Mommy Tip Monday: Road Trip with a Baby in 33 Easy Steps

This wisdom comes from very recent experience.  While I was not getting any sleep last night it occurred to me that when daylight came it would be Monday and I could share it with you as my second installment of Mommy Tip Monday.

Overnight stays with a baby pose special challenges.  Here is what you should do:

1. Put everything you own in a minivan.
2. Put the baby, and any other participating family members in the minivan.
3. Drive to location that is too far to drive home from in one day.
4. Take everything you own out of the minivan.
5. Simultaneously take baby out of the minivan.  
6. Reintroduce him to the people who live too far away to see on a regular basis.
7. Hope he does not cry when they hold him so you can organize your belongings.
8. Take baby back from disappointed grandparents.  
9. Put him on a blanket while you quickly move belongings out of common areas.
10. Feed the baby.
11. Visit and eat a meal while holding the baby.
12. Arrange bedding and put older child to bed while baby cries in exhausted frustration at not being constantly held.
13. Nurse baby for five minutes until he falls alseep.
14. Put baby down and unwind for 45 minutes or so.
15. Turn out the light.
16. Immediately nurse the baby.
17. Put the baby down.
18. Spend half an hour trying to fall asleep.
19. Nurse the baby.
20. Spend 45 minutes sleeping.
21. Nurse the baby.
22. Repeat steps 20 and 21 until 4:20 a.m. when the baby wakes up and smiles at you.
23. Ignore all of the images floating through your brain.
24. Get baby back to sleep.
25. When daylight comes find caffeine.  
26. Continue infant/grandparent reintroduction program.
27. Repeat steps 10-26 as needed until it's time to return home.
28. Put everything you own back in the minivan.
29. Drive back home.
30. Take everything you own out of the minivan.
31. Deposit it in random locations in your home.
32. Repeat steps 13-19.  
33. Sleep until you hear the baby crying or the neighbors knock on the door to complain about the noise.

Mommy Tip Monday: What to Buy for Baby

Linus, using his play mat and a Boppy during tummy time. 

 
This is a list my friend Katelyn posted on Facebook.  As soon as I read it I thought "That should be on a blog - how about mine?" It's personal, factual and fairly concise.  Hopefully if you have a first baby on the way (or know someone who does) it will be helpful.  Katelyn's sweetie has some special needs, which she refers to in her explanations.  But I find that her thoughts here apply to lots of babies.

Maybe I will start having regular "Mommy Tip Monday" posts.  We'll see.  In honor of Katelyn, who has taught me lots about feminism, I should probably call it "Parenting Tip Monday."  Dads can do most of this stuff too (unless we're talking pregnancy or breastfeeding).  But it's not as catchy, so I'll stick with this for now.

I've been noticing an increase in my friend's posting of baby things on Pinterest. I've also read some lists lately of things 'you don't need for a baby' and 'baby must-haves.' I wanted to share some experiences with baby stuff - what we use, what we like, etc.

• Cloth diapers! They are awesome. We use prefolds with covers. Best Bottoms are our favorite brand of covers. Prefer the snaps to the Velcro. The Gerber prefolds big box stores carry have fallen to bits, but I guess we've been using them longer than normal; a typical baby probably would have outgrown them by now. Osocozy's (another brand of prefolds) are fraying a little, but he'll outgrow the size 1 soon (hopefully). We dry pail- wet bag in a trashcan from Target. We do a mix of cloth wipes and regular. I cut up some of Sean's old shirts and keep them in a used wipes container. We tried using an airpot to have warm water for them, but it didn't work very well. Cold wipes for Cutie Pie. Favorite video explaining folding prefolds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDqa45EOHfE
• Swing - I didn't want to worry about buying and having batteries for a swing so I opted for one with an ac adapter. It was great for the... five or so weeks we used it. Then we found out Cutie Pie couldn't breathe in it when he was asleep. The best part about the swing was its ability to put him to sleep so it lost most of its usefulness. It's a great thing to have though (you know, if your baby can breathe...). Safe place to put baby while you're showering or whatever.
• Whale tub - People say you don't need a special baby tub and I guess you don't. Toss your baby in a sink, hold them in your tub, you could probably wash them in a clean five gallon bucket if you really wanted to, but I love the whale tub. Trying to hold a wet, naked baby with hypotonia in the tub is pretty difficult. With the whale tub, he can't fall to the side or slide down. We give him a bedtime bath every night and just leave the whale in the tub or leaning against the wall in the hallway outside the bathroom. If having a whale hanging around your bathroom would drive you nuts, this isn't for you, but if having baby stuff all over would drive you nuts... babies may not be for you.
• Play mat/gym - One of the great things about play mats is that they are just about the only toy a newborn has a use for. Cutie Pie loves his and would flail around happily before he was able to grab the toys. At 14 months, he still uses it daily, but I don't know how long a typical baby would have a use for it. (Rachel's note:  Since the toys all come off they are useful even after baby starts to be mobile.  Also the rings can be used to attach to other sites like strollers or high chairs to keep toys in reach.)
• Boppy - I've heard these are great for breastfeeding, but I never used it for that so I can't comment. However, it's great for propped up tummy time, supported sitting, and keeping a rolly baby on his tummy.
• Baby food - We make our own. It's quite simple: cook, puree, eat/freeze. We use a food processor to puree. A baby bullet or specialty appliance isn't necessary at all. Once the food is pureed, we freeze it in ice cube trays then pop the food cubes out and into freezer bags. Cutie Pie on his very best day will sometimes eat 2 cubes at a time. I don't know how much a typical baby would be eating/how much freezer space they would require. We like to make a bunch of food at one time and so far it was been really easy.
• Newborn clothes - I would not waste money buying too many newborn outfits. Cutie Pie wore almost exclusively pajamas. We didn't manage to get him in all the newborn outfits we were gifted and he grew incredibly slowly. Some babies are even born too big for the newborn size anyway.
• High chair - We have a standard high chair. I like having it for meals and sticking him in when I'm in the kitchen. If you have no space (we have a dining room), I've seen some neat chair attachments that would probably work well. 
• Bassinet - Cutie Pie sleeps in our room in a pack n' play. We considered using a family heirloom bassinet, but it was rickety and wooden and I was afraid he would hurt himself/it would collapse. Since the packn'play works well and I would want one anyway, I see no need for a bassinet. We use the pack'nplay as a bed when we travel and if your baby is mobile I'm sure it would make a nice safe play to cage them. 
• Breast pump - I exclusively pump. I started with an Ameda, but burned out two motors. I have an awesome Medela hand pump for traveling and now rent a hospital grade Ameda pump. I wish we would have bought it for how much it is costing to rent. At one point I was pumping seven times a day, but am now down to five. Your health insurance will cover a pump, get one (check with insurance on how to do it, you may need a script).
• Bottle feeding supplies - We bought Dr. Brown's, Medelas, and Evenflos. Cutie Pie could only eat with an orthodontic Nuk nipple so the Dr. Brown and Medela bottles were of no use to us. We found plastic bottles took forever to warm up and switched to glass Evenflos. Sean's mom gave us a bottle warmer, but it didn't seem to work at all. We microwaved water in a mug and set the bottle in it. Now he prefers cold milk so we just pour and go. For outings we have a small cooler from the hospital. It came with an ice pak. When we were heating his bottles, we used a hot water thermos from Tommee Tippee (http://www.tommeetippee.us/product/travel-bottle-and-food-warmer/). Cutie Pie was born right as bottle manufacturers were switching to all-in-one systems that weren't interchangeable. The first bottles we bought, for the most part, had interchangeable parts (bottles, rings, nipples), but now Nuk products only match with other Nuks, Evenflos with Evenflos, etc. I would recommend buying one to see if your baby likes it before stockpiling. For washing, we use a bottle brush and dry in regular dish drainer, no bottle drying racks or systems.
• Blankets - Swaddling is pretty easy after a little practice. I've never used any special swaddling devices, I can't see them being worth it. But, please, PLEASE, read about safe sleep and reducing the risk of SIDS. Really, do all the reading you can about baby safety in all areas, car seats, sleep, putting poison away, covering outlets, etc.
• Stroller - Having a car seat stroller combo is great. Pop the car seat into the stroller and go. This has been especially great during polar vortexes. I don't have to worry about carrying him to the car in the wind and snow, he's covered in the car seat. For a typical baby, though, they probably would not fit in an infant car seat after the first year.

Most of the things we have, we didn't buy. Our awesome friends and family gave us tons of stuff as shower presents! They also continue to give Cutie Pie all kinds of presents. Hopefully, this is helpful to someone. Have questions or rationale for why you bought or didn't buy something? Let me know!

Getting Kids to Eat Vegetables Or "How My Son Became a Tomato"

This post was originally written last May and posted on my other blog.   I just saw another blog post about the topic the other day though, and it made me think of this.  Lenny is, naturally a little older now and might not actually have a meltdown over being prevented from eating tomatoes.  Maybe.

I was just reading an article online about how to influence your child toward good eating habits.  Most of the tips involved actually exposing children to a variety of good quality produce.  At that exact moment Lenny was eating cherry tomatoes and a tortilla with ham and veggie cream cheese for lunch.  Mostly the tomatoes, though.  The container I bought new yesterday now has three tomatoes in it.  Half the tortilla was gone.  Finally I told him he couldn't eat any more tomatoes.  I snapped the container shut and put it in the fridge.  By the time I got back he was crying uncontrollably.  I explained that if he just eats fruits and veggies and doesn't eat other food he won't grow up to be big and strong.

It's not that he doesn't enjoy some junk food as much as the next kid.  Chocolate ice cream and pizza are at the top of his list.  But last summer when we were getting lots of amazing veggies from our "Community Supported Agriculture" farm he would rate food on whether or not it was "better than pizza."  Potato soup - with a variety of additions or just onions, potatoes, milk and salt - was high on his list. Pretty high on mine too because it was easy and used up some produce we had tons of most of the time.

Today he was upset because it was cloudy.  I told him that I don't have control over that and he said he wished I was God.  He said then I could make it so that he could have chocolate ice cream and go in the pool every day.  I didn't go into the theology behind that one.  Sometimes you really just have to let an idea ride.

Another idea in the article was to eat healthy as a parent.  I have been accused of being a healthy eater, but I think that it's more a case of being acutely aware of how food affects how I feel and eating accordingly.  When I really started having trouble with fatigue a doctor suggested I do an elimination diet and as a result I stopped eating wheat, corn, soy, non-organic eggs, most nuts and some other odds and ends I'm probably forgetting.  I stick to these "restrictions" pretty religiously because I hate to have migraines and some of the other symptoms that eating the foods above give me.  I also avoid most red meat because I don't like the cramps I get if I eat them.  So I cook a lot of foods from scratch and eat a lot of foods found in the the "health food" section. 

We had tons of "greens" last summer.  I like them best cooked and put them in soups and stews as well as sauteing them with onions.  It got to the point that when we had a meal without them Lenny asked "Where's the green stuff?"

My avoidance of wheat does not translate to a gluten allergy or intollerance.  I sometimes make my own home-made pizza, but since I don't eat yeast the crust doesn't really compare with store bought.  Lenny didn't like it as well as the frozen kind.  I haven't made it for a while as a result.  He recently suggested I try it again since his tastes might have changed.

Beats were another big winner from the CSA.  Actually they've been popular every year that Lenny was eating solid food.  I think if you look back you will find pictures on the blog of him covered in them.  Thankfully now he can eat them without so much mess, but last summer it was till wise to remove clothing that wasn't purple or dark colored.

So to make it a little more general, I would suggest the following:

• Eat food you love - hopefully with veggies included.  We love curry.  Easy way to sell all kinds of veggies.  Stir fry, soups and stews, even tossing them into a creamy pasta dish are other ways of including veggies in foods you love.
• Have the best quality produce you can afford.  Doing a CSA means that we have tons of great quality stuff in the summer.  But in winter we use frozen cooked veggies and bagged salad.  We do what we can afford and what works.
• Serve raw veggies salad bar style.  That way everyone can pick the ones they like best and those who live in mortal fear of foods touching each other don't get stressed out.
• Foods not touching is a stage.  Most people outgrow it.  I don't think it's worth fighting.  We didn't get any of those handy plates with dividers, we just pulled out multiple small plates to make sure foods didn't contaminate each other.
• Don't worry about making every meal a nutritional powerhouse.  Personally, I just don't sweat it if supper one night is just frozen pizza.  Chances are there was salad at lunch or will be apple sauce for snack.  
• At our house everyone has to at least try everything at a meal.  But if I know that something isn't a big hit I will take it off rotation for a while.  Food that is too spicy is an exception.
• But don't give up on a food just because it didn't go over well the first time.  Tastes do change and sometimes it just takes a while to get used to something.
• Get kids involved.  I know.  Sometimes easier said than done.  Lenny loves to help wash greens.  He's always up for helping with baking.  And if he doesn't get to help set the table he feels he's been cheated.  
• Always remember:  different people like different things.  Some kids will be harder to teach good eating habits than others.  Some are more sensitive to texture or strong flavor.  Food is just another area where we do the best we can and try not to beat ourselves up when it doesn't look like some pie-in-the-sky ideal.

Parenting is Cheaper than Therapy

Lessons about victory and defeat are easy to come by these days.

When I was writing about blogging being cheaper than therapy I got to thinking about something else that is cheaper than therapy - keeping a journal.  Which reminded me of a book I read early in my illness called Writing Out the Storm: Reading and Writing Your Way Through Serious Illness or Injury by Barbara Ambercombie.  I remember this book being very helpful early in my illness so I decided to get out my journal from that time and see if I could use it to write a review of the book that would be helpful to other people.

The problem was that when I looked at those old journals it reminded me of a dark and difficult time in my life.  And so many of the entries were emotionally fraught.  I dealt with a lot of depression and loneliness and I poured a lot of mental anguish out on those pages.  When I first looked at them it was hard for me to see how it could have been helpful for me.  It seemed like writing it all down might have been a way to dwell in that dark place rather than helping me find a way out.

But today I found an entry that was much more hopeful.  It's dated June 10, 2006.  I was thinking about activities I did a lot at that time which felt like a waste of time.  I was thinking about what I would rather my life look like.  Here's part of what I wrote:

"Activity - "productive" activity, has become an obligation for me rather than a source of joy or pleasure.  Expressing myself is risky and part of me believes that the purpose of expressing myself is to correct myself.  Not for the joy of knowing who I am, but for the purpose of dealing with emotions, correcting faulty thinking, resolving old grudges, facing old fears, forgiving, remembering, letting go of pain, expressing anger.  These I feel are obligations - tasks I should accomplish because I should continue to grow and mature as a human being.  I have a goal - to become as emotionally healthy as I am capable of being so that my emotional health will not be a detriment to my physical health.  I am trying to be strong mentally so that I can deal with my physical weakness better.  I don't really want to know who I am, I just want to know how to deal with my past in a way that will allow me to view the present realistically, have motivation to do the things I want to do, and courage to face the future.

Many elements of this plan are good, but it has some basic flaws.  I will never have freedom to "do" until I give myself permission to "be."  I will never have motivation until I decide that I actually have the freedom to choose what I want to do.  I will not be able to walk away from anxiety until I find that there is victory in failure and beauty in imperfection.  Healing will come when I begin to believe that it is my right rather than my job.  My needs will become less overwhelming when I give myself permission to have them.  My anger will not be  able to hurt me when I can see it as a source of strength - not something that I need to have power over or that has power over me, not something I need to hide for fear of rejection and not something that everyone but me has a right to.

Becoming whole must be more than finding the parts that are broken and fixing them, more than dumping old baggage and learning to think more realistically.  Becoming whole must involve becoming aware of who I am, being willing to accept that person in the entirety and with no conditions.  Not "putting myself on project status" as Dr. Phil would say, but finding space to breath, coaxing my soul out of its hiding place and giving it ways to express the whole range of what it contains.  Censoring nothing, fixing nothing, manipulating nothing.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to know that even if I never accomplished anything for the rest of  my life I had at least known peace for one afternoon?  How much energy would I find if I could move by the motivation of my own desires, if I could lay down the weight of obligation and how much strength if I move away from the sting of disapproval?  What if I can learn to express myself for no other reason than to meet my soul's need for expression - not to be heard, but simply to speak - to cry, to laugh, sing, dance, run and fly, to scream and kick and punch, to break and build, to create and destroy, to stretch out, enlarge and reach beyond the limits?  Can I move because I want to and be still because I am ready to allow my soul to expand instead of moving out of obligation and being still because I am holding my soul at bay?

I hope so.  I hope I can find a way to being that balances pleasure and pain.  I want to find ways to move out of the cycles of disapproval and rejection to reject the myth that says that someone else knows better than I do how I should be.  I even want to move beyond believing that I know how I should be or even that I know how to get where I want to be.  I want to stop being so afraid of being lost and instead have the strength to look at where I actually am.  I want to know the relief of being who I am without any apology.  I want to be unfettered to know joy." 

It's interesting to me that becoming a parent has actually help me achieve some of what I was hoping for in this journal entry.  I think that parenting is a form of self expression.  I've heard people say that having a child means that part of your heart is walking around in the world.  I thought when I first heard it that this was overly sentimental, but I realize now that in some ways it's true.  Also,  I think that being a parent has helped me accept myself and learn to deal with my emotions in the following ways:

• It helps me smile every day.  Kids are cute.  They do funny stuff.  It's not hard to smile at them even when  they are exasperating.  Which they are so...
• Learning to deal with anger is an ongoing project.  Has a child ever looked you in the eye, picked a piece of food off of his high chair tray and flung it toward the corner of the room?  Lenny went through a phase where he did this at least once a day.  This is when I learned that it's possible to actually shake with anger.
• Helping little people deal with their emotions has helped me be more accepting of my own.  When I want to insist that my children STOP CRYING I don't because I want them to learn healthy ways to calm themselves.  Helping them through the process gives me more confidence in my own abilities.
• Knowing that I chose to be a parent - even though I didn't really know what I was getting in to - helps me embrace the challenges.
• Carrying on in the face of crazy and overwhelming times has helped me learn to find peace in the midst of chaos.
• Spending my days with my little ones involves actually building, destroying, dancing and exploring the world.
• Celebrating my children's growth and achievements has helped me realize that life is a process.  I feel more confident that I can trust it to produce growth in my life also.
• My children are beautiful and amazing.  Since they came from me looking at them makes it easier for me to believe there must be something lovely about me also.

I'm pretty sure that having children is not the only way to learn these lessons.  I think that being part of a community, doing fun, creative and amazingly difficult tasks can probably help anyone through this process.  For me, that happens to involve being a parent.  I hope that each of my readers, whatever your path, can be immersed life and learn to know joy.

How to Bless a Mom with Chronic Illness: Practical Matters

Cooking with Grammy.  If we lived closer Lenny would do this often!

 I shared how being a good listener can be a blessing to a mom with chronic illness (MWCI).  Now I'll give some ideas about practical ways you can help a friend.  This will vary significantly, so this is just the time when being a good listener is important.  Sometimes when people offer to help I feel hesitant to tell them that their first idea or instinct will not work in my specific situation.  So keeping the channels of communication open can be doubly important in helping MWCI.

Just about every MWCI can use practical help at some point.  Most of my ideas fall into categories that could be helpful to any tired mom, but with a few modifications.

Food

 Just about every MWCI I've ever encountered had some kind of special diet requirement.  Most people, after feeling bad for a while and not getting lots of answers from doctors start to explore how the food might be affecting her.  Gluten free, dairy free, low carb, avoiding certain foods because of sensitivities... I'm sure there are other possibilities.  I personally have a pretty long list of common foods I can't/don't eat.  So people who have helped me with food have had to take a creative approach.  Here are a few options:

• Bring food she can feed to the rest of the family.
• Find out what foods she can eat and prepare/buy those foods to bring.  This could include getting some hard-to-find ingredients from your friend.
• Prepare food at her house.  It's still a good idea to check about ingredients and recipes.  At my house you can find foods and ingredients that I don't actually eat but use to feed the rest of the family.
• Get groceries for her.  Considering the special diet issue it's really important to get a list and stick to it exactly.  If the 16 oz package of the store brand is specified but the 32 oz pack of the national brand is on a great sale it's probably best to ignore it and get what's on the list.
• Clean her kitchen for her so that she has an easier time cooking.  In spite of my vigorous defense of us moms who don't keep shiny houses a clean kitchen is such a relief and blessing to me.  Sometimes when I have one I just go out to eat rather than messing it up!  But it also gives me a chance to make that extra batch of muffins or comforting pot of soup I've been thinking of.

Kids

One of my biggest insecurities as a MWCI is my fear that my kids will miss out because of my illness.  So anything that a friend does to help them has the double blessing of giving me a break and setting my mind at ease because I know they are having a fuller life than I can give them on my own.  Basically, anything you do for my kids, you do for me.  Here are some of the ways others have been able to help me:

• Play dates.  I love these.  Sometimes I go along or the other mom comes to my house.  Then we get to visit and I love that because I can only handle so many conversations about cars and using the potty before I need to have an adult conversation.  Other times my son has been able to go without me and then I can take a break or get something else done.  Occasionally I've been able to have one of his friends over and then he gets the fun of a playmate without us having to leave the house.  (Unfortunately, because of my messy house situation I really only feel comfortable hosting play dates in the summer when we can spend time on our shady back deck.)
• Outings.  Like play dates, only not at home.  This includes going to a park, the mall, the library, a museum, the zoo.  I like to go to places I'm not really comfortable at with another mom (or friend) because sometimes I get overwhelmed and it helps to have another set of ears and eyes.  It's also fun for my kids and a big help to me when they are invited along on an outing without me.  (OK, only the oldest has done this so far.)  Some friends have even hung out with my little one for the sole purpose of giving me a break.  Such a blessing.

Odds and Ends
I feel like I'm missing something major here, but I can think of a few seemingly small ways that friends have really blessed me.  These include:

• Helping with driving when I had doctor's appointments.
• Picking up special orders at stores that weren't near my house.
• Helping with laundry.
• Doing errands like taking recycling to the center.

So again, each MWCI is going to have a different situation and need or want help in different ways.  Communication is key.  Hopefully these ideas can help get a conversation going that will allow blessings to flow.

Feminism and Sons: An introduction to My Journey

Not the bear with the offending glasses, but one very much like it.

There's no shortage of material on the internet about feminism.  Possibly there's even a glut.  More than any one person could process in a lifetime.  So now I will add my two cents to the conversation.  I'm on a journey and having started the post I realize that I'm not up to a good, systematic presentation right now.  So I'll just let you know where I started and try to give an idea of where I'm at right now.  Maybe I can even throw out a few conclusions that will help it make a little more sense.  Probably I will revisit the topic.

"They" (whoever they are) say that discussions on the internet don't change people's opinions.  Well, maybe I'm weird, or maybe I was headed in that direction anyway, but my ideas about feminism have changed substantially in the past....five years or so and much of what I think now has been influenced by reading blogs, news articles and more blogs.  Mostly I credit an "IRL" who likes to post links on Facebook and pin them on Pinterest.  Don't despair all you "sharers" with a cause.  Sometimes people pay attention.

So if you had asked me five years ago I probably would have said I was not a feminist.  I thought that people should be treated "fairly" and "equally" but I was OK with men and women having different roles.  (Especially in the church because doesn't the Bible say they should?)  I didn't think much about negative ways that gender roles impact society or individuals.  I had never heard of "rape culture."  I felt that valuing personal modesty was a positive way for me, as a woman, to interact with the world and that understanding the concept might help other women.

My views on all of this are different now.  I see feminism as a movement that promotes awareness of ways that gender roles have been used to limit and define people.  Not as an attempt to undermine or reject the value and beauty of motherhood or "traditional" family systems.  Rather it seems to be an attempt to recognize that a "one-size-fits-all" approach to how anyone of any gender should approach life is going to leave some people marginalized - alone and hurt.  Also, I see something about power dynamics.  But not the "women grabbing for power" that I might have assumed to be the driving motivation in the past.  More the "giving men and women the power to make healthy decisions about their own lives" kind of dynamic.  (I think the Bible says something different than I thought it did about this too, but that's a huge topic for another day.)

I'm still figuring lots of this out.  It seems fairly simple from the personal application end, though.  I don't need to go out and get a job to be a feminist.  I don't have to change how I dress or where I go.  I just need to embrace the idea that who we are is not determined by our gender.

But when it comes to interacting with my sons I feel.... confused..... unprepared... unsure of how to proceed.  Now before someone jumps on me for singling out sons I will say that I only have sons.  I can imagine that if I had daughters I would be facing a similar struggle.  But after some thought I have decided that it is important to say that my children are boys because society does send different messages to boys and girls.  They face different pressures.  The cost of personal expression is different for them and the consequences of not learning some of the lessons of feminism could be quite different.

So.  Why am I so confused?  Some examples:

Clothes.  Baby boys wear blue.  Everybody (it seems) wants to know if the baby is a boy or a girl and they want clothes to clearly tell them this.  I go right along with this demand.  I am not ready for my baby or toddler to deal with the confusion of hearing "Oh, she's so beautiful!"  This happened when Lenny was younger.  Even with what I thought were unambiguous clothing choices.  What can I say?  They were right about the beautiful part.

But why do I care?  It would not be bad if he was a girl.  People we happen to meet in public could interact with my babies and toddlers all day long without knowing their gender and it would not make one single ounce of difference - would it?  Should it?  What message am I sending to my boys by making sure their clothes fit the socially expected standards?

When Lenny got a little older he noticed that girls get the best clothes.  More variety.  More sparkles.  Just plain more.  I acknowledged this.  I get frustrated that retailers seem to totally ignore the fact that little boys might want to have some of the "costume" dressing options that little girls have.  But I do not take my little boy into the girl's clothing section and let him pick out items that he likes.  I am not ready to help him navigate that social swamp.  I would be up to my neck in no time.

On a related note:  grooming.  Lenny hates to have his fingernails cut.  He doesn't like the feeling of the exposed skin that was just covered by nail a few moments before.  We've had some epic battles about this, but now he tries to reason with me.  "You have long fingernails, why can't I?"  Sometimes I tell him that it's because he's little and doesn't always keep his hands clean and that germs can easily live under fingernails.  Other times I tell him the truth from a social point of view "Most people feel that it's OK for girls to have long fingernails, but not boys.  I don't know why.  They just like it better that way."

As a kindergartener Lenny is looking for these types of patterns.  He wants to know what defines girls and boys, women and men.  He wants to know how they relate to each other.  He brings home a picture he drew of a girl in his class who he's "falling in love with."  He tells me that he kissed another little boy in his class on the hand.   He says he wishes he could marry his baby brother.

Lenny has been working his way through a book I bought him - tracing letters, numbers, pictures.  He wants to get to the maze section at the back which looks like the most fun but he feels he should do all the other pages first.  He gets to a page with a cute little bear with glasses.  Somehow the picture communicates the fact that the bear is female.  He says, "I don't like this picture."

I ask, "Why not?"
"Because of the glasses," he tells me.
"What's wrong with the glasses?"
"She shouldn't be wearing glasses.  They aren't pretty."
"But Grammy wears glasses," I remind him.  "Isn't she pretty?"
"Yes," he says, struggling to articulate, "but we don't love her in that way."
"In what way?"
"You know..." He's frustrated.  I should get this.  "Because of being pretty."

It went something like that.  I don't remember exactly.  I was tired and just holding up my end of any conversation was work.  But that's a really normal part of parenting for me right now.  Most often I ask questions, try to find out what he's really thinking.  Sometimes I add more information or a different perspective.  This time I did not say, "People with glasses can be pretty."  Or "we should love people because of who they are, not what they look like."  I just let it go.  I hope that these are lessons that he will learn from watching my husband and I.  I know that what we do will be as important as what we say.

Other examples:  toys, activities, attitudes toward aggression.  Nobody has time to read what confuses me about these topics.  At least not all in one post.  

I feel that like most of parenting I'm probably getting some of this wrong.  I feel pretty confident about a few choices we've made as parents.

• Like telling our sons that what Mommy does (staying home to take care of them) is just as important as the "work" that Daddy does (being a professional astronomer and university instructor).  
• We try to accept our sons for who they are and give them opportunities to explore ideas and activities that are interesting to them.  
• We treat each other with respect.  We are a team.  Sometimes one of us takes the lead, sometimes the other one does.  It depends on who knows more about a specific area - or who is stronger at that specific moment - or who is available.  
• We have a motto, "Different people like/do different things."  It applies to preferences (like food), culture, and choices people make relating to gender.  

We have one fast rule that I hope will help my sons be men who can make the world a better place while at the same time making them safer:  If you touch someone and they ask you to stop, you have to stop.  All they have to do is ask.  If someone touches you and you want them to stop, they have to stop.  All you have to do is ask.  No reason or explanation is needed.  Just stop.  It seems to me to be part of the feminist message about respecting others and allowing them to decide what works for them.

It's a work in progress.  Society won't change overnight and I can't figure it all out at once.  I'm listening and thinking and reading, though.  If you have thoughts - constructive suggestions - I'd love to hear them.