Your Friday Awesome: Everyone Wants Grandbabies

This is family. This is love. This is pretty much the exact same reaction I got from my mom.

Rick Perry and the rest of the homophobes can suck it.

The Breeders: The Cleavers of the New Millenium

Who is that second kid? Foreshadowing...

We are in what may be the worst economy since the Great Depression and my husband just quit his job. 

He hated it. It was not his “calling” and the benefits sucked. I actually like my job and the benefits are great — not only does the entire family have medical, dental and vision coverage, but I had six months of maternity leave for cryin’ out loud.

We decided it made sense for Adam to quit his job, for one very simple reason — economics. It may sound counterintuitive — to decide to have less income does not seem like a smart economic decision — but daycare is expensive. Very expensive. Almost more expensive than our rent.

On average, a nice daycare will run you about half of one of our monthly salaries. Add in bus fare, lunches, maintaining your work attire, sick days for the inevitable daycare colds, and it didn’t really make sense for Adam to spend forty hours a week away from the kid just so we could afford to have someone else take care of him for forty hours a week.

And while I may be the only one with a dependable salary and benefits, Adam’s talents will also be bringing in some income. More importantly, he gets to spend time with the kid while launching a career he actually likes.

So, now I bring home (the majority of) the bacon and my husband fries it up in a pan. Surprisingly well, I might add. But he also does the laundry, mops the floors, illustrates and paints commission projects, and makes sure the kid is not only in one piece by the end of the day, but is enriched and happy.

I may have gotten the easier end of the deal.

Also posted on Alameda Patch.

The Breeders: Shop Local This Holiday

I was up at 4 a.m. on Black Friday, but rather than elbowing shoppers away from doorbuster deals, I was trying to convince the kid to go back to sleep ... again.

I've never participated in the Black Friday consumer extravaganza since I'm not really that big on shopping to begin with. Department stores are overwhelming and I have yet to be convinced that the deals are worth digging through the overstock discount stores.

Sure, I do love a good Target run (one-stop shopping!), but if I had the choice I would do all my shopping online. Amazon's free shipping has led to something of an addiction.

But, this year we've decided that we will eschew Target and Amazon and do all of our holiday shopping here in Alameda. We can reduce our carbon footprint by walking to the stores and not having anything shipped. And, we can support the local economy by doing what we already enjoy: walking through our adorable (albeit temporarily treeless) downtown, saying hello to friends and supporting our neighborhood businesses.

Of course, with a husband who is an artist, my love of holiday baking, and one very cute new expense, we'll also be giving a few homemade gifts.

...speaking of that artist husband of mine, if you want to join us in our local economy boost you can do that and support our schools this Saturday at the Alameda Education Foundation's Holiday Fair. Come by the Elks lodge and get really local by supporting your local mommyblogger's family economy and buy paintings and ornaments from her husband. The kid and I will be there between naps.

Also posted at Alameda Patch.

Your Friday Awesome: Adorable Arthur Recreates Movie Scenes

12 Angry Men Bunnies and Bears

Meet Arthur. He re-enacts scenes from movies. Seriously, how do these moms have the wherewithal to be so darn creative during postpartum hormonal craziness?

The American Beauty one is a little cringe-worthy except that Arthur looks absolutely adorable - and quite like my kid.

The Breeders: Your Mom's on Facebook

The first time I saw someone “poke” another person I was looking over the shoulder of a 19-year-old sophomore I was tutoring. Rather than writing a paper on Machiavelli she was alerting her softball teammate, who was next to her also not writing a paper for English 1A, that Melissa and Ryan were in fact dating — it was official on Facebook.

Instead of chastizing her for being off task, I was appalled (at the ripe old age of 26) that the youth of today were getting real-time updates on each other’s love lives. “Isn’t it weird to find out stuff like that on the internet?” I asked. “Um, no ... old, out of touch, grad student.”

Okay, she didn’t say that last bit ... but, at that point, only college kids were even allowed on Facebook, and I really didn’t need to know about my students’ partying.

I didn’t create an account until Facebook opened to people without a .edu email address, and I had to do so for work — when it became not just a place to keep tabs on your ex, but to promote projects and share news. As it became more popular and my friends joined, I made friends through it, and yes kept tabs on their love lives. But, then I had to figure out how to keep it both useful and appropriate for work and my social life.

And then everyone joined Facebook. Everyone. Not, just your friends, and your ex, and your boss, but your mom. Not only did you need to make sure to hide questionable photos from your boss, but your parents — and you had to hope they didn’t talk about your childhood underwear on the internet where your boss could read it.

My experience was a little different. I actually had to convince my mom to create an account and was only successful because shortly after she joined she wasn’t just mom but grandma. Now I am the “mom on Facebook” - and new moms (and dads) have a whole new online persona to figure out. Namely, how not to end up on STFU Parents.

Among the conversations we had about parenting before the kid was born, my husband and I laid some ground rules for our post-baby social media habits. We agreed that we would never share the contents of his diapers, naked baby butts (though they are ridiculously cute), change our profiles pictures to pictures of only our kid (though we don’t judge if you want to), and we wouldn’t complain about our kids on the internet. Then we wondered how much was too much? How many adorable pictures? How many milestones? How many hilarious quotes? We decided we’d figure it out as we went.

Then the kid was born, and he is adorable, and his milestones are many. The first few weeks were a veritable avalanche of baby photos. Too many? Maybe.

Not all of our friends have babies, but we are suddenly a fertile group and they are multiplying, so I’m sure for some folks it can be a little weird to suddenly see a feed full of rosy cheeked cherubs (and weird little alien old men when they are fresh out of the oven) when just last year it was all pictures of parties and exotic vacations. But, our friends are a creative and generous bunch so half (OK, maybe less than half) of the pictures I’m tagging with the person who designed or picked out the kid’s onesie as a sign of appreciation.

There is also that whole co-worker factor — do they really want to see that many pictures of my kid? Maybe not, but that is a pretty fertile group too, and since those at the top of the organizational ladder put pictures up of their kids I think I’m okay.

In the end, I’ve decided to be selective, but still pretty prolific — why? Because Grandma is on Facebook. What started for college kids and added twenty-somethings, and then coworkers has evolved into a place to for everyone - including Grandma, Great Uncle, second cousins and my first-grade teacher (no really, I tagged her in the picture of the kid cuddled up in the adorable blanket she knitted for him), and they all demand pictures of their darling boy.

Also, Facebook is a place to share who you are. Sure you can sculpt your personal brand, but my online persona isn’t that far off of who I am in real life, and now who I am is a mom —  a mom on Facebook. I figure if people don’t want to see that many pictures of the kid they can unsubscribe from my feed or just follow me on Twitter — though you’ll still get links to my mommy blog.

Also posted on Alameda Patch.

The Breeders: Back to Work

So much for my stay-at-home mama status. I'm now making frenemies with my breast pump.

The Breeders: The Honeymoon Is Over

My town decided to clear cut our main street as part of "revitalization." We (me and pretty much everyone else in town) are pissed. I tried to be a grown up about pointing out what a dumb decision it was.