Gendrefication or power up the Cloaking Device

This morning in the race across town to my now distant cushier job I steal a peek @suefisher and @bonstewart. An excellent dialogue on gender and lego; a happy little mind bending to incisive people I have never met. I reach and think a fine few minutes of those I weave some affinity with -- the luxury of it.

Anyway.. the dialogue.. Gender to lego, enough! Damn how can lego have gender? Well too much has gender now. It is what - or it is one more thing -- that is eating away at childhood in my mind. I think one tweeter put it out as market forces. B*%lsh@t! No I know it is not. Not market forces but the aggression of corporations over childhood.

Remember I have one boy and one girl. I learned early what would and would not go both ways -- toys, clothes even books. It is something I have bucked, if you will pardon the pun. My son wore plenty of track pants just a little bet scalloped on the edge. The kids have abided the rants that there is not such thing as girl music.. even if there is.

I do believe I have become a rantafarian. I freak that we are holding onto childhood by our fingernails that the mania for industrial child corps to extinguish the ambiguity of children in favour of the profitability of mini-adults is winning. Remember I was an administrator for schools so impoverished for resources, begging, brokering and selling to make learning happen. It was a part of my work for a tough three years sick to see the Matrix of learning devices and 'free' software pin kids from the youngest possible ages in a dataset of self that will set them for harvesting for sale in perpetuity. I can't help often to see the black patent swish of a Trinity trenchcoat in each 'it will save us' post of the graces to Ipad in education.

I say this with the intense vulnerability of this space do I? That I have done as much to pin my own children (thinly veiled) on a blog? I don't think so. More than once I thank the test space of this parenting dialogue to allow me to want to hack parenting and fight and differentiate. I have said it before it is the dialogue in these distant spaces that have fueled my (hard come by) commitment and fitting in to to IRL action of being mother-woman. I am not here to tell you how this will end...



So you see I was biting my tongue just a tad....

Deregulation of Childhood

This weekend we celebrated a fantastic neighbourhood party in the park. Lots of happy families and many growing kids. The tug of war under 3' category was esp. good! Standing over the playground with kids going on 6 years we have debated a lot with our peers. Not so long ago the question came to me as to when I would let my children go to the park by themselves. I hummed and hawed. What 8 years old?

No, surely it won't take two full years for my oldest?? For whom I have been over this groundbefore, a couple times. Access to independence is an important parenting principle for me. Even, if it is not a natural one. My kids' world has grown exponentially. The park is a part of their ground, their city home. They will not always need me to be there. I think over my (philosophy professor father-person) friend questioning... What age he asks? Tossing in the layer of the child's good judgement.. When?

My mind travels to the pre-parenting me; observing. 3 months pregnant on a bench in Montmartre. No doubt interrupting some delicious sandwich I turned to my children's father-to-be saying the children nearby us were playing 'on their own'. *GASP* We watched. Happy, noisy children in a square, late evening. But then the fact... The children we're not 'on their own'. It was after dinner. They were centre of the square and the windows of every kitchen of the surrounding apartments faced out to where they played. Mothers and Dad's would be keeping an eye out, and each apartment on the ground floor had an outside door. They had a sense of being alone and some risk but not like a tap, off/on.

I wish for moments like that Montmartre evening here but tremble a bit myself. I am a pawn certainly like many in the steady terror making of child safety regulation. But I'd rather not be. In a culture of car seat expiry dates and "you must be this high for the water slide" there are too many trade offs of judgement and/vs. god damned regulation. Children will never be truly growing up without toying with freedom and risk. The hide and seek of my own childhood ran too far and wide for my terrified parenting self today doesn't it? We surveil still more closely than those parents in Montmartre at our park I suppose, though soon I guess I'll test it. And at least a couple time my fleet of foot eldest child tested me.

I hope we'll balance. Government and sales folk... enough is enough. Stop throwing a rock through my child's window and selling me more baby junk. Your regulation is so much less than my judgement and the development of theirs. We act too often as if childhood is a stage and not a process. The milestones a millstone. We wait for buzzers and bells to tell us when.. But so often our role is not to decide at all but rather to observe...

Tell is there some simple answer to this one.. When do children go to the playground solo?

The end of assvice?

I have been working a lot in the area of shifting publishing and more and more I find my identities crossing over. Mother. Woman. Librarian. "Blogger". Twit. I am happy about that since I actually started the Mother-Woman blog back in 2005 to weather the fracturing of identity I faced when I returned to work that autumn a mother surely but unsure how to be a hyphenated mother.

To this day, though I do it so infrequently now... I do still like the blogging. I was so excited to hear my friend and mommy-to-meta-blogger Kerry is presenting at Northern Voice a Vancouver blogger event I am going to for both personal and professional reasons. 1.) let me rankle.. the NV folks better not be billing my best mommyblogger peeps just to attract the inevitable, Mommy Bloggers you suck press coverage from the top flight proprietary news outlets. And 2.) aren't social media threads for parenting information just the best thing ever invented???

As I spend more time, as a librarian, thinking about what is happening to the quality (qualities?) of information a bit of an aha moment. I keep looking for the points of disconnection between the information sources we've had and the new options. Do you agree with me when I say it's not just about convenience it's about credibility? I mean if you share my low-ish opinion of the parenting books from main stream publishers blogging makes inordinate sense. If we asked the question what's so great about parent blogging? Well yeah it's because it is better and more credible than those books. Parenting that's about a social as it gets, innit?

And, if you ask bon... well what about the genres. We need to reshuffle the deck on voice. As I wade through they myriad of choice for information sources in schools day by day I never make up my mind. Organize by format? By access.. by discipline. Well like one of my best friends said to me when I had my first baby "Repeat after me. Your guess is as good as mine"!

And, that's peer review for ya nowadays, innit?

Broke

Maybe this economic crisis isn't all bad. I really enjoyed telling my 4-year-old we will "NOT BE ABLE TO BUY THINGS ANYMORE."And, we won't.

I mean I am slightly sad about people not having work to manufacture crap but it's crap! And that I won't miss.

Go Ask Alice

So another good hour of my life gone. Into the abyss my time spent chasing, chasing chasing a little rabbit down a hole, or pipe, as the case may be... Looking looking deeper and deeper in the Internet, for this...



In an effort to replace the very scrungey character that passes for this fellow around here I have purchased 3 impostors -- all different sizes and finishes. It is a sad path of failure in this futile lovey hunt. By any chance do you have an hitherto unadored little specimen at your house? Ah, I might as well be looking for a small stuffed windmill.

Conspicuous Consumption

I ran screaming from a mall this week. Count me as one who simply cannot cope with the environs. I have a sincere sense of being ripped off just being there. Everywhere a scam. Look out behind you! There is some ridiculous overly-expensive duplication of a near-duplication of a knock off you will pay full price for. I don't really have an eye for quality after so many years in thrift stores.

Remember, too, that we, of course, are blessed with one of each. So blimey the expense. I look ahead and feel it will do me in to navigate all the product that we say we need to get to the actual items we do need. I dunno, size 10 flip-flops for 9 dollars. Is that a good deal? Do I need that?

Bear in mind that this is the woman who will (God willing) wrap up a six month renovation of three bathrooms and a kitchen this coming week. Exactly, how much did that cost, eh?
I believe I spent a good part of Thursday playing Design, Inc. out looking for that perfect pendant light. Did you know that pendant lights cost between $60 and $800? My profound design fatigue had me settle on this striking beauty.

Yeah I know. White. Plainest plain white you ever did see. We might do some fingerpainting with it or something.


Times like these I do think I hate my life. The banal dilemmas. The petty wayfinding. Come please, poverty. Purify me. You will likely hear about it. Dumping the dual in dual income breeds a lot of home cooked chick peas, thick sweater wearing and turned down thermostats. I can't wait. Envision my fingers turning blue as I rinse every dish in cold water only. Will the righteousness warm the cockles of my heart? Or are we just cocksmokers?

ps. I do promise to someday post some pics of our lovely refreshed, chic dwelling. That is if i can ever finish my argument with the overfull startup disk on the machine at which I run my archive iPhoto.

Where's my bonus?

I find that at this particular moment very worst part of being a parent is, surprisingly, the lack of performance indicators.

The rudderless drone of activity my life represents is relentlessly taxing. I bristle at every demand from outsiders for me to do a little something more because to do so seems to imply in my internal dialogue their presumption that I am not busy.

Why can I not demonstrate the free timelessness of it all?
Will I prove my worth or success with potty training?
I have no credible measure of my ability to achieve nutritional goals?
When will I be sure my discipline and development expectations are in order?

Please someone, a performance review. It would nice for someone to care enough; but not too much.

I know it is not just me. I critique all those chronicled moments of babyhood. I recognize among bloggers the rudiments of a dissertation filled with welcome skepticism of the milestone of babyhood as a weapon that undermines the value of actual parenting. The burr of unrecognized performance indicators borne of a disdain for their pointless substitutes.

My hates list for the moment, said pointless substitutes:
Growth charts
Sleep theory books
Preschool, Public school, private school, home school
Nanny, v. Daycare v. At home parent
Minivans
Bus passes and/or bike seats and/or with versus bike trailers
Birth order
Arranging my life through email, usually more than 6 emails at a time
Bullying at the playground
Learning to talk
... do you know what I mean?

Maybe don't mind me? I am sick as a dog. My nanny a no show. I still have no kitchen. My van* is in the shop. The naps are freakishly challenging. The drywall with be sanded today -- what is the point in vacuuming.. hack wheeze.

Where's my bonus?

* In the spirit of reciprocity? soul-matedness? or enabling? I hit the van last week. Doesn't p-man feel a whole lot better?

Presents In Mind / Does This Make Me a Grinch?

Toys suck.

Even all the lead paint aside I am praying to God that we do NOT get toys this Christmas. I have been working overtime begging all the relatives and some of our friends to give us books instead. I mean if we get books I know just what the kids will do with them; they'll sit and browse them. I will be able to drink a cup of coffee and enjoy a measure of Christmas myself.

Face it, I'm selfish.

If we get toys I will be instantly transported to that twist-tie RSI hell steeped in the zap-strap-fuelled-crankiness and whoa look out. Mama hates me some toy products more often than not. If we get the damn toys I will spend the morning breaking up fights while I try to actually get this crap out of all the overpackaging. I will be rifling for batteries and sorting out all the age inappropriate crap.

To meet my goal I have two dear souls to thank really. Those being my librarian-parent-blogger compatriots Mad Hatter and Kittenpie. Thanks to their terrific online lists I have made use of the evil empire's fancy interface functionality to post our public booklist and be generally really pushy about wanting books not toys. I am secretly hoping that they will, in fact, use their local bookstore or our really fine flagship Vancouver store but no matter how they come. Wish me luck, I cannot face a load of toys like last year and part of me know that toys for our 3 year old are going to be 10 times worse.

Never mind that this might save me from those quarterly book buying sprees I have that have become a bit ridiculous. I mean as a librarian I don't really need to buy books at all but, still....

George is 30!

I have a good friend who told me early: even if you don't have one, you have to admit you have a toy problem.

We have one (but you should see his. Talk about problems!)

We are showing the signs of a house with too many toys. That is to say, in our house, toys are everywhere you can see. They are also in the invisible place, between the joists, and under the foundation. This is the house that toys built.

It wasn't always the case. I was all wicked witch with my daughter and gave her nothing her first Christmas, because I'm like that. I let her play with wax paper, balpeen hammers, and tupperware almost exclusively till we got sucked in on the daycare track and we discovered all the great plastic horrors. The granmpother with the dollar store addiction. Never mind the endless streams of fuzzy germ factories our friends and other relatives have made as certain as death and taxes...

My son turns one next month and I am seriously thinking about not having a party for him for fear of the stuff.

There must be a solution, beyond rejecting any new stuff, which addresses the old. I have heard some good ideas but I am always on the look out for more. I want to teach the kids to let go of their stuff early. I have tried to prime my daughter to give things away but it isn't going too well.

Must I suffer these beasts forever? I write moments after tucking the girl in with George the Giraffe, a stitched and restitched stuffy from 1977, hmmm where did he come from?

Carry On

I carry my son a lot. No, this isn't about cling (though I know, I know, I know!! that's another post). This is about the act of carrying my Mr. Little Big Guy around.

My son is a big pain because he grows out of everything so fast. He grew out of newborn diapers in approximately 2 hours. The infant carrier in barely three months. The swing? could I ever really use that? Don't get me started on my war with the friggin' Ergo (curse those Junipers for making it sound so easy, that was my last official sucked in' by some object d'art baby junk sellin' blogger).

So instead I carry him. It turns out I like to carry my baby. Nice to see his face on a trip to the park or hold him close to me for a cat nap. I think back on how many places I went with his sister in the freakin' infant carrier or the stroller; pissing us both off. Why? Why? Why? In retrospect I recognize how programmed I was to interface with my kid through consumer goods for children. It was always like I needed some sort of conduit product to take care of them instead of me. A Baby Bjorn or some swing, the right stroller... that's why I now prefer to meditate over the real alternate parenting paradigm out there.. the one outside this North American experience.

I like it better that way.