I know that this time of year is supposed to be all, happy happy joy joy, but the truth is, there is much about this season that just sucks. Between juggling family obligations, wrapping up school, work and all of those presents – which, of course you have to buy first, causing no amount of stress for well-meaning procrastinators like me – it’s enough to turn even the merriest of elves into a Grinch.

Add to that the emotional baggage that can come with the holidays – feuding families! Dead people we miss! Money we can’t spend! – and the season of joy can feel downright joyless.

But, since being in a bad mood for two weeks is no fun, and it kind of wrecks it for everybody else, I am here to offer a) sympathy and b) some easy ways to remedy the feelings of stress, sadness and punch-you-in-the-throat frustration that can so easily rear it’s muddled head at this time of year. Christmas doesn’t have to be blue.

Tips for Surviving the Holidays Without Ripping Anybody’s Head Off:

• Simply decide that you cannot and will not do it all this year. If making your own advent calendar and doing all the baking and making your kids’ stockings and cooking 175 latkes for the grade 1 Hanukkah party and hosting the holidays is going to kill you dead, cut something out. It’s ok, Martha – the kids will survive with store bought cookies.
• Pick your poison – and make sure you have it on hand, whether that means herbal tea, a bar of dark chocolate; whatever gets you through. I prefer coffee, with Baileys after six o’clock.
• Carve out a tiny bit of time for yourself. I know, this can sound ridiculous when you feel like you barely have time to go to the bathroom, but taking a few hours for yourself can be a lifesaver. Spend an afternoon at the gym or enjoying an evening out with your girls. Hell, a movie by yourself can be as relaxing as that spa treatment your husband had better get you.
• Remember the reason for the season. For me, that means family. The idea is to be together, to see people I don’t get to see often enough, to watch my children’s face light up when they open that present I stressed out about finding, paying for and wrapping. But whatever your reason for the season, try to keep it in mind.

Photo courtesy Ohio University

What are you going to be for Halloween?

It’s a question we ask and answer over and over again at this time of year, whether we will be taking our children trick-or-treating for the first time, or trying to out-do our friends at the annual costume party.  And there are many of us that put quite a bit of effort into Halloween costumes – making a child’s costume by hand, spending too much money on a store-bought outfit or wracking our brains to come up with something clever and original that will have people talking until next Halloween.

But this year, a group of students at Ohio University would like us to think about something else when we are planning our Halloween costumes, and have come out with a campaign to help us do just that.

We’re a Culture, Not a Costume is a poster campaign launched by Students Teaching Against Racism in Society (STARS), and has each of several posters featuring students of various cultural backgrounds holding pictures depicting people dressed up in stereotypical and racist garb. In one poster, a woman of Asian descent holds up a picture of somebody dressed as a Geisha. “This is not who I am and this is not OK” the poster proclaims. It’s a strong message, and not surprisingly, the campaign has gone viral, exploding on Facebook and in other social media channels.

And while many of the images are disturbing (the student of Arab descent holding up the poster of somebody dressed as a Sheik-come-suicide bomber is particularly unsettling), I have to admit, I am unsure of where exactly – when it comes to Halloween costumes at least – the line that separates parody and archetype from  racism, is drawn.

I would probably not have thought of somebody dressed up as a Geisha as somebody being insensitive to Japanese culture. Why that is, exactly, I’m not sure. Because the misogynistic or enslaving implications of Geisha culture outweigh the racist ones? Because Geisha is no longer widely practiced and therefore already in the realm of parody and history but not stereotype? Because I am too ignorant to fully understand the implication? Like I said, I’m not sure.

There are definitely costumes that should never be worn, for cultural reasons. Dressing up as a Nazi comes to mind as about offensive a costume as you can get, but how many cave-dwelling Osama Bin Ladens do you think there will be at the Legion this year? Anybody with access to some combat fatigues and wig can go as Gadhaffi, and I’m pretty sure he’d get a few good guffaws. Their death count may not have been as high or as swift as Hitler’s, but genocide is genocide and I doubt people need to see any despot’s party tricks.

Does intention or model, I wonder, have any bearing on precisely how racist one should perceive a costume? I would cringe at the site of an ‘Indian Chief’ costume, all headdress and war paint and animal skin pants, but what about the dress and raven-hued hair of the hero princess Pocahontas?  I’ve already said that I have an issue with somebody dressed as an Arab sheik (bombs or not), but what about a little girl donning the costume of her beloved Jasmine? Is it ok if Disney does it first?

Last year, I dressed up as one of four sister wives at the inaugural Blissdom Canada Costumes and Karaoke party, something that could have been seen as offensive to a member of the Mormon Church. We knew that was a possibility, but quite frankly, dismissed our uncertainties almost immediately because we felt that parody trumped cultural insensitivity, and we went on to become some of the most widely talked-about masqueraders there.

This year, my group went as Georgian zombies, which should probably have only offended the most die-hard of Jane Austen enthusiasts, but are we now to scrutinize every costume for potential of offense? Perhaps the answer is a resounding yes, but I also wonder about (note – wonder about, not condone) the notion of turning even the most innocent of intentions into cause for alarm. I’m just glad that my own kids’ Halloween costumes are already decided. Hopefully the dragon and Bat Girl won’t get anybody’s ire up.

So what do you think as Halloween draws ever nearer? Is this about cultural sensitivity, or are we just being oversensitive?

what would you do?

He was a cute baby, perhaps 8 months old, all chubby cheeks and waving hands and little squeals. Sitting on his adult’s lap (I can only presume that it was his father, but that is indeed a presumption), that baby looked happy and clean and well-cared for. That baby made me smile.

And then the baby’s adult reached down beside him into a little paper bag, and shoved a fistful of popcorn into his mouth. The baby, being a baby, grabbed the man’s hand and yelped at him. I thought it was cute. It’s always cute when babies want what their adults have. Except then, the adult reached down into the bag again, came up with a single big, fluffy piece of popcorn, and popped it into cute baby’s mouth. Not cute! Not cute!

My stomach dropped and my eyes widened. Popcorn? For a baby? Is that adult crazy? I looked around to see if anybody else had noticed, but I seemed to be on my own. The man fished out another piece and gave it to the baby. And then another. They got into a bit of a rhythm – a fistful for me, a kernel for you. Cute baby was happy and seemed to like the popcorn, but all I could think was, cute baby is going to choke! Don’t you know how dangerous it is to give a baby popcorn?! Cute baby is going to die because cute baby’s adult is a moron!

I was absolutely stuck in a moral dilemma between standing there watching, minding my own business, and sprinting up to cute baby’s adult, informing him that You can’t feed popcorn to a baby! He will choke! He will die! I had no idea what I should do.

If cute baby had been un-seated in a car that pulled up next to me, I would have rolled down my window and yelled at them. Or maybe even called 911. If cute baby had been playing near an electrical outlet, or had a purse strap tangled around his neck, I would have said something. But I had no idea what to do about cute baby being fed popcorn.

The story ends with me getting off easy – cute baby’s female adult (presumably his mother) came back to the pair from some other corridor of the mall, and scooped cute baby up. She seemed neither concerned nor surprised about the baby’s current snack, but I can’t be sure she saw him eating it. The man got up and pushed the strolled after the woman, popcorn bag tucked into the basket underneath.

So I said nothing.

But it’s been nearly two years now and I still think about cute baby, my inability to make a moral vs safety call on the subject, and wonder if I should have said something.

Should I have said something? Would you?

A story broke this week about a Toronto Daycare Caterer who allegedly lied about food sources, preparation standards, and generally pretty much everything involving the food she provided to 75 different childcare facilities around the Greater Toronto Area. After my initial horror from reading the story, I immediately called my child’s daycare — who provide her two of her key meals on weekdays — to confirm their food source. Relief was felt when they put me at ease by telling me that they had never worked with this caterer. I’ve always been impressed by the menu at our daycare and my 5yo loves everything — except for the fish cakes but at least she gave them a try. The food is healthy, the variety is impressive, and while it’s not organic, neither is the stuff I serve at home.

Anyway. I count my family very lucky but what about the parents who had children in one of these daycares? It’s one thing to find out the ‘organic food’ your child was served was no where near organic — that fact alone is enough to make my head explode but what about the parents who discovered their children were eating:

• Halal meat that was just regular ol’ meat from the local discount grocers
• Kosher meals that have never seen a rabbi and kosher meat that was slaughtered contrary to tradition
• Undercooked meat and food transported without any cooling/warming systems
• Peanut-free snacks and food that actually contained or came in contact with nuts

Those accusations are all horrific and dangerous, and enough to make me rethink daycare (not that I can but I’d be lying if my mind didn’t try to figure out an alternative.) And to think: those are just some of the accusations made against the woman who runs this business. There are also claims of unskilled workers, prep facilities that violate regulations in too many ways to list, and re-labeling of food to cover up the lack of promised items.

These things — especially that nut one — could have killed a child. Killed a child.

I’m floored. I’m horrified. And I think this probably happens more than we’d like to think.

So why do people who run businesses do things like this? In my opinion it’s the bottom line: to save money. It almost always comes down to the almighty dollar. What a wonderful society we live in, eh?

The woman in the centre of the accusations is Susan Blouin, owner Whole Green Kids. She lives in a rented McMansion in Thornhill (a nice area north of Toronto for those outside the GTA), she drives a Porche Cayenne SUV, and apparently declared bankruptcy 4 years ago because she owed over $400,000. What does she have to say about the whole thing? In a nutshell: it’s disgruntled workers who are out to ruin her. Well Ms. Blouin, you will get your day in court (I hope) and I know you are innocent until proven guilty but even if one of these accusations is true, you should be ashamed of yourself and punished for letting your business operate this way. Everything on this list of accusations leads back to the operations of this business, and this is how I feel about anything she has to say about blaming this all one someone else:

• Untrained workers? Management’s fault
• Poor worker moral? Management’s fault
• Unsanitary conditions? Management’s fault
• Poor quality product? Management’s fault
• Poor Management? Owner’s fault
• Unchecked conditions as per The Board of Health? Okay, I’ll give her that one. Someone in that department needs to answer for that.

Please let this be an anomaly in the childcare system and please do not let this go unpunished if proven true. Families that need daycares put a lot of trust in those who provide that safe environment for the children, we don’t need this kind of worry with everything else that’s going on.

So what sayeth you fellow Bad Moms/Parents? Have you heard of similar stories? How do you handle a situation like this? How do you keep from running away from society and homeschooling the little ones? This Bad Mom wants to know.

source

image source

Last week, People magazine ran a story under the headline, Rachel Zoe ‘Thrilled’ With 10 Carat Push Present.

There is so much to say about that statement that I’m not even sure where to begin.

Rachel Zoe? 10 Carat? Push Present?

After I rubbed my eyes, gave my head a shake and downed a shot of vodka, I was ready to process. First of all, I had no clue who Rachel Zoe was, but after getting a farking 10-carat diamond ring just for having a kid, it was easy to deduce that Rachel Zoe was either a) Queen of the Vaginas or b) the first woman ever to give birth. I’m pretty sure that I – and many of us – gave birth prior to 7 weeks ago, so I’m going with Rachel Zoe, Queen of the Vaginas.

I suppose that as Queen of the Vaginas, one is entitled to the most extravagant, ridiculous gifts in the universe, but let’s say – let’s just say – that Rachel Zoe is actually a mere mortal like the rest of us, or maybe even just Duchess of the Vaginas, and therefore does not, for that reason alone, qualify for a 10-carat ring just for pushing a kid out her nethers.

I’m just not sure about these push presents. They kind of gross me out.

Yes (and Twitter will vehemently agree with me on this one), it’s nice for a husband to show his appreciation for his wife after all the hard work she did to carry and birth his progeny. Yes (and Facebook will back me up here), it’s nice for a husband to commemorate the birth of his progeny and the expansion of his family with a thoughtful trinket.

A gigantic doorknob of a ring is probably going to be seen as excess in all corners of the internet, but I just don’t really get the whole concept. When I brought up the subject of push presents on a recent car trip with my husband and 21-year old nephew, it turned the trip into a laugh riot:

From my nephew: Does it have to be sparkly, or could it be, you know, a sweater or something?

From my husband: A present?! Isn’t the baby the present? Do I get a present for putting it in there?

From my nephew: So, like, do all girls expect this now? Is there a special bank account I have to start saving in, like an RRSP?

From my husband: Aren’t bigger boobs the ultimate present?

From my husband: Is this just something men get their wives because they have no intention of actually doing the hard work of parenting, and want to make sure their wives don’t complain about it? Hey! The kids 6 months old and my husband’s never changed a diaper! But look how shiny!

So our conversation got me no closer to understanding the motivation behind the push present, and also kind of made me thankful that we were done having kids.

I also think there is something condescending and inherently unfeminist about the whole thing. It feels less like a show of appreciation and more like a pat on the head for doing a good, womanly job. I can’t shake the image of a woman sitting up in a hospital bed in full makeup, smiling like a fool while a man swoops in with a little blue box and rewards his wifey for quietly putting her feet in the stirrups and doing what’s she told. This is probably not the reality of the situation for the recipients of the venerable blue box, but it’s what I think of.

I didn’t get anything sparkly when I had my kids, and the only little boxes I got were full of take-out Chinese food. But I did get a committed  father for my children and a dedicated partner, albeit with a questionable sense of humour. Oh, and  beautiful, healthy babies.

What more could I have pushed for?

When friends of ours from London, ON took a recent trip to Toronto, their boys, ages six and three, were ecstatic at the idea of playing in the hotel’s pool. But when their mom, Elaine brought the boys into to the women’s change room to get into their swim trunks, a sign she saw on the wall shocked her:

PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT BOYS 5 AND UNDER MAY USE THE WOMEN’S CHANGE ROOM.

BOYS 6 AND OVER MUST USE THE MEN’S CHANGE ROOM.

Signed, The Hotel Management.

Elaine read it twice to be sure that she understood the message, but there was no mistaking the orders. The hotel would not allow opposite-gendered children to accompany their parent into the change room if they were older than age five.

“It seemed irresponsible and dangerous,” Elaine said of the thought of sending her six-year-old  into the men’s change room alone. She continued, “Even if I felt he were able to get himself ready, I don’t think I want to send my child into a situation where he’d be totally vulnerable – not to mention naked – in front of strange men.” Elaine kept her son in the women’s change room with her.

On the other hand, Elaine admitted that she often wondered what the right age was to send her boys into the men’s washroom instead of bringing them into the women’s washroom, and had on occasion felt uncomfortable when older male children were brought into the women’s washroom with their mothers.

“The need for more family facilities is huge,” says Elaine, but even if she’s not sure about what the right age for separation is, she is quite sure that it should be left to the parent – and not the management – to decide.

Is there a right age to send children into the washroom or changing rooms alone? Should dads bring daughters into the men’s room?

My children have no idea what an awful singer I am. Because they are still very small and I still retain God-like status in their eyes (and ears), they, in opposition of the rest of the free world, enjoy hearing me sing, and encourage me to do it often.  Since they will soon find out what everybody else already knows about their tone-deaf mother, I happily and enthusiastically indulge their requests.

And like many parents, I sing to my children at bedtime, something I have done so since my first was born, 5 ½ years ago. And in 5 ½ years, I don’t think I have ever gotten the lyrics right. To anything.

The problem is, I am about as tired as my kids by time I put them to bed, and my brain just cannot conjure up the correct words, even if I was the one that chose the song and had previously, in a more sleep-rich life, known the proper lyrics. So I just make them up.

Take our current most-requested bedtime song, Mockingbird. I’m not actually sure how we ever got on to singing this one, and I’m also not sure I ever knew the correct words, but I sing it to my children practically every night anyway. My version goes like this:

Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.

And if that mockingbird don’t sing, Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.

(Good start, right?)

(Here’s where it gets weird)

And if that diamond ring turns brass, Mama’s gonna buy you a looking glass.

And if that looking glass fogs over, Mama’s gonna buy you a four-leaf clover. (?)

And if that four-leaf clover ain’t lucky, Mama’s gonna buy you a (phthalate-free!) rubber ducky.

And if that rubber ducky don’t float, Mama’s gonna buy you a big, shiny boat.

And if that big shiny boat turns round, (WTF?)

You’ll still be the sweetest little baby in town.

Insane, or smart thinking on my feet? I’ll leave it to you to decide; all I know is that my kids think that I’m da bomb, and that a four-leaf clover is a reasonable substitute for a foggy mirror, which is a good substitute for a diamond ring. (SUCKERS!)

My only worry is that my children will one day hear the correct versions of the songs I sing to them, and realize that I am a lunatic. It’s going to happen, because I do sing some pretty classic songs that get lots of radio play.

Just wait until they find out that Peter, Paul and Mary were not leaving on a jet plane to go to Florida, where it’s warmer in the winter. Oh babe, I hate the snow.

Heh.

Dear Old Male Fertility Doctors Who Keep Telling Us We’re Waiting Too Long To Have Babies:

Please Shut Up.

I’m 40. And as long as I can remember, women have been told that our eggs run out eventually. It’s the first thing you’re taught in Family Living in grade 7.  I do not know any woman who does not know this, who has not known it since she was 15, that fertility is not limitless. The Fear has been put in to us from a very early age.  And yet, many of us – more of us than ever, in fact – are waiting til later and later to have children.

And as a result, yet another screaming headline pops up. 35 IS THE BEST BEFORE DATE FOR WOMEN.

Yes. We women? We expire.

And how dare we try to defy our predetermined expiry date.

Apparently, if I was a “good” “smart” woman, I would have obediently popped out a baby in my 20s, when it would have been a hell of a lot easier to conceive (as in, not take 5 years) and give birth (as in, not take 5 days and a scalpel). The rest of my life would have been an epic disaster, with no career and no husband and no home but hey! What does that matter, as long as my eggs are ripe?

Christ.

Listen, Doc. Why do you think women are waiting? Because we just vastly prefer going out every night and sipping champagne in Jimmy Choos?

Actually? I think that *is* why you think we’re waiting.

And that’s 100% wrong. (Well, 99%.)

We wait because we want to be the best parents we can. For some of us, that involves doing some work so that we can give our child a home and a stable family or whatever it is that is just as important to us as fresh eggs.  And when you beat us over the head with this “best before” stick it’s just another way of telling us we’re morons, as if our reasons for waiting don’t matter, they aren’t as important as how old our eggs are.  Never mind choosing the right person to fertilize those eggs. Just frigging fertilize them already.

We also wait because, well, it’s not like our society is really encouraging people to have kids these days, is it? Mainstream media outlets publish article after article about how truly horrible it is to be a parent.  Other articles recently raged about how long it takes for your salary to recover after you take a parental leave (tip: YEARS.) And you don’t need to go far to see some parent being judged and disdained for simply being a parent (heard any good Mommyblogger jokes lately?)

Yeah. Kind of no wonder having kids is last on the list. We make it sound just so wonderful.

But here’s the thing. It *is* wonderful. Except for all the people who spend their time telling us it isn’t.

So instead of bashing women over the head with our biological clocks, how about we change the entire way we look at parenting? How about instead, we all start fully acknowledging and respecting the fact that reproduction is an imperative for our species instead of an inconvenience and an annoyance? How about instead of slamming parents, we look at parenting and children as wonderful, joyful, rich parts of the continuum of this life?   And how about we acknowledge that people take many paths to parenthood, and that some come to it earlier and some come to it later and each has unique challenges and that each one contributes to the tapestry of this life and we should celebrate it, not beat us over the head with our choices?

Or in other words, Old Male Fertility Doctor:

If you can’t say anything nice, then please, just shut up.

Next time you stop by to read the updates on your child’s Facebook profile (if you even have access)* check on their farm. No seriously, check it. If it looks a little too bountiful in FarmVille, go through your credit card bill next.

*(Ed. note: if they even have a Facebook profile. Seriously. Shouldn’t they be old enough to drive before they can hang out on Facebook?)

Because how quickly would your head explode if you discovered your twelve-year old child racked up 1,400 dollars worth of ‘products’ playing FarmVille on Facebook? Woah, that’s fast.

And how quickly would it re-explode once you discovered the only way the bank will toss out the charges is if you have your child charged by the police? Wow. Good thing we can’t regenerate.

This happened to a British woman recently (not the head exploding but the credit card surprise). Her 12 year old son stole her HSBC credit card information and purchased £900 of Farmville farm stuff in one month. Wow. That must be a huge farm. Since the mother didn’t want her son to have a criminal record of any kind, she is stuck with the charges. Ouch.

Despite being on the hook for the charges, the boy’s mother isn’t blaming Facebook, HSBC, or Zynga the creators of Farmville for what happened; her son is responsible for the purchases (despite the insanity of Zynga refusing any refund of the unused ‘products’ purchased because the boy’s Facebook profile has obviously been shut down — probably until he is thirty). But the mother does believe that “they need to shoulder some responsibility in this business and put systems in place to stop this happening again. The fact that he was using a card in a different name should bring up some sort of security and the online secure payment filter seems to be bypassed for Facebook payments.”

This woman is much calmer and level headed than I would be in this situation. I’d be still trying to lift my jaw up off the ground after discovering the charges.

So what would you do in the same situation? If you have children this age, do you think they could find themselves in the same situation where online spending got out of control? FarmVille isn’t like porn, radars may not go off if you see a pre-teen playing this online, so could this slip under the more stringent parental radars only to be discovered upon the opening of next month’s bill? Bad Moms want to know (you know, so I can prepare myself for the pre-teen years that seem to be coming faster and faster down the barrel of parenthood.)

source via Gawker

Ever caught yourself alone with the kids and heard a scary noise?

Ever been embarrassed during small talk at the playground because you refered to a rifle as a pistol or a shotgun as a hand gun? Ever heard another mom discussing bullets and only belatedly realizing that she was not talking about formatting documents in Word?

Silly mom, why don't you have a gun?

Welcome to the first in a what we full intend to be a screamingly hilarious series of:

Because the more you know, the badder you can be.

This week: why didn't you know that you're supposed to have a gun?

Bad Moms Know that parenting sometimes require bringing out the heavy artillery. What we *didn't* know was that some parents have, historically, taken that literally. Apparently if you don't know your way around firearms, you just aren't a competent mom. Or so thinks Major Dad and that freaky lady who looks like Mrs. Doubtfire and, presumably, Sarah Palin. Enjoy and learn!

source via Jezebel