Teeny Manolo

Seventeen year old Marche Taylor from Texas found herself handcuffed and led away by police instead of attending her senior prom.

Prom chaperones said her dress violated the dress code, and told her to leave.  She disagreed, apparently an argument ensued, and eventually the police arrived.

The video below is a news clip from a Houston station covering the story.

What say you? Was the dress too much? Should the school have offered her some sort of compromise, which she claims they did not? 

If you grew up in the seventies, then chances are you had a Garanimals outfit.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I owned more than a few myself.   Er, well, perhaps I should be, but there it is.

If you were not part of our exclusive Garanimals club, allow me to explain the concept.  Garanimals took the children’s fashion world by storm when they introduced the concept of a matching system.  By having labels, usually some sort of jungle animal, kids would be able to dress themselves by simply making sure that the labels were the same for both top and bottom.  If you had two bears, your outfit was a surefire winner!  There was no way you could walk out of the house in an unmatched outfit and embarass your mom!  So, a supposedly idiot-proof system.

Why this concept has not been introduced for men, I am not sure. But, that is entirely a different post probably better suited to a different blog. 

But really, isn’t being able to dress batshit-crazy some sort of three year old birthright?  At that age, it is downright adorable to go grocery shopping wearing an orange striped shirt, red shorts, and a superman cape.  Kids should dress like that as often as they can, because that window of opportunity gets slammed shut around the age of seven or so. At that point, the child will either be seen as destined for fashion greatness or someone who will never get invited to birthday parties.

Apparently the makers of Garanimals decided that a couple decades of freestyle dressing by America’s youth was too much for them to handle. They re-launched the brand in February of 2008, available exclusively at WalMart. Which sort of explains why I didn’t know about it until now.

So once again, children have the opportunity to match zebra to zebra and elephant to elephant! Forget about actually teaching them how to put clothes together, let’s have some faceless corporation do all the hard work for us! But according to Dr. Joyce Brothers, “Garanimals…helps the pre-schooler to handle his/her own wardrobe.” Remember Dr. Joyce Brothers? I thought not. Nothing like trotting out an almost thirty year old quote to inspire brand confidence!

The very lengthily named and greatly in need of an acronym Los Angeles County Inter-Agency Council on Child Abuse and Neglect wants to tell you not to co-sleep.  In fact, not only do they want to tell you not to co-sleep, they want to let you know that “…if you take the baby to bed with you and fall asleep, you are committing a potentially lethal act.”

Well, if that is so, then I am a wanted woman.

Co-sleeping was the only thing that helped my family maintain our tenuous grip on sanity.  If we hadn’t co-slept, my husband and I would have been desperately re-thinking the entire pro-creating thing.  Well, we did that quite a few times, but it would have definitely been more often.

In fact, I truly believe that it helped my son sleep better than he ever would have by himself in his crib.  His crib was used, but not often. I had read this book by Dr. Sears prior to having the Munchkin, and it changed my entire outlook on parenting, including that of co-sleeping.

But anyhoo, back to some quasi-governmental agency trying to tell me what is best for my child.  They quoted a study which stated “…that nearly half of 119 infants who died suddenly and unexpectedly during a four-year period in the St. Louis area did so while sleeping with someone else.”

Well, I’d like to know the number of infants who died while sleeping alone, which is left out of the equation.

I believe that there are indeed situations where co-sleeping would be unsafe, such as if one or both parents was taking a drug of any sort that produced drowsiness. And after drinking alcohol? Definitely not. A crowded bed with other siblings might also not be safe.

Unsafe situations aside, I happen to think it is a highly personal choice. I also happen to be pro co-sleeping. What about you?

There, I said it.

You know, this week started badly, is worsening rapidly, and at this rate I really don’t know if I’ll be able to face Friday without smelling salts. Tell me: Do they make overproof Earl Grey? I’ll have a double.

One doesn’t want to natter on about the Good Old Days before one was born (too much) because they were oppressive and hypocritical and full of ugly, synthetic garments and hostility towards the people who supply the toys for our Happy Meals and our mail order babies.

But.

One is reminded, one is, of the time Mister Walt Disney went to former Mousekateer Annette Funicello and asked her to keep her bellybutton covered during her upcoming beach movie, for the sake of the reputation of the Mickey Mouse Club. Well, she did and they gave her three sequels anyway and as far as we know she’s sitting on a beanbag full of cash, drinking whiskey sours her cabana boy mixed and emailing Perez Hilton corny jokes from the verandah of a swanky retirement villa in Santa Barbara. And good for her.

My, how things have changed. First Miley Cyrus, now this:

From Slate:

After reading of the Cyrus flap, I e-mailed my photo to Disney… How did the company square its position on the Liebowitz photo with its risqué billboard in China?…

Foster said he didn’t know which ad agency prepared the ad, how old the model was, or where the photo shoot took place. But he was sure it was the work of a Disney licensee: Shanghai Zhenxin Garments Co. Ltd… He assured me the billboard would be removed immediately…

It may be a small world, after all, but not everyone shares Burbank’s mores, and you can’t be too careful protecting your brand: You never know when a Chinese licensee, or an American glossy, will deviate from the Disney way.

So to speak.

According to a study out of the Universitites of Exeter and Oxford, it was found that women who ate a hearty, healthy breakfast were more likely to conceive a son.

In a rather stunning development, women who ate at least one bowl of cereal per day pre-conception were found to have the most male babies. Although cereal contains quite a few nutrients, it frightens me that a food which is completely engineered and bears no resemblance to anything in nature should be the key to having a boy.

Suspicious that some sort of cereal company was underwriting the study, I tried, but could find no evidence of shenanigans.

Women who skipped breakfast or ate a breakfast which was low in nutritional value had more girls.

Now does this study demonstrate yet again the superiority of the female sex, or what? When the going gets rough, it’s the girls who come through. But the boys? Oh no, conditions have to be perfect or they won’t even bother showing up for the party.

I’m trying to remember if I ate a lot of cereal before I got pregnant, although I have to admit that I had a “surprise” pregnancy and thus didn’t even know that I was pregnant until over a month and a half later. So goodness knows what I was putting in my body. I know that I certainly wasn’t making any extra effort to eat healthy, nor did pre-natal vitamins pass my lips until the pregnancy was confirmed.

But hey, if you’re a big fan of Lucky Charms, Frosted Flakes, or Fruit Loops and you want a boy, then by all means, chow down!

I offer you the above illustrations from the new modern fairy tale ”My Beautiful Mommy.”*

It’s the heartwarming story of a sad Mommy who thinks she isn’t good enough the way she is. Why, she’ll never be crowned Mrs. MILF America if her tummy is so flabby and her boobs so droopy!  So in comes the big, buff Plastic Surgery Fairy to make Mommy all better. 

But, Mommy and the Plastic Surgery Fairy want to make sure that the little girl knows that Mommy coming home all bruised, bandaged, and unable to move doesn’t mean that she got hurt!  Oh no!  It just means that Mommy got prettier!

This book is a must-read for all Mommies who care about their impressionable young kids!

*Currently being sold at all finer plastic surgery offices nationwide.  Pick up your copy today!

Ayutthaya, Thailand:
Children enjoy a water fight with elephants during the Thai new year festival
Photograph: Pornchai Kittiwongsakul/AFP/Getty Images

I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking the team on the left must be pretty damn good.

This is perhaps the most superfantastic sports video of all time. I defy you to watch this and NOT get all misty-eyed. The Good Twin to Anonymous’ Evil Twin, Improv Everywhere has struck again (with the help of NBC Sports). This time they struck two Little League teams that will never be the same.

Behold the mighty Lugnuts versus the fearsome Mudcats.

ImprovEverywhere via Gawker

It was the worst experience that I could ever imagine going through as a mother,” said one West Hollywood mom… “Of course I broke down and started crying. I threw up. I had diarrhea. I locked myself in the closet and drank myself into oblivion. I felt like I failed my kid.”

I know that you are thinking to yourself, what the hell caused that type of reaction? Was her child mauled by a wild bear? Maimed in an entirely preventable accident? Or perhaps walking too close to a cliff and fell off, resulting in bodily injury? Did they have a disease which she blames herself for missing the symptoms?

No my friends, it was worse than that.

Much, much worse.

Her child just so happened to be wait-listed for kindergarten.

I know, I know.

Don’t worry.

I’ve got enough hankies for all of you.

In a nutshell, that is what an “eminent biologist/naturist” EO Wilson said at at the Aspen Environmental Forum.

Well, Mr. Wilson, we’re even worse when we have PMS.

Not one to be above some hyperbole, Mr. Wilson was trying to encourage his audience to think about how our current society, with its advances in technology and fear of children running around unsupervised, has made our children disconnected from nature.  In theory, this leads to a society that will care less about nature than previous generations.

While I agree that we are moving toward more structure in our children’s lives via classes and playdates, I think the death of the appreciation of nature has been greatly overexaggerated. 

I don’t have to force the Munchkin outside, he loves being outside.  There is all this hand-wringing about how computers and video games are ruining our kids, but my son loves nothing more than playing in the mud.  I wish I was kidding.  Given the choice to watch Scooby Doo or go out and dig in his alloted spot in the planter, he will choose the digging every single time.  He loves the beach and just today was complaining that we haven’t been in so long. 

I happen to think that children have an innate connection with nature.  I don’t know any mom who purposely keeps their kid cooped up in the house all day.  In fact, it is exactly the opposite.   It might be because of where I live, but I don’t that’s all of it.

While I understand that Mr. Wilson was trying to make a point, I really think he is selling us moms short.

Or, maybe he is simply trying to pull a classic mom ploy.  Hands off the guilt trips, Mr. Wilson, they’re all ours!