Vital Stats...

Naomi at 2 years: 32.75 inches tall, 22.25 pounds. She's petite...we know this, but healthy. She's doing the things a two year old is supposed to do and even some things that are expected of older kids. With a second case of nursemaid's elbow, the doctor showed us how to try to pop things back if we're absolutely sure it's nursemaid's elbow (I'm not sure we'll do this should it happen again) and a suggestion to be cautious with things like monkey bars where she might hang and put extra stress on the elbow until she's a little older and more sturdy in the elbow joint.

Miriam at 4 months: 24 inches tall, 14 lbs 13 ounces..."Don't be surprised if she outweighs the other one in the next six months." I won't be. But my carpal mommy syndrome (pain in my wrist and hand) in my left arm isn't loving it. She's much larger than Naomi was at four months though-Naomi was around 11 pounds I think, and was probably two inches shorter. Miri is doing well-got a physical therapy referral to Florida Hospital for her head and neck. I need to talk to zedrikcayne about scheduling that because I'll need help while that's going on. May need to arrange a sitter for Naomi if we end up doing PT as well-someone to play with her for an hour or two, either down at the hospital or here at the house or something.

Next appointment for Miri is in June. Naomi doesn't have to go back for a whole year, unless something is wrong, though we'll also have a dentist appointment and probably an eye doctor referral next year...I want to watch the eyes so we can catch any problems early-both Andy and I have worn glasses since we were in elementary school and probably should have started before we did, so if I can catch a problem early it may help.

So I have healthy kids. I'm fortunate that way.

Is this really what we should be teaching about men?

(I know a couple of you probably read the same post on the mailing list I'm about to talk about...I just couldn't formulate a polite response to the sentiment so I'm going to talk about it here and maybe something will come up and I can write a nice, polite and disgusted response.)

A parenting mailing list I'm on has had a recent conversation about protecting our children from the threat of molesters (without really saying that that's what the conversation is about.) It's a reasonable thing to discuss on a parenting mailing list, and most of the discussion has been interesting. The book "Protecting the Gift" has been tossed around...trying to find the right balance of caution and freedom...the usual kinds of things. And I was fine with the discussion, didn't have anything to contribute...until the email that spouted off the following: "All men are pervs."

I was disgusted. Yes. Statistically more men are child molesters than women. And it's important to teach our children to trust their intuition and to trust our own...that's one of our protective measures, and to trust our own-sure we'll err on the side of caution sometimes, but that's better than putting ourselves or our children in dangerous or damaging situations. But to make a blanket statement like that...what a nice way to talk about your husbands. What a great thing to teach your sons-that their destiny is to be "pervs," and that they should be feared, reviled, hated, avoided, and all that. That's not what I want to teach my girls about men and certainly if I had sons, not what I want to teach my sons about the kind of men they'll grow into.

This kind of sexism is no more okay with me than someone saying "All women are whores" and I'm not sure why a bunch of mothers-some of whom have sons would think it's okay.

I'm angry. I've yet to find a group of other mothers who I really connect with...this isn't going to drive me away from this group like the Wiccan incident did with a different group, but I'm not happy. And I hope my daughters grow up knowing better...

To cheer me up

I will talk about Naomi having a tantrum last night.

Because the subject of her tantrum was in fact very funny.

She has lots of magnets to play with-numbers, letters, animals and vehicles. The number set I bought for her came with some "counting stars"-they're plain yellow stars that you can count with and practice math and so on.


So Naomi likes her magnets and knows they're supposed to stay in the kitchen. But she got terribly frustrated with them last night and brought one to her Papa who was having serious cuddles with Miri. And she was in tears. The magnet wouldn't stick to her belly button. It kept falling off every time she tried to stick it to herself. This was terrible and tragic to my two year old. And unfortunately I had no stickers that she could stick to herself...I will remedy that soon.

She also just came over to me and said "Monkey! Ook ook!" I had no idea she knew monkey noises. Her pronunciation of the word "monkey" has gotten much clearer in the last few days too.