There’s another prego senior in the news this week and the present is looking more and more like some sort of dystopian future. 66-year-old Elizabeth Adeney from England is eight months pregnant thanks to IVF treatments undergone in Ukraine. This is on the heels of the 60-year-old Canadian woman who gave birth to twins in February, and a handful of other 60-plus-year-old women carrying pregnancies to term. I was actually all set to rise to their defense. I had a whole spiel planned out where I lay into the mainstream media for trotting out these freak-show stories under the auspices of ethical concerns. Does anybody really care about the well-being of these families anymore than they care about the Jon and Kate sextuplets, a family of little people, or the outrageously obese of reality tv? Aren’t we really just interested in the spectacle of it all?
Category: Uncategorized
Categories
My Excuse
DAILY SNACK
Late nights and late starts to mornings. I’ve been playing catch-up for weeks.
Self-imposed deadlines start to crack at, “Mom? Can you please read The Little Red Hen to me?”
Breathe and get some perspective.
Of course I can.
Categories
Photo Shoot Prep
DAILY SNACK
What are you doing, Mom?
I’m just bandaging Bubba Bear.
No . . .
Well, he hurt his head and I’m fixing it.
Nooooo!!!!
(five minutes elapse)
What are you doing?
Fixing Rolph’s ear.
Oh. Do we need the whole roll of toilet paper for that?
Hey you! Yes, you with the kid on your shoulder. And you throwing that baby into the air and then catching it. And you kids riding bikes without helmets. Stop it. All of you need to just stop.
At the risk of sounding like . . . no, scratch that, I know that I’m going to sound like an overprotective old shrew, but it is worth repeating. I guess that’ s why us moms sound like a broken record a lot of the time — we will just keep repeating this stuff until somebody listens. Or until it gets so far under your skin as to ingrain itself in your very essence and you will never, ever be able to engage in that behaviour without feeling fundamentally uneasy. (Now that I’m a parent there’s a whole torrent of warnings from my childhood that I simply cannot stomach: kids on balconies, kids running onto elevators — what if it’s not there?!, ink on skin, and young babies bearing weight on their legs, to name a few.) Some of these nagging warnings are just our own particular peeves, but some are real hazards. This is hazard number one.
Categories
The Impromptu Day Trip
Once a week I like to recommend something fun for the family to do. I’m not picky. I’ll write about a good song or a crazy vacation, as long as I’ve tried it and liked it. There’s really no shortage of things to do for kicks. Still, every so often, I come up dry. So does everybody, right? Sometimes you want to get out of the house and do something, but you can’t for the life of you figure out what you feel like doing. Guess what? That’s okay, too.
Categories
Learning to Fend for Yourself
DAILY SNACK
They were laughing, he was running.
They chased him around and around and it really looked like fun.
But it didn’t stop.
Are you having fun with these boys?
No. They keep chasing me. They’re being mean.
Oh dear. Tell them to stop. Tell them you don’t like this game.
Categories
When TV Doesn’t Work
DAILY SNACK
I look up from the computer.
Okay, you’re sitting too close. Move, I said.
That is way too loud. Your sister is trying to sleep.
You can have some volume, you know. No, that’s too loud.
Yes, you can have chocolate. Yes, you can eat in the living room. Yes, you can watch another show.
Not so close, I said!
My mother breastfed all four of her children. And her mother before her, and so on. I am incredibly fortunate to have an unbroken tradition of breastfeeding in my family; and the support and understanding that comes with that tradition. Why, then, am I the first woman in my family to feel comfortable feeding my baby in public? To feed my baby at a cafe or a mall, on a bench or on some steps — wherever I am when my baby is hungry? Why did my mother duck into public bathroom stalls (can you imagine?!?) to breastfeed her babies? And what has happened since?
Categories
Baby Holding
DAILY SNACK
She was so tiny as a newborn.
Her big brother sat up in the arm chair with a nursing pillow across his lap
And he held his baby sister and he was so much bigger and she was still so tiny.
Now, six months later, she slings one leg over his and leans into the arm of the couch.
She is robust, she is sturdy, she can hold her own.
And he is still the same.
Categories
Does Crawling Matter?
Learning to crawl. I love this. L’il I flips over onto her front just as soon as she hits the ground. She lifts her head up high and reaches out toward a toy or some piece of junk that Young C’s hauled out of who-knows-where and left on the ground. She reaches and squirms and wriggles herself just a little bit closer. She starts screeching with frustration before long, I know, but her stamina is improving.
Young C never did this. He rarely rolled over and hardly played on his front at all. I do remember him sliding backward quite a distance over ceramic tiles once or twice, but he never did get the hang of moving forward on all fours. He was always focused on lifting his head up while on his back and trying to do little baby sit-ups. (Until he finally succeeded in rolling from his first sit-up into a somersault off the bed. But that’s another story.) He would insist on being pulled into a sitting position and did eventually develop a half-crawl, half-walk scoot move that would propel him a couple of feet toward a stray toy.