No guns, no knives & no boxing. Guns are for killing and I want no part in it. I've taken my pacifist nature for granted all of these years and assumed that my children would just stay away from these things. And my grand scheme could have very well worked... if I had baby girls instead of my two boys.
For the past five years I've filtered toys and made big decisions. Like: "Is a water gun really a gun?" (no, as long as it's brightly colored) and "Is Mr. Freeze's freeze gun okay?" (only if you're okay with those pointy bat things that Batman has too). I've warned Liam to stay away from the neighbors with their bee bee guns (yet somehow I found one of those yellow bee bees in my front garden after the snow melted). And I've hoped that this is good enough. I thought I was in the clear because Liam never showed an interest in those little green army guys.
But then Liam became more worldly. He started wanting Transformers and Bakugans and Superheros. They all come with weapons... usually attached. You can still buy friendly Zhu Zhu pets... for your little girl. For boys there are King Zhu's that come with very sharp looking swords. We went from being a house with no guns to house with at least 25 toy guns (water guns not included). I mean, we don't have any toy with the sole purpose of being a gun, but we do have a lot of those little machine guns sticking out of cars, attached to the arm of a Superhero or Supervillian toy from McDonald's Happy Meals and even as parts of Lego sets. Apparently it wasn't enough to play with toys with guns, Liam also needs to act out fighting scenes and talk non-stop about shooting and fire and all sorts of violent topics.
I'm going to stop you from thinking "Well it's all of that violence he sees on TV." The most violent thing Liam sees on TV is SpongeBob (I"m not a fan but he sneaks it in). He watches mostly PBS. That's not to say he hasn't seen anything violent. There's fighting in so many different movies- from Bolt to The Incredibles. And it may have been a mistake for Bill & I to take Liam out to his first movie, Kung Foo Panda (he was too young to really care much for the attacking tiger guy). But this too is becoming harder and harder to avoid. For example, is Superman too violent? There's nothing quite like an epic battle in a junkyard between a bad Superman and Clark Kent, now is there. But it's a classic so how can we not expose him to Superman.
Maybe a deeper question here is, what is our culture's attachment to violence? How do we stack up to other cultures? Am I just being a "fuddy duddy" (it wouldn't surprise me, I've been called that before)?
I would like to think talking about violence, and the mere act of naming it "violent" is helping to defer some of the effects with Liam. How much does a 5 year old really understand the concept of death anyway? When he sees a Transformer smash down a building (okay, somehow he must have snuck in that cartoon) does he realize that smashed buildings really do have people inside? Am I taking the whole thing too seriously when I tell him I've seen smashed buildings and that seeing them fall was one of the saddest days of my life?
Maybe there are pacifist toys out there, perhaps a chef Transformer who comes with a cooking utensil or an athletic Bakugan with a golf club. Chances are Liam would walk right past them though to buy the Nerf gun. If this is a war against violence, I think I've lost this battle.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
I Think This All Started With The Flinstone's Vitamins
These days it doesn't matter what you are buying- whether it's a toothbrush, a tricycle (or bicycle), a toddler bed, sippy cups, puzzles or a lunchbox- you will likely take home something with a character on it. Choosing a toothbrush becomes less about soft, medium or hard and more about Cars, Bakugan or Pooh. You want to buy a toddler bed? How about Diego or one of those Disney princesses? And while you're at it, you can get the matching organization bins with Diego or that pretty princess.
I can classify diapers by company and their matching logos. Huggies opts for Winnie the Pooh whereas Pampers sticks with Sesame Street. How much extra am I paying for the character? I may have to resort to White Clouds! But then there are those Luv's diapers. They used to pay for that cute Blue's Clue's dog on them but now they just go with a generic purple monkey. Josh likes the monkey so we're cool with the change. So if diapers can go logo free, why can't wipes? Why do I need to see the Lion King on the wipes container to make me buy it (okay, it does match with the jungle themed nursery so I guess if I'm given the choice between Lion King and Toy Story, I'll go with Lion King).
My least favorite logo isn't even a character. It's not a he or a she, an animal or a plant but it's everywhere you look. Before Liam was born I was looking for a gift for my niece for Christmas. She was getting a new play kitchen (Dora, of course) and her mom suggested we buy her some play food to stock the shelves. I looked at K B Toys expecting this to be cinch. I was sure I could find some plastic ears of corn just about anywhere, right? I was wrong. The only play food on the shelf was french fries, hamburgers and fish filets. You've got it, McDonald's. Now I really do like chicken nuggets (even though they stopped serving them with honey) and there's nothing quite like a soggy salty McDonald's fry... but I wasn't about to pay money to stock the Dora kitchen with fast food. I had to go to a specialty toy store to find the nice wooden set from Melissa and Doug (thanks M & D for not selling out... yet). Now after Liam was born my mom and sister and I braved the Black Friday lines at Toys R Us (can't beat the train table and set for $80... mind you, we didn't buy the "Thomas" brand). Waiting just behind us was a dad who braved the lines for one item only. He said his daughter had told him it was the only think she wanted for Christmas that year and he was happy to have found it for $35. It was far worse than the Dora kitchen... it was a play McDonald's restaurant. I didn't ask him if he found the matching food set on the shelf.
Party supplies have just about gotten out of control too. It seems impossible to have a generic "dinosaur" birthday party. No, you need to have a Dinosaur Train party. A little boy can't have a choo-choo train party, it has to be Thomas. Girls can't have princess parties- it needs to be Jasmine or Ariel. You walk down the kids' aisle of the party store and it's like a Saturday morning cartoon line-up. You're surrounded by Handy Manny, My Little Pony, Batman, Power Rangers, Toy Story and Tinkerbell. Liam wanted to have a Dragon birthday party... make that a "How to Train Your Dragon" birthday party. For Josh's party we chose a fireman theme. Thankfully Fireman Sam (though a popular choice in our house) hasn't really hit the mass market yet (maybe if they made more than 8 episodes) so we were safe. It was just fire hats, firemen & fire trucks. Liam and I went shopping to pick out Joshua's party supplies. Liam reminded me how much Joshua loves Elmo but we had already chosen the fire fighter theme at that point so we were committed. We found him plates, napkins, hats & badges and on the way out we stopped to look at the balloons. "Oooh!" I heard myself say, "Maybe we can find a balloon with Elmo as a firefighter!"
I can classify diapers by company and their matching logos. Huggies opts for Winnie the Pooh whereas Pampers sticks with Sesame Street. How much extra am I paying for the character? I may have to resort to White Clouds! But then there are those Luv's diapers. They used to pay for that cute Blue's Clue's dog on them but now they just go with a generic purple monkey. Josh likes the monkey so we're cool with the change. So if diapers can go logo free, why can't wipes? Why do I need to see the Lion King on the wipes container to make me buy it (okay, it does match with the jungle themed nursery so I guess if I'm given the choice between Lion King and Toy Story, I'll go with Lion King).
My least favorite logo isn't even a character. It's not a he or a she, an animal or a plant but it's everywhere you look. Before Liam was born I was looking for a gift for my niece for Christmas. She was getting a new play kitchen (Dora, of course) and her mom suggested we buy her some play food to stock the shelves. I looked at K B Toys expecting this to be cinch. I was sure I could find some plastic ears of corn just about anywhere, right? I was wrong. The only play food on the shelf was french fries, hamburgers and fish filets. You've got it, McDonald's. Now I really do like chicken nuggets (even though they stopped serving them with honey) and there's nothing quite like a soggy salty McDonald's fry... but I wasn't about to pay money to stock the Dora kitchen with fast food. I had to go to a specialty toy store to find the nice wooden set from Melissa and Doug (thanks M & D for not selling out... yet). Now after Liam was born my mom and sister and I braved the Black Friday lines at Toys R Us (can't beat the train table and set for $80... mind you, we didn't buy the "Thomas" brand). Waiting just behind us was a dad who braved the lines for one item only. He said his daughter had told him it was the only think she wanted for Christmas that year and he was happy to have found it for $35. It was far worse than the Dora kitchen... it was a play McDonald's restaurant. I didn't ask him if he found the matching food set on the shelf.
Party supplies have just about gotten out of control too. It seems impossible to have a generic "dinosaur" birthday party. No, you need to have a Dinosaur Train party. A little boy can't have a choo-choo train party, it has to be Thomas. Girls can't have princess parties- it needs to be Jasmine or Ariel. You walk down the kids' aisle of the party store and it's like a Saturday morning cartoon line-up. You're surrounded by Handy Manny, My Little Pony, Batman, Power Rangers, Toy Story and Tinkerbell. Liam wanted to have a Dragon birthday party... make that a "How to Train Your Dragon" birthday party. For Josh's party we chose a fireman theme. Thankfully Fireman Sam (though a popular choice in our house) hasn't really hit the mass market yet (maybe if they made more than 8 episodes) so we were safe. It was just fire hats, firemen & fire trucks. Liam and I went shopping to pick out Joshua's party supplies. Liam reminded me how much Joshua loves Elmo but we had already chosen the fire fighter theme at that point so we were committed. We found him plates, napkins, hats & badges and on the way out we stopped to look at the balloons. "Oooh!" I heard myself say, "Maybe we can find a balloon with Elmo as a firefighter!"
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Bath-Time
We recovered from the shower curtain incident and in no time the boys were back to baths. Baths with splashing, hiding behind the curtain (which I think in lieu of recent events, is a dangerous idea) and dumping wet toys onto Mommy and/or Daddy.
You would think it's a novel concept; the procedure of getting soaped up and then washing the soap out in the bath. Because every time we start a new bath, it seems the kids just want to play. Whether they're floating solo or together, the concept of water on the head just always seems to throw the boys into a tizzy. Liam screams out with the drama of a 15 year old girl, "Towel!" Meanwhile Joshua reacts the same way to every cup of water dumped on his head. He widens his eyes to about the size of a quarter and stretches out his whole cute round face.
For awhile we thought we had conquered the bath-time drama with a pair of swim goggles. Boy did we feel smart. True, Josh wasn't ready like his big brother to wear the goggles, but we knew it was only a matter of time. True, the goggles didn't really end the splashing (in fact, it made splashing even more fun). True, the goggles kept filling up with water and therefore the drama kept creeping back into bath-time. Eventually Liam moved on from the goggles and, despite our urging, consistently opted not to wear his goggles. So that was a short-lived solution.
Maybe we've shown kids that bath-time is too much fun without really implying that there's a purpose to bath-time. Maybe they just have the wrong impression. And really, who wouldn't think bath-time was so fun with all of those toys piled up next to the tub? We've got boats, duckies, funny looking washcloths, baskets, splash balls, cups, a swimming crab and even a bath time Hot Wheels race car track. There's even more on the market- floating sponge islands, sudsy crayons, musical instruments, and more. So it does kind of come as a surprise when it's time to stop playing and start soaping (and unsoaping). Don't bother to be rational and suggest, "Why not try the soaping routine before the playing?" We actually do this most times because we end up in a hurry at bath-time so there's no time for playtime anyway ("It was bed-time 10 minutes ago but you need a bath because this weekend you painted your hair, sat on a lollipop and dug for worms! Hurry up!").
A friend of mine had all of her kids showering at a very early age (I'm going to exaggerate and say at 3 years). What a fabulous idea. But I just don't see my 5 year old taking the initiative to soap and unsoap without me coaxing him on (that's a nice way of saying "yelling at him").
You would think it's a novel concept; the procedure of getting soaped up and then washing the soap out in the bath. Because every time we start a new bath, it seems the kids just want to play. Whether they're floating solo or together, the concept of water on the head just always seems to throw the boys into a tizzy. Liam screams out with the drama of a 15 year old girl, "Towel!" Meanwhile Joshua reacts the same way to every cup of water dumped on his head. He widens his eyes to about the size of a quarter and stretches out his whole cute round face.
For awhile we thought we had conquered the bath-time drama with a pair of swim goggles. Boy did we feel smart. True, Josh wasn't ready like his big brother to wear the goggles, but we knew it was only a matter of time. True, the goggles didn't really end the splashing (in fact, it made splashing even more fun). True, the goggles kept filling up with water and therefore the drama kept creeping back into bath-time. Eventually Liam moved on from the goggles and, despite our urging, consistently opted not to wear his goggles. So that was a short-lived solution.
Maybe we've shown kids that bath-time is too much fun without really implying that there's a purpose to bath-time. Maybe they just have the wrong impression. And really, who wouldn't think bath-time was so fun with all of those toys piled up next to the tub? We've got boats, duckies, funny looking washcloths, baskets, splash balls, cups, a swimming crab and even a bath time Hot Wheels race car track. There's even more on the market- floating sponge islands, sudsy crayons, musical instruments, and more. So it does kind of come as a surprise when it's time to stop playing and start soaping (and unsoaping). Don't bother to be rational and suggest, "Why not try the soaping routine before the playing?" We actually do this most times because we end up in a hurry at bath-time so there's no time for playtime anyway ("It was bed-time 10 minutes ago but you need a bath because this weekend you painted your hair, sat on a lollipop and dug for worms! Hurry up!").
A friend of mine had all of her kids showering at a very early age (I'm going to exaggerate and say at 3 years). What a fabulous idea. But I just don't see my 5 year old taking the initiative to soap and unsoap without me coaxing him on (that's a nice way of saying "yelling at him").
Of course, the highlight of every bath time is soap time. No one seems to mind the actual soaping up. There's something fun about becoming more slippery. And soap time is when our favorite bath toy always comes in handy. The mirror.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Don't Try To Clean: You May Get Hurt
Tonight I started a fight that I didn't stand a chance of winning. I hate to spoil the ending for you but I lost miserably and I can't wait to cash in on my consolation prize. But before I experiment by pairing chocolate milk with buttery, salty, Parmesan cheesy popcorn I'm going to tell you my story.
Round 1: Somehow I managed to volunteer to host Book Club for the month of March which is crazy because March is a very crazy month with birthdays and special events (can you say, Purim Carnivals and St. Patty's Day?). At any rate, I think I thought that I could just have a clean house for the whole month of March, which is entirely unrealistic I now realize. I started preparing for my clean house month by doing a thorough vacuum and a complete freak-out during my "vacation" last week. Today I was home with a sick Liam and it seemed like a good day to get some more of that cleaning done, considering that now it's March. I noticed that the shower curtain had some stains on it. I have no idea how a shower curtain got stained. I'm just going to go with water damage. At any rate, I put it in the wash. This is completely logical because it's made out of cotton.
Round 2: The shower curtain comes out of the drier looking... a little crumpled. No bother, I'm sure it'll all even out.
Round 3: The shower curtain crumpling is seriously more serious than just being crumpled. It's about 1 foot shorter and 1 foot less wide than it had been when stained, hanging up this morning. I panic and shout for Bill, who giggles and goes back to making his sandwich. I'm not sure if he realized that I was actually in crisis here. Maybe I wasn't in crisis only because of the shower curtain. It might have had more to do with vacation planning going awry and watching a sad movie on TV this afternoon. Either way, this was bad.
Round 4: I iron the shower curtain while talking to Bill who apologized for walking out of the room instead of panicking with me. I accepted fault too for my panicking but as I ironed I could tell this could still be an issue so I kind of panicked again. How are we going to have time to go to Bed Bath and Beyond before Book Club?! And I thought to myself, at least I have that 20% off coupon... Bill suggested that he could go to Target without me. I think I might have actually ignored that suggestion.
Round 5: I hung the shower curtain up on the rings and this was when I realized that everyone else who has a bathroom with running water also has those nice wrought iron (or cheap imitation) shower curtain hooks. Some people even have ones that coordinate with their bathroom theme (think yellow submarines or seashells). Somehow I must have overlooked this trend because my shower still has tacky green plastic rings. Ooops?
Round 6: I managed to inch down the shower tension rod so that the curtain would be a little lower and cover the bathtub better. Between the ironing and the lowering of the rod, it wasn't looking so bad and I was thinking that we could put off Bill's trip to Target.
Round 7: I got selfish. Hmmm... that worked really well. Maybe if I just lower the rod a little bit more, the curtain would hang a lower too... And with that, the rod gave out and fell unceremoniously into the bathtub, carrying my slightly-too-small curtain with it. Bummer. And Bill had already left for the evening.
Round 8: I tried to compromise with the shower curtain rod and I looked at the bright side, this gave me a chance to wipe down the surface of the side of the tub a little better. But the slippery surface just made getting the rod back in place more impossible. This wasn't going well.
Round 9: I talked to Bill on the phone and he suggested moving the rod a little closer to the edge of the tub wall. It worked!
Round 10: I got selfish again and tried to lower it. It fell again, which almost made me cry but I was able to get it back in place. I texted Bill back with "I fixed it!" And he responded with an excerpt from the speech our best man gave at our wedding, "So you've got that going for you, which is nice." Real funny.
Round 11: Later in the evening, after I thought the battle was long since over and won, after I was started to look back on the bright side and move on to assorted other challenges like making dinner, cleaning the bathroom sink, etc... I took Josh in for his bathtime. I leaned over to turn on the faucet and (you know what's going to happen next, right?) the shower rod and curtain and those stupid green plastic shower rings all fell down directly onto my head.
Fully admitting my loss, I texted Bill back, "It just fell on my head" and I found myself starting to cry- just starting to, mind you. Deep breath. There was a bright side to all of this, I quickly realized. First of all, Joshua wasn't the one whose head got smooshed. He had been standing right next to me and managed to escape any injury. Second, now I had a great view of Joshua in his bath while I continued to clean the bathroom counter and mirror. I even got him to try something new- dumping water on his own head! And third, I started devising my plan of how I could reward myself for all of my troubles later in the evening. I know some of you really like to top of a tough night with a glass (or bottle) of wine. Many of my friends like to just go to bed early. But me? My consolation prize is a big bowl of popcorn- buttered, salted and covered in Parmesan cheese. Now, I wonder how it will taste with a glass of chocolate milk?
Round 1: Somehow I managed to volunteer to host Book Club for the month of March which is crazy because March is a very crazy month with birthdays and special events (can you say, Purim Carnivals and St. Patty's Day?). At any rate, I think I thought that I could just have a clean house for the whole month of March, which is entirely unrealistic I now realize. I started preparing for my clean house month by doing a thorough vacuum and a complete freak-out during my "vacation" last week. Today I was home with a sick Liam and it seemed like a good day to get some more of that cleaning done, considering that now it's March. I noticed that the shower curtain had some stains on it. I have no idea how a shower curtain got stained. I'm just going to go with water damage. At any rate, I put it in the wash. This is completely logical because it's made out of cotton.
Round 2: The shower curtain comes out of the drier looking... a little crumpled. No bother, I'm sure it'll all even out.
Round 3: The shower curtain crumpling is seriously more serious than just being crumpled. It's about 1 foot shorter and 1 foot less wide than it had been when stained, hanging up this morning. I panic and shout for Bill, who giggles and goes back to making his sandwich. I'm not sure if he realized that I was actually in crisis here. Maybe I wasn't in crisis only because of the shower curtain. It might have had more to do with vacation planning going awry and watching a sad movie on TV this afternoon. Either way, this was bad.
Round 4: I iron the shower curtain while talking to Bill who apologized for walking out of the room instead of panicking with me. I accepted fault too for my panicking but as I ironed I could tell this could still be an issue so I kind of panicked again. How are we going to have time to go to Bed Bath and Beyond before Book Club?! And I thought to myself, at least I have that 20% off coupon... Bill suggested that he could go to Target without me. I think I might have actually ignored that suggestion.
Round 5: I hung the shower curtain up on the rings and this was when I realized that everyone else who has a bathroom with running water also has those nice wrought iron (or cheap imitation) shower curtain hooks. Some people even have ones that coordinate with their bathroom theme (think yellow submarines or seashells). Somehow I must have overlooked this trend because my shower still has tacky green plastic rings. Ooops?
Round 6: I managed to inch down the shower tension rod so that the curtain would be a little lower and cover the bathtub better. Between the ironing and the lowering of the rod, it wasn't looking so bad and I was thinking that we could put off Bill's trip to Target.
Round 7: I got selfish. Hmmm... that worked really well. Maybe if I just lower the rod a little bit more, the curtain would hang a lower too... And with that, the rod gave out and fell unceremoniously into the bathtub, carrying my slightly-too-small curtain with it. Bummer. And Bill had already left for the evening.
Round 8: I tried to compromise with the shower curtain rod and I looked at the bright side, this gave me a chance to wipe down the surface of the side of the tub a little better. But the slippery surface just made getting the rod back in place more impossible. This wasn't going well.
Round 9: I talked to Bill on the phone and he suggested moving the rod a little closer to the edge of the tub wall. It worked!
Round 10: I got selfish again and tried to lower it. It fell again, which almost made me cry but I was able to get it back in place. I texted Bill back with "I fixed it!" And he responded with an excerpt from the speech our best man gave at our wedding, "So you've got that going for you, which is nice." Real funny.
Round 11: Later in the evening, after I thought the battle was long since over and won, after I was started to look back on the bright side and move on to assorted other challenges like making dinner, cleaning the bathroom sink, etc... I took Josh in for his bathtime. I leaned over to turn on the faucet and (you know what's going to happen next, right?) the shower rod and curtain and those stupid green plastic shower rings all fell down directly onto my head.
Fully admitting my loss, I texted Bill back, "It just fell on my head" and I found myself starting to cry- just starting to, mind you. Deep breath. There was a bright side to all of this, I quickly realized. First of all, Joshua wasn't the one whose head got smooshed. He had been standing right next to me and managed to escape any injury. Second, now I had a great view of Joshua in his bath while I continued to clean the bathroom counter and mirror. I even got him to try something new- dumping water on his own head! And third, I started devising my plan of how I could reward myself for all of my troubles later in the evening. I know some of you really like to top of a tough night with a glass (or bottle) of wine. Many of my friends like to just go to bed early. But me? My consolation prize is a big bowl of popcorn- buttered, salted and covered in Parmesan cheese. Now, I wonder how it will taste with a glass of chocolate milk?
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