Mouth Fishing

I knew a young boy who swallowed a bug, I don't know why he swallowed a bug ... but he's not dying on my watch!

This morning I had to fish out several pieces of ladybug from my nearly 1-year-old son's mouth. To say this took an extreme amount of fortitude would be an understatement.

I grew up on a farm and am no stranger to bugs, but I have become more squeamish about them over the years. And the thought of them crawling all over my baby, let alone in his mouth, is just a bit too much to stomach.

The first one who tells me that bugs are just protein is going to be forced to eat a plate of them.

Since I didn't want the bug to go into Max's stomach, I knew I had to get it out of his mouth. I'm always swiping a finger through his mouth to remove all the other weird things he manages to find and put right into his most exploratory baby part -- mostly little stones of grout from the aging tile in our kitchen.

Thankfully he seems content to roll around these stones and leaves and bits of fuzz in his mouth until I notice the telltale signs on his lips and come in for the swoop. Unfortunately he has gotten wise to my efforts and now will clamp shut his jaw instead of submissively letting me dig around in there.

It made my knees week this morning to discover he had a ladybug in his mouth. We have a real problem with them getting into our house, but I haven't seen many yet this spring. (Centipedes are another matter, they're everywhere, but hopefully they are too fast for his pudgy baby fingers.) I think he must have discovered a dry old dead one in some corner missed by the vacuum.

I had to mentally instruct myself to get this out of his mouth. I had to convince myself that to feel the crunchy bits of wings and legs and disembodied head of the ladybug with my finger wasn't nearly as nasty as them being on his tongue.

Let me tell you, ladybug bits don't come out easily. They want to stick to that wet tongue, and the baby wants to keep exploring that new texture. It was quite the battle, complicated because I was holding him over the kitchen sink so that I could fling away the bits of bug as soon as I captured them. I didn't need to worry about them landing on the floor where he would just find them again and put them back into his mouth.

Guh-ross.

My Driving Grace

My teenager finally secured his driver's license, and I feel like I've suddenly cloned myself.

Gabe is entirely willing to drive my husband's Big Red Truck to the village recycling center or my -- gulp -- brand new compact utility vehicle to the grocery store. He can take himself out to my parents' farm or to the barber shop.

My schedule revolves around the schedule of my nearly 11-month-old tyrant. I have to allot my time for chores and errands according to how long Max will nap or how long he will be awake and pleasant. Consecutive slots are gold.

I found it remarkable when I stood at the kitchen sink washing baby bottles and extra formula and forgotten batteries came into the house during that same time slot. Two chores got checked off the list, and I had to physically do only one of them! It was like magic!

It was Gabe, without whom I would be totally sunk -- especially while my husband is out to sea.

There is a cumulative time-saving effect as well. I crossed off so many things from my list yesterday, including vacuuming out the fireplace for the season, that when I laid down Max for a nap this morning I realized I didn't have much to do.

So, I'm writing my first blog post in a month. Hopefully I will get to do this more and more often.

All thanks to a brand new driver in the family. Now I truly know what my mother meant when she said the day I got my license was one of the happiest days of her life.

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.

Now This Is Really Working from Home

It's been a little over two weeks since I quit my job at the newspaper, and I'm finally getting around to doing all those things that I said I would do now that I'm not offering sacrifices of time and sanity to the altar of journalism.

Like write my first Mommy Remix blog post in two months.

Maybe I needed a longer break from writing than I anticipated. Maybe I underestimated how much more time I would be spending with my family. Maybe I wanted to be out of the public eye for a little while.

I do want to reconnect with the blogosphere. Frankly, I need some adult engagement other than the residents of "Sesame Street."

I have been fortunate to recognize some affirmation here and there that my husband and I made the right choice in me quitting my job and him continuing to go out to sea to support our family financially. I went to the doctor today and when the nurse asked the litany of questions at the beginning, including how many days I had felt despair or worry or anxiety, I was thrilled to answer "none" when I know my answer would have been quite different just a month ago.

To keep on the worry-free track, I'm not going to sweat explaining my decision in a blog post.

I will share that I am glad I pushed through that time when the reporting position I took to "work from home" was so overwhelming just because it was new, and that I didn't quit when I was flailing (and never home, by the way.) I am confident that there will be a media job for me in the future, when Max is older and Gabe is on his own and when I have energy again for a career as demanding as one in newspaper.

I also will share that it's an odd thing to give up the clout of being in the media, the vanity of seeing my name in print, the real and measurable effect I can have for a wide range of people by telling their stories.

And to be a housewife? There is a fear of becoming dependent on my husband, of being marginalized, of making a mistake.

But each day that has gone by has brought a new little victory, even if it was just getting the laundry done. I suppose I always managed to get the laundry done before, but all of my chores feel easier now. I especially love doing them without the burden of a story deadline hanging over my head all the time.

I love cuddling Max in the morning and not feeling guilty that I hadn't checked my work email yet. I love being able to go wherever I want, even on short notice, because I don't have to cover some assignment at a certain time. I love, love, love getting to spend all that extra time with my husband before he went out to sea.

My gratitude for him is boundless. He even bought me a brand new car. I think we're both getting a little kick out of him taking such good care of us right now. We'll just enjoy it for as long as it can last.

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.