Revenge of the Baby Blogs

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

by Gigi

Since Sophie posted such a lovely non-standard head shot of herself last week, the least I can do is post this St. Patrick's Day photo since it's St. Patty's day today. Did everyone remember to wear green?

I'm at an age where lots of my friends are having babies. And along with the babies, the vast majority have started baby blogs.

I love being able to keep up with my good friends who are spread out across the country -- seeing how their babies are growing and walking and saying the funniest things.

But I'm also curious about what the babies themselves will think a few years from now.

They say that kids growing up today are much more open to having everything in their lives public, thinking nothing of posting their most personal or outrageous details on Facebook or YouTube. But I wonder how far that extends. Will they really want their friends watching videos of diaper-clad tantrums? They're super-cute tantrums, it's true. But still.

It took me a long time to venture into social media, so I know I'm overly cautious. I joined this blog because a certain person strong-armed me into it -- for which I'm forever grateful :). And thanks to my 2011 New Year's resolutions, I've also got a photography blog and a Twitter account. (I'm still not on Facebook. I share an office with my office's social media strategist, who finds it amusing beyond believe that I'm one of the last remaining Facebook holdouts in the country.)

The first week I was on Twitter, I obsessively wondered how much was oversharing. I got over it once I got the hang of it, and now I'm having a blast (and I think I found a happy medium). But what about posting on behalf of your kids? I know I'm probably overthinking the whole thing -- but remember, anything posted online is potentially out there forever.

Not to end on that scary note, I'll wrap up by sharing the happy news that one of my friends is due to give birth any day now! This friend lives nearby, so her daughter will be one baby whose blog I won't need to read to see her grow up :)

Martha Writes For Children

"What's your book about?"

The dreaded cocktail party question.

I have a pitch at the ready: "A teen spy infiltrating a graffiti artist ring finds her loyalties torn between the mission and the artists who inspire her to redefine herself."

Sometimes I get wide-eyed excitement.
But sometimes I get, "Oh. You write for children."

Yeah. I write for people. Age thirteen and up. What's it to you?

I don't understand why black turtleneck-wearing literary types* have it in for children's literature.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote for children.
Mark Twain wrote for children.
JM Barrie, Lewis Carroll, and even hoity-toity William Blake targeted children.

That dog-eared Salinger whine-fest hipsters lug around their college years? Originally published for adults. But today? That would be considered a book for children.

Children's literature has the best of all worlds.

The immediacy of action thrillers.
The poignancy of romantic tearjerkers.
The thematic impact of literary juggernauts.
Books, you know, being bought and read.

The inevitable follow-up question comes: "When will you write an adult book?"

But why would I write an adult book?

I already have the best audience in the world.

* Nothing against literary types who wear black turtlenecks. I even have friends who wear black turtlenecks.

The Childbirth Conspiracy

by Lisa Hughey

The other Pens have admirably covered the angst of teen years, motivational tools for recalcitrant elementary schoolers, the heart-warming auntie love, the onus to make the most of our lives so that we set a good example.

I’m going to cover a topic no one ever talks about. I’m breaking a major female taboo, but I just think that every woman deserves to know about the Childbirth Conspiracy.

If you’re young and still deciding about motherhood, I’ve got one word for you: BEWARE.

Sign courtesy of www.warningsigngenerator.com


At first, right after you pee in the cup, or on the strip, or whatever, you are THRILLED. All out crazy happy. Your heart pounds with excitement, every little hiccup in your day can be attributed to that tiny zygote growing inside you. You will be entering the hallowed halls of motherhood. You smile, you glow, you gloat!

And then you throw up.

Sometimes it’s just a little nausea, so you shrug and smile serenely, secure in the knowledge that it’s all for the good of that miracle growing inside of you. Two weeks later, you’re lying on the bathroom floor, clinging to the bowl, vowing never to eat again, and half-heartedly noting that you really need to clean the base of the toilet. Weak from dehydration and lack of sustenance, the floor seems like a pretty nice place to hang out.

But eventually the urge to blow chow seventy times a day fades along with your memories of cold tile and dirty commodes. It’s a miracle. You’re blessed. Give thanks!

And you toddle along, with a waist that expands faster than you can purchase new clothes. Nothing ever fits correctly, too wide in the legs, pinched in the waist, too tight in the chest, because Holy Mother of God, you’ve got giant boobs. (Which will sag the moment you’re done breastfeeding)

Then that baby rolls around in your stomach like an astronaut in zero gravity.

Image courtesy of Getty Images


The little cuss bounces off your ribs, your stomach and your bladder like a bowling ball against bumpers until you are peeing twenty times a day or attempting to relieve the constant heartburn brought on by eating the blandest food on the planet. The BLANDEST food on the planet. If you’re really lucky, constipation is your constant companion and you start mainlining Metamucil (after you steal it from your grandma) to try and relieve the symptoms.

And then it happens. One day as you tug on clothes that you’re sure must have shrunk in the wash because an elephant could wear this top and have room leftover for a few friends, and you look down to see...a great big belly.

You can’t see your feet. Not only can you not see them but chances are they are (with your cankles) swollen to forty times their normal size, forcing you to give up the one food you crave above all others.

Potato chips. Which immediately sends you into a crying jag that lasts for a good hour. Maybe longer, because, honestly besides the fact that their gestational period is months longer, you and Dumbo’s mother could be twins.

It’s too much. No one told you about all this!! When every woman you know was waxing poetic about the joy, the beauty, the miracle of freaking childbirth, they always neglect to mention the trials and challenges of actually being pregnant.

The truth is that every woman out there who has ever given birth signs a confidentiality contract, agreeing never to disclose the true facts about pregnancy. Then as if we are characters in some bizarre mind wipe sci-fi plot, women forget the horrible, awful, no-good days of being pregnant when the doctor places that tiny infant in their arms. But I feel it’s my duty as a woman to let you know that the conspiracy is real. It exists. Beware.

Even being able to combat the effects of the Motherhood Mind Wipe, I ended up with three of my own conspiracy babies.

Lisa

Counting Blessings

L.G.C. Smith

I'm short on words today, though long on thoughts about all the families who have lost children in the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the children who have lost loved ones. In recognition that all we can ever be sure of is the present, here are some of the lovely moments the children in my life have given me in the last year or so.

#1 Niece: Christmas at Grandma's & Grandpa's

#2 Niece at the playground

#3 Niece in the wading pool last summer

My only nephew was born last summer.
I got to take his sisters for their first look at him.

Sixteen? How did that happen?

My cousin's smart, beautiful oldest daughter at fifteen.

My favorite non-blood-relation boys with the Leezlet.

Some of the other FHF kids and G bellying up to the bar for cake.

Only Nephew at 8 1/2 months.

My three favorite girls in the world last month at Grandma's.

This One's For The Moms

--Adrienne Miller

I’m not a big advice giver, especially when it comes to writing tips. We all know the biggies by heart anyways. Butt in chair. Hands on keyboard. Do it every day. There are great books if you need deeper help. On Writing by Stephen King is a favorite. Anne Lamont’s Bird by Bird is pretty good too. I can’t pretend to do better than those two. 

But there might be one area that I can shed a little light on. You see, about three years ago, I almost quit writing. I hadn’t been at it for very long, not seriously at least, when my older son was diagnosed with autism. My life was full, too full, I figured for me to engage in dream chasing. I was already juggling a toddler, a preschooler and a full-time job, and now life was tossing a complex disability into the mix. I could have given up an no one would have faulted me. No one but me, that is.

Of course, I didn’t give up, and in the last three years I’ve learned a handful of things that have kept me going. 

1. Give up on perfect

And I’m not talking about perfectly folded towels and immaculate kitchens, though if that is your hang-up then it might be a good idea to take a step back from that too. 

No, I’m talking about something far more insidious -- the idea of perfect. The fiction that we create in our minds about the perfect tomorrow. The perfect writing conditions, the ones that, if only we had them, we could pump out six or seven bestsellers a year.

You know the story. It always starts off with One Day. One day when the kids are in school. One day when I have six solid hours of quiet to write. One day when I have my own office filled with comfy couches and potted plants.

One Day kills Today.  And there’s no guarantee that it’s coming. All of those problems that are clogging up your life right now, yeah, in five years they all may be resolved, but guess what? New ones are going to rush right in and take their place. Problems you can’t imagine yet. Problems just as complex and annoying as the ones you already have. 

One Day doesn’t exist. There is only wonderful, chaotic, annoyance-filled today with all of its lovely potential. 

2. You are tougher than you think

You’ve dealt with everything that parenthood has flung your way. The nausea,  lack of sleep, the panic you felt when the nurses first wheeled you out of the hospital with that helpless little bundle in your arms--you got through all that. You’ve coped with major and minor doctor visits, temper tantrums, and all out fights. Every time life chucked a curveball at your head, and you muttered to yourself that you couldn’t handle it, you did. 

Motherhood is a crucible. You go into it one person, and the stress, the worry, the pain and the joy changes you. Just remember, you are as strong as the fires you are forged in.

The hard work of writing and rewriting, the wear of rejection and the stress of deadlines, I’m not going to lie and say that they’re easy in comparison. I’m just guessing that if you can get through back to back sleepless nights with a squalling baby throwing up all over you, you probably have what it takes to handle a few faceless rejection letters .

3. What you’re doing is actually good for your kids

I know sometimes it’s hard to believe, especially when good ol’ guilt starts creeping its way into your head late at night, but I promise you its true.

Sure, kids need homemade cookies and somebody to snuggle them when they fall down and scrape their knee, and I’m going to go way out on a limb here and guess that you do that. But they need more than that. 

Everyday your kids are watching you and they are learning what it means to live a life, lessons that our society at large does not teach them. If their momma is a writer, they learn that passions are worth following, that dreams take hard work and dedication to come true, and that failure is just a part of the road to success. 

Drunk short animals

by Juliet

Cute stories about one's kid are like stories about one's dog or a slide-show of family trips to Disneyland: lovely to recall in the privacy of one's home but best not inflicted upon unsuspecting readers.
(Besides, my now-nineteen-year-old doesn’t relish his mom giving away his secrets...like how he used to prance around the house in the nude, brandishing his Nerf bow and arrows. Or how, when he deigned to put on clothes at all, he dressed as Robin, complete with cape, for a little over two years. He would tell all who would listen that Robin was very important, because Robin was Batman’s psychic --by which he meant sidekick. Cute, huh?)

Okay, enough. Sorry about that.

(Above, my boy with his grandma. No longer Batman's psychic.)

So instead, I’ll just ‘fess up: I never used to like kids.

I mean, I liked the concept of children. They're the future, they're full of wonder, they're innocent miracles, etcetera, etcetera. But when it came down to actually spending time with kids...not so much.

However, since my own kid was a kid, and I liked him, then I liked kid. And now whenever I see children I remember my boy at that age, and I get all gooey and nostalgic, and end up not unlike a big old puddle of melted candy.

Here’s what I learned:

1. Kids are nuts. It’s like they’re on drugs, or drunk, or schizophrenic. Or all three at once. They talk to themselves, see imaginary people, twirl around until they throw up just to see what it feels like. Seriously, watch a kid for a while in a public setting, and then imagine a grown up acting like that. They’d be arrested for their own protection.
2. In order to talk to kids, it’s best to act crazy yourself. If a kid’s wearing a pink dress, go, “Duuude. Nice pants you’re wearing. I like that color green.” Usually this inspires them to correct you, which give them the satisfaction of knowing that even though they still pee in their pants, at least they’re smarter than a certain grown up they could mention. If, on the other hand, they just stare at you with an uncomprehending look on their face, they’re not worth your time. If they laugh and get the joke, you should make a note to check in with them ten or twenty years down the line, as they might just turn out to be a really interesting human.
3. As a corollary to the above: kids are boring if you try to talk to them about anything important. They couldn’t care less about recent events in Egypt, and they have absolutely no opinion about the use (and overuse) of adverbs in fiction. But if you go with the crazy, they’re highly entertaining. Bored at a party? Find the six year old and ask them when they were last on Mars. Or how long they think horses can hold their breath. Or whether the Cookie Monster and Elmo should get married. They’ll have an opinion, guaranteed.
4. Kids are little savages. They have no idea how polite company works. It is their parents’ job to train them in the ways of our cultural norms. Unfortunately, many parents fall short in that regard, so a lot of kids don’t know they’re not supposed to sit on top of the table while sticking a fork in their eyes and spitting into the gravy. Sometimes, you have to be the force of cultural tradition, which is an uncomfortable place for those of us who like to think of ourselves as iconoclasts and rebels. In short, children act like children. And sometimes adults act like children. And that means YOU have to act like an adult, which is a major drag.
5. Children don’t actually need a reason for stuff, and they’re easy to trick. I didn’t want to fall into the “Because I said so” trap with my son, so instead I’d say “I’ll tell you later. Like when you get to college.” This became a useful trope in our household. I would tell my son: “Don’t pick your nose. That’s for college.” “Don’t sit on the table and put the fork in your eye and spit in the gravy, you can do that all you want when you’re in college.” “Don’t pee in your pants….” You get the idea. By the time they actually get to college, peer pressure will do your job for you. Plus, this way kids grow up thinking college is this awesome hedonistic world of pants-peeing and nose-picking and sitting on tables while spitting and inflicting injuries. In addition to taking care of your immediate explanatory needs, this method causes them to aspire to a university education. High expectations makes for good parenting, or so they say.

Soooo, I like to bring these posts back to writing. I know, I know, hard to imagine the connection, right? Here goes: While writing, it’s best to bring out the inner crazy, indulge that long-ago child that didn’t realize there were so many limits. Like children, writers often appear to be drunk, or high, or schizophrenic -- we talk to ourselves and spend our days with imaginary figures, and imagine a world of pure possibility. It's a thing of beauty.

Just remember to keep it in check while in public, or you’ll be arrested.

(At left, the author as a kid, with her dog Princess-- otherwise known as a talking horse from Mars.)

On Clocks

A few years ago, a friend came over with her baby. The child was perhaps two, a solid little toddler. I did a quick baby-proofing, and decided that as long as she didn't stick her fingers into our uncovered outlets, we were pretty safe.

Then we started chatting, and seconds later, the child wandered out of the bathroom carrying the sharp hair scissors I keep on the bottom shelf of the open cabinet. It had never crossed my mind.

No harm, no foul. She wasn't injured. Her mother laughed. But it proved something to me. I am not a natural mother.

Perhaps I spent too much time as a babysitter in my youth? I wore out all my mothering-ness? I babysat from the age of twelve to twenty-two. That's ten years of spit-up, diaper-changes, and juice-boxes, and I was only a nights/weekends kind of gal, nothing like actual parenting.

Did I wear out that part of myself?

I heard my clock tick once. About four years ago, the alarm (which had never made as much as a peep before) rang, and I couldn't find the snooze button.

As I do with all new things, I got REALLY excited about it. I researched every option available to my partner and me, finally figuring out that the perfect combination of ease and affordability came with knowing the donor. The procedure, to be legally protected, had to take place in a doctor's office (whew), and it would be a little less than fifteen grand, which was the low-end starting price for every other option, it seemed.

So we thought about it. Who would be the best person to tap (as it were)? We ran through our mutual friends and came up with one name. Rob. I'd known him for twenty years, and loved him like a brother (really, only like a brother). He was married to a woman he loved who already had almost-grown children--Rob and she weren't interested in having any more. But maybe he wouldn't mind being a bio-dad?

I called him. I can't even remember what I said, and I'm sure I bargled it all up, but after he talked to his wife, he agreed. With happiness! He was excited! How great it would be to be the special relative, to have a little piece of him running around.

Then my alarm stopped ringing. Jobs were gained. And lost. The money was never there (and while charging a pair of shoes might be all right for some, I couldn't imagine putting the cost of optional pregnancy on a credit card). Time passed.

I lost interest, probably when I started something new: photography, or spinning (recently it's weaving that has my attention). My wife (who was fine with anything and left the whole thing in my court) asked, "Hey, what about Rob?" I shrugged and stayed up too late reading about how to make artisan bread.

And after a while, Rob asked, "Hey, what about me?"

I said, "Well. About that, what you were going to give us? We'll pass." Of course, I said it much better than that. I was sensitive. Loving in my let-down. But that's what it came down to. I'd wanted a baby like I'd wanted my iPad, probably for about the same length of time. Then I got an iPad, and used it for a while and actually wrote two books on it, but now it really only comes in handy for playing Scrabble on planes.

Think if I'd treated a child like that. I'd get two books out of it, and then shelve it under a stack of trade journals. Then CPS would haul me away, and I'd get another book out of that . . . Well, perhaps I should rethink . . .

It makes me sound hard, doesn't it? I don't feel hard, but I can admit it appears that I am. I have all the love in the world for my nephew Isaac, who truly is the smartest almost-two year old in the whole wide world. He will be the first banjo-playing-rock-star-astro-physicist-president, I just know it. I love being with him.

But then I love going home and having a glass of wine and staying up too late, just for fun. And outside in the back yard, in the grass, next to the broken vacuum cleaner, the old gas grill, and the lawnmower with the broken chain, my clock rests. In peace.