November 2009 – Her Bad Mother

30 Nov

Go Tell The Spartans

I give up. I surrender. The battle has been fought. It has been lost.

We have tried everything, pretty much, to get Jasper to stay asleep in his own bed. Which is to say, we have tried everything within the limits of our physical and emotional endurance. We made a final push this weekend, a cry-it-out effort to hold the pass of our bedroom door and defend the peace of our bed, but to no avail. The boy found his way around our defenses and, like Leonidas at Thermopylae, we held our ground, we tried to hold our ground, but our forces were no match for his cries and his pleas and his Dadda Dadda Dadda Dadda MAMA MAMA MUM! And so we fell, and so we give up.

88 Comments

27 Nov

Thankitude

by Catherine

Faith, Family, Fearless, Mush

I’m Canadian, so I celebrated Thanksgiving weeks ago, but still, it’s hard to ignore all the cheerful goodwill and gratitude in the air when American Thanksgiving rolls around. Also, the pie. That’s all anyone has been able to talk about this week: PIE, pumpkin or otherwise. And stuffing and turkeys and liquor. Oh, and gratitude.

Gratitude, like appetite, is contagious. So, herewith, an account of my thanks, the things for which I am grateful (not, please note, in order of importance):

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26 Nov

And Down Will Come Baby…

by Catherine

Motherhood

Okay, so I threw it out there and I said that the parenting stuff that I tend to feel most guilt around is the stuff that I (almost) never write about here. And then I asked whether that was reasonable, seeing as I advertise myself as a mother who knows no shame, and who believes firmly in the emancipatory power of speaking the truth – good and bad – about our experiences. And you all, quite reasonably, said that that was indeed reasonable, and what’s my problem?

I don’t know. It is, to abuse the simile, something like an itch that I can’t scratch, and that maybe I shouldn’t scratch, but that nonetheless is calling to be scratched and I can’t help but wonder whether it wouldn’t be better if I did scratch it, if only for the second or two of the scratching which, you know, always feels good.

Anyway. Here’s my confession, in video form. Which is to say, here’s a video that shows the sort of thing that I’m not proud of and that I tend to not write about, because, seriously:

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24 Nov

Confessions Of A Bad Mother

by Catherine

Fearless, Motherhood, Uncategorized

Yesterday, I took part in a televised discussion about so-called ‘bad parenting,’ shame and confession. I wore a lot of eyeshadow.

I never wear eyeshadow, so I was really kind of embarrassed by it. Later, when I asked my husband what he’d thought of the show, he said, ‘you had some really good things to say, but you looked like you were in pain.’ ‘That was the eyeshadow,’ I said.

65 Comments

23 Nov

Havin’ My Baby

by Catherine

Uncategorized

No, it's not what you think. It's better. Better, even, than one of Emilia's still life art installations. She calls this one T-Rex The T-Rex With Purple Girl. It's a reflection on the decline of...

0 Comments

19 Nov

Boot Skootin’ Snot Boogerin’ Nobody’s Sleepin’ Boogie

by Catherine

Anxiety, Jasper, Sleep, Uncategorized

This is what 6am looks like at our house: saggy diapers and ukeleles and big, snot-smeared hugs.

It’s also what 8pm, 11pm, and 3am look like. Yes, he sleeps in those cowboy boots. No, not for any longer than two or three hours at a time.

80 Comments

18 Nov

Just Like A Prayer

by Catherine

Categories, Causes, Faith, Heavy, Tanner

I don’t believe in petitionary or intercessory prayer. I’ve written about my reasons for this at length, but it boils down to this: I don’t believe in, can’t believe in, a God who responds to such prayer. As I said some months ago, ‘why should God help us find a cure for cancer, and not for muscular dystrophy? Find one lost child, and not another? Help the Red Wings win while leaving children dying in sub-Saharan Africa? If God is a god who lets bad things happen, the only way that I can understand that is if the point of letting bad things happen is to compel us to cope with pain and heartbreak and evil ourselves, alone, to better understand those things. And that idea of a didactic God doesn’t square with a picture of God as a moody patriarch who dispenses favors to his children on the basis of who supplicates most fervently.’

4 Comments

17 Nov

Five Reasons You Should Totally See That Vampire Movie

by Catherine

Feminism, Uncategorized

New Moon – the second film in the series based upon the Twilight novels (which I will not explain to you here, because, seriously, have you been living under a rock?) – opened last night and I did not go see it. Oh, I’ll get around to seeing it, eventually, but I’m not in any great hurry because a) if I happen to find spare hours in any given day sufficient to the purpose of going to the movies, I will be using them to catch up on sleep, and b) I actually really kind of didn’t so much like New Moon the book (more on that below), and will only be seeing the movie to see the parts that actually involve a plot – which is to say, the end – and that can wait until I’ve caught up on my sleep. But the flurry of discussion about the Twilight novels and the movies deriving from those novels, much of which repeats last year’s canards about aren’t these books actually kind of bad? and a good feminist would never, ever let her daughter anywhere near these books, has got me thinking about the stuff I was thinking about last year when the first movie was released. So I thought I’d repost (what follows was originally posted at MamaPop), with some minor addenda and amendments, some of my thoughts on the subject.

So there’s this vampire movie? And, like, it’s based on this book that’s like part of a four-book series and it’s about this vampire? Who’s like a nice vampire? And he falls in love with this girl and she falls in love with him and it’s, like, SO AWESOME.

Seriously.

I’m not going to claim to anybody that the Twilight series is high literature. It’s not high literature, by any stretch, unless you happen to consider the works of Dan Brown high literature, in which case you’ve probably already read Twilight sixteen times and made notes in the margins with your National Treasure commemorative ballpoint pen, and, also, could I interest you in a library of leather-bound works by Ken Follet?

0 Comments

16 Nov

Now We Are Four

by Catherine

Emilia, Mush

Dear Emilia,

This weekend, you turned four years old. You were so excited to turn four years old. For months you asked how many weeks it would be before you turned four, and for weeks you asked that we count down the days until you turned four, and for days you insisted that we tick off the hours until you turned four, and when the day finally came you said “Guess what, Mommy? Today, I am FOUR.”

And I smiled and hugged you and said “yes, yes, I know.”

40 Comments

12 Nov

They Say It’s Her Birthday

by Catherine

Emilia

Emilia’s birthday is this weekend. She will be four years old. Four year olds, she informs me, always have birthday parties.

“So do five year olds. And sixes. I don’t what happens when you get really old, but I hope you still get cake.”

I didn’t tell her that when you’re really old, like, thirty-something, you’re lucky if someone fixes you a bowl of cereal and washes the dishes. No point in rushing the disillusionment.

88 Comments

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