Baby wearing is hard — but putting her down is harder
I spent a very big chunk of time the other day “wearing” and holding my three week-old daughter, Evelyn. The night ended with a bad stomachache (hers triggered mine) and by the time my husband got home and scooped Evie up in his arms, I was relieved. I slept for four hours, alone, in a pitch black room. I practically melted into the sheets. It felt good to be a separate entity, even if I was asleep for it.
Shit’s getting real: what baby poop has taught me about being a parent
Now that my daughter is two months old, it’s becoming more and more tempting to post about poop.
Having a kid in The Sims is like having a kid in real life — except for when it’s not
Until recently, the last time I had played was when we bought The Sims Castaway while I was pregnant. I may or may not have spent hours obsessing over my Castaway baby, which we named Lentil, and deciding we were having a girl after “we” did on Castaway (we had a boy in real life), and worrying about poor little Lentil, who had to deal with Castaways-Stephanie who apparently didn’t own any slings or want to breastfeed.
Dealing with the sting of a toddler’s mean-spirited words
It was a new thing for Tom to be deliberately mean, so it hurt. But I also recognised myself in him. My parents separated when I was eight and, although I would never have seen it in myself at the time, I can admit now that I used to be completely horrible to both of them at changeover times, when I was switching from one house to the other. It was as thought I thought I would miss them less and find it easier to go if I fell out with them first.
Why we’re not planning on cutting our son’s hair anytime soon
My son is newly two-years-old, and has long, blonde, curly hair. Aside from the fact that it’s usually a bit wild, it pretty much looks like the kind you’d find on toddler beauty queens — and we have no intentions of cutting it any time soon. Sure, we’re nearly constantly bombarded with mis-assumptions about his sex due to his hair, and family members are always quick to ask us when we’re going to finally cut it.
Are we protecting our kids from the right things?
Parents don’t want their kids to make unpopular choices out of a feeling of love. And also, mostly, a feeling of fear. We love our kids and we want to protect them. We’re actually required to protect them. It’s part of our job as parents. However, we have the equally important job of deciding what to protect our children from.
Safety concerns on playground apparatus
Children have broken bones and injured themselves since time began. It used to be a sort of rite of passage for children. But, as playground equipment has become more sanitized because of so-called safety (read: liability) issues, I hear about injuries less and less. On the face of it, less injury sounds like a good thing, right? But less injury actually might mean less meaningful play and comprehensive exercise.
Convincing my five-year-old daughter that boys can like pink
We’re friends with a family with a somewhat gender-variant son, Q, who likes pink and wears his hair long. Our five-year-old daughter, Leigh, has played with Q a few times, and thinks he’s fabulous, and specifically asks if we can play with him again after we see them. She also insists that he is a girl.