you know what I’m saying and I think you do. On the occasions when he’s had an accident at home there have been a lot of frantic tears and panicky upset and most heartbreaking of all, the stuttery claim that he’s SORRY (dear god), and we’ve immediately swept in with Parental Damage Control, soothing and doling out hugs and reminding him that having accidents is okay, all kids have accidents, it’s totally no big deal, etc, and I don’t know precisely what happened at school but he confessed something to JB about how he “couldn’t stop crying for Daddy” and ohhh, it’s not often that I feel like Riley’s school situation is anything but positive, but this morning, as he leaned against me and said he wanted to stay home with Mommy today, I felt like one of the Spartan mothers from 300. You know, where they send their little boys off to fight wolves and shit, and maybe they survive to become great warriors but maybe instead they are simply devoured in one bite like toddler-shaped Slim Jims? Look, I know it’s not exactly the same, but I think we can all agree that sometimes school environments are every bit as traumatic as battling flint-eyed wolves in the snow. Especially when sometimes you have yourself a little bathroom break and whoops, the built-in toilet that’s previously been attached to your butt is no longer there.
While I was helping him get dressed this morning he kept getting his foot stuck in his pants, then putting both feet into the same leghole, then starting to walk off while I was trying to button the waistband, and I was bent over uncomfortably and the whole time Dylan was blatting endlessly from his chair in the kitchen and I finally barked in Riley’s face, “JUST! GET! YOUR! DAMN! PANTS! ON!” or something equally gentle and maternal. Because it wasn’t bad enough that he was feeling skittish about going back to school today, I had to go and yell at him for no good reason too. Go me.
(There is nothing in the world like the feeling that you have done less by your child than you should have. Even if it’s for a small thing, a blip on the radar screen that surely won’t be remembered, it settles onto your parental soul and digs in. These transgressions seem different to me than other embarrassments or regrettable actions we all accrue in life, because they can’t be buried or dismissed — they require that you look them in the eye and see your reflection for what it was in that moment, acknowledge it and vow to do better. A good thing, surely, but much better to avoid the process altogether.)
I had thought that potty training might be made easier by his part-time daycare attendance, but maybe not. Those of you who have been in similar situations, do you have any tips? He’s armed with multiple changes of clothes and diapers for naptimes, and his teachers seem patient and willing to remind him about breaks — anything else we should be doing?
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