"Sleeping Through the Night" and Other Myth's First-Timers Foolishly Believe

It's been happening a lot lately.  I'll be standing in line at the grocery, my most beloved of pastimes it would seem, in a zombified state as I wait for the cashier to get to my order when a mother of five (or some other staggeringly impossible number) will begin gushing over Mina.  I get it, she's adorable, so I don't mind.  I'll sleepily smile back my "thank yous" and engage in non-committal conversation about how wonderful children are, despite the work.  "Aren't we lucky, yada yada yada."  And then, inevitably, they'll ask, "Is she sleeping through the night yet?", as if the pulsing purple bags under my eyes aren't answer enough.  And I'm not really sure how to answer.  "Well, she used to," I'll say, "but she stopped around the time Thanksgiving hit."  They stare back at me like I have three heads, pityingly, but still as if my daughter's regressive sleeping habits are somehow an indication that she's not human.  Because human babies, or so I'm told, begin sleeping through the night and never look back.

In fact, human babies spend most of their first year sleeping, not just through the night, but in general.  This is such a widely held belief that friends in my PhD program congratulated me warmly when I told them of my pregnancy.  "What perfect timing!" they would tell me.  "You'll be able to get so much work done while the baby's sleeping, probably write your whole dissertation since you won't be teaching."  Being the optimist I am, I believed their lies.  When asked by the L&D nurses at the hospital what I do for a living and whether I'd be returning to work, I would proudly declare my graduate student status.  "I'll be prepping for my exams and then writing my dissertation while I stay home with her," I'd beam, never stopping to wonder at the looks they'd give me as they backed out of the room.  Looking back now, I can only conclude they delivered a lot more non-human babies than I gave them credit for.  Because non-human babies, like Mina, are born alive, alert, and enthusiastic -- okay, maybe not so enthusiastic -- which is why the notion of writing a dissertation, or even beginning to think about my dissertation, in the first year of her life was absolutely ridiculous.

But when it comes right down to it, I'm beginning to suspect there is a much wider range for what it means to be a "normal human baby" than originally thought.  During our first visits to the pediatrician in those early months of Mina's life, my husband and I would go armed with a notepad brimming with questions:  Why isn't she napping?  Why does she eat every hour on the hour?  Aren't fifteen wet diapers in one day excessive?  Should her head spin around like that when she throws up?  And our overly patient pediatrician would always respond with an I've-been-there smile and say, "That's normal."  What I'm coming to discover is that babies are as unique as the adults they grow into.  Some are night owls, some are early birds, and some are both.  ><  Some have insatiable appetites with black holes for stomachs, and some have to be arm-wrestled into the high chair.  Just as we can't nail down what "normal" behavior is for adults (or at least, we have an entire field dedicated to sorting out what it means to be "normal" and even they argue about what "normal" is), "normal" behavior for babies is an equally tenuous thing to pinpoint.  My new motto?  Expect the unexpected cause it's probably gonna happen.  Oh, and savor those rare "normal" moments...

To have multiple or not; that is the question...

Okay, before I begin, let me be perfectly clear about this:  I am not nor do I intend to be expecting another baby anytime soon.  But an increasing number of people in my life -- my dad, my mother-in-law, my sister, my bff, the Russian cashier at Macy's -- have expressed an interest in knowing if and when I'm going to have more children.  Some, my father most notably, have told me I most certainly must have more children and SOON!!!  My mother-in-law argues that it's not fair for parents of only children to always know who broke the teacup, gave the dog a fancy new haircut, or stuck glow-in-the-dark stars all over the kitchen ceiling.  My sister says she just wants more babies to play with, and since she already has four of her own, it's my responsibility to provide them.  Such musings seem premature as Mina is not even a year old, but I'll run with it.

To be honest, before we had Mina, my husband and I talked about this quite often and had an ongoing debate about which was better, three or four children.  I like odd numbers, my husband likes even.  I grew up in a family with three, my husband a family of four.  We figured we had plenty of time to decide between having three and four children and settled on a wait-and-see attitude.  If we had three and really, really wanted another (or had three of one sex and wanted to try for the opposite one more time), then we'd go ahead and have a fourth.  Once Mina was born, all that changed.

In the early days, when I found myself confined to the couch nursing Mina for 8+ hours a day, I began wondering how people in our pioneer days managed to have multiple children while also taking care of the day-to-day chores and responsibilities of running a farm.  I figured extended families lived together back then and probably helped out when a new baby was born.  Since I live 30 minutes away from any family, 45 minutes from family who is willing to actually hold Mina, this realization didn't set me at ease.  Were I to have another child, how would I keep Mina from getting into the drill bits when I found myself quite literally strapped down with her younger sibling?  Who would stop her from eating out of the litter box when I was was upstairs handling the casualties of her younger brother or sister's butt?  More importantly, how could I manage to give Mina or her sibling the attention each deserved when I could hardly manage with just Mina around to find an opportunity to do something as simple as feed myself?

So, as I do with everything else in life, I decided to make a list.  An ongoing list of the pros and cons of having multiple children.  I realize life cannot be so easily categorized or reasoned out.  Some things, like having children, are largely illogical.  But this is how I deal with things, so I'll share with you the current list, which is, sadly, probably the short answer to the question you've all been asking me.

Pro #1:  I <3 babies.  More children = more babies.
Babies are, in short, the most adorable things in the whole wide world.  Playing with and watching babies gives me hope for the future of the human race.  They are truly perfect and don't know deceit, malice, or hatred...yet.  When she looks at the most commonplace thing as if it's the most amazing thing she's ever seen, Mina reawakens in me the ability to see the world through a new perspective...to see the wonder in things I've grown to take for granted.  Obviously, more of this is a good thing, is a great thing.  Is quite possibly a good enough thing to outweigh all the "bad" things that go into having multiple children.

Con #1:  More babies = less "free" time.
I think I remember what it was like to wake up and wonder at the possibilities a day held for me.  I could do any number of things that I've since forgotten how to do:  read a book, spend the day shopping, go for a run, relax.  When I anticipated the early months of Mina's life, I always thought I'd have lots of time to still do these things because I believed, as all those evil parenting books told me, that babies slept most of the time.  Enter Mina, the Incredible Energized and Alert Newborn.  Free time became a pipe dream once Mina was born.  And now that she's getting old and is more capable of entertaining herself, I see a semblance of this returning (read: I have a blog).  Another baby means another six months (at least) of time during which no time is free.  It's a selfish reason not to have more kids, I realize.  But it's a reality, nonetheless.

Pro #2:  More children = more dependents = bigger tax return!
I remember being so, so excited to finally get started on 2010's tax return, and now that I've already jumped in headfirst, I'm not disappointed.  Our tax break for having even one child is more than I could have ever dreamed (but not so much that the government should reduce it...just in case any congressmen/politicians are reading this).  Just imagine the tax break of having TWO children...THREE....FOUR OR MORE?!?  My sister tells me four kids leads to a pretty nice return.  I'm envious.  I love preparing taxes and finding obscure deductions; it's very likely one of my favorite things to do all year.  I know, without a doubt, that having more kids will make tax preparation that much more fun and rewarding.  Okay, I'll admit it, this too is a selfish reason for having more kids.

Con #2:  More children = more dependents = bigger tax return for a reason!
When I was a kid, I always heard parents complaining about how expensive children were.  I never really knew what they meant until I started shelling out a seemingly endless stream of money for Mina's diapers, clothing, food, doctor's visits, toys, furniture....  We've started a college fund for Mina, and when I look at it and see how far it'll take her in today's educational market (parking pass for one semester?), I tremble to think how much money she'll need when she's going off to college in 18 years.  No doubt, she'll end up with a full scholarship, right?  But the thought of putting multiple children through college terrifies me.  Let alone the thought of feeding multiple children through their teenage years.  My husband routinely ate three bowls of cereal for breakfast, entire pizzas for lunch, and once, thinking it was an after school snack his mom had made for whoever wanted it, ate the family's dinner of chicken wings all by himself before anybody else could grab any.  No joke.  I may sound old saying it, but kids are expensive.

Pro #3:  Siblings = BBFFs (Best-Blood Friends Forever).
So, I realize siblings don't always get along.  Heck, I lost my first tooth when my brother and sister conspired against me in an evil plot to make me smash my face into our homemade teeter-totter.  But when the proverbial poo hits the proverbial fan, siblings (are supposed to) have each other's back.  As morbid as it may sound, I would feel more at ease passing from this life into the next knowing Mina and her (potential) siblings have one another to depend on.  I've been blessed to have a brother and sister I can lean on, and my husband has the same thing with his siblings.  It seems cruel to deprive a child of the special kind of love (and irritation) siblings provide.

Okay, that's it for now, kiddies.  More updates to the list are sure to follow.  And please, feel free to pass along your own pros and cons.  I'd love to mull them over and add them to my list!

Stroller Snuggler™

Before I had Mina, the thought of winter travel never intimidated me.  I envisioned stuffing her into a marshmallowesque winter coat and then squeezing her, snug-as-a-bug, into her car seat before heading off into the Winter Wonderland of Northeast Ohio.  Sure, she'd probably be able to move about as well as Ralphie's little brother, but she'd be warm.  And then I read about new standards concerning babies, car seats, and winter coats.  Apparently, big, puffy winter coats and car seats are not a match made in heaven, as I previous thought they were.  According to federal safety guidelines, the heavy winter coats we pile our kiddies into may actually diminish the effectiveness of the car seat harness in the case of an accident and will allow baby to rattle around inside the car seat like a ping pong ball.  Since the point of car seats is to protect babies during accidents, this newfound knowledge set me to thinking:  How could I keep baby warm while also keeping her safe?

Bundle Me

Tivoli

There are several products on the market to keep babies warm in their car seats without adding extra padding between the baby and her harness.  For $50, you can get the JJ Cole Bundle Me from Babies 'R Us or, for $70, you can get the Tivoli Couture Car Seat Cover, which pretty much does the same thing for the added cost of being "couture."  My issue with both of these, aside from their price, is they either entirely restrict baby's movement, as the Tivoli does by leaving nothing but the head exposed, or they expose the arms and shoulders to potentially frigid weather.  I wanted to cover Mina with something that would cover her shoulders and chest while also leaving her arms free to play with toys or randomly flail, as she's so fond of doing.  While there are other options available, nothing on the market met my needs, and so, as the nascent seamstress that I am, I took to the sewing machine to construct what I call the Stroller Snuggie...or Snuggler, if we're trying to avoid copyright infringement.

My pattern, largely inspired by the one seen here, is really quite simple.  Picture a Snuggie, and then miniaturize it to fit a baby.  I won't bore my readers by going into the nitty-gritty details of how to make one of these (unless you really want me to) other than to say it only takes "a yard" of blizzard fleece and about an hour of time (including interruptions for chasing after baby).  I say "a yard" because that's what I ask for at the fabric counter, but really, I start with a piece of fabric that is about 36" x 60" and pare it down to a square 36"x 36" using the rest of the fabric to construct the arms and a matching hat.  I used a yard of blizzard fleece and a yard of regular fleece in an accenting color for my first attempt and ended up making what I refer to as the Deep-Freeze Arctic Stroller Snuggler.  Unless you live in a region where the temperature regularly dips under 25 degrees below zero, you probably don't need a lined Snuggler.  Mina was literally sweating within minutes of putting this thing on, and so we only use it on very rare occasions.  I made a second that is constructed of a yard of blizzard fleece and find it to be just about perfect for our climate.  It's warm enough to keep Mina comfy when we venture outside, but it's cool enough that we don't have to snatch it off of her as soon as we head indoors.  With that said, however, we do make sure to take it off if we're going to be spending any significant amount of time inside.  This fleece is an excellent insulator and traps a lot of body heat.  More than 30 minutes indoors under this thing, and Mina's sweating.  The nice thing about the Snuggler is it meets all of Mina's winter travel needs:  it sufficiently covers her arms, chest, and shoulders while also providing her the mobility to be able to play with toys or just flail about.

Critical or Conversational? Think Before You Speak.

As a culture, perhaps as a people, we love to muse over the best and worse methods for successfully raising kids.  Sure, it makes sense.  The future of the human race depends on how well we raise our kids.  Admittedly, on rare occasion, we like to congratulate parents on their successes by approaching them after church or in line at the grocery to remark upon how well-behaved their kids are.  But, for the most part, it seems we love to ridicule what we perceive as bad, misinformed, and lazy choices people make as they struggle through parenthood asserting we would have done things so much better.  Well, maybe we would have done things better, or maybe there's a chance we don't know what the hell we're talking about.  As outsiders, we simply can't know the kids or situation in which they're being raised, or heck, even if the behavior we're witnessing is typical.

My father once told me a story about a time when my aunt, his baby sister, had "the nerve" to criticize his parenting techniques as attempting to "program" his kids as if they were computers.  She believed, it would seem, that we should have been given more latitude in the day to day, and while I'm not altogether sure what specifically she was referring to or what brought about this criticism, I can honestly say she may have been right.  It's no secret that my father was rather strict with us when we were growing up.  Stricter than most parents?  It's hard to say.  Especially when my standard of comparison is my mother, who was about as lenient as they come.  At any rate, my father's feathers were ruffled by my aunt's comments, not because he recognized she was hitting close to the truth but because she, a woman who chose not to have children, felt it was her place to offer up advice on how my father should be raising his kids.  He felt my aunt was too ignorant about the ins and outs of raising kids to be criticizing a parent's decisions regarding his/her children let alone promoting her own theories regarding the rearing of children.  She had, after all, zero experience being a parent and was educated to be a surgical nurse, not a child psychologist or even a pediatrician.  Now, I'll be the first to admit my father is as stubborn as a bull and that maybe he should have at least considered the point my aunt was trying to make, but at the same time, as a parent now in similar shoes, I can't help but wonder if he was, at least in part, justified in his response.

A good friend recently admonished me for falling into my father's line of thinking while I was complaining about another friend's acerbic remarks regarding choices I've made in caring for Mina.  He stopped me short when I whined that the person "wasn't even a parent" and went on to assert that his inexperience as a parent does not negate the knowledge he's gleaned from friends who have had children, his parents, or information he's acquired on his own through other sources.  He made a good point.  I know I had plenty of opinions about how to best raise children long before I became a parent myself, and while some of those notions have since fallen by the wayside, I still hold on to most of them today.  But then again, just as employers are skeptical of applicants lacking on-the-job experience, parents are justified in taking advice from their childless friends with a grain of salt.  After all, it's nearly impossible to really know how to raise a kid until your up to your eyeballs in diapers and spit-up and actually doing the work of raising your child.  And in all likelihood, unless the parent is a bumbling idiot, they've probably already considered the criticisms likely to be launched by their non-parent friends.  I know very few parents who have approached parenthood with a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants attitude.  The vast majority of parents I know, and I assure you I'm among them, have spent countless hours reading parenting books, visiting parenting websites, reading the most recent research, discussing concerns with the pediatrician and talking to other parents (be it their own or friends who have already ventured down the path of parenthood) to determine what they consider to be the best methods for raising their kids.  That's not to say, as parents, we shouldn't be open to the opinions our childless friends offer up.  After all, they're looking in on our situation from a different vantage point and may be able to see things we simple cannot (like my Dad not seeing he could have lightened up a bit with us).  But I think it falls on the person making the criticism (be it a friend with or without kids) to at least do so respectfully.  To offer up their point of view as just that, a point of view, and not the gospel truth, certainly not when we're talking about how somebody else should be raising their kids.

And now, because I'm my father's daughter:

Epiphanies 1 thru 5: Courtesy of Mina

It's that time of year particularly apt for making lists, and so it seems as good a time as any to reflect over what the past seven months of life with Mina have brought me and record some of my more poignant epiphanies.  Had I realized these at the start of our adventure with Mina, I'm certain my transformation from a self-involved, child-free individual to one responsible for the well-being of another human being would have been much, much smoother.

1.  Nothing before or ever again will be as special or important as the child(ren) we've created.  
What can I say?  Cliches exist because in some way they contain a truth that is shared, though not universally, at least by a large majority.  I must admit I was always skeptical of doting parents who proclaimed their children were the best thing that ever happened to them.  Really?  All of life's many great adventures had never been as satisfying, memorable, or as terrifying as your kids?  I didn't buy it.  Ziplining through the jungle 100 feet above the ground seemed a much more interesting feat than putting a screaming baby down for a nap.  But now, seven months into this, I find myself long since feeling the same way.  Giving birth to and raising Mina has been (and no doubt will continue to be) the single most precious and perfect thing I have ever done in my entire life.  She has challenged me in ways I couldn't have imagined, but she has also rewarded me with hugs and wet, sloppy, open-mouth kisses that are the best gifts I've ever received.  I know it sounds corny and cliched.  It's the truth.

2.  Children are black holes for time, free or otherwise.
While I was pregnant, many people delighted in telling me how my unborn baby would take up all my time once she was born.  What is wrong with people that they get off on telling you how much life is going to suck once your baby is born?  Seriously!  Being the stubborn person I am, I didn't believe them.  Or, if I did, I didn't really think they meant "all" my time would go to taking care of the baby.  At first, this was a problem because, as you can imagine, it's true...in the most literal sense of the word.  I never knew what "all" really meant before Mina was born.  Like any self-respecting neurotic pregnant lady, I did extensive research before my baby was born and read that babies slept anywhere from 16 to 22 hours a day.  Surely, there would be plenty of downtime for me to get to the things I wanted to do, like school work, scrapbooking, cooking...showering and, let's be honest, going potty.  What I didn't realize, of course, was that some babies, mine in particular, spent 8 to 12 hours a day nursing, and the rest of the time were wide awake, ready to be entertained.  So, yes, babies take all your time, but in the end, it doesn't really matter because of, you guessed it, Epiphany #1.  As a matter of fact, I've come to look forward to spending an entire day just watching Mina discover the world.  Chores be damned!  Mina's only going to be a baby for so long, and then (poof!) this phase in Mina's life will be over.  I'll be glad not to have missed it.

3.  Bodily fluids, once thought to be the carriers of all that Satan embodies, are actually not that bad.
It's no secret that I'm somewhat of a germaphobe, a trait which is not entirely illogical.  I don't drink from the same cup as anybody but Derek, and even then on rare occasion, because I knew a kid in high school whose father died 24 hours after contracting bacterial meningitis when he drank from the wrong cup at his son's graduation party.  This tendency of mine to keep other peoples' bodily fluids far, far away from me concerned me as I looked forward to giving birth to and rearing Mina.  So, I knew I'd have to deal with her drool, and I heard horror stories about babies covered in poop (another thing people just love to tell you is gonna happen).  Honestly, finding ways to hygienically deal with Mina's various fluids creeped me out more than the thought of giving birth.  But now, after innumerable encounters, I find myself not really caring when, in the middle of changing a particularly noxious diaper, I look down and see I have poo streaked across my finger.  It's a matter of damage control, I guess.  In the moment, it's a lot more important to finish changing Mina's diaper and prevent more nomadic poo from escaping her nether regions than it is to freak out about the smidgen that managed to find its way to my hand.  I certainly wash my hands once I'm done, but I'm proud to say I've never once freaked out about whatever random fluids find their way onto my body throughout the day.  Spit up, drool, urine, and even poo ain't got nothing on me.  At least, not Mina's spit up, drool, urine or poo.  I'm still incredibly terrified by other peoples' fluids, so keep them far, far away from me!

4.  Babies make the (incredibly fast) passage of time blatantly apparent (i.e. I feel old).
When I went off to college and began a series of annual moves (in and out of the dorms and then to a new apartment each year until I was married), I would always perk up my ears and take note of the passage of yet another year when I found myself going through the annual tedium of packing up all my belongings and finding a new roost to call home.  As I stuffed my clothes into a new (and somehow always smaller) closet, I'd reminisce over all that had happened in the previous year and wonder how long I'd stay in my new residence and what adventures would greet me before I moved again.  At least, I did this ever year until my husband and I bought our house six years ago and settled down into a seemingly more permanent home.  Ever since, time has marched on, unnoticed and unimpeded.  Sure, I recognized that time was passing, but I'd stopped paying attention to how much and how quickly time was passing as I made my way through the tedium of the day-to-day, week-to-week, year-to-year.  And then Mina was born.  At first, as I muscled my way through sleep-deprived days, time seemed to stand still.  It felt like a year had passed before she finally reached the coveted six-week mark when life was sure to get easier.  And then, all of the sudden, she was six weeks old, and then time started flying by at warp speeds.  I look at the calendar and am flummoxed by the fact that seven months have passed, SEVEN MONTHS, since Mina was born.  She's more than halfway to a year old, and only four more of those and she'll be in Kindergarden.  I look at her today, outgrowing 12-month clothes and making strides toward crawling and cutting her first tooth, and can hardly believe how much she's changed from the helpless, insatiable newborn she was seven months ago.  I get whiplash thinking how quickly we've arrived at this point, and since time is relative, I know the next seven months (and seven months after that, and so on) will go quicker still.  In a way, I'm grateful because I've begun forcing myself, each day, to slow down and really soak in the special moments:  rocking Mina to sleep, hearing her giggle uncontrollably as Derek tickles her tummy, watching her gaze in amazement at each new discovery.  Still, I wish there was a way to slow the eternal march of time down, to live these moments a little longer because once they're gone, they're gone.

5.  I know what I'm doing, despite what x, y, or z person may think.  
In the beginning, I deferred to everybody else's opinion on what I should be doing with Mina.  If the lactation consultant told me to nurse Mina standing on my head, I'm sure I would have done everything in my power to make that happen.  I took my parents' criticisms of how I was caring for Mina to heart, questioning if I was, in fact, doing harm when I followed advice offered up by the pediatrician or gleaned from all the leading parenting books.  After all, they'd successfully reared their own children with these seemingly old-fashioned methods, and we'd all turned out okay...well, sort of.  But somewhere along the line, I began to realize nobody on this entire planet knows Mina as well as Derek or I do, and while I recognize the "wisdom of the ages," I also realized that we do know what's best for Mina and should feel confident in the way we've decided to raise her.  Certainly, I'm not infallible, and I'm always eagerly ready to hear advice on how we can do things better, but I'm not nearly as sensitive to the jabs (i.e. you're doing that wrong and are going to raise a spoiled brat because of it) as I once was.  I guess, at some point in the last seven months, I became a parent, a grown-up capable of taking stock of a situation and deciding what's best.  The irony is, of course, that it was my daughter who taught me how to become the mother she needs me to be.

Pink Camo

It's not often that I find myself lounging around watching others play video games.  A couple times a week, maybe?  Okay, perhaps that's more than the average bear.  But watching a gaming session in which a woman is playing what is typically considered a "male" game (Halo, Call of Duty, etc.) and dominating her male playing partners?  Almost never.  Anytime I've watched (and occasionally joined in playing) these games, girls are usually invited to play by their boyfriends or brothers as a "stand in," a place holder, an easy kill.  But a worthy adversary who is competent at head shots?  I've only witnessed this once, and perhaps this is why I found it so striking that my sister, the go-to sniper of the day, was running around as a big, burly, plaid-clad, man with a mullet.  When I asked why my sister was playing a man, she told me there weren't any female characters, at which point my feminist reflexes kicked in and, without even thinking, I remarked upon how sexist that was.

My family challenges me, and this is something I both love and hate about them.

The moment the words had escaped my lips, I knew I'd made a mistake.  My father turned to me, eyes bugging out of their sockets, and just shook his head.  At the same moment, my sister and twelve-year old nephew started assaulting me, rapid fire, with questions:  Did I think it was sexist men were born without a uterus?  Did I think it was sexist women were forced to lactate?  Did I think it was sexist women weren't given the privilege of having a penis?  And on and on.  I parried, I dodged, I returned fire saying I was complaining about the design of a video game, not biological reproductive roles.  All fell on deaf ears.  "Women," my nephew asserted, "belonged not on the front lines but at home with their babies" (a comment that won a rebuke from my sister).  Defeated, I quickly retreated to the kitchen (I-R-O-N-Y) where my husband was having a friendly conversation about, none other than, video games with my brother-in-law.  The conversation was soon forgotten, and the evening came to a pleasant end.  But it's been nagging at me ever since.  Why did it bother me so much that (1) women who elected to play the video game (and many like it) are forced to subvert their own gender and take on that of a (hideously attired) man and (2) that my family was incapable of having a rational conversation about it?

A few years back, one of my best friends was getting married and, as etiquette dictates, held a small get-together for her out of town guests.  Being the trendy, well-dressed person I'd always known her to be, I was somewhat surprised when she greeted us at the door wearing camouflage capris and matching ballet slippers (you know, the shoes...not real ballet slippers).  This friend is one of the "girliest" friends I have, and I would have thought she'd walk around naked before being seen in camo, but I didn't say anything. At least, not until we'd gotten together for a drink after the party.  As it turned out, her camo attire was not something she had picked out on her own, not even something she wore altogether willingly, but rather something her husband (who has always been trendy and hip) had bought for her after declaring "she needed to wear more camo."  A wise woman picks her battles, I guess, so my friend acquiesced.

As I thought about the incident with my family over the gendered nature of combat video games, this memory came flashing back to me.  And I must say, I find myself getting a little annoyed.  So, it's okay for women to wear camouflage (nay, even PINK camouflage) if it matches current fashion trends, but depicting women in a video game that mimics a war zone is ridiculous?  More to the point, allowing women to take on a feminine identity in what is typically considered to be a "male" video game is so ridiculous that to even suggest such a design can reasonably be expected to be met with a barrage of criticisms so illogical responding isn't even worth the time or effort.

I know, I know.  It's just a video game.  Why bother wasting the energy getting my pink, camouflage undies in a bunch?  My point exactly.  It's a video game.  Why then is it so ridiculous to ask for a girl to be given the opportunity to play a character who more closely matches her real world identity?  To create a video game in which girls/women don't have to throw off their own femininity to participate.  Is that really so far-fetched that we can't even have a conversation about it?  If we can't even conceive of gender equality in the fictional world of video games, what hope do we have of achieving this equality in the real world, where it really counts?

Squishy, Squashy!

Hold on to your butts!  We're about to embark upon our most exciting blog post yet!  Today I began my foray into the world of homemade baby food and prepared (successfully, if I do say so myself) homemade squash.  I used a pretty simple recipe from Wholesome Baby Food that called for me to split the squash, scoop out their guts, bake, and puree.  Simple doesn't even begin to describe this process.

Split...

Scoop...

and Bake!

Despite my fears of having pureed squash all over the kitchen ceiling, things went pretty well.  Mina interrupted the process a couple times by (1) making squash of her own and then (2) refusing to go down for a nap (Mommy won that battle!), but even with a couple stumbles, it only took me about an hour and fifteen minutes start to finish.  Mind you, that includes about 25 minutes of baking.  Not bad, not bad at all.

Some lessons I learned:

1. There are many, many different kinds of squash.  The long, yellow ones seen here are banana squash, and while my experience tells me they puree nicely and make something very similar (if not a little sweeter) to what Gerber sells, I guess this is not the "ideal" type of squash to use when making baby food.  Next time, I'll try the acorn or butternut variety as they've been heralded as having excellent flavor, and my guess is they will also yield a higher ratio of usable food (i.e. have less waste and, therefore, be more economical).  
2. A pound and a half of raw produce does not equal anything even remotely close to a pound and a half of baby food.  I knew there would be waste, but I had no idea how much waste there would be.  I was thinking I'd get somewhere around seven 2 oz. servings, but, alas, I only ended up with three.  So basically, my $1.49 worth of fresh squash yielded three servings, which would have cost $1.49.  Add the time and energy spent to make the squash, and I'm actually losing money on this one.  Eep!  My hope is that Mina will devour this homemade stuff and provide some vindication for the effort here.  Next time, I'll definitely make a bigger batch.
3. Know when to tell when squash is done baking.  The recipe called for me to bake the squash 40 minutes, but I was also using squash that is not as meaty as the squash this recipe called for.  I accounted for that, but when I peeked in the oven after 25 minutes, I was probably met with overcooked squash.  Does it really matter?  Well, maybe.  The edges were turning brown, and when I scooped them out, I did have a little trouble getting the squash around the rim.  If I'd cooked these any longer, my guess is they would have dried out a lot more and made the process of scooping them out pretty tedious.  
4. Even homemade squash tastes like wet toilet paper.  The fact that my daughter loves squash proves she was switched at birth.  Still, she's pretty awesome.

No clue on how Mina will receive this stuff.  She's in the middle of being introduced to sweet potatoes now, so she won't be able to try this until Sunday.  I'll be sure to update once she tries it.

Next up:  Bananas!