Music Monday: Kiana Brown "Hey Chica"

I've been lucky enough to have a few awesome pre-teen girls enter my life lately, and this is now on my "You Are Awesome" playlist (along with pretty much anything Willow Smith does).

Its unfortunate that the video starts with boys, but its body positive and inclusive - and most importantly has a fun dance beat. And let's be honest we could all use a fun dance beat today.

Your Friday Awesome: Sonia Sotomayor, "being a princess is not a career"

Nerd Alert: JSTOR has...wait for it...a store.

One of the most exciting things for me about going to graduate school at a major university rather than the tiny liberal arts college I went to for undergrad, was the sheer amount of resources I could access from the comfort of my couch. 

I probably killed ten full grown trees printing out pdfs from JSTOR - I was in the humanities. We take notes. Actual notes. With a pen. 

Now, JSTOR has a STORE. 

Said store has baby clothes, intended for those PhD candidates who didn't make it out before procreating, I'm sure, but also for those of us who spend far too much time thinking about the things they should have written their thesis on instead.

Your Friday Awesome: Forget the RNC, Meditate On These Water Balloons

That is all.

Here's another toy I will not buy for my son

Didn't you know? Crafting is only for girls, unless you are making heavy equipment. In that case, no girls allowed.

Your Friday Awesome: Ode to Joy Flash Mob

Okay, I have a quibble with the definition of "flash mob," but the beauty of this is amazing. I love the close ups of the crowd reaction, and as a choir nerd the cut to the dad in the choir with his kid on his shoulders makes me want to find a choir to join yesterday.

h/t Shakesville.

The Breeders: Why Walk When Crawling Keeps You Closer to Gross Stuff to Put in Your Mouth?

He is his mother's child in so many ways...

Your Friday Awesome: Forget Unicorns, Whale Spouts Magical Rainbows

Wait for it...shazaam!!!

The Breeders: My child's first birthday was not #Pinterest worthy.

A year ago I pushed a human being out of my body. Now he (lovingly) smears frosting on my pants. But, it is sugar free frosting. A lovely tasty one in the case of the cake my sister made him. A gloppy mess in the case of the cake that I made. Yes, he had two parties. No, they were not Pinterest worthy. Well, maybe Autie's cake was.

Happy birthday.

The Breeders: Separation Anxiety...for Mama

Next week I have to travel for work. Needless to say I'm a bit anxious about it. Any tips for surviving parental separation anxiety are greatly appreciated. But, don't worry I will fully take advantage of the opportunity to sleep - anxiety will not win out over Ambien.

...and why, yes, of course my son already has a cape....

The Breeders: Achieving key parenting milestones

Adam: What did you write your blog post about this week?

Me: Cheerios and maracas.

Adam: Oh, cool.

Yep, this is the new normal. Read about it over on the Patch.

Your Friday Awesome: Calming Manatee

Who doesn't need a little manatee in their day?

The Breeders: First Word? Maybe?

From my new favorite blog, Parenting with Crappy Pictures.

I was an English major who maybe took too many semiotics classes. I also have a friend going to school to be a speech pathologist, so I might be over thinking the whole first word thing, but when the first word is just a shortened version of repeated babbling, its hard to tell.

I don't want to shortchange the kid, but I may also be the only mom who was also kind of hoping it would be "dada." It seems only fair considering he spends all day with him.

The Breeders: A Meaningful Mother's Day

Strong Families cards celebrate all kinds of mamas.

My masters thesis examined how women have used the socially accepted role of "mother" to work towards peace. It had a 23 page bibliography.

I refrained from using any footnotes in my recent Patch blog on the origins of Mother's Day and the many organizations using Mother's Day to call attention to maternal and infant mortality the world over.

I also talked about how I can't wait to get handmade cards and macaroni necklaces.

Music Monday: Sing, Sing a Song (to which your pre-verbal baby can harmonize)

If my kid gets antsy all I need to do is start singing. One day my mom and I needed a new song to sing while she made dinner (thanks, mom!) and I cleaned up the kitchen so we started singing this classic. Neither of us could remember all the words so we just started singing, "la, la, la, la." Turns out those geniuses at Sesame Street in all their 1970s pro-child (and bell bottoms, and polyester shirt) amazingness knew that mom brain could only handle two verses and those are the actual words to the chorus!

But, they also may have proven their knowledge of child development. Last night I was singing this over and over to my kid who, according to my friend studying speech pathology, is at the "jargon" stage in his language development. He doesn't use actual words, but can have a whole conversation and tell you all about his day in words we aren't privy to. After two rounds, he started singing along with the "la, la" chorus. Every. Time.

Well, at least until his dad came in and I tried to show him that our son is obviously a musical genius.

Your Friday Awesome: Gertrude (Beer) Stein

As an English and Women's Studies major, and a lover of Amy Poehler I think this might be the most awesome thing ever. scATX of Speaker's Corner made this and shows you how you can to via Zazzle. 

The Breeders: Eat Like a Baby

Another exciting installment in the "things you don't know to expect when you have a baby" files - having a kid means you have to start eating like an adult - or at least wait until after he goes to bed to have brownies.

The Breeders: Forget College, We're Going to Need a Grocery Fund

When my sister was a toddler, the pediatrician assured my mother that babies can live on a tablespoon of solid food a day. My kid, on the other hand, eats more than most adults do for breakfast. I can only imagine the grocery bill when he's in high school. Growing a giant is gonna be expensive.

Your Friday Awesome: US Suffrage/Bad Romance Parody

I love me a good history lesson with costumes, choreography and humor.

The Breeders: My Baby Is a Hipster

Check out my post on The Patch about how my child loves vinyl and unlistenable noise pop. Now he just needs a fixie tricycle.

Your Friday Awesome: Feminist Harry Potter (and Hermione, and Ron)

Another YA series is taking over popculture, but this is still awesome.

The Breeders: The Hunger Games Might Not Be the Best Date for New Parents

I was more surprised than anyone that I actually didn't hate the movie adaptation of The Hunger Games. I'm a pretty harsh movie critic, especially when it comes to movies based on beloved books. 

The only problem is that I'm a new parent and it is a movie about kids getting slaughtered. Read about my emotionally exhausting movie watching over on the Patch.

Your Friday Awesome: Circle of Six

There is a lot of talk about how technology can be dangerous for (especially young) women - sexting, check-in apps, etc. But technology can also be really useful. Circle of 6 does what a lot of people do already - use your friends to get out of sticky situations.

With two taps (and the tap to get to the app) you can let your friends know where you are if you need a ride or get separated, have a welcome interruption, or help advise you out of an unhealthy situation.

People, myself included, have being doing this with our friends for years, but now you don't need to excuse yourself to go to the bathroom to call or text a buddy. The app does it for you based on a predetermined circle of trusted friends, which is pretty awesome.

The only thing that Circle of 6 doesn't do is my #1 rule of dating: Make sure someone knows where you are and who you are with before you go on the date.

The Breeders: The Best Way to Babyproof

Borrow your friend's toddler. Let them loose. Try not to die of a heart attack. Clean up after the mess.

The Breeders: Postpartum is a Bitch

Luckily I live in a time and place where postpartum care and support is available from people who (mostly) know that breastfeeding is hard and depression may be looming. However, none of the books or medical professionals seem to pay attention to or prepare you for one minor detail - creating, carrying around and delivering another human kind of fucks with your body.

Okay not kind of...it really does. And no I'm not just talking about the extra weight you gained to sustain that human, but all the other stuff. The ligaments, muscles and joints that are affected. Maybe 22 year-olds don't have this problem. But let me tell you 32 year-olds do. Thank god I found some people to help me out.

The Breeders: We've Gone Mobile

I'm pretty careful about what pictures of my baby I put on the internet, but seriously...how could I not share this adorableness?

Hear about our adventures in crawling and use of smartphones on the Patch.

The Breeders: So Much for Our Food and Entertainment Budget

This kid is definitely an adventurous extrovert. He loves being out and about. His favorite adventure is going out to eat - not that he gets to eat much (mostly the grains of each ethnic fare, so far) - but, he's okay with that since his favorite thing is watching the wait staff.

Read about how this is blowing our household budget over at the Patch.

The Breeders: Giving the Kid Some Privacy

Years ago, before I went to Austin or we got married we were joking around about how celebrities name their kids crazy things like Apple and we tried to come up with the craziest names we could. We settled on Tractor, for a boy, and Beige for a girl.

The nicknames stuck. Every time we talked about our future kid we referred to him as Tractor. I bought a toy tractor to give to my husband for when I told him I was pregnant. Even our friends caught on. When I was pregnant everyone referred to our future baby as Tractor.

I thought about using it as a pseudonym here, but I figured that people would probably continue to use the nickname in real life so it would defeat the purpose of not telling the entire internet my kid's name. Oddly, the nickname disappeared. No one calls him Tractor. We didn't even get any Tractor themed baby gifts. It seems his personality is bigger than any nicknames that preceded him.

I still haven't come up with a good moniker for him, and I don't plan on sharing his real name, 'cause well the internet can be full of weirdos - no offense.

My recent Patch post talks about keeping the weirdos at bay and also trying not to leave a totally embarrassing internet legacy before the kid can have a say about it.

Your Friday Awesome: Children's Gendered Advertising Remixer

Pick a commercial targeting boys and one targeting girls and swap the audio. The result is pure awesomeness. Sure its hilarious, but it also points out the extreme division of constructed gendered norms.

What really strikes me is that the cuts and punctuation in all of these commercials is exactly the same. Further proof that many children's toys are derivative and void of any true thought. So yeah, the state of kids toys? Not awesome. Screwing with the system? Totally awesome.

This also makes me really glad that we don't have cable. When the kid finally gets to watch television he can watch Sesame Street and Yo Gabba Gabba commercial-free.

Music Monday: Smile - Ska for Kids

My baby loves music. Probably because his dad loves it, too. They spend a lot of the day listening to records and making music. Adam actually helped make this one. He did the cover art while we were waiting for the kid to arrive and had a really fun time with it.

That's the theme of this record - fun, fun, fun. One or another of Adam's bands has been on Asian Man Records for last fifteen years or so, and I can attest - dude is fun. When he's not making music and running the label, Mike Park is busy marrying us and everyone else we know. Seriously, if you need someone to marry you, he is really good at it. Your ceremony will be romantic and heartfelt, but also super fun.

He is also really good at making kids music. All the big kid and baby blogs (and punk news sites) have been all over this record. Mike has two ridiculously adorable kids of his own to inspire him so I'm not surprised.

So (shameless plug), if you buy this record I would suggest foregoing iTunes and getting the CD version through good old fashioned mail order, it looks like a Little Golden Book and it comes with crayons so your kid can color the coloring book pages inside. See...FUN!

Your Friday Awesome: Jailbreak the Patriarchy

Jailbreak the Patriarchy is a Chrome extension that swaps the gendered pronouns in your browser. Technological genderf*cking. Pretty awesome.

The Breeders: The Sandbox. The Point of No Return

Another point in the Plus column for our town - the parks are so well maintained at least we don't have to worry about needles and cat poop.

The Breeders: The Best and Worst Part About Being a Working Mom

I can make my kid happier than he has ever been and crush his soul all in the span of five seconds.

That won't screw with your psyche at all...

The Breeders: My Husband's Best Parenting Tip

Speaking of increments of time, my most recent post on The Patch is about how my husband is a genius and came up with a super simple way to keep us sane.

Counting. 

No, really. That's it.

Your Friday Awesome: The Longest Shortest Time

Do you have a baby? Do you know someone who has a baby? Are you about to have a baby? Are you thinking about having a baby? Soon? Ten years from now? Are you now, or may you in the future be around anyone that may have a baby?

Yes? Good. LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST.

I read all the books. All the blogs. I had a few friends that had babies. I was once a baby who was parented by a mother who shared stories about my babyhood. I was not prepared to have a baby.

The first few months are hard. Those first few weeks are very hard. You need to know that everyone else thinks they are hard too, but most importantly you also need to know that those first few weeks and months that feel like they will never end, that you will never stop being required to keep a person alive solely with what is made of your own body, that you will never stop smelling like spit up and spoiled milk, that you will never be able to control your hormones...that will all end. It will end soon. It will end faster than your required quarter of Western Civ. It will end more quickly than a season of American Idol.

It will end.

And the moments that are amazing, that make you laugh, that make you think you might just be totally capable at this, that make you think you could never love any person more (but not so much that you sob every time you think about it) will be much more frequent. The moments that you enjoy your baby will greatly outnumber the moments that are hard, and you will begin to forget the time when they didn't - and that, my friends, is awesome.

The Breeders: Sorry, Kitty. You're Not the Baby Anymore

Yes, I wrote about my cat. Yes, I referred to my cat as a "big brother."Evidently this is a thing that happens when you are a mommy blogger blogger that happens to have a baby and also a cat.