He was doing a talk and book-signing at Borders, an easy 7-minute bike ride away from my house, so I decided to go. I felt a little guilty about leaving Stuart to put Daniel to bed, as our child has hit a serious stage of separationi anxiety if I am not with him AT ALL TIMES around his bedtime, but the event was close to home and free, so I went for it. There were definitely some baby bedtime issues while I was gone, but I won't dwell on that.
Alexander McCall-Smith was great, though. I got hooked on the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series a couple of years ago.
Right after Daniel was born, during those long days of brand-new motherhood when it seemed like all I did was breastfeed and get up occasionally to use the bathroom, I read most of his other books. He had so many good stories to tell, including one involving an Irish judge crawling on all fours to sneak out of a two and a half hour lecture on "Philosophy of Taxation," and the resulting dilemma of his bodyguards, who weren't sure about the best way of going about "guarding" him when he was in such a position (they settled on crouching as the most protective yet least dramatic exit). I would recount the other things he had to say, but there's no way I can adequately reproduce his choice of words, his demeanor or his tendency to crack up in the middle of an especially funny anecdote.
On a completely unrelated note, here is a picture of our visitor-slash-mouse-chaser-extraordinaire of last weekend. As you can see, Marcus and Daniel get along quite well: posted by Suze at 10:58 PM | 2 comments Happy Bambino, gifts from friends and relatives, and hand-me-downs, I've only had to fill in some gaps here and there. So off I went to Kohl's, which is situated in a big, nasty parking lot/mall complex on the west side of Madison, but nonetheless has inexpensive children's clothes and a pretty good selection.
Or so I thought. There were certainly racks and racks of things to choose from, but the choices boiled down to: - ironed-on race cars, trucks and fire engines - baseball/football/basketball motifs with things like "Daddy's little All-star!" embroidered on I didn't spend much time looking on the girls' racks, but a cursory glance showed a selection of flowers, kittens, lots of pink, and a onesie that read "Does this diaper make my butt look big?
" I shouldn't have to tell you what I thought of that one. Now, I'm not a person who gives terribly much thought to what I'm wearing. I've never had a full-time job that required dressing up every day, and I was raised to believe there are better things to spend money on than lots of nice clothes.
Things like a college education, travel and good books are more of a priority for me. (Well, and yarn, but I'm trying to be good.) Besides, most of what I wear gets doused with pee, barf, drool and pureed vegetables.
When it comes to little kids, they REALLY don't care what they're wearing, as long as they're comfortable. But at what point do they start noticing that girls are almost exclusively dressed in pretty, flowery, soft clothes, and boys in more aggressive, active, extroverted clothes? As if girls don't play sports and aren't interested in trucks.
(When I was little, I loved cement trucks. I still get kind of excited when I see one, but that's a story for another day.) As if boys can't appreciate flowers and butterflies.
After 20 minutes, I settled on the only two pairs of jammies I could stomach, one with little ducks all over, and one with puppies. When I left the store, I was thoroughly disgusted, both with the clothing companies and the store for their merchandise, and a little bit with myself for caring so much. I know there are other options out there, but I have a feeling they're expensive.
I'm not going to shop designer labels, but I want to avoid making my kid look like a lil' NASCAR fan. I don't have time to make all of his clothes, and I don't think it's worth it considering that he, too, is often covered with pee, drool and all the rest. I also know that in the scheme of things, this is not a big deal.
The war in Iraq, global warming, homophobic legislation - all those things bother me a heck of a lot more than baby fashion trends. Maybe I should start a line of affordable, stereotype-free kids' clothes. Maybe I should just get over it.
posted by Suze at 11:20 AM | 10 comments Thorny's post on the value of mothering. It's from a few days ago, and it got the ol' noggin cranked up to write a post on a similar topic, but that hasn't happened yet. Anyway, I encourage everyone to read it whether you're a parent or not, because she's got a lot of good things to say in there.
Secondly, I've been tagged! Whoo! Steph made a list of her ten favorite books and now she's making me do it.
As if I need my arm twisted to do such a thing. I love reading and I love lists and I have a napping baby and a pile of dishes I don't feel like washing and a piano that I don't feel like practicing (although I had a insightful piano lesson this morning, which I also want to write about soon), so now seems like the perfect time. I haven't been reading much lately, which is ironic, considering the subject of this post.
When you combine the sleep-deprivation I've had of late with the intellectual rigor of recital preparation and physical exhaustion of taking care of a 7.5mo, all I can muster up the energy for is cookbooks, food magazines, and knitting blogs. It makes me feel sad and shallow.
Were it not for the whole "being in grad school" thing, I would be afraid of turning into a smaller, messier version of Martha Stewart. Enough with the excuses! Here's my list (in no particular order): The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.
I actually thought that book kind of sucked, and here I'd had all this build-up before reading it. Granted, the feminist religious stuff was pretty cool, but the prose read like a bad movie script, and I kept envisioning Tom Hanks running around the Louvre and it just didn't work for me. OK, here we go for real.
By the way, I'm not doing the link to Amazon because I quickly get impatient with links, and I know if y'all really wanted to find these books, you're capable of going to Amazon or your library or local bookstore and finding them yourselves. He was doing a talk and book-signing at Borders, an easy 7-minute bike ride away from my house, so I decided to go.
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