My children have conspired to make sure that one of them is making life... let's go with difficult (for lack of a better, non-four-letter word) around the clock, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Lucy's talents are particularly well-suited for making me want to pull my hair out and punch crib mattresses between the hours of 7pm and 7am, and then when she gets up in the morning, I assume she gives some sort of secret signal to Asher (I picture her narrowing her eyes and dragging a tiny index finger across her throat when my back is turned to grab a diaper) and he accepts the relay baton of Operation Parental Destruction.
Lucy is working on her two top teeth. I know I should have more sympathy for her than I do. I know it must hurt, those jagged peaks of enamel breaking through her soft widdle gums. And God forbid she inherited MY teeth, as anyone who has ever seen me in person can attest, I have front teeth the exact shape and size of Chiclets, so cutting those suckers is probably no walk in the park. Each time she cries out for comfort in the middle of the night (ALL EIGHT OF THEM), I take my sympathetic response down a notch or two. Which is the OPPOSITE of what I SHOULD do, I know. Intellectually I know that more frequent wakings means the baby is in more pain and discomfort, but guess what? SO AM I. Do you know how badly my eyes burn after having to pry them open and then use them EIGHT DIFFERENT TIMES between the hours of midnight and five a.m.?
And then she gets up for the day at seven and pretends that we haven't seen each other every 45 minutes for the last 12 hours. That kind of charms me, I'll be honest. Especially if I was wearing my angry and frustrated face for our last meeting. But it's like she doesn't care, she's standing up in her crib and babbling and doing her best Godfather impression when she sees the photo collage of herself hanging on the wall. (I should videotape that. Words do it no justice.)
I get about 15 minutes of peace with her before her brother gets up and assumes his duties. About three seconds after he gets out of bed he starts whining and he doesn't let up until he's in bed for the night at 8:30, which FUNNILY ENOUGH, HAHA, coincides with Lucy's first scheduled wakeup for tooth comfort. It's amazing how they do it. I won't go into details about what Asher's job description entails. Suffice to say that I'm guessing he's just THREE, and is exploring all the different ways he can express himself, as long as those expressions make me want to lock him in a broom closet until he turns eight. (Short version is that we're working on asking for things politely and being gentle and kind with Lucy.) (And the short version to the question you're undoubtedly asking now is NO, it's NOT GOING VERY WELL.)
Which also means that even though Asher turned three a full month ago, we have not been pushing the potty training issue. We have some hurdles to work through still with communicating effectively with him (I have never met a child so hardened to bribery or peer pressure) but I did cave and buy him some (VERY PINK) Dora pull-ups a couple of weeks ago in hopes that it would encourage him. (It didn't.)
Can we just talk for a second about television characters? Can someone please explain to me why children's television shows feature normal, relatively sexless and genderless characters and yet the marketing for those shows turns them into either very masculine or very feminine personas? Take Dora, for example. If you watch a regular, 25-minute episode of Dora on Nickelodeon, there's absolutely nothing about it that would make a boy/male viewer feel as if it was too girly or exclusionary to his gender. Dora doesn't wear anything frilly or ridiculous, she has a crappy haircut, she has some pretty dorky friends (someone tell me what that squirrelly thing with the buck teeth is, and why he can DRIVE). But she does cool stuff. She helps people. She's selfless. She plays SPORTS. Yes, sometimes there are girly-ish things like rainbows and butterflies, but these things also OCCUR IN NATURE.
Now take the MARKETED Dora. There are DVDS of Dora princess movies and there are pink toothbrushes with Mermaid Dora on them and there are talking Dora dolls and pink Dora underpants and pull-ups. These are all things that are marketed only to girls, even though the Dora television show is not girly at all. So boys who like Dora are subjugated to wearing/buying things that are pink or girly, much to their fathers' dismay. (SPEAKING HERE OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.) Whereas if a girl happens to watch a show like Diego (again, a situation where the show itself is neutral and geared mostly towards kids who like animals, not necessarily just BOYS) it's considered totally okay for her to own/wear Diego merchandise, because of the double standard of girls being able to wear boy clothes/play with boy toys/be named boy names and society being totally okay with it. It's not usually okay the other way around.
I PERSONALLY am not opposed to buying my boy pink things. If I am buying him something that he likes, and it happens to be pink, well then, that's fine. (Case in point, two pink Mermaid Dora toothbrushes sitting on the bathroom counter. Because you can't buy REGULAR Dora toothbrushes! She has to be GIRLIFIED for some reason.) That's not my issue, though, even though it's annoying. It's okay for princess stuff to exist. I just don't understand why EVERYTHING has to be princess-related. I think my issue with it is the same issue a lot of moms have with the overabundance of girly princessy things: that they don't want their daughters growing up thinking the absolute coolest thing a girl can be is a beautiful, long-haired princess.
Likewise, I don't want my SON growing up thinking that the only things girls are good for is being a princess or a mermaid or some other crappy fantasy. Why can't the Dora from the cartoon show be the same Dora that's portrayed in the merchandise? (And I know the REAL reason, obviously, because this kind of crap makes money, and who's to say that I won't buy it once my daughter is old enough to care? I can't say that I won't, because I haven't been there yet.) But for my son, and I know this is a first-world problem, the idea of struggling over marketing for a television show, but just BEAR WITH ME, I would like him to be able to admire a girl on a television show because she does cool, kind, and brave things. But he'll end up being bombarded by images of that same girl being reduced to a princess or a mermaid, neither of whom I tend to admire very much. THE WORLD DOES NOT NEED MORE PRINCESSES. Can I get an amen?
Geez, as much whining and wearing me out that kid does, you wouldn't think I'd have any motherly instincts left with which to love and protect him, and also RAISE HIM TO RESPECT WOMEN, but it turns out I do.
