Teeny Manolo

If you want to hear what has now surpassed Madonna’s version of “Santa Baby” as the most annoying song on the planet, have a listen at this.

He did not just say “I’m glad you’re a hot mom now.” Did he?

I don’t know why, but it seems ok when a woman uses the term to describe herself, but really creepy and wrong when some weird dude playing bad acoustic guitar does.

Is that wrong? Am I being hypocritical? Or do you think the term “hot mom” is demeaning/objectifying no matter who says it?

We hear all the time that today’s kids are sheltered. People question how they will ever learn to function on their own if we only allow them to go on pre-scheduled playdates and classes?

What say you? Is it a bunch of media hype, or do you think it’s true?

In my heyday, my musical tastes were cutting edge. Kasey Kasem’s Top 40 never blighted my refined ears, lest I instantly become unhip due to a few bars of “Jump! (for My Love)” or “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Both of which I viewed back then with a thinly veiled contempt. Well, I must confess that the contempt is there even now.

No, I was all about New Wave, Alternative, Punk, and Post-punk. I wore black, although it was really more for show than anything else. I didn’t have that simmering rage a lot of my friends had. I just liked the music, and if I didn’t wear the black, well then they might mistake me for someone who would enjoy listening to the songs above.

As I have aged, I have kept up with musical trends. I know the music (and in most cases even like) of bands such as Weezer, Death Cab for Cutie, the Killers, and many others. My teenaged cousin’s eyes practically popped out of her head when I mentioned I liked a song from Vanessa Carlton. What? I could see the gears churning. A person over the age of thirty knew who Vanessa Carlton was? Perhaps she would have to dump poor Vanessa off her playlist since someone such as aged as myself knew who she was.

But really, who am I kidding? The Munchkin is only five. It takes a lot of work to keep up with all this new stuff, and to be truthful, I’m getting tired. Can I really do this for about seven more years? Can I possibly still be interested in new bands after I hit forty?

I have a feeling that by the time the Munchkin is in his teens, I’ll be content to be in my rocking chair, listening to The Ramones.

*You must be familiar with the songs of The Ramones, or else you will think I am referring to myself as a ho.  Which I most assuredly am not.

The phone rang, and I automatically glanced at the LCD display to see who it was. Don’t we all?

Oh, a mom friend of mine, one whose daughter is in the Munchkin’s class. Fabulous! What gossip does she have to dish out to me today?

Instead of mom, though, I hear a rather breathless, “Hello, this is Cutest Little Girl in the World and is the Munchkin home and may I speak with him?”

Thrown for a bit of a loop, I walk over to where the Munchkin is sitting. He is engrossed in his newest obesssion, which is an old Scooby-Doo movie where Scoob and the gang meet Batman. I think he pretty much has all the lines memorized at this point.

I hand him the phone with a chirpy, “You have a phone call!”

And ever the clueless male, he continues to watch the television until I make him pause it. He then chatters rather aimlessly for about a minute and a half, and they hang up. Something about chocolate chip cookies was communicated, that I know for sure. The rest is anyone else’s guess.

So he says goodbye and hangs up the phone. Instantly, he turns the television back on. No big deal. Just a blip on his radar screen.

And all I can think to myself is awwwwwwww, he just got his first phone call from a girl!

Then…

Oh crap! He just got his first phone call from a girl!

I am so not ready for this!

Gets to choose the best outfit.

The Munchkin’s preschool is having their annual musical showcase.

I am always early dropping him off to school because I am just anal like that about almost any appointment or obligation. I have yet to drop him off late. And with only three weeks to go, I am pretty confident I will maintain my perfect record. I know I just somehow put that curse out on myself, and it is now echoing through the cosmos, probably coming back to bite me in the ass on the day I need to take him to his SAT’s.

So, there I am being all early and stuff, when I see that there is a sign-up sheet on the little table the teacher has set up outside the door. I pick it up, and it seems that this year the school is being anal as well, for there are actual outfits, costumes if you will, that must be worn to this year’s Musical Extravaganza. I look at the two choices for boys:

White Dress Shirt and Khaki Pants

or

Blue Dress Shirt, Blue Pants and Blue Suspenders

Huh?

Blue Suspenders? I have no idea where you can even purchase blue suspenders around here. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a child, or even a grown man other than Larry King, who just doesn’t count, wearing suspenders.

So of course, I sign up for the relatively easy white shirt and khaki pants.

I watched as some of the moms straggled in to class as I was getting in my car. And all I could think was, you are gonna be the chumps who have to go searching high and low for some suspenders that your kid will most likely never wear again.

Suckers.

Dear Creator of Zip-Off Pants,

Although I searched and searched on the vast internets, nobody knows who you are. Which is a shame, because such an invention deserves to have legions of mothers sending you millions of personal thank you notes.

Sir or madam, I would like to get down on bended knee and offer you my sincerest thanks for your ingenuity.

Because of you, I do not have to worry about the transition from morning into day, or from day into evening. Your pants are there to help. I do not have to carry around separate shorts and pants, or simply leave the house throwing up a prayer and hoping just one or the other will do. With your product, I can be happy, carefree, and have more room in my purse.

Some might argue that you have “softened up” our children. That being either too hot or too cold builds needed character. Pshaw, says I. What your pants do is save me, over my lifetime, what would most likely amount to hours of whining.

So to you, nameless innovator, I again offer you thanks.

Smooches,
Glinda

P.S. I have only one suggestion for improvement, and that would be to somehow make sure that it is impossible to lose the zipped off remnants of fabric. I know, I know, I ask for yet another miracle, but I have faith.

P.P.S And also, it is probably the one article of clothing that we mothers of boys have that mothers of girls probably wish they had too. I shall resist the urge to say “Neener, neener.”

Hmmm, more people should take this kind of test in advance, if you ask me.

If you are already a parent (and why else would you be reading this blog) then take my advice: just keep re-taking this quiz and tweaking the answers until you get the result you want, then post it in your blog and if the kids give you any sass at some point in the future, you just point and say “random internet quizzes DO. NOT. LIE.”

When you learn that you are having a boy, a sort of resignation sets in about the whole fashion and clothes thing.  I mean, boys have this reputation for beating up their clothes, not caring if they are particularly clean, and basically as long as a few threads are holding it together, they are good to go.

I was also particularly fearful that my son would inherit my husband’s inability to match items of clothing.  Although he has many fine qualities, fashion sense isn’t one of them. Brown belt and black shoes?  What’s the problem?  Gray shirt and gray pants?  How in the world can I keep insisting that he can’t wear it out of the house, because if two things that are the same color don’t match, then the universe has a serious problem.

Anyhoo, my son had been displaying the usual young male indifference to his clothing.  Clean, dirty, matching, unmatching.  It was all the same to him.

But then last week, something happened.  Dare I say it, a breakthrough of sorts.

They were having “graduation” pictures for his preschool, and I had picked up a lined navy blazer for eight bucks, in one size larger than his normal size.  Yes, I know you are jealous about that.  Often when shopping for the Munchkin, I have the Bargain Angel on my shoulder.  For myself, not so much.

My son knew he would be wearing a white button down shirt and brown linen pants, but hadn’t known about the jacket. I showed it to him in the morning as we were getting ready and asked if he would like to wear it.  His eyes lit up and he said, “Oh, yes!”

So he got dressed and I put the jacket on him.  He immediately went to the full length mirror in my room and stood in front of it.  And he actually began to preen. 

“Mommy, I look like I am forty years old.”

“Yes, baby.”

“Mommy, I look like the mayor or something.”

“You do.”

He turned to me with a big grin on his face.

“Mommy, I look really good, don’t I?”

Indeed, perhaps there is hope after all, my son.

Surreptitiously, I wiped a tear from my eye.

And if the amount of squealing from random unknown females on the way to class was any indication, I may also want to think about amassing a large number of sticks. 

You know, I’m wondering exactly when I turned old. When I became the type of person to mutter under my breath, “These kids today!”

I see dresses like the one that unfortunately led to a ruined prom, or ads like these for prom dresses, and all I can think is, the horror! And also perhaps, thank goodness I am not raising a girl! Because I would be sorely tempted to keep her locked in her room with only classic literature and a chess board as her only forms of entertainment.

I understand that teens are all about the shock value. That they love nothing more than to rebel and make people look at them. They enjoy rejecting the values that society at large supposedly holds dear.

I wish I could say that this has been a trend that has been going on for a very long time, but I am inclined to think it has been more prevalent since the Industrial Revolution. Teens who needed to work the field to make sure the crops were harvested didn’t really have the luxury of wondering if getting a belly piercing would help them to establish their independence from Mom and Dad. In most agrarian societies, there was no true “independence” from Mom and Dad. Everyone would live and work together to help their family survive.

And what I am also wondering is, have we failed our children?

Have we allowed false celebrity and overt sex to flourish in our society because we are too afraid to speak out? That we are a “live and let live” sort of place where we think of badly of ourselves if we trample on someone else’s right to utitlize sex and sex appeal to sell everything from cigarettes to hair products ?

Sex obviously sells, and we must be buying into it. Literally. Because if it didn’t work, they would move on to a different strategy, I assure you. It’s ubiquitous. On television, in magazines, on computer ads and billboards along the road. Name me some place that it isn’t. And then we cluck in dismay as teens are flashing as much skin as they can and worrying if they are fat? Do we truly hold the idea of the innocence of children all that dearly?

Or do we just talk a really good game?

Or perhaps soon enough, (because short of public nudity, I’m not sure there is anywhere else to go) the pendulum will swing the other way, and the showing of an anke will become scandalous.

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?