I kid you not, within two days of posting about our winter of horrible illness, Robin got sick and had an asthma exacerbation. And then it happened again about 4 days later. And I have a cold, and now Holly has a fever. I turned 32 yesterday and I ended the day having a panic attack in bed over Holly’s illness. The worst part is the time between discovering that yes, this is an actually sick kid and not just tired or cranky or whatever, and the time when you know exactly how bad it is. The verdict, this time is: not so bad. But I didn’t know that last night, for all I knew, she’d wake up every hour. She’d spike a fever again and be inconsolable. She’d start throwing up, which is still my #1 fear, even though it’s not any worse than any of those other things. In the fog just before slumber, I chased those fears down a rabbit hole of extreme scenarios, and that always ends with the certainty, the absolute certainty, that one of my children will be diagnosed with a life-threatening disease.
Natasha Mileshina via Compfight
In the moment, it seems completely plausible. They get sick so often. They have this wanness about them that reminds me of Colin from The Secret Garden. When sick, they’re extra sweet and lovely like Beth from Little Women. And no one I know has a kid who has been seriously, gravely ill. It seems like it’s bound to happen: I know lots of people with lots of kids, and it seems statistically likely that SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, will have a child with cancer or meningitis or some other awful thing. Why not me? It will probably be me. It will probably be my child. Every time I’ve ever considered having a third child it’s because in the darkest moments, I am heartbroken at the notion that one of my daughters could lose a sister.
I do not handle these things well. I simply don’t have the temperament for handling the ups and downs of these things with grace and good humor. I fret. I stew. I worry. And I shut down. It’s embarrassing and it’s the number one aspect of parenting that makes me wonder if I ever should have gone down this road. I mean, if I can’t handle routine childhood illnesses well, what business do I have raising children? If I can’t fathom summoning the inner strength to cope with a serious illness, I should probably have never gotten on a train where that’s a possible destination. It makes me think I’m probably not a great mom. I think truly great mothers weather those tides.
It reminds me of this clip from Parenthood (the movie, not the show) in which the grouchy grandfather (Jason Robards) consults his son (Steve Martin) about a problem with another son of his. He tells him about a time when he was a child and they thought he might have polio.
“For a week, we didn’t know… I hated you for that. I did. I hated having to go through that… caring. Worrying. Pain. It’s not for me. It’s not like that all ends when you’re 18 or 21 or 41 or 61. It never, ever ends…”
I get that. It’s a horrible thing to say, and you can see Gil (Steve Martin) react with horror and disgust that a parent would hate a child, would resent something the child can’t control. But I relate so much to that sentiment.
Posted in Mothering, Pop Culture, TV & Film
Tagged childhood illness, illness, mothering, movie, parenthood, polio, stress, worry
SPOILER ALERT: Don’t let your 5 year old read this review.
My girls love princesses. Princess dresses, princess tiaras, dress up shoes and gloves and hats, sparkles and glitter and tutus—they spend hours playing pretend and dress up and putting on princess shows in which I have to sit on the couch and announce “And now, Cinderella will perform her beautiful dance!” And Dorothy will twirl down the hallway in her princess dress and dance in the living room and wrap it up with an elaborate curtsey while I applaud wildly. Yay princesses!
That said, they have not seen most of the classic Disney princess movies, because, frankly, there is a whole lot of death and evil going on there, and I just don’t want to have a conversation about Snow White being saved from her glass coffin by true love’s kiss from a stranger. Because really, isn’t it just a little bit weird and disturbing that the Prince is magically attracted to her when she appears to be dead? Glass coffins, vigilante mobs with torches (Beauty and the Beast), evil stepmothers (Cinderella, Snow White), octopus witches who steal your voice and/or soul (The Little Mermaid)—it just all seems a little intense for preschoolers, especially when what they are primarily interested in the sparkly dresses.
But Merida has been much hyped as a new kind of princess: she rides fast, climbs tall mountains, shoots a bow and arrow with tremendous skill and accuracy, and is endearingly imperfect. Strong, brave, independent, willing to challenge rules and traditions: you know, the kind of girl we’re trying to raise. So we left Margeaux at my sister’s, tucked a bag of Gummi Worms in my purse, and bought the exorbitantly priced tickets.
MOM! CAN I HAVE A BOW AND ARROW AND A TARGET AND A HORSE AND A FARM FOR MY BIRTHDAY WHEN I AM 6?
Four things we loved about Brave: Continue reading
A bunch of bronies found my much earlier post on My Little Pony and left many, many comments. Some contradicted my points using broader examples from more recent episodes of the show (and it is true, my comments were based on the first season only because that’s all that was on Netflix at that time). None of them, apparently, had seen my more recent post where I back off of hatin’ on the smart shaming. In general, the comments are thoughtful and offer rebuttals to my ranty mom raging that are worth considering. Go check them out.
Unfortunately, some of them also called me:
Many commenters in the thread about my post assumed that every comment would be deleted and that it was pointless to argue with me. I hope they see they were wrong. I hate bloggers who aren’t receptive to arguments (at least, reasonable ones not filled with hate) or willing to reconsider their perspective on something.
Several linked me to Lauren Faust’s original defense of the show back in 2010, in Ms. Magazine. I definitely appreciate that Lauren Faust is a cartoon genius, a feminist, and is trying to do something good for cartoons and girls with the show. I still wish they handled issues of race and difference better. Her vision is not totally fulfilled. I still have problems with specific episodes. But I no longer generalize those problems to the entire show.
And perhaps it goes without saying that I will not tolerate misognynistic attacks on our blog. Please see our comments policy.
I hope some of the commenters and Pony fans see that those who made actual arguments were listened to and respected, even if in disagreement. And those who call me a cunt were baleeted.
ETA: Balancing Jane just wrote a great piece about agonistic rhetoric and the idea that instead of EITHER saying “we all need to get along” OR “we all have to argue until someone comes out the winner,” we learn and grow from agonistic debate, in which stakeholders engage in some worthwhile grappling without the intent to win or lose, but test our arguments and reevaluate on all sides. She writes:
At the end of the day, we have to believe enough in our arguments to be willing to test them, and that means that we can’t just run screaming from opposition. It also means that we need to be willing to test them fairly and not wait at the end of a dark alley to batter unsuspecting opponents over the head with arguments they aren’t prepared to counter.
I’ve made a vow to be better at practicing this kind of rhetoric myself, and–for me–that means not bristling at the first sign of dissension. I am strong. I can dissent as well.
I have been thinking the same thing today as I ruminate this discussion about MLP: if no one had ever pushed back on my beliefs, I never would have become a feminist, or an anti-racist, or a fan of coffee. I truly appreciate respectful debate. Let there be more agonistic rhetoric in the blogging world! To that end, I’m not trying to be right about MLP. I’m trying to grapple with children’s media, media that claims to be feminist, and figure out what that might look like and where I draw the line on crappy tv for my kids. My perspective has shifted thanks to agonistic debate and an open mind.
Posted in Pop Culture, TV & Film
Tagged blogging, bronies, children's tv, debate, lauren faust, misogyny, my little ponies, trolling, tv
A few weeks ago, I wrote a huge diatribe about how much My Little Pony: Friendship is Magical undermines the causes of feminism and anti-racism etc etc. I made a point about how MLP encouraged girls to follow “faith” rather than, you know, using common sense, reason, or problem-solving.
Well, I have to scale back my MLP ire-ometer from an 8 to a 6 or so, because I’ve since discovered that the whole “blind faith is great” trope is pretty common in kid’s shows. There’s an even an episode of my beloved Spongebob in which Spongebob and Patrick are rewarded for believing in a magical conch and Squidward is punished for doing things like finding shelter and creating a fire.
So MLP gets demoted (or upgraded) from “strenuously disappointing” to “equally as sucky as everything else.” My kids recently discovered JEM, which is basically a cartoon soap opera with occasional music videos thrown in, so these days? I’m kind of missing Ponyville.
Posted in Pop Culture, TV & Film
Tagged blind faith, critical thinking, ire, kid's shows, magical thinking, my little ponies, My Little Pony, spongebob, tv
It’s getting humid and hot in Iowa. Every summer since 2007, I go through my own twisted version of Proust’s Madeleine moment when I step outside into the sun and feel the heat bearing down on me and the warm air thick in my lungs: I start to feel vaguely queasy.
My daughters are winter babies, so my early pregnancies were during the summer. We conceived Robin very purposefully on June 4th, 2007. We’d just bought a brand-new king sized mattress. I went to see Knocked Up by myself and at the end, I thought: “Well if those idiots can have a baby, so can I.” I drove home and we made a baby. I confirmed the pregnancy two weeks later, while vacationing with my Mom’s extended family at Kentucky Lake. We played flashlight tag with my cousins for hours that night, and then I went inside and took the test. Brian had stayed home to look for work, as he’d been recently ejected from his PhD program, and I texted him an image of the test.
Post-flashlight tag, pre-vomiting glow!
Holly was conceived just after finals week in May 2009. We were high on Led Zeppelin and getting decent rest now that Robin was 14 months old, and then I really was Knocked Up. I took the test just after Memorial Day and the general reaction was Oh Shit (and later, Yay).
This is a positive test. When Brian saw it, he smiled and said with relief, “Phew! It’s negative!” And I was like…. actually…
I had hopes that I’d be one of those breezy pregnant women who literally glow in pregnancy: the women for whom hormones ramp up the sex drive, clear the skin, and give them a sense of deep contentment and purpose. I have friends who love pregnancy, who thrive in pregnancy, who sometimes get pregnant to feel better.
I am not one of those women. Continue reading
Posted in Memoir, Mothering, Pop Culture, TV & Film
Tagged coach mcguirk, dooce, home movies, morning sickness, nausea, Pregnancy, septopus, tv, unisom, vomiting, zofran
Willow Smith shaved her head recently, and when Parade Magazine asked him about it, Will Smith said this:
“We let Willow cut her hair. When you have a little girl, it’s like how can you teach her that you’re in control of her body? If I teach her that I’m in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she’s going to replace me with some other man when she goes out in the world. She can’t cut my hair but that’s her hair. She has got to have command of her body. So when she goes out into the world, she’s going out with a command that is hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives.”
Inspired by Will Smith (a phrase I never in a million years thought I would type), Lauren and Jen talk about setting boundaries and answering tough questions.
Lauren: So, would you let Dorothy shave her head?
Jen: I shaved my head, when I was 19.
Lauren: Cooooool.
Posted in Jen & Lauren Chat, Mothering, Music, Pop Culture, TV & Film
Tagged beauty, blogging, childhood, family, feminism, hair, home, identity, kids, make up, motherhood, mothering, parenting, real life, teenagers, Will Smith, Willow Smith
So I didn’t do much (okay, any) writing last week. But I promise, I wasn’t slacking!
What I did:
1.) turned in my grades
2.) spent 2 days in professional development seminars
3.) went to my nephew’s track meet
4.) planted lime basil seeds
5.) hung out with my sister and her new baby
6.) cheered for the otters at the zoo
7.) cheered for Margeaux when she stood up for the first time
8.) bought a new round squishy ottoman so Margeaux has a safe place to stand up
9.) taught D and Lucy how to use a lint brush so they can clean the cat hair off the new ottoman
10.) chased the cat around to squirt peroxide on his gross open wounds twice a day
11.) vowed to never let the cat outside again Continue reading
Posted in Grad School Quittas, Mothering, Pop Culture, This Is Not a Lifestyle Blog, TV & Film
Tagged alligators, Beastie Boys, blogging, career, family, Fresh Beat Band, funny, home, how things work, identity, kids, MCA, motherhood, mothering, organizing, parenting, teaching, work, Writing
Dear Bronies, before reading this, getting pissed, and commenting on it, see UPDATED ENTRIES in which I BACK OFF OF THE SHOW AND CONCEDE IMPORTANT POINTS MADE BY YOU, fair bronies, who I do not hate, nor do I hate the producer (and yeah, I KNOW SHE IS A FEMINIST), nor do I hate the show. I’m closing comments on this entry because I have said everything I have to say about this issue countless times, and weathered enough verbal abuse from defenders of the show who seem more interested in making me feel bad than in actually understanding it. The comments below make a lot of the points you probably intend to make, and you can read my responses there.
See original post below.
* * *
As you know, Jen and I are always on the search for good shows for our daughters to watch. In an effort to justify what we agree is a borderline problematic element of our parenting, we do our best to pick shows that edify, or at least have kick ass narratives and messages that we can embrace as feminist mothers.
My girls recently got hooked on the new My Little Pony: Friendship is Magical series, and I was hoping for a winner. Note: My family only watches TV through Netflix. That’s why I’m always two years behind any trendy outrage.
I love the animation style, and I’ve revised my stance on their strangely slender and un-ponylike bodies (in that, it doesn’t seem egregious so I’ll drop it). MLP:FIM focuses on the majority girl town Ponyville (because only girls are friends?), where the fairly smart and sassy Twilight Sparkle has adventures with a colorful cast of ponies and writes letters to Princess Celestia in a sort of “Jerry’s Corner” wrap-up at the end of the show. The show’s emphasis is friendship, which is magical, and magic, which is also magical.
Tragically, despite its potential, MLP:FIM has several problems that I’m simply not okay with. Namely, sexist, racist, colonialist problems. Continue reading
Posted in Mothering, Pop Culture, TV & Film
Tagged african americans, archer, cartoons, colonialism, feminism, kids, lana kane, motherhood, My Little Pony, native americans, parenting, pop culture, privilege, racism, stereotypes, tv, whiteness
Jen and I chatted this week about sisterhood, family, and babies. Conclusion: sisters are awesome. So is Eight is Enough.
Posted in Jen & Lauren Chat, Memoir, Mothering, Pop Culture, TV & Film
Tagged best friends, Birth order, cheaper by the dozen, coming of age, eight is enough, family, home, Iowa, kids, Life, motherhood, mothering, Oklahoma, parenting, Sibling, sisterhood, sisters, tulsa, yours mine and ours
