I am a bad mother.

No, seriously.

I had no intention of dressing the kid up for Halloween. He’s 10 months old, he can’t eat candy, the trick-or-treating starts during his bathtime and continues until after he’s already in bed. Why would I dress him up?

His father thought he should have a costume. So, on October 27, we looked for a costume. (Because I am a writer, not a costume designer, and have zero sewing ability.) Target was a disaster, with Halloween stuff shoved to the side to make way for Christmas (!!!). BabiesRUs had all of a dozen costumes, but there was a 12 month Tigger costume that was relatively cute and didn’t frighten me. I felt like I was doing a different kind of walk of shame as I made my way to the register to make my last minute purchase. Other mothers had bought their children’s Halloween costumes weeks or months in advance, judging by the empty racks.  (But hey, waiting until the last minute does have it’s perks: the costume was marked down from $29.99 to $7.50.)

(Aside: I hate the kids’ costumes that have the character’s head on the hood or whatever, as if the kid has 2 heads. In this case, the hood of the TIgger costume has ears and eyebrows, but the only face will be the baby’s, peeking out from under the hood. Make sense?)

So, the kid will be Tigger for Halloween.  Which mostly means putting him in the costume, taking pictures, maybe letting him sit on my lap and hand out candy on the front porch before it’s time for bath and bed. It is the way of things, I suppose. I’ll be happy to buy (again, because I can’t sew) any costume the kid wants to wear when he’s old enough to tell me what he wants, but this year I was content to be amused by the costumes I saw in the stores and catalogs and leave the kid in his footie pajamas come sundown.

I won’t be dressing up for Halloween. There is no costume for bad mother.

(And, also, I’m a bad writer and blogger. Hello, out there!)

Posted by Kristina in Pregnancy and Baby in Baby at 11:48 AM Permalink

Whenever I see the ads for the shiny, noisy, plastic baby crap that my baby supposedly needs, I feel a momentary pang of guilt for denying my child the joys of those obnoxious, over-priced, easily breakable, freaking loud toys. I hate all that baby crap. I hate things that make noise. I hate practical, necessary items (highchairs, pack and plays) that are covered in cutesy rainbow patterns that make my house look like a children’s playroom. I hate the stupid mechanical music boxes in stupid garish-colored “educational” toys that play horrible kiddie music.  I hate Barney and Elmo.

So, I feel guilty that my poor little baby has so few of those must-haves (according to Toys R Us, Fisher-Price, PlaySkool, etc.). Am I stunting his development by refusing to buy the toy keyboard with 14 different animal noises and nursery rhymes, played at a volume louder than the television?  Will he be delayed educationally because I haven’t bought the entire Baby Einstein DVD collection?  Is he going to hate me when he discovers all his little baby friends have the giant mechanical dinosaur that walks and roars and all he has is a stuffed monkey?

Then I take a deep breath and think about Thomas Jefferson.  Little Tommy didn’t have any of that stuff and he did okay in the brains department.  And I wonder what Albert Einstein would make of the Baby Einstein line of products?  I think he’d laugh.  It does seem kind of silly when I think about the fact that this world has turned out a lot of amazing, brilliant people who never even heard of LeapFrog. Then I go back to playing with my adorable baby, who coos and laughs as he runs a piece of ribbon through his fingers or trashes the Restoration Hardware catalog.

Posted by Kristina in Pregnancy and Baby in Baby at 02:52 PM Permalink

I also posted Patrick’s nine month birthday letter on my rather neglected baby blog. Oh, how my monkey has grown!

Posted by Kristina in Pregnancy and Baby in Baby at 05:12 PM Permalink

I find myself with several unwanted subscriptions to parenting magazines. I’m not sure how I came to have these subscriptions-- I never paid for them. But when a woman gets pregnant, she finds herself on all kinds of mailing lists.  I get coupons and free offers and samples and these parenting magazines.  Jay gets none of it.  Funny how that works.  Obviously, I’m the only one in the house in need of the advice offered by “25 Ways to Encourage Your Toddler to Be Eco-Friendly!” and “10 Sure Fire Tips to Guarantee Your Child Won’t Be the Weird Kid in School.” Oh, to be an oblivious father whose only concern is teaching the boy how to fish and play football…

As a reader and a writer, it goes against the grain to throw away a magazine, even one I don’t subscribe to.  (I have this irrational fear that the apocalypse will come and I won’t have reading material.) So I saved those parenting magazines for a few months, thinking I’d eventually get around to reading all those articles about the best baby gear, safest cars, tastiest homemade baby food recipes, sexiest mom jeans, etc.  I actually started accumulating magazines before Patrick was even born-- they give them out at the ob/gyn, the maternity store, on the hospital tour.  I was inundated with useless information while I was pregnant and the deluge continues on a weekly basis.

I’ve given up any hope of reading those magazines.  First of all, I simply don’t have the time.  If I spent my time reading all those parenting magazines, I’d never have time to actually parent the child.  Secondly, I really don’t care.  There, I said it.  I don’t care what that smiling woman on the cover knows that I don’t know.  These parenting magazines are the mom version of the women’s magazines I loathe-- “10 Days to Thinner Thighs” has become “10 Days to Get Your Baby to Learn a Foreign Language.” The women’s magazines make women feel bad about… well, everything… and the parenting magazines (and let’s call them what they are-- mom magazines) are designed to make mothers feel insecure about absolutely every aspect of childcare.  So, the parenting magazines go into the recycle bin now, unread and certainly unwanted.  Bye-bye parenting magazines, I hope you are recycled into something more useful.

I don’t have this parenting thing down as a matter of instinct.  And I don’t have anything against seeking advice on parenting issues.  Heaven knows I have a small library of books in my possession already and I refer to them often.  But I don’t need a subscription to a magazine that covers every issue from birth to high school. What’s the point?  I can barely keep up with Patrick’s new developments from one week to the next-- why put all that pressure on myself to read (and remember) so far ahead?  I’m happy to learn as I go… just like this amazing child I’m parenting so recklessly.

The funniest part about the unwanted parenting magazines is that they always seem to arrive in my mailbox on the same day as my Victoria’s Secret catalog.  Go figure.

Posted by Kristina in Pregnancy and Baby in Baby at 01:01 PM Permalink