Yeah, you heard me. I’m coming down against team snacks. I’m coming down hard.

First of all, when did this start? I can guarantee that my parents weren’t scrambling to pull together any team snacks during my childhood. This is something our generation came up with, isn’t it? No doubt it’s supposed to foster a sense of community and sharing. I’m sure some people even think it’s easier to bring a snack for everyone every few weeks than it is to bring a small snack for just their own kid every time. Maybe the kids look forward to the snack and it’s healthy and good for them and isn’t that all that matters? Huh? Isn’t it?!

No, man. It’s not.

The most important thing to consider should be that I am so over the food politics of parenting. Breastmilk! Formula! Breast! Bottle! Organic! Affordable! Made-from-scratch! Convenient! Shut up! And now I’m supposed to come up with a refreshing and wholesome and non-processed snack that will contain no major allergens and that all the kids will like. Fuck me.

The amount of anxiety I had picking up a watermelon last week was ridiculous. Because maybe it was too cold for watermelon and was it even enough? And also because I was trying to feed my kids a healthy, homemade dinner at the crack of 5pm in order to get their asses to the t-ball diamond in time and have you ever tried to carve up a watermelon and spoon feed a baby at the same time? While you’re also refilling milk glasses and breaking up fork fights? THIS is why I starve all day and then resort to snacking on junk late at night and can’t lose the baby weight. Stupid team snack.

So I call bullshit on team snack because it is fraught with politics and anxiety. But I also call bullshit because nobody really wants to do it, do they? Am I wrong? Speak up you team snack lovers! Nobody wants to deal with coming up with a snack on the way from work to the ball park. Nobody needs another thing to deal with in the after school scramble. And since I have two other children who get to sit through every game and practice, I still need to pack a snack on my off days.

Are you with me or against me, bad moms? And if you’re with me, can we please figure out a way to put an end to this charade of communal snacking bliss? Please!

I think I am the only person who is not shocked, horrified and otherwise offended by some aspect of the Time magazine cover. You know the one. If you’re not put off by the image of a preschooler breastfeeding, then you’re upset by the way the picture was staged. And if you don’t blame the mother for putting her son in the spotlight, then you definitely blame Time  for setting them up for attacks.

But not me. My first reaction was, Damn, that chick can rock skinny jeans while she’s still breastfeeding! And then I marveled at how brilliant the cover is. It’s pure genius. The image of an older three-year-old breastfeeding (while standing on a chair, no less) is guaranteed to cause a stir. But the cover line “Are you mom enough?” is the icing on the cake.

I knew the question would get parents of every stripe fired up, but I didn’t quite expect the furor aimed at the magazine itself. There are accusations that Time is trying to pit mothers against each other, that it is exploiting the child model and sensationalizing (or sexualizing!) breastfeeding. Some claim that it amounts to a blatant attack on attachment parenting and nearly everyone agrees that it’s a low-down, shameless way to sell magazine copies.

They may have a point, but I’m going to withhold my judgment until the magazine hits the new stands and I can actually read the article. As of Sunday evening (in Canada at least) the only way to access the article is by online subscription which I’m unwilling to pay for. Neither is anyone else, it seems, since none of the reactions I’ve encountered so far can offer more than speculation about the actual content of the magazine. It’s not uncommon, after all, for a well-researched and fair article to be out done by sensationalist headlines.

And as for the righteous indignation about Time‘s attempt to stir up a new kind of mommy war? Puh-lease. We eat this shit up, don’t we? Those of us whose social media is teeming with all manner of parenting types were inundated with responses to the cover image by mid-morning on Friday. When has a cover ever generated that much interest? We love this stuff. It gives us something to get all worked up about.

And, besides, how we parent is now cover story material. That’s a good thing, if you ask me.

Seven summers ago, we had a house fire. It was … well, it was horrible. It could have been so much worse than it was, but we all made it out safely and (bonus that I didn’t care about at all once we were outside and alive), we only lost one rocking chair and a baby quilt out of our material possessions. That’s it. Mostly because we called friends and about a dozen of them came in the middle of the night to move everything outside so that when the water that doused the roof came down, the only damage was to the walls. They also packed up toothbrushes and other toiletries and changes of clothes and baby chairs and DVD’s and dropped them off to where we spent the night. We got back from being checked out at the hospital quite late, and to wake up to so many things that are essential to (me feeling human, and) a one and two-and-a-half year old was such a blessing. I hadn’t thought about any of those things when we left the house, and seeing them in the morning was proof to me that having people in your life who care about you and take care of you is so important.

We live in a community that is small (about 10,000 people) and is quite close-knit. You know everyone through school and soccer and swimming and skiing and whatnot. We know even more people through our church, which is a good size and is heavily involved in the community. I am surrounded by women whom I love, and who make my laugh, and cry, and whom I can talk about anything with. We have couples in our life with whom we get together with and talk about everything from hunting to shopping, and who are invested in the lives of our kids as well. It is not uncommon for us, now that our kids are older, to invite ALL THE KIDS over for a play date. Two weekends ago, I had kids from three different families over. Combined with my three kids, there were ten minions versus me. But it was no big deal. The kids played in the tree fort and swung on the swings and dug in the sandbox and played street hockey and built with Lego and they HAD FUN. Better yet, their parents had a break.

They’ve all done the same for us.

This past week has seen my sister-in-law taken out by the stomach flu and so many of us took turns dropping kids off at school, picking them up, having them over after school (my kids LOVE their cousins, and it’s reciprocal). Another friend’s husband had shoulder surgery and we’re all doing what we can to help out with their four kids.

Yes, life is busy, and yes, there in no time, but … there kind of is. It really is so much better to give than receive. (I have a hard time accepting help, but I want to HELP EVERYONE.)

I am so glad for community. For my village. A lot of us don’t have grandparents around to pour into our kids, so we do what we can to help each other out and build our kids up. It’s kind of awesome.

Do you have a good “village” or community? Or do you want more?

There is nothing more important than the safety of our children, but omfg, car seats are THE WORST.

Maybe I’m only saying this because I spent over five hours wrestling with car seats today, but that doesn’t make it less true. I spent FIVE HOURS wrestling with car seats in one day. It doesn’t get much worse than that.

I figured out how to fit three seats across my backseat after months of research, shopping and plotting. I installed them halfway through my last pregnancy just to make sure they’d work and then left all three in the car because there was no way I ever wanted to do that again.

But baby Mary is outgrowing her infant seat and Colum is more than ready for a booster. So all I needed to do was turn Colum’s old seat rear-facing and put the extra-narrow booster that finally went on sale in place of the baby bucket seat. Easy peasy.

Two hours, a bag of garbage and a seat full of crumbs later, the fancy-pants new booster didn’t fit. It wasn’t even close. Colum was late for his t-ball game and I was standing in the driveway amidst $900 worth of child safety seats that couldn’t keep my kids safe. My husband wound up driving Colum in Irene’s seat while I walked with the girls.

Then, since the car wasn’t doing the kids and I a whole lot of good, he took the car for the rest of the afternoon. I then walked all three kids from the baseball diamonds to my parents house, but told the husband to please bring all the car seats there because I had a new plan.

Over an hour later I’d managed to cram the booster between the two car seats and even installed the rear-facing seat without the manual. Woot! Things were looking up … until someone actually tried to sit in the front seat. Damn, that rear-facing position takes up a lot of space.

We drove home like that anyway, but as soon as the kids hit their pillows I needed to be back out there.  This time I was going to turn Irene’s seat rear-facing for Mary, move Irene to Colum’s seat and Colum to the booster. We’ll just put the booster in the middle, no, try that side, no, try the other side. Okay, perfect. Wait. What’s that? You want to be able to close the door? All the way? Fine. I’ll try again.

And I did. I tried again and again until I finally came up with a configuration that works. It’s a squeeze, but all the seats are safely and securely installed and they are NEVER coming out.

Also. The car seat safety police will be happy because baby Mary will be rear-facing until Colum no longer needs a booster. There is no way I’m ever moving those seats again.

What are your worst car seat stories? I know you have some.

When my oldest kid turned four years old I packed away the stroller. Well, I put away the sit and stand-type stroller and moved his toddler sister into a Maclaren, anyway.  At the same time, we moved around the corner, just a couple blocks further away from everything.

It doesn’t take too many foot-dragging, 45-minute ordeals with a stroller full of groceries and a whiny preschooler before you just start driving. We’d walk to the local park and to the school bus stop and take the wagon every once in a while, but for the most part I started driving places I used to walk to. The twenty minute walk to my parents house? With a four year old? Make that an hour long walk and forget about it.

Then last summer I was massively and painfully pregnant. My pelvis seemed to just kind of fall apart one day about halfway through my second trimester and that was the end of walking for me. I mean, I was still mobile, but I had to be slow and deliberate and not overdo it.  I was driving everywhere. EVERYWHERE. I basically had to.

And I’m sick of it. Spring weather has finally arrived and I’m still packing an extra 25 pounds worth of baby weight. I wanna walk!

This is how, just days shy of his sixth birthday, two years after our final stroller farewells, I wound up pushing my son to school. And I don’t care what people think … or say or post to their Tumblrs. We already missed the bus, so I put the baby in the carrier, the three year old at the front of the sit and stand-style stroller and my son stood on the step as I hauled ass to the school. It was actually awesome.

Hey, if having three kids is a pretty good way to put on some extra weight, then maybe pushing them all around will be a good way to lose some of it.  And if taking along a baby carrier to make a spare seat (or step) for a six year old means I get to walk around my city again, then I’m all for it.

Because explain to me again how driving my kid from place to place makes him less lazy than if he walks one way and then hops on the stroller on the way back? Hell, forget about him. My kid is too big for his stroller so my ass won’t be too big for my jeans.

What do you think? Should there be a cut off age for strollers? What age should it be?

I haven’t had a lot of “free” time on the Internet for far too long, thanks to my job at ‘The Firm’, what with it’s long hours, daily commute, and decision to block/monitor the Internet. It’s totally their prerogative, and I didn’t abuse the Internet like others did, but I used to use my lunch hours to get some freelance stuff done, or reply to emails, or read/comment on posts. I have no desire for them to know how I spend my free time, so I’ve stayed offline until the evenings, which means that I’m trying to meet deadlines between putting my kids to bed and taking my husband to bed.

*Ahem*

When I do sit down to read, it seems that the same debates that were out there when I started blogging seven years ago are still going strong. I know that everyone’s trying to drive traffic and I know that these may be new topics for first-time moms, but all of the judgment being flung in the name of page views makes me sigh. And roll my eyes.

The working mom/SAHM/WAHM debate. Dudes. Parenting is THE HARDEST JOB ON THE PLANET. Your work situation is just a peripheral issue. I have been all of the above and you know what? You throw little beings into your life who rely on you to KEEP THEM ALIVE and we’re all hanging on for dear life.

The “picky eaters” vs. those who are smug about how there kids eat ALL THE THINGS. My kids fall in the picky side of the spectrum, but get all of the food groups during the day. I get them to try the less “mainstream” dishes that I make, but I don’t push it. I was picky until I was in my twenties but the fact that I’m sitting here typing this at the ripe old age of 37 is a testament to the fact that, 1) I DIDN’T DIE, and 2) PREFERENCES CHANGE. (Also! 2b) My oldest (age 9) tries new stuff all of the time, and likes it. There is hope!)

Breast vs. Bottle. SO MUCH RAGE from either side. Full disclosure: I was strictly formula fed and I have no allergies or any other possible side effects from formula. Full disclosure, part two: I was the smug mother-to-be during my first pregnancy; my kids would be strictly breastfed and never have formula. My first child was great breast-feeder, but at about six weeks old I was planning for a hair appointment and he WOULD NOT take a bottle. We tried about ten different bottle nipples until he would take one. My personal belied that the spiel of “nipple confusion” is BS, unless you’re referring to my first-born. With babies number two and three, Daddy took one feeding in the night to give me a longer stretch of sleep. My kids had formula for their supplemental feeding and, hey. They’re perfectly FINE.)

Co-sleeping vs. babies sleeping in their own bed. People shout statistics from either side. Side one: Co-sleeping is better! Side two: Sleeping on their own is better! Me: DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU. When my babies were itty-bitty newborns, they would spend the first few weeks in a bassinet in our room. Or sleeping on my or my husband’s chest. Then they went to their own room, right next to ours. My firstborn was a great back sleeper; the other two got to about eight weeks old and would wake up out of a dead sleep and WAIL if I put them on their backs. So I (gasp!) let them sleep on their tummies. Many of my friends did the same. It’s like a secret club. *whisper* My baby sleeps on her stomach.

(Related: When our kids are sick/have bad dreams/etc. we will let them sleep with us. And will wedge toes in my ribs and smack me in the face ten times and keep inching over so that I am somehow “sleeping” in a space five inches wide, while holding onto the edge for dear life so that I don’t fall to the floor. Kudos to those of you who co-sleep every night. It’s not for me.)

Are you entrenched in the Mommy Wars debate? Or do you shrug it off? Do you feel like judging me for my choices? You wouldn’t be the first.

My daughter’s seventh (hold me) birthday is coming up, and all I’ve been hearing for eight months is, ‘Mom! I want a bowling party!’ or, ‘Mom! I want a horse-riding party!’ or, ‘Mom! I want a princess tea party!’ So naturally, in the face of all of these suggestions, I have done nothing. My daughter’s birthday is now three weeks away, and I have nothing planned. Nada.

Part of the problem is that we moved just before the school year began, and my daughter, the new kid, has not received one birthday invitation to another child’s party this year. Not one. Now, there are only seven girls in her class, but I hesitate to believe that not one of them has had a birthday yet. Or that they have all had a birthday, but no party. I’m pretty sure there’s been a party or two. And my daughter has not been invited to any of them.

So now what do I do? Do I forget these small town snobs and shun the children, as I believe my daughter has been shunned (this is mainly a thought I have at 3 am, when I am my most rational)? Or do I turn the other cheek (if there has even been a cheek turned in the first place), take the high road and invite all of the girls in her class and their mothers too, as an opportunity to get to know each other better? Keep in mind that these are the same mothers that do not bother to talk to me in the schoolyard :)

We always make a pretty big deal out of birthdays, with a party and lots of friends and lots of food and games, and I don’t want to deprive my daughter of that this year, but I could do something really nice with family and offer to take my daughters and their little cousins to the movies or something, avoiding the whole, ‘school friends’ issue altogether.

Not sure what my next move will be. What do you do for birthdays around your place?

From that first gummy smile to the first time your baby looks into your eyes and say “Mama,” the first year is full of joy and excitement. But that’s not all it’s full of.

Let’s talk about milestones, bad mom style.

• Baby’s first bad latch.  Maybe some women gaze lovingly into their baby’s eyes while he suckles sweetly moments after birth, butterflies flitting in a golden ray of sunshine. But everyone I know is elbow deep in lanolin within a day or two, trying to keep the cracked and bleeding nipples at bay. Who knew side-lying with a one-day old was going to be a bad idea?
• Baby’s first scratch. Because you just can’t bear to restrain those little hands with baby mittens when they clearly want to be flailing around wildly. So you don’t and the next morning your sweet little baby wakes up looking like she’s just gone ten rounds with the neighbour’s cat.
• This inevitably brings about baby’s first bleeding finger tip. You break out the baby nail clippers, resolved to put an end to the nighttime scratching sessions, only to discover that newborn fingertips tear like tissue paper and bleed like a faucet. And the crying! That pain-drenched baby wail will be with you forever. Welcome to motherhood. Here is your guilt. Wear it proudly.
• Then there’s the first blowout. All your round-the-clock feeding efforts pay off with a giant explosive liquid poo that will not be contained by any diaper known to man. It will burst out of leg holes and up backs, soaking and staining cute little onsies and sleepers — the cuter the sleeper, the stinkier the poo.
• This is followed closely by the second blowout which also merits milestone status, occurring, as it does, mere moments after you finally get the first one cleaned up and baby changed into a fresh, new outfit.
• Baby’s first cold is a harbinger of such exciting new pastimes as trying to squirt saline solution up the nose of a screaming newborn and then trying to fit the giant, hard tip of a suction bulb into the smallest nostril known to man, holding both the bulb and the nostril still, while you suction the snot right out of your own baby’s nose.
• This will never work, but it does mean it’s time for baby’s first night sleeping upright on mom’s chest! And maybe if you’re lucky, your own sleep deprivation will take a psychedelic, hallucinatory turn.
• My personal favourite is baby’s first fall off the bed. Bonus points if your baby actually somersaults forward off the bed and lands head first onto ceramic tile, like my first born did.
• That’d be a good time for your first call to Telehealth (or whatever over-the-phone medical advice service there is in your area.)
• Then you have your first near-choking experience, food and/or found object.
• There’s also mom’s first call to poison control because someone (who was not mom) somehow dropped an entire unlit cigarette under the dining room table and the crawling baby started to eat it. (Or is that just me?)
• Baby’s first steps are always exciting until they go careening head first, at top speed, into the corner of the table.
• And that lets us wrap up neatly with baby’s first ER visit.

This is just the stuff I could come up with in a sitting! Out with it, bad moms. What are your worst first-year milestones? Make me feel better about myself.

It seems that moms — especially those with depression – just can’t win. According to a recently released study, those sleep issues that my child had — natch, HAS — exhibited since birth are probably (wait for it..) my fault.

“Researchers have now found that mothers who are depressed may cause sleep problems in their babies or make them worse, rather than the other way round.”

So instead of the baby being the cause of sleep deprivation in parents, these researchers have concluded that the mom who displays depression may be the one stealing all that precious, precious slumber from the family. Awesome: depression just loves to have some guilt heaped on it, it intensifies the flavour I hear.

And while I haven’t read the actual study there appears to be a leap in logic that I don’t quite get: how does a population of 45 Caucasian American moms – with only 14 identified as depressed - stand up to the age old #zombiemoms phenomena?

How claims can be made with any confidence when employing such a small test group and observation period (1 week. ONE WEEK) is beyond me. But what do I know? I’m just a long-time sleep-deprived parent who also dedicated the majority of her undergrad to analysing research like this for fun and good grades. And sport.

The fact that the results also relied on the mom keeping a written diary of their observations on sleep deprivation also makes me raise an eyebrow at these results. If you’d asked me to write down my feelings while dealing with a screaming newborn at 3 am, my diary would have read like the book ‘Go the F**k to Sleep‘ but with more tenderness. And swearing.

Maybe depressed moms do like to cuddle more or take more gratuitous hugs and snuggles during the night for some much needed emotional support like the researchers claim, but I’m not entirely convinced that snatching little bits of love and comfort qualify as sleep disruptions. Who here hasn’t watched their child sleep and reached out to touch a soft cheek, or kiss that dewy forehead, or just nuzzle up while their sometime hellion looks like an angel? But next time, remember: Shame on you for doing it, especially if you are depressed. You’re stealing from that elusive sandman! IT’S ALL YOUR FAULT.

Commencing another guilt trip in t-minus 10.

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Have you read it?

You know: the hottest mommy porn to hit e-readers everywhere. The S&M the title that is being discussed on every media site, and being read on every pool side.

50 Shades of Grey.

I’m not embarrassed to say I read it, for work purposes of course. And it made me uncomfortable.

It wasn’t the graphic coupling, and the descriptions of her “sex” and her many almost  orgasms achieved under dubious circumstances that turned me off. It wasn’t even the bad writing, the typos, the need for an edit. It wasn’t  the multiple references for a need for a hair tie, as in: he asked me if I had a hair tie, I  had two hair ties, he braided my hair and put on a hair tie; where did the hair tie come from? [Note: these are loose quotes as I can't be bothered to go back and read the book looking for hair tie quotes -- believe me there are many.]

Or as Maria at Bored Mommy noted the multiple uses of the word Mewl.

Or the lazy anachronisms such as a 2011 university student not having a computer, or a cellphone or the strange cropping up of British terms such as “satchel”.

Or even that the book was first posted at a fan site as a re-write of Twilight complete with dashing man, virginal lead and a secret room filled with darkness and red leather.

I hated it because of the power dynamic. The story is of a young 21-year old university student, weeks away from graduation who meets a very handsome, fabulously wealthy, controlling man a few years his senior. Their attraction is immediate but before they can have a relationship she has to commit to being his “submissive” and not look him in the eye, and only eat what he tells her, and succumb to punishment if she breaks the rules. Of course, the punishment is a turn-on, at least for him.

Fans say that Anastasia Steele  is actually the one in control because she can say refuse Christian Grey’s rules.  I didn’t think she was the one in control, she may have had the ultimate say in the relationship but she is not an active player in the sex scenes, she is completely passive with her hands figuratively and literally tied. And since this is a book about sex, I think that says a lot about her agency.

I could have lived with all that if I had found Christian Grey remotely attractive.  I could put aside my need for equality and succumbed to this charms if he had any positive attributes other than his auburn hair and smouldering eyes. But no, I found him dull, handsome and rich, but dull. Only the email exchanges showed any humour in any of the characters, in fact they were the best part of the book.

But putting aside the writing issues and one-dimensional characters, what does the book’s popularity say about us moms, who are indulging in the “mommy porn”? Some pundits suggest that the attraction to this novel is that women in the feminist age want to read about submission, “to counteract the the more theatrical fantasies of sexual surrender offer a release, a vacation, an escape from the dreariness and hard work of equality,” says tiresome anti-feminist writer Kate Roiphe.

Yes, after storming the ramparts of the patriarchy all day, all I want to do is lie down in my pajama jeans and read some sexist smut.

Unlike Roiphe, I don’t think that this book says anything about the state of feminism in North America, (I look to the eradication of our reproductive rights to know that is true).  Maybe the term “mommy porn” has more to do with the media, than it does with us moms. There is little proof that this book was in fact, more popular with moms than it was with women of all kinds. But the fact that it got dubbed mommy porn, probably increased it’s popularity with moms. And so the viscous media cycle, mom panels and blog posts began.

Why the interest in moms reading smut? Are we moms so sexually mordant that a badly-written book about BDSM gets us all atwitter? The term mommy porn implies that moms read this book because our sex lives are over.  Or our need for romance is so strong that we sit around in our yoga pants craving a literary getaway where the man takes over and tells us to “eat!” and “bend down and don’t let go of the bedpost” [again loose quotes].

There is something sexist underlying the hype, as if we tired, frigid moms need a book to put some spice back into our lives, it is implied in all the coverage that our husbands are lucky if we read it — maybe we will get adventurous in the bedroom.

Corinna Lawson over at GeekMom says the mommy porn label does a disservice to the romance genre, which is the largest segment of the book publishing market:

Women are interested in the romance genre because the stories feature women, something that’s somewhat lacking in other genres and sorely lacking still on the movie screen.

The fact is that the largest single segment of the U.S. consumer book market is being derided because it’s fiction written by women for women or dismissed as “mommy porn” should be concerning to all women or all those interested in judging someone not on their gender but as an individual. It’s yet another way in which female sexuality or girl parts can be derided or dismissed as unimportant.

I admit I don’t read traditional romance novels, nor have I read too much erotica. (I haven’t read Twilight either.) But I would read some of the books that Lawson or Jezebel recommends to see if they appeal to my inner romantic or outer vixen.

The embarrassing thing is, that even though I didn’t like the book and do not want to give any more time to the twisted world of Ana and Christian, I kind of want to know what happens next.  So if anyone could tell me, I would appreciate it.

Have your read it?  Did you like it?  Do you generally read romance or erotica?