Tag: Parenting

For decades dads-to-be went golfing while their pregnant wives spent an afternoon as the honoree at a baby shower. Showers were the domain of women and it was made clear that men were not welcome in this feminine environment.

Well, the current trend may give fathers-to-be one last night out with the boys before diaper duty puts a damper on their social lives.

It is a life changing event – and not just for the mother. Men are more involved in raising their children than ever before. A dadchelor party is all about getting together with friends, knocking back a few beers, and letting off steam before the responsibility of parenthood changes leisurely weekends forever.

There are no hard and fast rules for man-showers; they are too new for that. Generally a package of diapers is exchanged for beer, often a lot of beer. A group of friends may pub crawl, spend the weekend in the city, or take in a baseball game. Generally the parties are rated PG although not always.

The dadchelor party acknowledges that a man is entering a new stage of his life. It is a modern rite of passage that can help the dad-to-be ease into the new chapter in his life.

Do keep in mind that, while dad may be blowing off steam and sowing the very last of his wild oats, what happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas. Have a great time, make lots of good memories, but don’t do anything that would rock his (or his partner’s) world the next day.

Oh, and if you are a really awesome friend?  You’ll have room service bring him hot coffee and aspirin in the morning. Don’t forget to tell them to knock quietly.

photo credit: Olof Werngren

No matter how well educated you are or what your vocabulary level is, there are phrases that you will find yourself saying that you could not imagine even thinking prior to becoming a parent. See if you identify with any of these.

1. Don’t pee in your sister’s diaper – no, I don’t care if someone was in the bathroom.
2. Yes, cats do land on their feet – usually. But they don’t like being dropped from the top of your bunk bed.
3. I know you are doing something you shouldn’t be up there. It’s too quiet.
4. No, I cannot exchange your new baby brother for a Transformer.
5. Don’t wash mommy’s cell phone in the toilet ever again.
6. I know the dog drinks from the toilet but people don’t do that. Next time use the kitchen sink.
7. Is the finger still attached? Can you see bone? O.k. Just put a bandage on it. I‘ll be home soon.
8. Please do not wiggle your fingers at me under the bathroom door.
9. Yes, I did go poop in the potty. No I do not want an M & M as a reward.
10. She ate what? What did it look like? Phew, those aren’t the poisonous kind.
11. He stuffed his peas where?
12. Don’t use your brother’s toothbrush to clean the gunk around the sink.
13. Stop breathing his air. I mean it. Breathe your own air.
14. Sit on your hands until we get home. When? Six hours.
15. Don’t ever chew gum you found under your chair again.
16. Use a sturdier box when you slide down the stairs – someone could get hurt.
17. Do not chase your sister with a booger.
18. Wipe your nose – no not on the back of my shirt!
19. Stop driving the cars over your brother when he is sleeping.
20. How did you get orange soda on the ceiling? Why was it in the squirt gun?
21. Yes, it is amazing that you can pee on the door when you are standing in the bathtub. Don’t do it again.
22. No, I am not going to have puppies. I don’t care how hard you prayed.
23. No, this isn’t a daycare – they really are all mine. Yes, by the same dad. Yes, I do watch television regularly.
24. We do not take the umbrella into the shower.
25. Get your armpit out of your sister’s face, right now.

So, what are the weirdest things you have ever said since being a parent?

photo credit: FreeLearningLife

Is there anything worse than seeing a toddler at Walmart at 2:00 in the morning, sleepy and screaming? I don’t think so. It’s the stuff horror movies are made of.

While I realize that, under extenuating circumstances, it can be necessary to snatch your child out of bed and rush to a 24 hour store for some unusual reason, it is really frustrating to see children wailing in helpless exhaustion while their parents fill the cart with beer, bologna, and canned vegetables.

So much of the time the child gets yelled at or worse, when all that really needs to happen is that the parents need to take junior home and put him to bed.

I will sound old here I’m sure, but when my children were small, parents generally had some sort of schedule and shopping was done prior to bedtime. If it was necessary to shop after bedtime then you arranged for someone to watch the baby while you headed off on your midnight quest. It wasn’t always convenient but naptimes or bedtimes were usually the priorities.

A child who is having a tantrum in a store in the middle of the night does not need discipline – she needs her bed. Not only is it distracting, irritating, and frustrating to other customers, it is unfair to the child and adds unnecessary stress to the parents.

Tired, stressed parents combined with a tired, cranky baby? Well, that’s just a Child Protective Services moment waiting to happen.

If you must take your child out to the store late at night, then be prepared to have unending patience. Realize that babies do not handle exhaustion in a reasonable manner and that tears, screams, and temper tantrums are normal, and even expected, behaviors in this situation and don’t yell or smack your child – he is merely responding to the situations in the best way he knows how.

Have you ever had to make a run to the store with an exhausted baby? What are your tips for getting through it?

photo credit: Jan Tik

While twenty-somethings may be choosing to enlarge their bust lines, women in the middle decades of their lives tend to covet the all-encompassing mommy makeover.

Eventually you will have had your final child and pregnancy will be a condition you won’t be experiencing again without the appearance of an angel, a star, and three wise men. At that point, if you are like most moms, looking in the mirror can incite the same feeling of nausea that the dissection lab in high school biology did.

Years of nursing has relocated your breasts to an area where you vaguely remember your waist being.  Your once tightly toned tummy may spill over your jeans while your thighs are dented with hail damage, orange peel skin, cellulite, or whatever you want to call it.

You are in desperate need of a mommy makeover, at least according to the media. This is a procedure, in which a plastic surgeon deftly returns your breasts to their proper upright position, tucks your trembley tummy into itself to reveal your abdominal muscles again and recreates smooth, lithe thighs in one fell swoop. It’s almost like having a fairy godmother.

There is discomfort of course – after all, you have had surgery. During your recovery time, you will probably feel a bit like a Mack truck ran over you – not as bad as six hours of back labor but worse than those sharp new baby teeth testing out your nipple while nursing. You’ll have some bruising and swelling for a time but it will clear up in a week or so.

So would you get one?

On the one hand, women are constantly bombarded with the need to look perfect, to maintain the same figure they had at 21, and to be able to easily compete with the latest Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. It isn’t realistic.

In a day when the average woman wears a size 12 to 14, that perfect size 4 body with those firm D-cup breasts attached is just not realistic for most of us. At least, it isn’t realistic without thousands of dollars worth of “work.”

On the other hand, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to look the best that they can. While we may say that we have no desire to look like a Victoria’s Secret model, the truth is that few of us would turn that down if the aforementioned fairy godmother offered the proper magic dust.

As much as women want to evolve past being judged for their looks, there is a small corner in many of our hearts that seeks to achieve the very thing we disdain – the power that comes with beauty and has been wielded by beautiful women for centuries – women from Cleopatra to Beyoncé. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, exercise just doesn’t give you the results you want.

The question remains. Would you get a mommy makeover? Is it something that you feel would enrich your life? Or, do you feel that it is just another way for society to force women into a china doll mold based on what Hollywood says is beautiful?

photo credit: Deven Laney

We’ve all gotten used to gift registries for bridal showers, weddings, and baby showers – even anniversaries – but how do you feel about parents that register their kidlets’ birthday wishes?

More and more consumers are using the convenience of their computer to buy gifts of all kinds. It is certainly convenient to be able to log on to a registry, click a few buttons, and have the gift paid for, wrapped, and sent to your home so that your child can present it to his or her friend without ever having to actually see it.

Surprise!

It makes me wonder if, despite the convenience factor, society isn’t depersonalizing relationships. In the past, when a child was invited to a birthday party the guest took a Saturday and shopped for the perfect gift, the thing that the child most wanted to get her friend. The gift was taken home, carefully wrapped, and presented.

Like Forrest Gump’s proverbial box of chocolates, you didn’t know what you were going to get.

I understand the ease of choosing from a registry. I get that it is nice to know that the birthday girl or boy will get exactly what they want. There is no time consuming search for just the right gift. It is a no-brainer.

In that convenience, you have to wonder if something isn’t lost – the lesson of receiving gifts graciously perhaps. More than that, I wonder if we aren’t smudging the definition of what a gift really is.

Gift: noun. Something bestowed without any particular effort by the recipient.  Something given in honor of an occasion.

The gifts the child wants may be above some people’s over-stretched budgets, and I am pretty sure that registries take the fun out of getting someone a gift for some of us.

So, what are your thoughts? Is signing your child up for a registry hot or not?

photo credit: Julie Rybarczyk

Our culture and our time all impact us parents. We can no more step back to the 1950s than we can prepare our children for the inevitable eyelid embedded, thought reading iPhone of the future. We live in the here and now.

And that’s a good thing. Because A) who wants to re-live the 50s, really? And B) a thought reading iPhone – yeah, right?!?

But how does our past influence our current lives, even our future? Let’s look simply at language. Yes, I’m talking specific word choice. As in ‘use your words,’ a phrase you no doubt know. Hey, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right?

What words do you use to express yourself – are they productive or unproductive to little ears? Read more…

Becoming a parent is a momentous occasion. It’s a step in life where you and your significant other take that next great leap into your future. But, there are so many unknowns and so many things that come to mind when attempting to prepare for such a journey. So what are the “must-make” decisions every parent should decide on before baby arrives? Well, as a mom of three, I have narrowed down the seemingly endless list to a manageable starting point. Read more…

When Tina Fey accepted the Mark Twain prize for American humor, she acknowledged that funny people often come from a difficult childhood or troubled family. Then she promptly looked up to her parents in the audience and said, “They are giving me the Mark Twain prize for American humor…what did you animals do to me?”

And then she sorta let it slip that it was a good time to tell them she’d be putting them in a home.

So tread lightly here…just joking! Read more…

What if the secret to success is failure? That was the question the New York Times posed at the beginning of the school year last year and I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

The article is about character, about children learning and practicing ‘good character.’ It’s also about teachers (and in some respects parents) teaching and measuring good character.

For me, until now, good character was sort of like Read more…

I used to think that the definition of insanity was doing things over and over and expecting a different result. Come to find out I was wrong. Actually, it’s the definition of parenting.

See, I keep having these expectations. That’s my down fall. I expect in terms of outcomes. I expect that my older daughter will sit properly in her chair and eat her food with her fork and knife. She’s 4. She knows how to do this. Or I expect that she’ll get dressed – in her clothes, NOT her pjs or her baby sister’s clothes or her tutu costume – in the morning. Without being reminded umpteen times.

And yet so clearly I see my role in this. I remind her (read: nag) many times giving her the opportunity (!) to correct her behavior. She’s 4. She should want to please me. She should want to show me how capable she is. Right? Right? Read more…

With so many demands on our time, it’s hard to reconcile that we just can’t do it all. I’m not an over-achiever to be sure. I like my television and my couch way too much to be called that.

However, I find myself on this treadmill of parenthood that both energizes and exhausts me. While I want to be the best parent I can, I often find that good enough will do, too.

Like, for instance, dinner. I love to cook. Really, I’m not joking. It neither scares me nor bothers me like I know it does to some women (or men). For me, cooking is a chance to unleash my pent up creativity because reading the same book to my tot 10,000 times does quite a number on my brain, thank you very much. At dinner time I yearn to lean over bubbling pots, sticking my wooden spoon in, swirling then tasting.

Yet I just can’t make it happen as often as I’d like so I’m learning that good enough dinner is OK. Instead of a roast pork loin with truffled oil and Parmesan gnocchi, I’ll settle for a store bought roast chicken, frozen ravioli and a homemade butter cream sauce. It’s still yummy and it takes 15 minutes to assemble and serve. Good enough.

I’ve heard that perfection is the enemy of productivity and I think parental aspirations of being, if not the perfect, then the best mom hinders the enjoyment of parenthood. Being “the best” takes so much effort while being good enough is easy. Hopefully my girls will understand in the long run because being good enough allows me to relax into my role as mother and not be so damn anxious about it. And an anxious mommy is not a fun mommy, lemme tell ya.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating slacker parenting, I’m just saying that loosening your grip may lead to a happier family. I know it has for me. The dinner will be served, the dishes will get cleaned, the clothes will get washed (if not actually put away)…eventually. Maybe I can even get a workout or two in…maybe.

photo credit: DaizyB

While nearly every parent would deny it, a startling new study by researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada shows that parents don’t treat their children the same. They found that the attractiveness of the child makes a huge difference.

Researchers observed how often parents strapped their kids into a grocery cart seat, how often the parent’s attention lapsed, and how many times the kids were allowed to stand up in the cart. The differences between attractive kids and homely ones was stark.

If a woman was in charge, 4 percent of the homeliest kids were strapped in compared to over 13 percent of the attractive ones. It got even worse when the dads were leading the shopping: none of the least attractive children were strapped in versus 12.5 of the cuties were.

The less attractive kids were also allowed to wander out of sight more often than the pretty ones. The findings were made by observing 400 families in 14 supermarkets.

Dr. W. Andrew Harrell, executive director of the Population Research Laboratory at the University of Alberta speculates that evolution plays a role in the findings. Parents may unconsciously view pretty children as their best genetic legacy and give them more care as a result.

[via New York Times]

photo credit: Kent Ng.

You may already know this. In fact, I might just be the last mom on the planet to know this, but now that I know, I can’t help but share. OxiClean is the best damn invention since sliced bread. I’m usually wary of any product hocked through late night infomercials, but I have to admit it – this stuff really works!

I found out recently at my mom’s house, of all places. Why she never clued me in before, I don’t know. We were doing laundry together (not something we normally do) and she put the OxiClean in.

I said, “Mom, I already put detergent in,” like, duh, you saw me since you were standing right there! Ahh, the special relationship between a mother a daughter. She explained that OxiClean “helped” the detergent get the stains out and I was all, “yeah, right,” if not physically then mentally rolling my eyes.

Lo and behold – all those stains – gone. Out. Vanished. No bleach, no faded colors. It’s truly amazing stuff.

One last example that’s probably gross, but every mom either has or will encounter this problem. Throw-up. Vomit on the sheets. Nice, soaked in puke, smelling like well, you know. This happened the other night – the wee one tossed her cookies during the night. I didn’t get to the sheets till morning, well, OK the afternoon the next day and they stank.

Normally, I’d have to run them through the washer a few times to really get the smell out but I poured in some OxiClean the first go round and guess what – they came out not only looking clean, but smelling fresh! I tell you, I’m hooked.