Hip to be Mom» Issues & decisions

A thought for others

Clairity — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 13:15:42 +0000

Apart from the usual groceries and eating out, we’ve been tracking the progress of Happy Feet, the emperor penguin who somehow made his way from the South Pole to New Zealand in June and was recently released back into the ocean to find his way home to the Antarctica.

It’s a 2,000 km journey back home for a little penguin in a vast ocean so obviously we, like a lot of folks all over the world, are concerned. What’s even more worrying is that his tracking device hasn’t been updating his location for the past few days. Skye, our animal lover, confessed she said a prayer for Happy Feet that he would find his way safely home to his family.

We also spent some time on the internet looking at the 911 pictures in the news and feeling incredibly saddened (again). It’s as incomprehensible today as it was back then. It was indeed a sad day for mankind. Our thoughts are with those who have lost their loved ones and those whose lives have been changed forever. I hope they find the space and time to heal and move on.

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Tick tock, the biological clock

Clairity — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:09:39 +0000

Stuck at home with the sniffles last weekend, the girls and I cuddled up for several movie nights and one of the movies we watched was The Switch. Okay, I had no idea Jason Bateman was still acting but hey guy, you’re still pretty hot! This is where my girls start grimacing and contorting their faces at their Mom’s choice of cute.

Never mind, on with the show. So Kassie (Jennifer Aniston) wakes up one morning to the loud ticking of her biological clock and decides she must have a kid. So the hunt for a sperm donor begins and she finally settles on Roland, an overly energetic and enthusiastic guy who would probably be out trying to tame a set of maxxim custom wheels as soon as he runs out of rocks to climb.

At the insemination party (harhar!), Kassie’s BFF, Wally (Jason Bateman) inadvertently switches Roland’s ingredients with his own. I’m not going to give too much away here in case you haven’t watched the movie.

Fast forward 7 years and Kassie returns to town with her son, Sebastian, who not only hits it off with Wally but also bears an uncanny resemblance, characterwise, to the man. And as parents, we all know how it thrills us to catch nuances of ourselves in our kids .

So what did I think of the movie? Loved it. Would watch it again.

Watched it? Watch it again? What do you think?

We’re so uncool!

Clairity — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 14:23:49 +0000

Raine and Skye both deleted their Facebook accounts last Monday. Of their own accord. I had nothing to do with it. Maybe it’s just as well because I’ve never encouraged any of my kids to be on Facebook in the first place.

I’ve maintained my stand from the beginning about what they should and shouldn’t do online. Mother knows best, as Mother Gothel would say. I’ve drummed into them the security and privacy issues and the dangers of electronic pickpocketing and pedophiles, stalkers and future employers finding out too much, et cetera.

My kids know the drill – no real names, no photos of themselves, no private info. They’ve been very good about it even though I’m sure the peer pressure must be enormous seeing as how people consider it ‘cool’ to shout out every last detail of what they, and the garden grasshopper, do every minute of the day on the internet.

The good thing about my kids is that they don’t care about trying to live up to everyone else’s definintion of “cool”. Like I always say to them, just do your own thang, think for yourself and set your own standards. It doesn’t matter how “cool” everyone else is. Just be yourself and you’re cool .

So then, is it any surprise then that we have no iPads in the house, never tasted a macaron and the only GPS I own is the often unreliable one in my head. That’s exactly how uncool we are!

You’re not wearing that?!

Clairity — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 13:55:50 +0000

As soon as I turn the corner to Raine’s college, the scenery changes from this

… to this, a sea of college girls with deuter backpacks and short shorts, some even shorter and tighter than these!

That’s the modern-day college kid for you. They don’t wear very much. Spaghetti and tank tops that can’t seem to keep stuff from spilling out. Skirts so short and tight you can’t even sit down. Times are bad, we need to save on fabric?!

Once my Dad came to pick me up from the college where I was teaching, and he almost flipped at what he saw. Poor Dad! He was going, is this what kids wear to school these days? Shaking his head, he went on, in my day, this is how hookers dress, are these girls here to get an education or what?

Indeed as a mom and teacher, my stand is this – anything that short and tight has no place in the classroom. Colleges may turn a blind eye but what about the parents? Shouldn’t they have a say in what their teens wear to school?

I would assume that most of us go through a thought process when deciding what’s appropriate and what’s not. Most of it is common sense really. Seems like that’s not apparent to everyone though. Worse yet, it seems kids are starting young too these days, according to this article which I totally agree with, by the way.

What do you think?

A soft toy story

Clairity — Mon, 30 May 2011 00:40:17 +0000

Say hello to Angry Bird, Minnie from Disneyland, Bobby John the Baby Panda from San Diego Zoo and Neal the Polar Bear from Seaworld, San Diego. Neal is Raine’s birthday present from her older brother, Steev.

When my kids were growing up, the only soft toys we had were a gorilla and a puppy which we had won at the Moomba festival in Melbourne, Australia and even then, those were stashed away, out of sight of the kids.

I have a ‘no soft toys’ policy and for good reason. First off, I can only imagine how much bacteria and dust is living in that oh so cuddly coat of fur. Surely that can’t be good for the kids, especially when they cuddle them close to their faces. Think allergies.

Sure soft toys are cute and all but I can’t see much of an educational value in something that can only sit there and do precious nothing else. Hence, my ‘no soft toy’ policy. My kids never asked for them and I never offered to buy them any. We would see them at the store, remark how cute they are and move on.

But now we have a small collection of soft toys, no thanks to my estranged half-brother and half-SIL who gave my kids their first soft toys. Said half-SIL was having trouble conceiving a child after 5 years of trying and according to some old wives’ tales, it seemed it would help her conceive if she were nice to other people’s kids.

What a ridiculous idea but hardly surprising considering how full of –it she is. Of course, I had no idea what she was up and why she was being so nice to my kids all of a sudden since clearly, she isn’t a nice person to start with.

Even after I told her I didn’t want my kids playing with stuffed toys, she still went ahead and brought a small army over and handed them to my kids. I understand her desperation but she could at least have respected my stand on the issue and bought them some other kind of toy, no?

Then again, we’re talking about a couple who would bulldoze their way through and do whatever it takes to get what they want, right or wrong. So that’s the story of how stuffed toys came into our lives. As the kids have gotten older, I’ve relaxed the rule. But it’s more of a rare indulgence though, like when we were on vacation earlier this year.

Are there any toys you don’t like your kids playing with for one reason or another?

The coming out

Clairity — Fri, 27 May 2011 02:25:02 +0000

So one of Raine’s good friends from high school came out and told her parents she’s lesbian. This is an extremely smart girl who loves to joke and laugh and is on back-slappingly good terms with the boys at school but that’s not the point. Point is she’s always been something of a tomboy, very outgoing, very athletic.

Obviously her parents were (and probably still are) in shock. But they’re not the only ones. Raine was clearly taken aback and so was I. Even more so that her partner is a woman in her 30′s! Not that we have anything against anyone’s orientation or preference. In fact, we’re pretty open to this.

Just that we always thought of her a tomboy. I mean, so many girls are tomboyish in their teen years and later blossom into girly girls. So her coming out was like a ton of bricks though in the backs of our minds, we might’ve had our suspicions.

Apparently her parents took it all rather badly, which in turn, got me wondering how any parent should or would react to something like that. I hadn’t really given this much thought. But if it were my kid, I’m not sure how I would react either. Would you?