May
10
May 10, 2006
Somebody found their way to this site by searching for “my child is eight months and not crawling”. Hey, same here, Mystery Googler! But fear not, for every child develops at their own pace, and soon enough both you and I will wonder what we did with all that free time before Junior started slithering around the house and tongue-probing open electrical sockets.
It’s sort of hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that Riley will be independently ambulatory at some point, I suppose it’s a reluctance on my part to picture him as a toddler instead of a baby…a deliciously soft, sweet-smelling, tiny…little…
Well! Pardon me while I sob brokenly into my shirtsleeve for a moment, here. Ahh, that’s better. Nothing like the emotional dichotomy of awaiting all new stages with breathless excitement while simultaneously mourning each passing moment, you know? I can’t wait for Riley to learn more and do more; I can’t stand the thought that he’s growing older by the nanosecond! Ha ha haaa, I’m going CRAZY!
(Crazy like a fox.)
(What?)
(I don’t know. Let’s move on.)
Watching the video Kristin posted of her ridiculously adorable Nolan doing his hilarious version of crawling actually briefly melted all of the connective tissue in my body with its awesomeness. I hope Riley busts some kind of cool-ass move like that, because that would be even better than American Idol.
Well, except for the Chris Daughtry songs. Sorry, Riley, but if it’s a question of sharing the magical experience of my firstborn child tackling a developmental milestone or watching Chris sing “A Little Less Conversation”, you’ll just have to do it again during the commercial break. Maybe if you had a wallet chain mommy would love you just a little bit more.
(9:47 PM update: Noooooo! WHY GOD WHY?)
I’m told that when I was little I didn’t crawl, but rather motored around by ‘walking’ on all fours, which seems highly advanced and probably indicative of incipient genius on my part – unfortunately for a while I also fell a lot but never put my hands out, thus constantly smashing facefirst into things and no doubt knocking all the gifted neurons into a permanently unused portion of my brain, along with my future ability to understand that microwaving a cup made of both metal and plastic is not a good idea. So here’s hoping Riley got an extra dipper from JB’s gene pool when it comes to early locomotion.
:::
In all the flurry of preparing for our weekend trip to Victoria – washing clothes, assembling all of Riley’s necessities, making reservations – I completely forgot all about Dog until this afternoon, when I placed a frantic and guilty call to the vet to see if she could be boarded. Thankfully there is room, but O how the mighty have fallen; Dog, who used to be top Dog in this household, now slipped somewhere below the laundry in terms of importance.
Tonight, to partially make amends for both my forgetfulness and her upcoming kennel stay, I allowed her to eat the leftovers from our dinner, which included some slow-cooked beans. I’m not sure if dogs are truly capable of revenge, but as a result of the mortiferous aroma that’s been wafting gently in my direction ever since, I think it’s safe to say that for now, Dog is pretty much first and foremost on my mind.
(“Forget about me, will you? Fine, I’ll gas you out AND dig in your garden.”)
May
10
May 10, 2006
I recently received an email that read “Demand a CEASEFIRE in the ‘Mommy Wars’ this MOTHERS day!”
Normally I tend to delete emails that yell at me in ALL CAPS, but I opened this one, which informed me that I should eliminate the headline grabbing media fiction designed to divide women, and tell the heads of CBS, NBC, and ABC to move beyond the false rhetoric of the MOMMY WARS. I could do all this by signing a petition, apparently.
I don’t know anything about the organizing group other than what I skimmed on their website, but my personal feeling is that I don’t see what possible good it does to send a petition to ABC to “denounce mommy wars jargon”.
If the so-called mommy wars are loosely defined as the political and social clashes over parenting choices such as working outside the home or not, that’s not something that was created by the media. It’s just not that simple. I applaud the noble notion that all of us mothers are banding together to collectively say that hey, all this stuff about us disagreeing over each other’s choices, it’s bullshit! Quit talking about it because it’s not true! – it would be great if I actually believed it.
It’s not just the choice to stay home or work, everything is up for grabs in the world of raising children and people attack each over all kinds of issues. There are loaded topics that almost guarantee a volatile response if you state a preference on the matter: La Leche League, Bugaboo strollers, cry it out sleep theory, practically anything Dooce allows comments on.
Who are we kidding by telling ourselves this is a fictional conspiracy dreamed up in order to boost ratings?
The word war is clearly a load of rich, creamy hyperbole, but are mothers uniformly supporting each other’s decisions and respecting individual situations? Of course not.
Caring for a child is such a terrifying endeavor because the stakes are so high. We put so much energy and focus and fear and hope into the choices we make for our children, how is it any surprise that given the diversity of parenting options that we are sometimes at odds with each other? How is it anything other than a basic human instinct to disagree over that which we feel most strongly about?
It might be nice if we could say “stop running news segments on subject X” and it would make the problem go away, but to me this seems like putting our heads in the sand and waving a pointing finger in any direction other than ourselves.
If someone publishes a book about how women are throwing away everything feminism has done for them by choosing to stay home with their child, or a book about how women have abandoned family values in pursuit of material gain, of course something like that’s going to get a bunch of media attention; either subject is going to piss a shitload of people off. Should I sign a petition to ban controversy? Should I demand that my thinking never be challenged by being presented with a different point of view?
I think the term “mommy wars” is about as charming as a sidewalk loogie, but the social conflicts are real. As mothers we have to navigate the murky waters of trying to find the best solutions for our families by coming to terms with our personal needs (or setting them aside for a while) within the fundamental confines of our situations, and the truth is, people judge us for the decisions we make. As hard as those decisions are, and even though we make them with only good intentions, we still have to deal with criticism. It happens all the time. NBC didn’t tell me I had the wrong values for choosing daycare, another mommy did.
At the end of the day, each of us has to take responsibility for what we believe and the actions we take. Advocating for women to sign a petition that deflects blame rather than meet these issues head on doesn’t seem to do us any favors.
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