So 43% of you are just fine with the Unbaby.me app that removes all bubbeh pics from your Facebook feed.  26% are like, whatever, 17% say if you dislike babies that much, just unfriend the person already, and 13% of you are not even on Facebook.

Today’s question is regarding the recent change in policy to male infant circumcision.  It seems that a peer-reviewed study has shown that the benefits of circumcision outweigh the risks, and the AAP is stopping just short of recommending routine infant circumcision.

A good friend of my son’s is in a Boy Scout troop (well, Cub Scout webelo, to be exact) and my son has been bugging me to allow him to join the Cub Scouts.  He wouldn’t be in the same troop as his friend, but he’s willing to give it a go.

And then they had to come out with this.

I fully realize the Boy Scouts is a private group and can dictate membership as they see fit, but it is very discouraging to see that they promote an official agenda that is discriminatory.  Although I did read somewhere that the Boy Scouts do receive money from the Department of Defense, so perhaps they aren’t as totally private as they would like to say they are.

So as a parent what do you do?

Do you try to locate a local troop that may not heartily embrace the “official” BSA party line?  I have heard that in my area, many of the troops march to the beat of their own drummers, so to speak.

Do you try to work and change from within?

Or on principle, do you refuse to join an organization that holds beliefs counter to your own?

I’m very interested in what you all have to say.

My husband, who prides himself on being a male who does not insist on always seeing the latest special effects-laden move fare, managed to be persuaded by my silver tongue to see Beasts of the Southern Wild.  Every review I’d read about it said it was fantastic, and the only theater playing it in our area was a half hour away.  Still, I prevailed.  I haven’t been with this man for over twenty years without knowing how to persuade him to see a damn movie.  If you can’t persuade your significant other to see the movie that you want, then you might want to rethink your relationship.

Anyhoo.

I sat and watched the move, entranced as the story of Hushpuppy unfolded.

I glanced at my husband, and his eyes were closed and he was ready to fall asleep.

Nothing a quick elbow to the gut didn’t fix.

When we got out of the theater, I could feel the resentment emanating from him.  The whole “that was two hours of my life I can never get back” thing. When you persuade someone to see the movie that you want to see, you also have to be prepared in case that someone loathes it.

But instead of being an understanding spouse, I decided to go on the offensive.  He loves New Orleans and the bayou (the little that we have seen of it), so what was the problem?  The actress who played Hushpuppy was cute as a button!  He has a daughter, could he not empathize at all with their relationship? Did he have an issue with the little girl being a strong female protagonist?  Did he disapprove of a lifestyle different than his own?

After a few rounds of questioning, and some valiant attempts to validate his opinions, he decided to just allow us to agree to disagree.

Smart man.

And in the end, Christopher Nolan is still our favorite director, so I’m thinking we’re still right for each other.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

As much as I love Dick Van Dyke, I just cannot bring myself to like this movie.

For some strange reason, I’d never seen it as a kid, and thus my first viewing was that of a cynical 40 year old, which may have something to do with it. My husband was stunned that I’d never watched it and insisted on telling me what a great movie it was.   Look, he said, it has a three and half star rating!  That’s one half off of a four star, so there was no way it could be bad.

Don’t believe the hype.

There are so many plot holes the mind simply boggles. And know it is an unfair comparison, but Sally Ann Howes?  The poor man’s Julie Andrews.  I told my husband there was a reason Julie is a household name and good old whatshername isn’t.  Listening to her caterwaul around her country estate in her fake hair for what seems like eternity about how she loves this guy she just barely met makes me want to throw the remote at the television.  A billion times.

The name Truly Scrumptious and all of the horrible songs about it that pepper the entire movie are JUST WRONG.  There should not be a famous movie with a character named Truly Scrumptious in it.  Hmmph.

The irony is my daughter adores all of the musical numbers in this thing, and I have had to endure them an untold amount of times.

Is there a classic children’s movie that you know you are supposed to like, but don’t?

Maybe it is due to the year-round termperate weather where I live, but not a single one of you uses your garage as a rec/play room.  I suppose though, that we don’t have basements where I live either, so that might have something to do with it.  45% of you keep your car in the garage, mostly due to weather issues, and 33% just have “stuff.”  A couple I know keeps their $60,000+ car in the driveway so that they can keep their $5,000 (max) amount of stuff in the garage.  This, it makes no sense to me.  22% do not have a garage, and in a way, you are lucky because they are junk magnets, to be sure.  My husband was so proud of himself for clearing the garage this weekend and we actually have one of our cars inside of it! Whoo hoo!  Well, for him, anyway…

Today I want to find out how you feel about cleaning your home.

Of course I don’t mean that only nutjobs homeschool, because then of course, I would be implying that I myself am one.

Well, maybe I am and I just don’t know it.

Making the decision to homeschool was one of the most difficult I’ve yet to make as a parent.  There is such a stigma surrounding the whole process, and in talking to people, I found that many had the impression that people who homeschooled were sort of odd, or anarchist-leaning,  or crazy, or religious, or some sort of combination of all four. 

But the reality is that there are as many types of families who homeschool as there are in any school setting.  It would be nice and easy to label homeschooling families as nuts or weirdos, but I’ve found in my dealings with the homeschooling community that there aren’t really many of those around.  It is entirely possible that I haven’t been looking hard enough, though.

For whatever reason, the formal school system wasn’t working for their children and their families, and so they decided to be proactive about it.   Say what you will about homeschoolers, but they are obviously not an apathetic bunch.

I cannot even begin to tell you how our lives are different now that we are homeschooling the Munchkin.  The freedom that this type of situation brings to a family is amazing.  To say that I am stress-free would not be true, as I have a toddler after all, but I am actually much less stressed than when he was attending school.  

I must admit that I am fortunate to have a student who “gets it” on the first try.  There is not a whole lot of explaining to do when it comes to math or reading, and when we hit a bump in the road we quickly address it, conquer it, and move on.  I have a newfound appreciation for how special and unique my son is, and even if he decides to go back to regular school next year, it will have been worth it just for that alone.

So if you are on the fence about homeschooling, I would seriously advise you to give it a try.  You just might like it.

65% of you say that if people are willing to pay more for child-free flights, if offered, then godspeed to them.  23% find it discriminatory, and 10% of people with kids would fly it themselves if they could.  To be honest, the child-hating trend that is out there right now concerns me a bit.  I mean, it is one thing to have smoke-free flights because second hand smoke is dangerous to your health.  Are we really lumping children into a similar category?  I could possibly embrace a child-free section of the airplane. 

Today I’ve got a personal question for you.  Well, it’s a personal question for me, to be honest.  My family, including grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. is going to have a formal picture taken by a professional photographer.  Formal meaning that we are going to be all lit up nicely and all that jazz that comes with a professional.  Now, the rub is that we don’t know how to have everyone dress.  We are actually quite a small family, and the total number of people is going to be 16.  Should we dress in a color-coordinated way?  Casual? Semi-casual? Semi-formal outfits for everyone and color matching be damned?  Everybody wearing essentially the same outfit?  We are at a loss, and turn to the wise members of the Manolosphere for help.

photo via

Last Friday was the Munchkin’s last day of “real” school.

Yes, I did the unthinkable.  At least, based on the reactions of almost everyone around me, I did the unthinkable.

What I really did was enroll the Munchkin in a school-at-home program run by the education department in my county.  So he still uses state-approved textbooks and a state-approved curriculum, it is just that he no longer attends a public school and I am his teacher.

I want to talk about  the way everyone acted when I told them he would no longer be attending public school and instead schooling at home.  I got everything from a “Good for you” (the tiny minority) to a long and dramatic “Ooooooooooh-kaaaaay” (the vast majority).  When my husband went to pick him up early one day during his last week, the secretaries, unaware of who my husband was, were actually gossiping about it at the front desk as he walked up! 

This was not a decision made lightly.  My husband and I have actually been pondering the idea for at least two years now.  I can’t tell you how many people have such a negative view of schooling at home, which I think in large part comes from a vision of a brood of children hunched over Bible verses instead of math books, but that is a story for another time.  A large part of our putting it off was based on how much people told us that it was a horrible thing to do, both to our son and to our sanity as parents.

But then it finally came to a point where I knew the Munchkin was losing interest in school. It was a fight every morning to get him out the door.  He was bored. He’s eight!  He has no business being uninterested in learning.  I figured I could never forgive myself if there was something I could have done to reginite that love of learning he used to have and used social conventions as my excuse to not do it.  We have done it at this point in the year on purpose, as the bulk of the year is over, and if for some reason the whole thing is an unmitigated disaster, he will not have lost much in the way of curriculum. 

I found the county-run program we are enrolled in almost by accident, but now I’m pretty sure there are no such things as accidents.  If you are considering taking the leap into schooling at home, but are intimidatd by thinking you have to do it on your own, it is well worth to check if your school district or county runs their own programs.  We meet with a teacher once every three weeks to check his progress, they gave me almost a thousand dollars worth of textbooks, and they have tons of field trips (much more than regular school) as well as computer, language, and music classes!  He will still take the state standards test, and he is given a report card, just like “real” school!

He always has the option to go back to public school if he wants to.  This is not something we are mandating, but a family decision that is flexible and committed to the best outcome for all involved.

We are only in day two of schooling at home, and I am still sort of getting the hang of it, as is the Munchkin.  But suffice to say that when we complete three day’s worth of work in one hour, I can’t help but feel vindicated.