New Shoe Leather: babies

Showing posts with label babies. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 28, 2007

The Overstimulation of Our Children

So i spent all day Monday babysitting my nephew ben, and what a time we had. He's a good boy and really onlly cried when he wanted something like food or a clean diaper or a nap. And his mom never once had to come down and intervene because i was such a good babysitter, i knwo right. So anyways wanted i wanted to talk about though was the fact that children nowadays are so overstimulated. if it's not the hdtv it's the gamecube, and the mini hand held PS whatever it's caled and the ipod so they can have music while they play video games. I give you exibit a and b

a) Ben's walker/entertainment center. This swivel walker thing had mirros, and twisty things and a noise maker and a song machine and stuffed animals and bright colors and really anything a child could want to distract them from the world. mind you he is 5 months old. What is all of this stimulation going to do do the poor boy's imagination?

b) his jungle mat, thing. It was made to look like a baby is lying in a junge with hanging animals and mirrors again, squeezy toys, lights, and twirling butterflies. It was excess at it's best and it made me tired just lookind at all of it. excess people, excess.

but overall i did like some of ben's toys, my favorite being this wierd sea creature named "captain uniqua."

Captain uniqua is from some nickalodeon show, and she's called uniqua because she is unlike any other creature in the world. Dont' you love teh subtle acculturation into the American way of being? i do! so this captain Uniqua was a one eyed pirate and she would sing these ska/reggae songs about pirates and treasures. By the end of the day i was singing them to ben and he was laughing and laughing. I decided to take a clip of uniqua's awesome songs, but sadly my dinasaur camera can only take 5 second clips....

so basically watch the first 2 consecutively and then i will write teh lyrics later.

so this first song goes:
"If you wanna be a pirate be up on your feet
you can't be a pirate if you're sittin in your seat
throw your hands up, and stand kind of bow
and make this noise wherever you go
argh argh ARGH!
a pirate, a pirate, a pirate says
ARGH!!"

The second song she sings is all about like treasure and finding treasure and she does this awesome falsetto. Anyways she said other phrases liek "let's walk the plank" and stuff like that and was generally awesome. I kind of want a captain uniqua.

So i leave you with this last image of Ben and I, relaxing 3 bottles, 2 poops, and 3 naps later. Proving once again that i might never want my own children, but i dont' mind spending a day with other people's really cool ones.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

the importance of being cut

So sidebar, to give context to this story i have to first tell you guys that i have a part time job at a preschool/day care center. I needed extra money and i figured i'd worked at the stanford preschool so i was definitely qualified. yes, on top of being a top tier grad student (ranked number 3 this year, bitches!! learn about it!) i also moonlight as a child care provider. '

So anyways my story to you all is really a parable or sorts to teach you all a lesson. not really a parable but you get the message so just listen. I usually work in the 1 1/2 to 2 year old room with really mildly obnoxious toddlers. Seriously terrible 2's are not a lie. Anyways aside from making me realize that i will indeed make a good mother someday in the future (i think all women have this fear that we will fuck up our children because we won't be able to physiclaly care for them), it has also made me realize that i do'nt know if i ever want children. Something about taking care of 10 crying, pooping, snotty kids just really makes the whole "cute little baby" thing extremely unappealing. That being said i really actually do have genuine affection for these kids, some might even call it love. It must be that whole vagina/maternal instinct thing, because when they cry i just want to make them feel better, and when their shit smells really bad it's kind of special and sometimes when i've had a really bad day and the kids that i actually like smile and give me a hug it gives me the fuzzies all over and makes me think "i can do this!!" so i mean i guess i literally see the future in a baby's smile, or whatever that saying is. Oh and i can change a diaper in 15 seconds flat!

so anyways today one of the teachers from the baby room was sick so i got moved to that room since i'm technically a floater who gives assistance whenever needed. So they had this new little 9 month old boy, let's call him guiseppe, who was having his first day of childcare today. And guiseppe was SOOO CUTE!! i mean he wasn't a particularly good looking child but he was petite and had charisma and didn't cry and smiles alot and hadn't gotten that 2 year old baby stink yet. he still smelled liek powder and baby vomit, you know how baby vomit can smell nice? anyways we all talked about how much we liked him. So then one of te teachers went to change his diapers for the first time and she yells over "oooh we've got an uncircumcized one." All the teachers then joined in about how gross uncircumcized pensises were, because seriously they are. And then the teachers started listed off the boys in the preschool who were uncut and i said, "well his name is giuseppe, maybe his dad is european, italian or something. I mean they don't do it to their kids." everyone agreed that this was probably the reason in which case we cannot blame his parents for their cultural beliefs. But then later his dad came and picked him up and was in fact NOT foreign. He looked really young too, possibly a grad student. How grad students have babies and functioning marraiges and mortgages i do not understand.

so my point to you all readers is....if and when you decide to have children, please please please circumcize them. do you want your son to be ridiculed from day care until the end of his life???? Woudl you do that to a child just for the sake of whatever reasons people give for not cutting their children????? I mean i knwo it's sensitive issue but it's one that reaches far beyond their sexual partners. it's "ruuuuulll deep," if you will.

Now onto lighter topics. My flowers finally made it today, and they are actually quite pretty. I actually don't liek flowers that much (shh don't tell david) not because i think flowers are ugly but more because i think they are really really overpriced and in the end i say "if you're gonna buy me $50 flowers just buy me a nice belt or some cool earings or kiehl's hand cream or anything that won't die in a week." but in the end men don't listen and when i say that ,instead of buying the latter things they end up getting me nothign so the flowers will suffice. And i think tulips are my favorite flowers in theory. i like bulb plants. So my cousin told me this trick, because she used to live on top of a florist in berkeley who told her. apparenlty if you drop a penny into the vase where you have tulips, or any bulb plant i believe, the copper somehow gets into the water and the stems soke it up and something about that chemical mixture makes the stems stand up faster and longer. and actually one of the stems was wilting and it's now standing up straight (you cannot see in the pic). so there, that is your lesson for the day. pay it forward people.

Also note the disgusting mess i am living in, scarves, coats, knitting projects i have yet to start, books, articles...projects left unfinished all piled on my tacky hand me down table that was in my room when i moved in.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

babies!!

oh my god i swear to you i look at these pictures and i might die and i weep and i'm so sad i cannot be there and watch him grow up so i make his mom takes millions of pictures and send them to me. seriously!!! DAH!! i asked ivan today if these tears mean my biological clock is ticking. i sure hope not.

bear suit!

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