Elf on Shelf Might as Well Be Chucky

These dolls are essentially the same thing to me.

Not just no, but hell no.

I am not a fan of the Elf on the Shelf. I cringe whenever friends post pictures on social media of where the little doll -- of the literary version or some other similar incarnation -- moved upon its own volition throughout their homes.

I am a fan of childhood mystery and magic. I am a fan of holiday tradition. I'm just not a fan of dolls that move. Not since the movie "Child's Play."

More campy than creepy now, that stupid serial killer doll Chucky made me rather anxious in my adolescence. Dolls were my most favorite toy growing up, and several dolls and stuffed animals were still hanging around my room as fond reminders when I first saw the film in the late '80s.

A possessed doll isn't really groundbreaking in the terror genre, but it remains a thread in storytelling because what could possibly be worse than an object intended for joy to turn into something dreadful, particularly when it belongs to a child?

I developed an abject fear of any stuffed thing with eyes and limbs suddenly coming to life at night and hacking me to pieces as I lay in my bed.

I'm sure I've given my sons enough terror in their lives and reasons for therapy. I don't need to add to the mix dolls that apparently got up on their own two legs and climbed up a bookshelf or crept into the cereal box or tangled themselves into a strand of Christmas lights.

'We Deserve to See a Range'

I cried for three days when I found out I was going to have another boy. Now I can't imagine my life without Max in it, but boy oh boy did I want a girl.

I love the idea of seeing what kind of mother of a daughter I'd be after being the daughter of my mother. I also love the hair bows and the frilly dresses, the dolls and the sparkles, the girly girl stuff in all of its forms.

But I know there are varied, wonderful dimensions to being a girl. I happen to have some of them. A pink princess castle isn't the only part. Hell, it doesn't need to be a part at all.

Frankly, castles should be gray. A little reality doesn't hurt any girl. Boys get castle sets that resemble real stone, so why does a girl's castle toy have to be pink? It's more of the same conspiracy to label girls as the "weaker" sex that is stamped right on their diapers. (See "The Cheese Stands Alone" blog post.)

Toy company GoldieBlox, which makes interactive books and games, is doing its very best to combat this nonsense and encourage girls to play with science and engineering concepts. (See Slate.com article.) Even better, it set a commercial of girls using all of that pink plastic crap as the world's biggest Mousetrap game to a Beastie Boys tune. I just so happened to have a little love affair with them when I was growing up.

That's not very pink and frilly at all. But they did inspire an awesome lullaby, "No Sleep till Boobie." (See "Max's Anthem" blog post.)

Operation Save Classic Games

At least most retailers restrained themselves until the clock struck midnight on Halloween, but the beginning of this month unleashed the full Christmas marketing torrent.

I love, love, love Christmas. I look forward to decorating my house all year, but I don't do it until after Thanksgiving. That holiday deserves its own feast and festivities.

I do my best to avoid the rampant commercialism that heralds the coming of the prince of peace. (No, the irony is not lost on me.) But I'm not always quick enough to mute the commercials between the few TV programs my toddler watches.

There are about four blog posts in this introduction alone, and I'll probably get to all of them at some point. What I want to write about today is one of the toys I heard advertised in those commercials.

Hasbro was hocking its games, including Operation. I about needed one myself when the announcer happily proclaimed that the pieces were "now easier to remove!!!"

What the hell? Isn't that the absolute point of this game?

My grandmother had the classic version, preserved since it first came out in the 1960s. We played with it constantly as kids, jumping every time our little metal tweezers made contact with the exposed metal border of the various anatomical parts the player is to remove.

There probably was a significant electrocution risk, but we played it like it was designed to be played: tough.

Operation back then taught us to be careful, patient and persevering. Operation today will teach kids that everything is easy and handed to them on a silver platter.

And we wonder why kids can be such pains in the Adam's apple.

The piece that desperately needs to be removed from parents' brains is that unfortunate desire to make things easier for their children. That won't make an experience more enjoyable. It just will heighten children's disappointment in all things and will erode their self-confidence and creativity. And yet Hasbro has caved to get their money.

Childhood isn't complete without a little zap now and again.

Neither Snow, Nor Rain, Nor Heat, Nor Gloom of Night

There was a blizzard yesterday, but not the snowy kind of my childhood that prompted us to wear thermal leggings under our Halloween costumes and parkas over them.

It was a social media storm, conducted by pleading parents and a few school board candidates mere days away from the election. Heavy rain and wind were in the forecast, and communities all over northwest Ohio started postponing trick-or-treat times.

Some did it earlier in the week, while other officials tried waiting as long as possible to see if the weather would cooperate. But once a few communities started switching dates, the rest fell like dominoes -- even those with long-standing traditions of Oct. 31, rain or shine.

It is apparent that many bended not to Mother Nature but to Mother Next Door.

I get it. No one wants to be outdoors in that kind of weather, let alone shepherding kids dressed as dinosaurs and superheros and spooky creatures. And there was the danger of cars losing traction on wet, leaf-strewn streets and plowing into crowds of candy-collectors. Because that happens all the time.

What no one really wanted was a kid dressed as Iron Man writhing on the kitchen floor in a full-blown tantrum that he didn't get to go trick-or-treating this year when his parent determined the weather was too inclement.

First, it would have needed to be an active tornado warning for parents of yesteryear (like mine) to even consider not letting us go out on Halloween night. We might not go far or for very long, but we all bundled up and got a few blocks covered. We'd dutifully unzip our coats when neighbors asked, "Well, what are you supposed to be, sweetie?" Hell, most of the time we incorporated boots and gloves into our costumes just to be prepared. It's the end of October in northwest Ohio. It's gonna be crappy weather most years.

Second, if I had thrown such a fit, my parents never would have let me trick-or-treat again. It just wasn't acceptable, but particularly to be that dismayed about an annual event, one at which we'd get another shot the next year. This was the same for Fourth of July. Fireworks were on July 4 only, and there weren't even displays every week at the baseball game like there are now. If it rained, the show got canceled and you waited until next year.

This was crucial development for us on how to handle disappointment. Parents today seem much less willing to deal with this admittedly hard part of raising a child. They hover over their kids and fix every little trial that comes their way. They're reordering days of the year, for heaven's sake.

I know several amazing, clever, thoughtful, dutiful parents with smart, respectful, playful children who wanted trick-or-treat times to be rescheduled around the weather forecast. This alone certainly doesn't make for a parenting failure. But it is a disturbing trend nonetheless.

If the weather turns sour next Halloween, I encourage you to get more creative about how you will handle it. A neighbor of mine throws a party every year for his children and their friends, and he arranges for them to trick-or-treat on our street at a certain time. (He and his wife even offer to supply the candy.) You and your neighbors could always do this among yourselves.

Check around your communities for shopping malls and churches who offer indoor trick-or-treating for a Plan B. You might find it a happy alternative on most years.

Or stay home and make a night of it. Throw an impromptu Halloween parade around your house, banging on pots and pans. Hide all the candy you were going to pass out around your house and have a scavenger hunt, with all the lamps off and using flashlights. Play games, make paper plate masks, read books, watch "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown."

Resist the urge to call your town hall and demand an official change in trick-or-treat times. You'll be setting a much better example for your kids.

Let's Pretend Caillou Gets Canceled

I'm about to join the legions of parents who express a deep and abiding hatred for the cartoon character Caillou.

My hairless baby unfortunately looked a lot like him, although we mostly got Charlie Brown references, thankfully. But why is Caillou hairless? He's like 4. Does he have cancer? Lice? A lazy artist?

No, insists publisher Chouette, from whose books PBS made the titular series. Caillou -- pronounced "ki-YU" -- is bald so that he can relate to all youth. According to Chouette's website:

"Caillou stands for all children. He doesn’t have curly blond hair, a carrot-top, brown hair, glasses, or ethnic features, because he represents all children. We wanted to make Caillou universal so every child could identify with him. And they do! Caillou’s baldness may make him different, but we hope it’s helping children understand that being different isn’t just okay, it’s normal."

Give me a break, Caillou is NOT representative of any other kid than a lily white one. He has parents with Caucasian skin, mousy brown hair and schlumpy clothes, and a little sister with plenty of orange hair. It's sort of creepy, in a vague, break-away religious cult kind of way.

And he is such a whiny brat of a boy. His incessant, plaintive dialogue is made all the more irritating by the high-pitched, nails-on-a-chalkboard sound that comes out of his mouth.

The narrator rubs me the wrong way too. She's always so very impressed with Caillou's antics, whereas I just want to tell him to shut the hell up and go sit in his room and read a book.

Even when raised in the most supportive, cognitively developed way, no child is going to pick Caillou when asked which cartoon character is most like him or her.

The PBS website claims that the show has evolved since the days I first suffered through it with Gabe. There seems to be a big focus on playing make-believe and building self-esteem and cultivating a child's imagination.

Are there children out there who are not imaginative? Is this a skill that has to be taught? Are we doing something that squelches imagination in children? I think Max will be fine without this show.

And besides, the new synopsis raises a red flag for me:

"Like other children, Caillou spruces up reality with a healthy dose of imagination. Each episode begins with an everyday event from Caillou's life that, through his mind's eye, quickly turns into a fantastic and larger-than-life adventure."

Hmm. I don't think I want my child concentrating that much on removing himself from reality all the time. I loved, loved, loved "The Neverending Story," but this show's premise just sounds like an early exposure to mental illness.

The Cheese Stands Alone

Sexism starts early in life.

I clad my baby in a brand of diapers that are adorned with cartoon characters. I use this brand because it offers decent leak protection and a nice little rewards program that lets me donate diapers to others.

These diapers are unisex. Some brands have a color-coded differentiation for boys and girls, which I find unfortunate. Can we give their genitals some time to actually develop before we cover them in pink and blue? Excuse me, pink OR blue.

But my brand may be worse. My brand isn't just telling babies that boys and girls are different, these diapers implicitly state that boys are better than girls.

The male cartoon characters are sometimes featured solo on the diaper, but the female characters appear only with their respective male partner or in a group. They never get to stand on their own.

It's fine for a baby girl to have Mickey Mouse smiling over her hooha, but it would be intolerable for a baby boy to wear a diaper with Minnie Mouse batting her eyelashes right over his pee-pee. Right?

No, this isn't right. This is how we indoctrinate our children right from the beginning that boys are supposed to be strong and independent and girls are supposed to be supportive and cooperative. Those all are good things to be, certainly, but when we start parsing them out on a gender basis we make the dividing line thicker and more damaging than it needs to be.

What's most troubling to me is that it's OK for a girl to wear boy things but not OK for a boy to wear girl things. Girls in overalls are cute but boys in a tutu are unacceptable.

Let's be quite clear: It's unacceptable not because it's just different but because it lessens the boy, it sucks away his manhood, it turns him into a weak girl. If a girl wants to step up and play with the big boys, that's admirable. But for a boy to parade around in a Minnie Mouse diaper would be an anathema.

I like it that girls and boys are different. I celebrate many of those differences in my womanhood, and I honor many of those differences in the manhood of my husband, male family members and other men I know. But none of those elements are harmful to the other person, none rob the other of basic personhood.

It boils down to girls being inferior to boys. When girls wear boy clothes, it's as if they are bettering themselves into being boys. When boys wear girl clothes, it's as if they are lowering themselves into being girls. It's acceptable for a girl to be like a boy because that is the ultimate way of being a person. It's unacceptable for a boy to be like a girl because that is giving up the best for just OK.

Damn shame, really. I'm kind of glad whenever Max poops all over it.

One Rotten Sugar Plum at 'Nutcracker'

With a 7-month-old baby and a 16-year-old teenager in our family, the holidays are an interesting spectrum of joy.

We're celebrating all of Max's "first" moments while we're encouraging Gabe to begin appreciating the traditions from a cultured adult perspective. And like all parenting moments, there are a few exasperated sighs mixed in with all of the laughter and smiles.

On Saturday night, we took Gabe to the Toledo Ballet's performance of "The Nutcracker" at the Stranahan Theater. Dan helped him tie his necktie and advised him on when to button and unbutton his sports coat, and he got more practice at holding open doors for his mother. Gabe agreed to pose with me and a dancer dressed as the titular character with an amazing lack of I'm-too-cool-for-that attitude.

The performance was stunning. Dan especially liked the well-choreographed opening scenes, and Mary Carmen Catoya as the Snow Queen was a marvel. The clever stage trick of "flying" the young angels was a nice touch, and 101.5 morning host Rick Woodell was hysterical as Mother Ginger. The show was a lovely mix of traditional en pointe and innovative gymnastics.

Now, here's the downer. I understand "The Nutcracker" is a magnet for families with young children. It's a fantastic children's story, after all. And with the amount of children in the cast, it's likely that a third of the audience were relatives. I actually enjoyed the occasional exclamation of amazement, a question about why a character was doing something, or even a plaintive request to be boosted for a better view.

What I could not tolerate was the running commentary of the little girl seated behind me. She apparently was familiar with the show and had to announce every scene with precocious authority, as well as complain when things weren't happening fast enough for her. She was sitting with her Nana, who deserves her own scolding for engaging this child in casual conversation throughout the entire performance.

I know the difference between children who have age-appropriate attention spans or even other challenges that mean they don't have the same aptitudes or social skills of typical children, and children who are badly behaved brats. First clue is that the little urchin kept wedging her patent leather-encased foot between the seat and back of my chair, poking me right in my behind even after I twice shoved her foot away with my hand. Second clue is that she asked her grandmother to tell her the time, repeatedly and at a moment Nana was busy, and when she was told she did not say thank you but instead replied, "Well, why did I have to ask you eight times?"

At that point my son's jaw dropped and he exchanged a look with me that pretty much confirmed we both knew he would be mangled if he ever spoke to me like that.

A very young girl next to us played with her stuffed kitty and cuddled into the seat when she got tired. Two lovely girls sitting in front of us politely engaged with us when their dad was telling us about seeing a man propose to a woman out in the lobby. An entire gaggle of children nearby sat in their bow ties and frilly dresses and simply enjoyed the ballet.

People, please teach your children some decorum if you are going to take them to the theater. It's never too early -- or too late. Nana and her rotten sugar plum have their work cut out for them, though.

How about Little Girls Go as Little Girls

Some costumes for sale at a local grocery store.

Maybe I am getting old. But not so old that I can't remember that when I was a young girl, I dressed up as Casper the Friendly Ghost for Halloween.

These days, girls are apparently dressing as Candy the Slutty Ghost.

If not some ridiculously pink and frilly princess, girls have few options from purchased costumes that aren't a miniature adult version of what a woman would wear to a Halloween party with the singular goal of getting laid.

Is it too much to ask that a vampire costume for a girl not include a red lace corset? Or a devil costume to include pants?

It's an adult concept that sex is part of the whole dark fantasy of a creature who can suck the life out of you, or that lust is a sin that can undo the saintliest of saints.

It's scary that young girls are parading around in these concepts and getting Snickers and suckers.

This makes me an old fuddy duddy, right? I suppose I'm rather fortunate that I have boys. Else I'd be spending all night on Oct. 30 trying to make a homemade costume appropriate for a young girl.

To Work or Not to Work, That Is the Question

I'm out of writing juice.

My new reporting job is sucking it out of me. It's also being rather gluttonous with my emotional and physical well-being.

I sent some videos of baby Max to his daddy out to sea, and they inspired him to protect what he could see as the results of a good, strong mother-son relationship. He said that I could quit my job and that he would keep working hard to support all of us.

To say I was relieved would be an understatement. On "E" in my articulation tank, I can't adequately describe what I felt to have been given that gift. It's something for which I had been praying about six months into my pregnancy, and now Max is almost 5 months old.

I also have no words for how difficult it has been to consider really quitting my job.

Lots of people are telling me lots of different things, which is turning my brain into utter mush and spurring my already manic tendencies. My bosses are begging me to stay and insisting that I just need to give it more time to feel settled and qualified in this beat. My mother is dead-set against me giving up a career for which I've paid so many dues.

I think my boys are leaning toward me quitting. My teenager Gabe found the most gentle way he could to tell me that I've been a raging bitch the past several weeks. Max just clamors to be nursed more often.

My identity has been wrapped up in newspaper for so long that it is far more challenging to jettison it than I ever had imagined. I have clear pictures in my mind of what kind of mother, wife, daughter, sister, cousin, auntie, friend, and community member I could be without the stress of a professional job. But I go back and forth several times a day.

My litmus test has become: "Do I really need this kind of bullshit in my life?"

The question is easily answered with a resounding "hell no" upon cranky emails from coworkers, standing in the damn rain at assignments, or typing a story with one hand while the other hand is desperately trying to guide a boob into a screaming baby's mouth.

Yet these "well maybe" answers keep creeping in. A story, typed with one or two hands, sometimes turns out really well, and it's hard not to be proud of it. A reader will thank me, or I make a really interesting new acquaintance. Suddenly laundry and bottle washing don't seem that glamorous, or even necessary.

I have more than 100 pairs of shoes in my closet, and I haven't found the walking ones just quite yet.

Just a Little off the Top

A freshly trimmed Gabe holds brother Max, while his cousin Maddie
waits for her magic foil to put pretty blonde streaks in her hair.

Many, many birds will be killed if I bother to pick up a stone. It's a chief attribute of a multitasker.

It was frustrating at the beginning of Max's babyhood to be limited to one little task spread over hours. He and I have figured out much better strategies now, and I'm getting a bit more rest, so I can tackle bigger projects.

My latest was wrangling three appointments at the salon. My roots were showing something fierce, Gabe had become a shaggy monster, and niece Maddie had been promised a proper highlighting for her birthday present.

It's always worth the 45-minute drive to the community where I previously lived so that we can receive these services from friend and stylist Shella. If I ever pop into a more local salon for a quick fix, I get tons of compliments on her work. And I wanted Maddie to have the best blonde streaks my money could buy.

Gabe gets great cuts at an old-fashioned barber house in this same community (he goes when he visits his dad and stepmother when he is in town with them) but logistics required him to join us in the house of estrogen. And I needed him to watch his baby brother.

On that score, Gabe did a most amazing job. Max took a nice long nap on his lap, and he was entertained so well the rest of his awake time that he never cried once.

As far as Gabe's head, though, he had to get it screwed back on after I chewed it off.

Shella had arranged for another stylist to cut his hair while she started on Maddie, and this woman gave Gabe a nice trim. But in my opinion, his thick, wavy locks needed more shearing for the summer. Leave it like that and he'd have to be right back in the barber chair two weeks later. That's a waste of my money.

All I said, though, was that I thought it needed to be a little shorter (like he gets at his barber, which I asked him to do the last time he was in town but that didn't happen). The stylist started telling me that it was what Gabe had asked for, so I told Gabe the same thing. "It would be good to get it cut shorter now, buddy."

"It's fine," he said.

Hmpf.

I explained that with as much as he was working on the farm repairing the garage roof, he would be cooler. I added that he would look more presentable with less shag when it grows out in a week. And still a second "it's fine" passed his lips. I tried the old evil eye, but it must have been out of order. He was willing to get out of the chair like he was. I persisted, and he resisted. The stylist spoke some sort of words that seemed to defend Gabe, and I had to get a little short with her to insist that in this moment I was calling the shots.

And so his hair got shorter.

Now, before you think this is a battle of aesthetics between a mother and a teenager, let me assure you that it is not. Gabe is a lot like me. He wants everyone else to be happy and comfortable. Hell, he may even remember me telling a stylist that my terrible haircut was "fine" only to go to someone else the next day for a rescue. He was not defending his desire to look a certain way. He just wanted the haircut to be over, to get back to the games and videos on his phone, and to leave the stylist feeling good about herself.

That's all well and good, but he sure as hell wasn't going to do it at my expense. I wasn't going to be the one walking away unhappy with it, not after going through all the effort to drag this baby around and handle a birthday gift and coordinate it all on the day he was due to come see his dad.

Back in the spa, where we were changing Max's diaper, I told Gabe that I felt he was being disrespectful to me, and that I would not tolerate it, especially in public. The evil eye was back in order, and a wagging finger was added for good measure, and Gabe seemed appropriately mollifying. (And yes, later I did check whether he liked the shorter haircut. He did.)

There certainly are people out there, and likely reading this blog, who think I am overbearing. Of the sins of motherhood that I could be committing, I will gladly take that one. Especially when it leaves Gabe looking presentable and feeling cooler while he's literally on a hot tin roof.

One of These Boys Is Not Like the Other

Several things he does can be explosive, including belching, diaper filling and screams.

"Stop comparing him to Gabe. This is not Gabe, this is Max. Meet Max."

My cousin Amanda recently had to reintroduce me to my infant son. I had become a broken record in mentioning how different Max was behaving from how Gabe did as a baby.

My memory may not be perfectly clear, but Gabe nursed for long sessions, slept contentedly in his crib, was happy to let his father hold him and could be easily soothed in his car seat by a rousing rendition of "Old McDonald."

That Max differs in these areas was causing me a bit of distress. I was doing pretty much the same stuff I had done 15 years ago with my first son, and with any other infant I could get my hands on, but my results were suddenly of the fussy kind.

Side note: I cracked up Dan a while ago with these comments to Max: "Hey, what's your major problem? Major Problem? He must serve under General Fussiness!" You'll have to forgive the military family humor. Back to my blood family.

Amanda reminded me that Max was an entirely different person and would have his own needs, likes, dislikes, attitude, nursing schedule, poopy face, etc. I needed to let go of what an easy baby Gabe was, and maybe even how capable of a mother I had been.


Surprisingly enough, things with Max got a lot easier from that moment on. Successes are of the two steps forward, one step back variety, but they are coming. He still thinks sleeping anywhere else but in my arms is an effrontery, but we're working on it. The vibrating bouncy chair helps.

I may be less sure of myself as a mother, but Max thinks I'm the bees knees. He loves to look at me and smile and wave his chubby fists at me. He will happily lie over my shoulder and slobber all over my shirt for as long as I will let him. He has learned what it means when I squeal "Kisses!" and he crinkles his eyes and opens his mouth and waits for me to smother his face in smooches. He is *this* close to actually laughing.

He would beg to differ if anyone called him something other than easy. To him, it's very easy: Just have his mommy hold him at all times, feed him practically every hour, let him nurse himself to sleep, and cram herself in the backseat with him and let someone else drive so he can see her at all times. The screaming comes only when we deviate from this plan.

I knew that every baby was "different," but I didn't think it would be this different. I should have kept in mind my mother's oft-repeated comments on the differences between her own two children, which go something like this:

"You were a perfect baby. As long as you were in the same room with me, you were content to sit by yourself and watch. You quickly added a half an hour on each end of your sleep until you were going through the night. I thought I was a great mother and had this baby stuff licked. And then your brother was born. He had to eat every two hours and had to be touching me every moment of the day. It's a good thing you were born first, Rebecca. If I had had Andrew first, you wouldn't be here."

I'm already pouting at my husband about wanting another baby (which he is adamantly refusing, btw) so Max isn't anywhere near the colic or stress that make women rush to the doctor to get a tubal. He's just not what I had expected, based on my previous experience.

And all that means is that *I* am not what I expected I would be. You know, someone who could cook and clean and get shit done around the house, even with an infant. Maybe even read a book (although I am quite glad I don't have to write an essay about it for some professor).

Max isn't really the cranky one at all.

I am.

Guest Post: Sometimes It Stays with You

Guest post by friend and coworker Roberta Redfern, a city desk editor at The Blade newspaper:

As both a mother of a little one and a journalist at a daily newspaper, sometimes I have to separate.

Sometimes it doesn't work. There was a drowning of a 2-year-old boy this week -- a tragic, tragic accident -- and I can't seem to scratch the images out of my brain.

Of that poor family. Of the lowest point in that grandfather's life and how he wants to take it all back; have a do-over for what is most likely the worst day of his God-given life. Of that sweet little boy’s face pictured in the obituary that came way too soon.

How my dad would feel if this happened to him. “Papa” watches my son almost every day.  He would be forgiven, for his pain, I imagine, would be torture enough.

Sometimes, when I drive home from work I feel the stressors of the day leaving me, but for this one, I haven't driven far enough yet.

Mirror, Mirror in the Car

When you live in a rural area, you spend a lot of time in a vehicle to get anywhere. Your kids have to spend that time in the back seat, which is only a few inches away from you but remarkably out of reach.

You can eyeball them a little bit with your rear-view mirror, or do a death-defying head turn or a contortionist hand reach as you are driving to tend to them. Infants in their backwards seat are even harder to deal with, especially mid-scream.

One of my favorite parenting contraptions are the little mirrors that clip onto the visors or suction onto the windows. You can angle those anywhere irrespective of traffic and train them directly on your children.

This way, I can watch helplessly as Max screams while I drive down the road. When he gets a bit older, as with his brother, Gabe, the mirror will get more useful. I can entertain him with silly expressions or direct him to stop picking his nose.

And apparently give lectures.

I recently pulled out my trusty mirror the other day, and teenage Gabe cried, "Oh, no!" When I asked him what was wrong, in that panicky way that assumed I had left the diaper bag on top of the car roof, he explained that he was having a flashback to the several admonishments that I had delivered through that mirror.

Excellent. ;)

Help a Mama Out

Life continues to go well here in newborn land, although I had hoped to blog more often. It's not that I couldn't find the time. I just often spend it doing something else.

I always had planned to extend an invitation for guest bloggers, so please don't feel like it's just a desperate, unshowered, overtired mommy begging for others to do her work. No, not at all.

I will keep posting, but it will be good to publish someone else's thoughts when I've suddenly realized what feels like one long day actually has been four in a row and Mommy Remix is getting a touch stale. In journo land, this is what we call having a well, from which we dip when it's a slow news day.

Please send your submissions to me via email at rckleiboemer@gmail.com and I will happily put them in the lineup.

You can write a full-length post or just a paragraph. Send pictures if you'd like. You have my full permission to be as snarky and foul-mouthed as I have been to this point, but no worse.

Topics could include:

• Your own family story
• What you do/did or don't/didn't enjoy about pregnancy
• Adventures in fertility, or disappointments and challenges 
• Why you don't want to have a baby
• What you can't stand about how parents raise their kids
• Thoughts on co-sleeping, nursing in public, crying it out, cloth diapers, etc.
• Hilarity of traveling with children
• How you keep your marriage and adult relationships going
• Public policy regarding education or health care
• What you like or don't like about your OBGYN or pediatrician
• Tips and warnings for new parents
• The best baby shower game or birthday party theme
• How you're raising your kids to deal with their peers
• To give or not to give an allowance
• Methods of discipline
• What phrase of your parents you swore you'd never repeat but did

For the record, Gabe often hears, "What the hell's the matter with you?" The more I say it, the more I like it.

And this post took me more than three hours to write, interrupted by two nursing sessions and one pee blowout that soaked both Max and me to the point of complete outfit changing.

Power Play: Bullying

This morning I caught a segment on CNN about bullying. There wasn't much I hadn't heard before except a little tidbit on an increase in the number of girls who are doing the bullying.

The author being interviewed (Erik Fisher, "The Bully in Pigtails") posited that bullying was rooted in a power struggle, and as girls were being socialized/raised more these days to be powerful, they were becoming bullies more than they had before.

I worry that this can be twisted into an argument against parity. He didn't go there, but it's not that far of a leap for someone to say, "Well, the answer is to go back to raising our girls to be Little Miss Pretty Pants." Which means skirts.

Power as a factor in bullying -- and in shame that prevents kids from admitting that they are being bullied -- is likely part of the equation. But this seems too linear, and too critical of "power."

Kids should be raised to feel like they have something to contribute, that they have leadership qualities to exercise. The key is teaching them servant leadership: Good leaders equip and empower others.

So maybe it's not so much "power" but "strength." Socializing any boy or girl to feel confident that he or she could influence another person is not bad, as long as the pride and goals are rooted in something positive and beneficial to all involved.

Child bullies often are suffering from someone else putting them down and continually draining them of their positive power. The old paradigm held that bullies often came from "bad" homes or families, broken in some social or economic way. But nowadays bullies come from all classes and backgrounds.

Somehow the kid bully from the "good family" seems even more heinous. Like she should know better, or be more generous with her resources, or have two parents who would notice the behavior and rectify it.

My newly developed theory, fresh off the griddle only this morning, is that maybe some of these bullies are yet another unfortunate consequence from helicopter or hover parenting.

Parents who spend so much of their energy fretting over every detail of their child's life are probably worn out by the time the kid hits adolescence. In desperation to reclaim some of their own adulthood, they may put their kids on autopilot and essentially stop paying any attention to them.

Adolescents are horrible creatures, but that's the time they need a parent's best time and energy. It's never going to go well for the parent and no one gets medals for it. But parental effort at this stage makes the difference between a tolerable kid and an asshole kid. And perhaps a bully kid.

A child who goes from being the center of a parent's world to being virtually ignored doesn't have the emotional toolbox to fix that herself. She is going to take that out on her peers, manifested in as unbalanced a power structure as her parents had established with her from her first toddling days.

Those are my thoughts on the matter this morning, anyway. And if you don't like it ... no, you won't get a knuckle sandwich from me. My parents had at least one eye on me during my adolescence.

And Then It Hits You

In August 1996, I lie in my Syracuse hospital bed with
infant Gabe and Minky, the teddy bear my mother had
tucked into his bassinet on the day he was born.

When my son Gabriel was born, it felt like an eternity before I was settled into my recovery room with only my new baby.

Well, and a roommate.

While her delivery had not taken three days like mine, hers had left her with a gruesome tear. I faulted her not at all when she opted to let her baby stay in the nursery as much as possible, and we both were grateful when the nurse pulled the curtain between our beds so that neither of us would have to suffer the other's obligatory chatter.

I did want to snuggle with my baby, though, especially after all the hell I'd gone through to get him. With my family members finally cleared out that first (third?) evening, Gabe and I relaxed in my hospital bed, tucked away in the privacy of our curtained cocoon.

As I was holding him, it occurred to me that I hadn't yet said "I love you" to him. A mother should tell her child that she loves him, I figured. So I did, sweetly but rather casually. "I love you."

A torrential flood of emotions took me so off guard that I don't think I've yet to recover. I started sobbing, as silently as I could so as not to disturb my resting roommate, and just kept whispering, "I love you ... I love you ... I love you ..." over and over to the tiny angel who had made me a mother.

When I went to deliver my second son, this time thankfully by a quick operation, I wondered what kind of moment like that I might have with him. It wouldn't -- couldn't -- be the same kind of moment I had when I first became a mother, but I had no doubt there would be a moment.

In May 2012, I lie in my Maumee hospital bed with infant
Max in a knitted beanie donated from an area group.

I happily had a private room, and even though my husband was irritated it was one of the smallest on the ward, I started to appreciate the cocoon setting again. At some points it was overflowing with family, but eventually it was just me and Maxwell. While I couldn't get enough of holding him and marveling at how super cute he was, and I told him right away how much I loved him, my maternal feelings felt more like a comfortable slipper, something warm and fuzzy and easy to slip on.

On the second day, The Moment came.

I was in my hospital bed in the afternoon, holding Max in a sitting position on my lap. The light from the window attracted his gaze, and I shifted him so he could get a better look. "There's a whole world waiting for you out there," I told him.

Whammo! The emotional freight train rushed by, and I dissolved into tears. Here was a brand new person to love and raise, to teach, to send forth. He had his whole life ahead of him, from that day forward, and there were myriad experiences waiting to enrich his life. I cried the better part of the afternoon.

My sons learn early that I'm a weeper.

Boy First, Brother Second, Babysitter Third

Gabe was so confident when holding infant Amelia that
he went ahead a read a book at the same time. She
looks pretty content about it, doesn't she?

Many people are referring to Gabe, my nearly 16-year-old son, as a "built-in babysitter" for the little brother I'm about to pop out.

True, he will be a good babysitter. He happens to be a professional one, serving as the nursery attendant at our church. He has a knack for getting babies to smile at him, toddlers to play with him, and youth to follow his directions.

He is particularly good with his cousin Amelia, who is about 18 months old. He recently was her shepherd at my baby shower, and she adored him so much that she called him "Daddy," which my cousin Amanda says isn't an identity confusion issue but more of a compliment that he is that good of a guy to be around.

But what I really want Gabe to be good at is being a brother. Even more so, I'd like him to be good at being just Gabe.

It's critical for any sibling to have his or her own life, and perhaps more so when there is a big age gap.

Friends who have been in similar situations advise me that while an older sibling eventually can carve out his own life, it can get quite delayed when a big part of a pre-adult stage is spent tending to a little brother or sister. We see it with teen parents, so it stands to reason the pattern would be similar in these cases.

Gabe and Amelia hang out at my baby shower.

There are still many positives to Gabe being a caretaker for his younger sibling, namely gaining the experience that will come in handy when he may care for his own baby. It may just raise his score on the attractiveness meter as well. This is the time when people start dreaming about what kind of mate they would like, and it's genetically coded into us to look for a mate who will be a good parent. "SWM, good with kids." Bingo.

But Gabe should be allowed to concentrate on being good at his video games, too. He really needs to be good at his school work, and his chores, and his driving skills. He must attend to his own development in faith, outlook on the world, political leanings, etc.

Having a baby brother certainly will influence all of those things. But it shouldn't shove them onto a back burner, and he shouldn't have to sacrifice all of the experiences of being a regular teenage boy.

Gabe is going to be a tremendous help to me and Dan as Mommy recovers from surgery and Daddy recovers from his entire world being turned upside down. He will do the same kind of chores he already does around the house, and he also will be taught how to change diapers.

He will not need any encouragement to shower love on his brother, and the little one will be blessed to get in that much more cuddling and cooing and soothing from the big one.

I will need reminders to secure other babysitters if I need one, and to let Gabe be Gabe.

You Hadn't Better Leave Your Kids Behind

In a Shine blog on Yahoo, the fifth phrase mentioned in a post about "Things Parents Shouldn't Say to Their Kids" is a big pet peeve of mine.

I've overheard plenty of parents at parks and restaurants and libraries threaten their children with: "I'm going to leave without you."

I've always been tempted to respond: "I'm going to take your kid, then."

Really, people? You've got the audacity to admit in public that you're about to do something that should result in a call to Children's Services?

First, never ever ever ever say anything to your children if you don't intend to follow through with it.

Don't say you're going to ground him if he ever does such and such again unless you really will do so. Otherwise, he will come to view you as a paper tiger, and he will have no reasonable expectation of the consequence to prevent him from doing it again.

There was only one time in Gabe's childhood (that I recall) that I knowingly threatened him with a consequence that I never really would have meted out. We had moved to a little cottage house near a set of railroad tracks. Even though the big backyard was fenced in, I had visions of my 4-year-old sneaking through the gate and investigating the oft-used tracks.

"Gabe, if I ever find you anywhere near those train tracks, I will beat you until you can't grow anymore."

His little eyes got round as saucers. I've had never beaten him, of course, and I never shall, but I was putting on a good enough show that he figured I was serious. I wasn't serious about beating him, but I surely was terrified by the thought of his limbs severed or head squashed. He was going to be equally afraid before the day was out.

Other than that, I've refrained from telling him I would throw away his toys if he didn't pick them up or send him to school in dirty clothes if he didn't put them his laundry in the hamper. I wouldn't ever do something like that, so there's no point in lying to him about it.

Second, never ever ever ever tell your children that you are going to do something criminal to them.

OK, so beating to the point of stunting is indeed criminal. But again, I threatened that only once and that was in the scenario of another deadly threat.

In the scenario of trying to get an unwilling child to leave a place when summoned, the threat of legally acceptable physical consequences seems preferable to the psychological torture of abandonment.

I've seen kids thus threatened go chasing after their parents, screaming incoherently in a trail of tears. The parent has gotten what she wanted -- to leave -- but the child has gained emotional scars.

Since he was misbehaving in the first place with his defiance, he obviously already was compromised in his pee-wee brain. Now he has to contend with the horror of being left behind as his parent goes off to whatever safety he knows and leaves him to the wolves.

On the other hand, especially with an older child, getting left behind might just be nirvana. He didn't want to leave in the first place, and now the person demanding that he do so is going to bug out and let him be. That probably sounds pretty good to his pee-wee brain.

Gabe was not prone to tantrums because I had been conditioning his obedience from early on. But if he had refused to leave a public place, I likely would have thrown him over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I would rather he cry and rail against his mother's sheer force of will -- which he would come to respect one way or another -- than sob and flail over his mother's cruelty.

If your kid is too big to do this, and you're still dealing with his refusal to leave a place when you tell him it's time to go, I've got news for you: That sure as hell isn't his fault. Don't make yourself look like an even bigger ass of a parent by threatening to leave him behind.

Oh, excuse me, the experts put it like this:

"Don't tell your kids you're going to leave without them. Instead, plan ahead. Chances are high that you've seen your child behave this way before. You know what will trigger a tantrum. What will you say if your child throws a fit or refuses to leave? 'It's okay to identify unacceptable behavior," says Dr. Deborah Gilboa, a family doctor, parenting speaker, and mom of four boys. 'You can tell them it's not acceptable but you have to motivate them with a consequence that you can carry out.'"

Just Say No to Helicoptering

Dear Helicopter Parents,

Back the f*ck off. You're actually endangering your child's safety.

Thanks, Mommy Remix

An article on the New York Times blog The Well Column recently raised the issue of an increased safety hazard when parents go down playground slides with their toddlers in their laps. The velocity from the adult's significantly greater mass can exacerbate injuries to the child if a limb gets caught. (Read full post here.)

Or how about some broken teeth or a bloody nose when you both go flying and you land on top of your little one? Maybe if someone is recording the moment, you could win some money toward medical bills from "America's Funniest Videos." At least baby teeth are supposed to fall out.

In general, I'm not a fan of slides. In elementary school, we had one of those giant, metal monsters that were scorching hot in the sun and from which a classmate fell and earned himself a compound fracture. At Cedar Point, a flight down the multi-laned, bumpy blue hill on a burlap bag gave me a friction burn on my wrist. At Discovery Zone (otherwise known as Dante's third ring of hell) where I worked as a "kid's coach," I wish I had a nickle for every time I had to blow my whistle and remind a guest that "the roller slide is for going down, not going up."

Slides are a slippery enough slope toward the emergency room without parents adding themselves into the equation.

True, parents think their arms are the safest place their little ones could ever be. But not when momentum is involved.

You cannot protect your child from every little bump and bruise. You shouldn't, really, else how will he know how to pick himself up?

I am positive that each time my parents said, "Jump up," they were attending to more than my physical state. They were instilling emotional fortitude. They were teaching me self-control and strengthening my pain tolerance.

Remember, we are not raising "children." We don't want them to stay children, for heaven's sake. We are raising them into men and women. Adults will need to rely on a foundation of "jump up," not "let me kiss it and make it go away."

I'm as klutzy as the next person, but most of my "falls" now are screw-ups at work, injuries in my relationships, oversights in my finances. If I sat on the proverbial playground crying until someone came running and fixed my boo-boo for me, I'd be sitting there quite a while.

Helicopter parents (those who hover over their kids' every moment) may be well-intentioned, but they need to adjust their radar scopes to a longer range. They need to account for how this kind of parenting will play out in the long run.

Kids who can't fend for themselves turn into adults who can't problem-solve their way out of a paper bag. Nobody wants that.

When, If Ever, Is Mothering a Career?

"My career choice was to be a mother."

When Ann Romney, wife of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, said this on Fox News in the aftermath of a campaign staffer for President Obama saying she had "never worked a day in her life," I vapor-locked.

Story: Romney wife rebukes claim

My career choice was to be a journalist. I also chose to be a mother.

Does this mean I have two careers? Or does this make me less of a parent? Do I "work" less for my children? Do I take care of my home with less effort?

Well, given the layer of dust on the credenza these days, perhaps the correct answer to that last question is affirmative.

But I will bet my baby's new booties that Ann Romney had a maid to dust her furniture, as well as other paid staff people who worked hard to keep her household -- and her children -- in mothered order.

It wasn't the smartest thing for Hilary Rosen to say when criticizing the presumed GOP nominee's economic policy rhetoric that he was relying on his wife as an economic expert for working women.

But Ann Romney has a billionaire husband who supported her entire lifestyle, including her "career choice" to "stay home" and raise five sons. I doubt she was "home" all the time anyway. She is not the SAHM champion by any stretch of the words, and certainly not by the word "career."

She never had to compete for a promotion or fight for her labor rights. She never had to manage others on a critical project or be managed by a nincompoop. She never had to be disciplined for her screw-ups. She never had to beat deadlines, meet demands or produce materials when somebody else's money was on the line. She never had to wrestle with the guilt of sacrificing any of her time or priorities away from her children, either.

So how exactly is she the best person to advise the leader of the United States of America on its women who have careers outside of their homes?

This isn't about whether stay-at-home moms work hard. Of course they do. This isn't about which is a better choice. That's impossible to say.

But I admit, I bristled pretty hard when Ann Romney compared her "choice" to my "career."

It's hard to find a way to express this without offending moms who devote their entire day to raising their children and tending their homes, which would be the last thing I would want to do. The offending, not the staying home. That SAHM grass is looking mighty green on the other side of the fence, even though I know it can be thankless, isolating, exhausting work.

If Mitt Romney has said he was relying on his wife to advise him on how to make sure stay-at-home moms had more support for their choice, perhaps in debt relief or the best possible family health insurance for their working spouse -- heck, how about a Nanny McPhee for everybody -- then that would have seemed relevant and even poignant.

But if he's getting ideas from her about how to support mothers-with-careers, then he'd best keep brainstorming.