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...