Third Birthday Party

The party was great. Everyone was lovely to come on out and help us celebrate and it made the day very special for B. She was so excited to have everyone over.

(If you are reading this post in a feed reader, you are missing the widget in it that has all the pictures.)

Okay, Let's Think of a New Way to Market Toys

My daughter is tall. She's always going to be tall. I wouldn't be shocked if she was the tallest person in her class for the rest of her life. That's person, and not just tallest girl. I know this will cause her some moments of pain, but there's always something.

I don't want to be too egotistical here, either, but I have an inkling she's going to be one of the "smart kids", and will catch some flack for that over her academic career.

She's going to be different in enough ways that might cause her some trouble over the course of her life. Given that, I really wish we could start this evolution away from being so stuck in our ways as far as gender typing is concerned.

It's time for us to let go of all those primitive preconceptions, relax, and let our kids explore the whole world with fewer needless labels. Nothing they play with when they're three or five or seven is going to make them anything other than what they intrinsically are and will be no matter what.

I am so sick of this obsession with "boy toys" and "girl toys". Yes, I understand that there is a phase that most kids go through when they first begin to understand gender and they become either hyper-feminine or hyper-masculine while they try to wrap their brains around this new idea and what effect that has on their place in the world. I just don't understand why we take this one phase of child development and blow it out of proportion. Kids are obsessed with gender roles for a year or so. Their parents, many times, are obsessed with them from the moment they discover the gender of their baby until, oh, ever.

Here is just one manifestation of this phenomenon:

First, here's something subtle you might not have noticed. There is one more item in the "boy" list than the "girl" list. This tells me that things left off of the girl's list were left off on purpose and not due to space constraints.

Also, this graphic (taken from a major online retailer) appears on their 3-4 year old toy guide page. At ages 3 and 4, many, many kids are not this gender specific. Their parents might be, pushing cars on little Johnny even though he might be asking for a doll (a perfectly normal form of pretend play, especially if he has a younger sibling) and putting princess hats on their daughters who might be more interested in trains or blocks. The fact that they're pushing such baldly obvious gender typing on kids in an age group that predates the typical age range where awareness of gender roles comes into play just shows how much of the gender differences and gender gap is nurture and not nature.

Further, the very idea that the only toy that boys and girls can agree on is "music" and that universal things like "building sets and blocks" are the exclusive playground of boys is frankly, offensive.

There's an expression I hate that says, "Boys will be boys and girls will be either." In other words, boys play with boy toys and girls play with girl and boy toys. Maybe you think that this means that girls are able to look at their world from more different and varied points of view, but I think it's more true that the toys seen as exclusively for girls exist in a sort of "not good enough for a boy" gulag, looked down on by the boys who play with the sort of toys that introduce them to a more realistic version of the world (compare playing with cars and trains during imaginative play and playing princesses, and then consider which one is more likely to prepare them for the world we live in.)

When you further consider that the foundations for interest in math and science are laid in play with blocks and interest in things like dinosaurs (which spark trips to natural history museums and the like) and trains (which can be turned into an interest in mechanical engineering as they grow older and want to know how things work), labeling those things "for boys" is a disservice in every way to our young girls.

I was once kept out of an algebra class in the eighth grade by a male math department head, despite the fact that I had the highest score in my grade on the test used to place us in the "right" math class. His excuse was that he "thought I'd want to be with my little friends." The principal backed him.

My friends were guys. I didn't know a single person in the eighth grade pre-algebra class I took, which bored me so much that it's the closest I've ever come to getting trouble for spacing out in class and not paying attention. My friends were boys, by the way, because they didn't seem as affronted by my interest in math and science as the girls were.

Maybe it was because the girls were brainwashed by gender stereotyping, and my insistence on ignoring the boundaries made them uneasy. Maybe we would never have gotten along anyway, and it was immaterial.

But you know what? As long as we keep brainwashing our kids to stay safely in their assigned gender roles, we're never gonna know.

Craftiness

I finished two projects recently, making some new toys for the B out of some pretty basic supplies.

Project 1: Lower case letter puzzle



We have a Melissa and Doug upper case letter puzzle that helped me teach her the upper case alphabet pretty quickly, but I'm always worried that we'll lose a letter or two and you can't get replacement letters for those puzzles. As much as I love our Melissa and Doug puzzles, I decided to try to make a basic one that would be easy to make replacement parts for if something went missing in the depths of the house that only a two-going-on-three year old can find.

I used clear packing tape, a cardboard box, one sheet of green construction paper, a sharpie, a pen, a pair of scissors, some glue, and an exacto knife. I drew the letters with a sharpie on the smaller pieces of cardboard salvaged from the old moving box that had come apart, making them nice and round and easy to read. Then I cut around the letters, trying to make the silhouette of the piece look as much like the shape of the letter as possible without getting too ornate. (Because then making replacement pieces would seem difficult when it's time to make them, and the likelihood of getting it done would be lower.)

Then I took the two long sides of the cardboard box body and cut them to the same size. I put the green construction paper over the piece that would be the "bottom" of the puzzle and taped it in place. Then I laid the cut-out letters on the piece that would be the "top", trying to arrange them evenly from side to side and top to bottom. I drew around the pieces with the pen and then used the exacto knife to cut out squares that were just larger than the pieces. (I used all the scrap cardboard under the piece to keep the exacto knife from cutting, for example, the carpeting, or my leg.)

Then I glued the two pieces together, the piece with the holes on the top and the piece covered in green construction paper underneath. I taped the sides for good measure, and ended up using the packing tape over the top (cutting out the holes with the exacto knife) just to make it more durable.

I drew the letter in each hole so she could match up the shapes of the letter pieces with the puzzle, and she was ready to play!



Total cost: We actually already had all of the parts I used for this project around the house. It was probably about a dollar's worth of tape, a little bit of household glue, and then a cut-up moving box that had fallen apart under the weight of the items in it when I tried to move it from one place to another in the garage. So basically, this one was free because of what I had around the house.

Project 2: Felt play food



I saw a post on the CRAFT magazine blog where someone had made some play food out of sheets of felt, and I thought I'd give it a go, especially since I finally got the front bedroom, where we are storing a lot of boxes and things, straightened out enough to set up my sewing machine.

For this, I just got some different colors of felt sheets at the craft store and then cut out food shapes freehand. Then I went to the sewing machine and sewed them together with appropriate colors of thread, stuffing some with polyfill to make them puffy and leaving others just a flat two-ply of felt.


Left column: bread slices
Top right: bacon
Bottom right: pepperoni pizza slices


Top: carrot
Middle: lettuce
Bottom: tomato, slice of cheese


Left to right: orange, banana, apple, watermelon



Total cost: About 8 sheets of craft felt at 20 cents each: $1.60 + tax. One bottle of puffy fabric paint for the tomato: $1.49 + tax. I also want to go and get a bottle of orange to make lines on the carrot, a bottle of black to put seeds on the watermelon, and white to put a little shiny highlight on the apple and the orange. I already had the polyfill, but that's not too expensive if you needed to buy it, and I already had a set of different colored spools of thread that came with my sewing machine when I bought it. If you didn't have the colors of thread you need for the different foods, that part could add up a little because those spools of thread are always more than I think they'll be whenever I look at them in the store. But still, a lot less than buying play food from a store, and most of that stuff is plastic and not really as fun to play with than fun, soft, squishy food.

So there is a record of my recent craftiness. Both projects were fun and the B seems to enjoy the end products, so it seems like time well spent.

Yo Melora Melora

Let's say, hypothetically, that you have a child who saw a commercial for the utterly-surreal kid show "Yo Gabba Gabba", so you put it on for her so she can watch it while you try to pick up the wreckage of toys in the house.

Then let's further say that you looked up at the television and saw someone you could swear is a dead ringer for Melora Hardin, known to many as "Jan" from The Office. And you think, "That can't possibly really be Melora Hardin dancing with these weird characters and singing songs and stuff."

But really, truly, the person looks and sounds exactly like her. So what would you do? Would you be thoroughly freaked out to google "Yo Gabba Gabba", find the official site, and then find this:

I mean, I know people guest-star on shows for kids. Goodness knows that most of the people who were celebrities when I was very young or before I was born are known to me mostly because a lot of them were on Sesame Street when I was a kid.

What's weird about this is that I don't think they called her "Melora" or anything, so any adults watching with the kids who recognize her from something else she's been in were really left stumped unless they went and looked it up like my obsessive nature forced me to do.

Looks like I can catch Amy Sedaris if she wants to keep watching it, but I'm not sure it really held her attention. Perhaps that's all for the best.

From Camel to Duck

I made such a rookie parenting mistake—I asked my two and a half year old what she wanted to be for Halloween. I asked so early because I'd like to make most or all of her costume, and one needs a bit of lead time for that sort of thing.

It took a bit of time to explain the dress-up bit, but she understand pretending, and I told her there was a day when she could pretend to be something or someone and she could dress up and have a lot of fun.

"So what would you like to be? An animal?"

"Yes! Animal!"

"How about a kitty?" (I said, envisioning making her a black hat with two little kitty ears on it, and some sort of tail.)

"Kitty! Teddy bear!"

Ah, teddy bear. That's not so bad. Brown hat with round ears, brown sweater and pants. Maybe some felt spats to cover her shoes...

"Camel!"

Camel. Ah, well. I guess I could...or...um... Knit some humps? Rig up a hat with a nose on it that spits at people?

"Are you sure? Wouldn't you rather be a kitty? Or a duck? Or a teddy bear?"

"Duck!" (relief) "No! Camel!" (aw, darnit)

I'm still hoping to turn her to kitty or duck. Teddy bear would be all right too. And she can be a camel if she wants. I'll come up with something. But still, it won't be as comfortable, so she'd probably wriggle out of a camel costume and then not have as much fun dressing up.

In my first salvo in the skirmish to change her mind, I made a hat she could use if she agrees to dress up as a duck.

Come on. Wouldn't you be a duck if you had that hat?

Building with Duplos

(Yes, I realize it's probably "Duplo" in plural and not "Duplos". I just think it's a little silly.)

One of the great things about having a child is watching them gradually learn how to do things, and to realize how many of the more creative impulses we have are innate. I never told her to build animals out of the various Duplo blocks she has. Some of them have eyes on them, and she took it from there.

The creations so far:

And there was another red animal of some kind that was demolished before I could get to it with the camera.

I'm pretty amazed at how creative they are, but that they are still recognizable as animals. Why do we become less brilliant and freely creative as we get older?

Best Timing Ever

The B and I walked up to the community poolhouse for her to play in the kiddie pool after she woke up from her nap this afternoon. The clouds looked a little gray, but it didn't really look or feel like rain other than that.

We got there (after I had to yell "No! Go home!" at a dog that got out of its fenced-in yard on the way there, but the 'Everyone in Colorado has to own a dog and then get a shitty fence' rant is for another day) and she played. It was a random amount of time; nothing that was planned ahead of time but something that seemed long enough for her to play but not too long.

We left (with no tantrum, yay!) and walked home. I even took my time when we got to the house pulling a couple of weeds out of the rockbed next to the driveway, and then I walked under the alcove at the front door of the house. I heard a funny noise behind me and turned just in time to see the skies open up and a veritable deluge of water come down. It's like it was waiting for us to get under cover and then it all was released.

Weird, but it made me feel oddly lucky, like I should go buy a lottery ticket or something.

Can't Buy Me Kite

So, let's assume that you have a yen to go kite flying. It's windy. You'd like to go that day. There's not a specialty shop near you, but you have a big-box toy store and a Target somewhat nearby.

Would you be kite flying later that day, or not?

That would depend on your timing and which employee you ask at the correct store, but very possibly, you would not be kite flying that day.

It's such a basic toy, isn't it? Target has whole aisles dedicated to Pla-Doh and things that buzz and tweet and toot, but I dare you to find a kite in Target. Perhaps at the beginning of whatever season is considered kite flying season (I honestly don't know...but aren't there windy days in every season?) then there MIGHT be a novelty kite in the seasonal row, but you'll get nothing but blank stares from the (usually helpful, 'round these parts) Target employees if you ask.

We made a special trip (~20 minutes each way) to a Toys'R'Us and looked around on our own before inquiring with an employee, and we lucked out and picked the guy in the store who has a crazy ability to remember the locations of even the most incidental of items. He remembered two sorta goofy pseudo-kites that they only had in stock because they were character-branded, and they were stuck on an endcap in the seasonal section among the pool stuff. You actually had to look quite closely to figure out was in the packages. We bought them and went kite flying with mixed results (wasn't quite windy enough) but if it hadn't been for that employee and some buyer who stocked the item because it went with the other seasonal stuff for that franchise's characters, we would still be kiteless.

They're sort of cheesy kites, really, so we still are kind of kiteless. It's weird to think of such a basic childhood toy as something you just can't find anywhere but a specialty shop. I'm trying to look for something close by that I can get something sturdier, but I may end up buying one from Amazon or something. Still...strange. Who thought kites were so scarce?

Crap

I took the B to a "pick your own" farm today, where I was nervous the entire time we were in the flower patch picking flowers (none of the good veg is in season yet, I guess, and the only fruit you could pick yourself were pie cherries, and the last thing I need is cherry pie) that she would get stung by a bee or a hornet. We made it out of there okay, got some beans (they had yellow, green, and purple) and checked out.

On the way out to the car, we walked across a little bridge thingie with hollow piping used as railing, and when we got to the far side, the B must have patted the piping or something and a swarm of hornets flew out. One of them was on her hand before I could react, and she started crying. I looked at her hand and there was a little bloody spot on it with the skin around it starting to swell.

Crap.

It appears she has no bee sting allergy, which is good. I cleaned it out well at the car (with the doors closed, thankyouverymuch) and drove home, where I put insect sting/itchy skin cream on it and then gave her the band-aid she kept asking me for in the car. (We put them on her mosquito bites after the 4th to keep her from scratching, so she knows what they're for.)

I know there's nothing I could have done to prevent it. Even someone with my level of persistent paranoia couldn't have imagined the pipes were housing a hornet's nest, and the sting happened so fast after I realized they were there that I couldn't have done anything about it anyway.

Still, seeing her little swollen hand and the band-aid makes me sad.

I Hope She's Not On To Something

For about a week, the B (now two and a half, for those of you who don't know) has been randomly, out of the blue, saying, "It's coming."

Now, we've said this to her when we're waiting for food at a restaurant or something like that, so she is just mimicking what we've said, but it's been a little like starring in an independent horror film for the last week or so.

Add to that her alternate names for shadows, which are "monsters" and "aliens". Where she got this, I don't know. She doesn't seem to be afraid of the "monsters" or "aliens", so I've been letting it slide and just saying, "Yes, that's a shadow," and hoping she embraces the right word on her own.

But when you put those two things together, and you get a child who says, "It's coming," and "Look, aliens!" and "Monsters!" while she points at, you know, NOTHING but some shadows on the wall, and it's honestly hard not to feel a little creeped out.

Help Me, William H. Macy, You're My Only Hope

I'm going to wager that the next bit of information that I type in is going to be something that no one who is likely to read this will already know.

William H. Macy provided the voice of the Narrator on the first season of the current PBS Kids show Curious George. It shouldn't be surprising that he was really, really good at it. It helps that the writing on that show, especially for the narrator, includes the occasional bit of irony, wry humor, and absurdity, but a great deal of the "hey, this is better than I thought it would be, and GREAT for preschool television" impression the first season episodes leave you with was due to William H. Macy's delivery of the lines.

For whatever reason, there was a new narrator at the beginning of the second season. Now, I don't have anything AGAINST the guy, but the whole show just doesn't have the same snap that it had before. The writing doesn't even seem as snappy (again, for a preschool-aged children's show) without him delivering it.

I don't know if he got busy with other projects, if they wouldn't pay him enough, or if it was something else, but I honestly wish he would come back. The hijinx of a monkey and his man with a yellow hat just aren't the same without him.

You May Have Played Too Much Rock Band Around Your Toddler When...

...she looks at you, says, "Sing...Maps?"

And then sings, "MaaaAAAaaaa--aaaAAAaaa--aaaAAAaaaps!"

Stickers

Let me tell you an odd little fact—my daughter seems to be afraid of stickers.

Sometimes when you go into a store that caters to kids, like a children's shoe or clothing store, they have stickers stashed behind the counter to give out. However, I noticed her aversion to them first when I went to vote in the last primary. I put the "I voted" sticker on my jacket, and then the nice lady behind the check-in table offered one to the B. She took it, but resisted any attempt to put it on her jacket like mine. It was funny at first when it stuck to her finger, but then, once we were in the car, she wanted it off of her.

Ever since then, when she waves and says "hi" to the employees in the store and ends up getting a sticker offered to her, she might giggle a little, but we have to take the sticker from them because she won't touch it. It takes too long to explain that she doesn't seem to understand what the stickers are all about, so we take them and move on. Any attempts on our part to get her interested in the sticker are met with a well-practiced, two year-old's "no!"

Considering the fact that modern bathroom learning techniques seem to be focused on using stickers and sticker books as rewards, I realize now that we're going to have to think outside the box where that is concerned. I don't see this sticker aversion going away anytime soon.

Bedtime Struggles Begin

So, the B, induced most likely by the stress of our recent move, can now climb out of her crib and does not want to be put there to nap or sleep overnight. Our kid who we used to lie down in the crib and she'd put herself gratefully out...that kid is gone. This one just wants me, but oddly, I don't want to go to bed at 8 for the rest of my life.

She's Two

Our girl turns two today. I can spend the day, no matter how much work we have to do on the house, secure in the notion that I have no chance of being busier today than I was two years ago.

The Explosion

The game is on. The avalanche of new words coming from the B has begun, just as everyone kept telling me that it would. We knew she understood a lot of what we were saying, but now so much more of the noises she makes are actual words instead of gibberish.

No matter how prepared you think you are for it, when she suddenly pops out with "butterfly" (well, okay, "buh-fwy!") while pointing to the embroidered outline of a butterfly on her sleeper, it's still a little mind-bending.

We've been writing down new words on our wall calendar, on the day we're sure she's saying it with intention. That went from a bit of ink on the calendar in September, to a smattering in October, to "oh my gosh, we're running out of room every day" in November.

This morning, she said, "pants" when we were getting out her clothes for the day. She's a little person! She feels more and more like an independent being every day, but it's moments like that when you realize exactly how far she's come.

Gaquin

That's as close as I can come to spelling it the way it sounds. This is what our B is calling her father, and no, it wasn't just a couple of times. She's saying it repeatedly, and clearly indicating that he is the one she is talking about.

For instance, he came out of the restroom the other day, and she ran over and shouted, "Gaquin!" He was away from the house and she sadly repeated, "Gaquin...Gaquin..." over and over throughout the day until he returned.

She's given him a name. Me? I'm just that lady who's always around, despite the fact that she did spend a long time calling me "Mama". Now I'm too ubiquitous for a name.

We also took a long, exhausting, interesting trip, which I will not jinx by talking about it. More on that as news arrives on our shores.

OMG Peep

So, I already purchased the B's Halloween costume. I got a worn-once, cute as a button bunny costume, complete with built-in head/ears/tail. She already has little white tennis shoes she can wear with it.

Then I saw...well...this.



This is not the B's costume. I just found it. It's $40. Ridiculous. Ludicrous. (want want want want)

Those of you who truly know me know how I love my Peeps. The year I was working my tail off to the lose over 90 pounds, I asked the mister to hide a box of Peeps in the house during Easter season and then serve a single Peep up to me each night. This is how important Peeps are to me. This is also the last year that we will most likely have complete authority over what the B will wear. Next year, she'll have her own preference. She'll want to be a princess or a volleyball or goodness only knows what.

So my dream of a Peeps Halloween costume is likely at an end, as no child would look at that costume and consent to be dressed in it unless they were simply too young to understand that they should scream, "No!" and run away. Sigh.

(There is an adult version of the costume, actually. I suppose next year I could make a deal with the child for us to "dress alike" and then buy both versions. I can dream, right?)

The World Hates Wide Feet

You know what, shoe companies? Screw you.

I've written to every single one of you to point out that there is a non-negligible population of toddlers with wide feet. Those toddlers have parents with credit cards, but we don't relish having to pay the ridiculous prices (two to three times what most parents pay for shoes) for the one and a half specialty brands that cater to all the widths. Every shoe company has written back with a polite, "Why don't you and your kid go eff off, because we don't care."

Even the couple of companies that charge in the $18-$30 range for wide shoes offer two wonderful varieties to choose from: the "ugly white shoe" and the "ugly black shoe". News flash: those shoes suck. Plus, I don't want to buy the same damn shoe in a new size every time her feet get larger. Call me crazy, but part of the fun of having a wonderful, goofy little girl who twirls around in the living room until she gets dizzy is dressing her in fun, unique, quirky stuff you can only really get away with when you're two or three years old.

So yes, there's Stride Rite. And when they have a sale, I can buy those shoes without having to breathe into a paper bag to calm myself down, because the only shoes I've bought for myself that cost that much have been specialty athletic shoes. And Stride Rite makes cute damn shoes, too, and I've never had them sigh at me when I hold up a shoe and ask if they have it in a wide width.

If they can do it, why doesn't anyone else bother at least trying to make a cute little WIDE pink shoe for my poor little girl? What did she do to you shoe manufacturers? Were you all beat up in grammar school by little girls with wide feet? Get over it and realize that not every product you sell has to be made only to cater to the majority. You can make a couple in a wider width without the world crashing down around your shoulders. Just widen the pattern, you idiots.

I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. And I'm not buying your shoes for myself, either. I'm waiting for adult Stride Rites, so that the only company that gives a rat's poo about my daughter gets all my money.

Bargains!

I went to a special consignment sale for kiddie stuff today that was organized for charity, and it was super-sweet! This was the "pay to get in" day, but it was only $2, and I figured, "Why not?"

Man, did I clean up getting there just after they opened.

Nice little play kitchen, with a bunch of food-related bits to play with and stick in the drawers and stuff, only $30! It was really clean and nice. Looks like it was played with about four times.

The B's Halloween costume! We were looking into kitty costumes, in honor of her recently beginning to say "kitty", but this bunny costume, worn once and looking pristine, was only $5!

And in a more embarrassing point, I also learned that the B knows (putting bag over my head) the name of at least one of the Teletubbies, and she decided it was important enough to actually say it. She doesn't say "milk" or "more" or "hungry" or anything useful like that, but she knows which Teletubby "Po" is, and she can say his name when she sees him.

Goofily embarrassing as it is, and yes, I know she shouldn't watch Teletubbies, but we DO interact while she's watching it, and it makes her so unbelievably happy that I can't help myself. I bought her the little Po figurine and she's been carrying it around, loving all over it. She even gave it a little kiss.

Nice outing, though, all around!