To start this piece, I’ll just admit that I have been seriously AWOL on blogging for the past few months/year. I get a hermit-induced cave built around me in the latter stages of pregnancy, to the point that I am sincerely avoidant after the baby is born. There are a number of reasons why this happens: first off,I don’t feel particularly well being so gigantic, and I just get tired of “it all.” I get tired of feeling worn out, and I get tired of talking about how worn out I am. Ben can tell you best of all how unwilling I am to talk about my feelings. They are just an albatross around my maternity belt, and I go out of my way to wear extra-baggy clothes to hide the dumb bird.

So, that being said, I’m working on recovering both physically and emotionally. I am actually able to *walk* without being in stupid pain (stupid pain: (adj.) pain that is not detrimental to the body, nor is a symptom of any other underlying problem, but merely exists to cause pain because the baby is sitting on top of your spinal cord, and thus, all the nerve endings attached to said spinal cord). I am also working on getting out of the house and inviting people over to visit more often, which is helping in working me out of my hermit cave.

In doing so, I am also able to use my brain more....which is AWESOME! If you have ever heard a woman complain about “mommy brain,” I assure you it is real. Your body is so flooded with hormones and UFIs (unrecognized floating ideas) that you really can’t discuss anything lengthier than how long the wind blew that day: “A long time...? I think...?” I thoroughly enjoy thinking, so this period of unthinking is tedious and exhausting; because I still try to think, but halfway through trying to think about thinking...I lose my train of thought. This gets old quickly, I assure you. I have had to write lists of things I am actively doing around the house so I remember to finish the load of laundry that I put in the washer, but forgot to shut the door; finish unloading the ENTIRE dishwasher before getting sidetracked and making corndog muffins for the kids; brushing my teeth after I put toothpaste on my toothbrush, and not start reorganizing the closet behind me. Stuff like that. If you have been a pregnant woman, or have spent any time around one...you’ll know “mommy brain” when you see it. We just look lost, but busy doing something. While lost. It’s weird.

All right, so I’m getting back into reality, and I’m starting to read parenting blogs again. Cool. I am always open for new ideas. Except, my body isn’t entirely back to 100% yet, so I’m yelling at my computer....

Why do mothers have logos?! This just dawned on me the other night (which greatly amused, and kind of frightened, Ben). I’m reading these blogs with super hip graphics and vintage photos of mothers all tatted up in aprons wearing a bandana on their head, stirring a bowl of something while wearing converse shoes. I can assure you, they are all way cooler than me. I get this impression with every new page. The thing is, I am not intimidated by magazine pictures of size 0 women frozen in a moment of glamorous beauty: I really don’t get fazed by them. Firstly, it is their profession to look beautiful (not mine). Secondly, they’re all photoshopped on top of it. I have seen enough “before and after” shots of the pictures, and the pictures in magazines are illustrations of women, not pictures of women. So I’m not intimidated by that.

I am intimidated by mothers who have crew cuts, tattoos, groovy clothes and 3 kids. In a clean house. I hate pictures of houses that don’t have jelly streaks on beige shag carpet, or dust building up on the unused piano, or coffee rings on IKEA tables. I don’t know what they are doing with their time during the day, other than cleaning (and being groovy by molding old vinyl records into cereal bowls...but I am a craft junkie, so I look at those in painful admiration).

Now, we had to have our carpets cleaned last year, and the carpet guy spent a good amount of time trying to get the tempra paint out of our floors. I was a little bummed that I was responsible for making this guy break out his industrial spray bottles normally used to treat oil spills in Alaska; but Ben was very encouraging and noted that the stains were made by our creativity spilling over or mud tracked inside after the kids were building forts in the backyard. So, really, these stains showed me where our priorities were: certainly not with cleaning (although I am getting a LOT better at this), but with giving our kids projects to create and build and explore. And there will be some consequences from this, such as slightly stained carpets. But what would the consequences be if we preserved the carpets and kept our kids clean all day? Where would the 5 foot tall fort be built then, or the dandelion/grass/mud soup be cooked? Where would their pictures of gnomes and transformers be painted? Not in my home, and not on my carpets...and what a shame that would be. I can buy new carpet eventually. I can’t buy Nova’s 8 year old period of painting back, or rebuild Glenn’s imagination. Those are our priorities. (end tangent)

So, back to logos. I guess I can’t be too upset with all the amazing graphics on websites. We were created to see, and we love to see things that are interesting...so inherently, there is nothing wrong with jazzing up your webpage. The thing that got me was that mothers had logos. And I was just thinking that it seems like mothering used to be something that we did, and now it is something that we market to each other. Mothering blogs have taglines now. It’s just...different, and I’m working with that. Because it feels like if you have a logo or a tagline, you are trying to convince the reader that this person has value...and I am already firm in my value of myself. Perhaps in the back of my mind is the seed of doubt which might suggest to me that if these mothers have more value with a logo, that mothers without a logo and a catch phrase have less value. Something silly like that, but if you’re human you know these little silly ideas can be the small trickle of a stream that might eventually take down a forest by the roots. I think this is the bottom of my logo-hate.

Beside all this, though, brings up the most interesting thing I have noticed with the blogs recently which is the language. I am not an advocate of Puritanical speech, by any means. I absolutely have my moments of verbal piracy, with the childhood phrases of “yars” and “down the hatch with ye” turning into...more colorful versions (we’ll just say). But when do parents mature, exactly?

“9 Things I Learned In The Parent Encouragement Program, AKA Shitty Parents Anonymous”

This is known as “edgy parenting”. This is a parent who goes to the same classes and buys the same Target sippy cups as everyone else, but they swear in their blogs to be above typical parenting (I’m guessing). It’s edgy and modern, and it assures the reader that “this isn’t your parents’ blog.” I’m actually okay with this, and it is honestly a nice break from some of the typical reading I see, where every child is a delicate flower and you are the humble gardener....stuff like that. So I don’t mind a little grit in my day. However, there is a pretty big difference between “a little grit” and “I. Am. IronMom.” :

“Accept that your children are going to do annoying shit.”

“Never get locked into a power struggle...Because now you're in a power struggle with a kid, and you won't want to lose because you won't want them thinking you're a pussy, and they won't want to lose because, hey, what's an hour wasted to them?”

“Never do for a kid what a kid can do for him or herself. This was the big one. Sometimes, your kids will stand there for eight hours before they brush their teeth and you're just like FUCK IT, and you grab the brush and assault their mouth because it's EASIER to do things for them.”

“No drive-by parenting. You have to get down face-to-face with your kids to ask them to do shit. You can't stand at the bottom of the stairs and yell at them to stop fisting the dog. They won't give a crap. Dog-fisting is too much fun.”

These were just a few examples from one page. The dog fisting metaphor was really the straw for me. But I am finding, in general, if you want to be an edgy, hipster parent who is cool and awesome and has the best hand-made paper garland headbands for your two year old daughter...you are going to swear and your are going to use weird metaphors which you would normally reserve for adult conversations.

So that’s when I thought: when do parents grow up? When do we stop using inappropriate language and humor to describe parenting, and start using more mature language to describe what we do for a living? Are we going to be “fisting the dogs” and complaining about “stupid shit” our kids do, or will we grow up and be leaders of our households, instead of just another kid who complains about having to do the dishes every night?

Do we mature when we are adults?

There was another blog I was browsing which had a big topic on having to get dressed nicely in order to take kids to preschool.

“And then I dutifully changed out of my pajama pants, put on a pair of workout pants, because everybody knows that workout pants are like Manhattan and pajama pants are Brooklyn in the world of pants without zippers, pulled on a hoodie, fixed my hair, snatched my flip flops and walked out the door.  I do this almost every morning that I take my son to school, and every day I secretly hope to see some mom who has decided to break our self imposed “no pajama pants” dress code.”

And at the end of a long list of comments of mothers who admitted they also, secretly, hated getting dressed when they dropped their kidlets off at school, there was a voice of reason (no, it wasn’t mine) who reminded everyone that in order to be good role models for their kids, they also must dress for the part. You wouldn’t take a CEO seriously if he was in purple sweatpants, and your kids shouldn’t take you seriously if you never get dressed either.

Now....I am writing this in kick-around clothes. I’m not saying you should be a fashion nazi about this. I’m just suggesting an “overall demeanor” of authority. There has to be balance in life between relaxing and working.

Under the umbrella of our position as mothers, though, it is our responsibility to be the role model for our kids first, and our appearance and behavior will guide them into becoming an adult who is cognizant of their own appearance and behavior; as opposed to adults who are completely unaware that their behavior could be obnoxious or at all unpleasant, for instance.

Role models and social influences are a big deal for your kids. Your kid will emulate their surroundings, so it is pretty crucial to be selective with what/who is around them. This is not only for how the child responds acutely, but also in the future how their influences and role models will shape whom they will become later. And some ideas will change over time, and some will take you by surprise. When I was in high school, The PowerPuff Girls were AWESOME. So I played a few episodes for my daughter, because it was like, empowering...and stuff. So, ya. I’ll just cut to the chase and say that The PowerPuff Girls are banned in my house. But Ninja Anime isn’t. It just depends on what you want your kids to focus on that will determine what you will and won’t allow around them.

This means sometimes you shelve certain language for certain times, and you put on some unwrinkled clean clothes on to take the kids to the park, and you display some good maturity to pass along to your kids as their primary role model.

But, in the long run, if you are parenting deliberately and not randomly, you’ll probably raise good kids anyway. I’m sure you already knew that