and the winner is...

Will you vote for me for Miss Universe?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlZk9tGZz-Y

in which I share pics of baby-j

I've calmed down since my last post, which is good, because I truly don't intend to argue with feminist writers and drop the f-bomb in every blog entry. Maybe just every *other* blog entry.

Anyway, here are some recent pics of baby-j that I just love. Many thanks to D for sending them along...

a rant in which Naomi Wolf goes all "stepford wife" on me, and I cry

I was perusing an old New Yorker article by Margaret Talbot that P left out on the table today about Bratz dolls. We’re familiar with them because my 12-year-old cousin has had some for about 4 or 5 years now and in our pre-baby-j days, we had time to play with her and her toys. Talbot describes Bratz dolls, accurately, as having “large heads and skinny bodies; their almond-shaped eyes are tilted upward at the edges and adorned with thick crescents of eyeshadow, and their lips are lush and pillowy, glossed to a candy-apple sheen and rimmed with dark lip liner.” I can see the appeal of these dolls in that they look “ethnically indeterminate” (as Talbot describes them) and so, rather than being an African-American or Latina doll, they simply “convey difference.”

What disturbed me when I first saw Bratz was that (again quoting Talbot) “they wear the sly, dozy expression of a party girl after one too many mojitos,” and that to take off their shoes, you rip off their feet at the ankles. Really. Scared the hell out of me when my cousin showed me for the first time how to change from the stiletto sandals to the stiletto boots.

So I’m reading Margaret Talbot’s article, and then, out of nowhere, is a quote from Naomi Wolf:

...if I were betting on culture as a form of stocks, I would get out of skinny Barbie and into multi-ethnic, imaginative Bratz dolls.

Say what? That can’t be right. Naomi Wolf, who wrote The Beauty Myth, promoting Bratz?

I just had to check out the context of this quote for myself. Sure enough, two Google-hops later, I was reading the The Dove Report: Campaign for Real Beauty, where Wolf originally wrote the above in an essay for the Dove company.

If you read the entire essay, Wolf goes on...

And I would invest in Curves – the breakout phenomenon that welcomes women of all sizes into fitness – and not invest in liposuction equipment. Most of all, I would notice, for purposes that extend far beyond body image and physical self-esteem, where the future lies –not in the outdated image of teen girl struggling with bulimia, gazing at Seventeen and wishing she could look like a model so she could feel complete, but rather on the teen girl with a picture of Mia Hamm on her wall, both a prom dress and soccer cleats piled in her closet, who likes herself just fine, who thinks her mom is the most beautiful woman she knows, and who is listening to “Girl Power” and “Together We Can” from the Cheetah Girl’s CD.

I’m torn about the report itself, which appears to be rooted in the company’s latest “pro-age” campaign, which I certainly support, but research done by a commercial organization--regardless of what I feel about the results--always makes me skeptical. That’s another topic entirely.

So back to my point and never mind the fact that this essay was written in support of research done for the Dove company.

Hey, Naomi Wolf: What the f*** happened to you? Bratz? Curves? The organization whose founder backs anti-choice groups that have recently claimed abortions increase one’s risk of breast cancer? Promoting Disney's Cheetah Girls? Yeah, the Cheetah Girls don’t look like they’ve subscribed to the “beauty myth." Methinks Wolf has been possessed.

What's up with cloaking corporate interests in feminism?

Between Bratz and the Cheetah girls, it's clear that despite what Wolf writes in her essay, the beauty myth is still alive and well. It's just even more inclusive.

And now I cry.

valentine's day

Today was a snow day, which made for a wonderful Valentine’s Day: P and I got to spend it at home with baby-j. The neighbors came over in the morning and we got a chance to relax at home.

In other news, I submitted the final draft of my dissertation proposal and the defense of the proposal is set for March 5. Whoo-hoo!

In other other news, we laid out more money for my car, which was in the shop again this past weekend. I’m hoping that this is the last time it needs to be fixed for a while—in part because of the money, but also because I’m sick of defending my car to P in lame conversations. We almost came to blows this weekend over the most ridiculous fake-argument I’ve ever heard. I started in on how my car has served us well in the four years since we bought it used; P didn’t seem convinced... At one point, there was the following intelligent exchange:
“Don’t be dissing my car.”
“You’re dissing my car. Don’t be dissing my car.”
Um, yeah.

sweeties

My composition students are currently working on an essay in which they write about the rhetorical appeals of their chosen advertisement. I just had to share this one that a student sent along to me for approval. Hope you enjoy it.

my bag

The words are coming very very quickly. My current favorite is “yo-goo” for yogurt. Baby-j also loves my purse, which he calls “BAGG-EEE!” with glee. Actually, I always call it my purse, but it really is more like a “BAGG-EEE!” since it’s a kind of small messenger bag. I’ve had a version of this bag for a while, and I love it. I often move on for a few months to other purses—usually in my attempt to downsize and carry fewer things to work. As it stands now, when I head out the door for work, I take a rolling suitcase, my lunch box, my breastpump, and my purse--sorry, I mean my BAGG-EEE! I’ve worked to try to whittle down the amount of crap I carry back and forth to work, but since I’m usually gone for 12-13 hours at a time, these four bags are essential to the snacking, the pumping, and the rolling I need to do.

Tonight when I got home, baby-j was smiling from the window, and then as I got closer, he began to pant. I thought he was excited to see me, but then he kept on with the BAGG-EEE! BAGG-EEE! BAGG-EEE! until I had placed it on the floor and he could have at the cell phone and the Kleenex. Good times.

spoon dance

I've been a very bad blogger lately. No updates on baby-j. No updates on P. Well, until I have time to write more, I shall pacify my few readers with yet another video I uploaded last week. This is baby-j's spoon dance, cut short by an NPR report. Note that he does, of course, take a break from the spoondancin' to listen briefly to NPR.

(By the way, I do typically join him in the spoon-dancing and pot-banging, but I've spared you here.)

do you wanna rock?

Some readers of this blog have been asking for something like this, so here it is: baby-j in action. We got it on video.

good news

I got my sabbatical for fall! We found out on Friday. My first reaction was Wow, I’ll actually get to write my dissertation and finish this doctorate.

My second reaction was Wow, I’ll actually have to write this thing to finish my doctorate.

And so even though we had already planned to do so, P and I spent Friday afternoon checking out some daycare options for baby-j for September, when I begin this sabbatical and need some time without baby-j in order to write. We’re looking to get him there for four hours in the morning, four days a week. We’ve found a place for him that we really like: it’s brand-new (not so important to us), provides a lot of outdoor time during the day (pretty important to us), and would give him time to socialize with other kids (very important to us). And there are no “three strikes and you’re out” biting policies.

He’ll be 2 in September. That’s just crazy to me. Do I have to refer to him as toddler-j at that point?

froggy

This is a photo of baby-j watching his cousins skate during 1 of 2 ice-skating outings while we were in MI. The holidays feel long over, and I have to admit feeling generally a bit down.

Some good news, however: P just found out that a major journal is going to publish one of his articles! Whoo-hoo! We are so excited.

Baby-j also started swim classes at the local Y. He seems to really enjoy the water. Most of the time during the lesson, he bobs up and down so fast I can barely hold him. The teacher says he’s mastered his “froggy kick,” though I am not quite sure what that is. What he’s doing looks more like butterfly stroke from the chest down. If he weren’t in water, he’d probably be giving me bruises.

true story

At dinner the other night, I delivered the following admonishment:
“baby-j, we don’t bitch-slap our sippy cup with a green bean.”

daddy oh daddy

It’s been an exhausting past few days. We headed into NYC the other night to spend the night at the apartment of the wonderful and amazing D and N. I had to work the following day, and D (bless him!) took care of baby-j the entire day. P better get back soon--you hear me over there?--as baby-j started pointing to D and calling him “daddy.” Of course, he will often call me “daddy” too; I think the label is more an acknowledgement of a favorite person. We should all be as favored by baby-j as P is.

The trip was loooong (90 minutes there and then 2 hours back the next day), but surprisingly, baby-j was pretty good in the car. The silence was interrupted by a short, loud (but not angry) shrieks from time to time. I figured out quickly that the shrieks would stop if I changed the song on the CD. As the day grew darker, and time in between shrieks grew shorter, the song-switching grew faster. Happily we arrived home before I had to resort to keeping one hand on the CD player and one hand on the wheel.

blamin' jersey

As a Jersey girl by birth with conflicted feelings about it, I have to say that I was both amused and not surprised by this CNN report on yesterday's odor:

New Jersey sniffed out as source of stench

Of course it was.

We (baby-j and I) spent this morning running around, cleaning, sorting recyclables and, after cleaning the kitchen floor, lamenting its perpetually dirty state (ok, so baby-j didn't do much lamenting on that front). In all the bustle I must have not given him enough to drink: I turned around at one point to see him sucking all of the water out of his Aquadoodle pen. (For those concerned that he was gnawing on a pen, be assured that it contains only water.)

I gave him a sippy cup of water, but then took it away when he began to water his puzzles with it.

venice

Today P set off for Venice today, heading out from New York despite the mysterious odor. So it's Day One of a Week With Baby-J. He was pretty calm about the whole leaving this morning: we played a bit in his room and he rocked on his stuffed whale. He hasn't yet mastered the "r" sound yet, so "rock" comes out like "f*ck." F*ck, f*ck, f*ck.

Yes, indeed, baby-j sure wowed both sets of relatives over the holidays with that one.

happy new year

Yesterday I overheard P swearing at the computer: “This pardeepants-lady needs to update her damn blog.” Subtle.

There’s actually not too much to update over here. We had a wonderful if somewhat hectic few weeks with the holidays, and now we’re scrambling to clean up the place before we have to get back to work next week. Actually, I have to head in tomorrow for a brief stint during which I will sit in front of a computer for 4. 5 hours helping students to register even though I know virtually nothing about the process since I only do this for 4.5 hours twice a year.

We went to our favorite Turkish restaurant in the area tonight (ok, the only Turkish restaurant in the area, or at least the only one we know of that exists in the back of a semi-vacant deli). There is much garlic breath in this household right now; even baby-j got in on the garlic-action.

stupid question

As part of baby-j's Friday morning class, parents are encouraged to do crafts. This usually involves cutting, or folding, or--my favorite--knitting, which I've recently taken up for projects not related to school. I'm not very good at it, but I enjoy how keeping my hands and eyes busy forces me away from the computer. I like doing these crafts; P's not so crazy about it. One of my current projects is a stuffed cat for school, complete with ears and whiskers. I'm almost done; I just needed a last minute consultation. So a few minutes ago, in our living room, I asked P how long he thought the tail should be.

He answered with four successive questions:

Why are you asking me this?

Then, immediately,
Haven't we agreed I suck at crafts?

And,
Do I like cats?

Then,
Am I not grading papers right now?

Um, the man has a point. Not much to say after that.

done!

Hooray! I am officially finished with the research-paper-grading and my final grades have been handed in. Now I can get worried about the upcoming semester instaead of the current one.

ribbon

baby-j and I are alone today: a loooooong day. What did you do with the boy today? P will ask when he returns.

Well, let’s see. There was some holiday cookie baking. There was laundry folding (on my part--baby-j prefers to just throw the laundry down and hump the warm, scented pile). There was an attempt at wrapping Xmas presents. There was much ribbon strewn about. There were a few meltdowns on my end because the child has only napped for 30 minutes total all day and it’s 5:30 and I have about 8 million desperate student research-paper-related emails to which I must respond. And there was the inevitable explanation to baby-j that mommy is just not as good at these long days as daddy, followed by the acknowledgement that, due to my teaching evening classes, daddy’s simply had more practice.

But now he’s singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” while shaking some bells, and all is right with the world. Oh, and I did give him a bath today.

scary sights

We are completely screwed. Last night I was cleaning up in the kitchen while baby-j played in the living room. I heard some movement of the window blinds and ran out of the kitchen to find him kneeling precariously on the arm of the chair, with window blinds in one hand, and a branch of the Christmas tree in the other.

I guess he can climb furniture at this point.

charlie brown

I was reminded that I never did post some of the shots of baby-j as Charlie Brown for Halloween, so here they are. They're not great, though these are the best of the bunch. The rest of them were yellow-and-black-blurs as baby-j whizzed by me.

This was my first attempt at fabric glue, so there was way too much of it, forming a crunchy zig-zag around his belly. This may be why he was never too keen on wearing the shirt. Ah, well... all in good time. I will become The Craftmaster. Oh, yes. I will.