Posts from the Past #TBT

I tried to clean out my drafts folder. I was moderately successful, but there were a few half-written things I just couldn't delete. I clearly meant to add more to each of them, but now that I'm used to Twitter and Facebook updates these seems long enough to be published.

September, 2011

So it's finally happened. I've been dreading it since long before I had children, going so far as to hyperventilate during a dinner party at my then boyfriend's boss' house when that was ALL THEY TALKED ABOUT, for the love of Christ. I mean, I was a first grade teacher then, I could talk about kids much better than the average single, childless, borderline alcoholic. But it wasn't just kids they were talking about.

It was kids' soccer.

And now, now I find myself reporting on my kids' soccer skills in great detail.

I never meant to become a soccer mom. Even when Ironflower begged to play soccer and I dragged Lovebug into because I thought he should try it, I never thought I'd be giving my kids pointers during games. I never thought that I would care so much about how hard they tried, or how they handled frustration or how many times they tripped over their cleats. Despite years of dance lessons and never having played a game of soccer outside of forced experiences in elementary school gym, I'm way more emotionally involved in the soccer process than I have ever been in Ironflower's dance recitals.

WTF?

November, 2011

Recently a friend of Hot Guy's spent a couple of days visiting. He has an 18 month old daughter, so naturally I used this an an opportunity to talk about what my kids were like at that age. Because if you give me an opening, I will tell you a story about my kids. I try to make the stories relevant and/or amusing, but somewhere in the back of my mind I realize that my stories are only relevant and amusing in my head.

I suppose I'll quit when I wind up on STFU Parents.

Anyway, as I was sharing stories of Ironflower's (relative) youth, I had a moment of clarity. I realized that Ironflower was a lot cooler before she started school. At 2, her imaginary friend was an Allosaurus. She played Legos. She wore pants.

At not quite 3, she started preschool. She became secretive about her love of dinosaurs. She labelled Legos as "boy toys". She became obsessed with princesses. She wanted to wear dresses or skirts every day. Her preference for pink became an obsession.

Four and a half years later, we hardly ever talk about dinosaurs. She will wear pants, but only if there's a practical reason to do so. Princesses have turned into fairies and pink has turned into purple, but she still won't invite boys to her birthday party.

Girl Toys Are Lame, November 2011

"We have to find more pink stuff, Mom." I stared at my daughter, trying to conceal my horror. "That's where the girl toys will be. Where there's pink. "

She yanked me away from all the cool Playmobil and Lego toys and dragged me to the sea of pink.

It started, I think, at McDonald's. The girl toys were always pink and the boy toys were not. The boy toys came in many different colors and could be anything from cars to superheroes to spaceships to puzzles. The girl toys? Always pink. Usually dolls.

Before preschool and McDonald's toys came into our lives, we didn't have any girl or boy toys in our house. We just had toys. But I was weak. I forgot about my women's studies courses when my dinosaur loving daughter came home from preschool and announced that she wanted to be a princess. I caved in and bought her a crown.

When the Barbies came - gifts at her 4th birthday - I let it happen. After all, I was a staunch feminist and I'd played with Barbies. And dollhouses. I'd even had a baby doll. Besides, she still built things with her brother and knew everything there was to know about dinosaurs. The fact that she never mentioned the dinosaurs to her female playmates, well, that was a little disturbing. But I'd thought I was doing okay in the appropriate toy department (if only because Ironflower and Lovebug are 15 months apart and have always played together) until the day we let them spend their own money at Toys-R-Us.

Lego-obsessed Lovebug stood slack-jawed at the shelves of Lego sets. Hugmonkey stood beside him yelling "Lego!" excitedly. And Ironflower wanted to look for pink. She bypassed the cool Playmobil sets she used to love, the board games she used to love, even the crafts. She stood in front of the pink shelves, but not in joyous awe like her brothers. Instead she scanned the aisles slightly desperately.

Everything in the aisles seemed to be poorly made, overly priced plastic. Barbie, Moxie Dolls, Littlest Pet Shop. . .the list went on. Ironflower couldn't decide what she wanted. Not because she couldn't stick to her budget or because there were too many choices, but because somewhere deep inside, she knew it was crap. And yet her desire to be like the girls in her class kept her in that section. And I knew that I had failed.

The only thing that got her out of the sea of pink plastic was that they had the new Barbie movie* in a bin in the front of the store.


*The Barbie movies are surprisingly not terrible. They have good messages and stories and I'd love them if all the characters didn't look like Barbies.