The Truth About Kids

No matter how thoroughly you prepare, no matter how well you’ve planned for every contingency, no matter how many books you’ve read or how much good advice you’ve internalized, kids will be kids. And over a lifetime they’re entirely likely to do things that will surprise you, or become things you hadn’t counted on.

Reuters has an article entitled An Inconvenient Truth - Kids Aren’t Perfect that examines the truth about kids with a good bit of humor, which is an indispensable quality for any parent to have in the face of real life. A short cite:

Before becoming a parent, for instance, I genuinely believed I could convince my offspring that Barney the Dinosaur is in fact evil and does not actually love them.

I was also convinced that my children would be the first toddlers in history to possess, thanks to their kindly father, impeccable table manners and a keen appreciation of historical documentaries, late-90s acoustic mope rock and Alaskan scenery.

On all these counts, I was forced to face facts. News flash: kids love Barney, do not generally appreciate the genius of Ken Burns or Elliot Smith and will never, ever, even if you shell out many thousands of dollars on a pleasure cruise of Glacier Bay, give a damn about the majesty of the wild when there’s a buffet table piled with cookies behind them.

It’s a funny read, recommended for all grown kids of us grandmoms who are just starting their families. Of course, the article is written by a Dad, and Dads aren’t nearly as realistic in their expectations of children than Moms are (somehow, we just know these things). My newest granddaughter will be here soon, so this is is a laugh dedicated to Sunshine’s Mom, who is hereby permitted to read it out loud to Sunshine’s Dad, just so he can see how silly unreasonable expectations can seem.

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Best Reasons to Go Vegetarian

Under the general heading of “nutrition” we’ve examined how to get the kids to eat vegetables, taken a look at how big food producers subvert our best nutrition goals through targeted advertising, how those same corporations once subverted the AMA to claim there’s no relation between diet and health, and how the best “animal protein” for infants comes comes directly from Mom.

The great blog One Big Health Nut has a post entitled Ten Great Reasons to Become a Vegetarian that just might help to push some of those kids who are toying with the idea all the way over the line. If Mom or Grandma were to help reinforce these reasons at home, that is. Why, a Grandma just might end up with a grandchild (like a couple of mine!) who eats bell peppers and whole tomatoes like apples, shuns any bread with no color, and subverts their school, scout and summer camp buddies to veggieburgers and veggie dogs.

Of Health Nut’s reasons, the ones that have worked best with my kids and grandchildren were #4: Save the life of many animals, #8: Help the environment, and #10: Vegetarian diets are healthier. Mad Cow and e.coli infection (Health Nut’s #1) are great reasons to avoid meat, but kids generally don’t tend to worry about such things much. They worry about obesity - they all know fat kids in their schools, and don’t want to be them - the environment, and (most of all for primary schoolers) animal welfare.

Go on over to One Big Health Nut and get the whole list! It’s worth printing out and putting up on the fridge with magnets. I did!

Ten Great Reasons to Become a Vegetarian

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Pimping Someone Else’s Blog

I know, I know. This one’s short and pithy, but I just can’t help it. I may be a grandma old enough to be attending a couple of grand-graduations this spring, but I’m also a certifiable geek or I wouldn’t be here playing amongst the Inter-tubes, would I? Bearing that in mind, I absolutely must recommend a new blog I discovered today that had me laughing so hard I was glad nobody but the dogs were here to think I’m crazy…

8 Good Examples of What Happens When Geeks Have Children

If you laughed at this borrowed photo, you’ve got some more laughs coming! Meanwhile, I’ve just gotta make one of those iPod onesies for Miss Sunshine, who should be here in the wider world with us this time next month!

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Tornado Dreams and Winds of Change

Thoughts and Dreams, Odds and Ends

At least 56 people died in violent spring storms across the eastern midsection of America on February 5th, the day of “Super Tuesday” voting in primaries across the country. Including Tennessee, which bore the brunt of the storms and lost the most people. Hundreds were injured. Oddly (or not), I had dreamed about tornadoes Monday night. The kind of dream where I’m standing on a rise in “big sky” country watching tornadoes off in the distance. I’m one of those people who seldom remembers dreams, but the ones I do remember tend to be weird premonitions.

My son had it too, informed us all one day when he was four that he’d dreamed something that sure enough happened just like he said it would just hours later. “I’m a psycho,” he told us quite seriously. “We know these things.” Though we of course laughed at his alliteration, this was coming from a guy who’d spent the first weeks of his life in the storm cellar - standard for April in Oklahoma. We weren’t too surprised.

Dream interpretors link tornadoes to big changes coming, though in this case it might just have been forewarning of the next day’s storms. They’re a little early this year, season doesn’t usually start until March, or get really hairy until April. But there are some big changes coming. My new granddaughter should be officially welcomed to the world by this time next month (though her Mom is really hoping for a Leap-Baby on February 29). A Democrat will win the Presidential election in November, finally ending the Cheney reign of terror. The transition from winter to spring is always turbulent, with its storms and wind. Birth can be tumultuous.

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Responsible Parenthood: The Diaper Deal

I had two babies in diapers before I was 20. The hospital sent #2 home with several boxes of a nifty new product called “Pampers.” Disposable diapers the baby uses once before they go to the landfill to take up space for 500 years! I thought they were totally cool. Until I got home and tried to fit them on my newborn boy-child.

Perhaps first time mothers don’t know this, but there’s a difference between girl babies and boy babies. My girl had ample hips and chubby legs, never had a problem fitting diapers - cloth or disposables - on her. My boy’s little bottom end came to a point. No hips, spindly legs, and a pee mechanism that didn’t care which way it was pointed. This was before disposable manufacturers figured out that the gaping gaps around the legs weren’t particularly good at catching any of the products diapers traditionally are meant to catch and hold. My boy peed straight out of the leg hole more often than he ever caught the “super-absorbant” part. And he had diarrhea for 3 straight months…

So despite my initial reaction to the idea of disposable diapers, I quickly learned they were useless and went back to old fashioned cloth diapers. Which, despite having poked enough holes in my fingers to donate blood at the Red Cross, actually did work for the purpose diapers were invented to address.

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