I didn’t make my goal of posting 5 days a week, but I figured 4 is better than nothing. Baby steps, baby steps.

This morning I was browsing Facebook & came across an article from The Stir about a mom keeping her sons hair long. I immediately clicked over, because I have a son with long hair & Caspian pretty much seems like he’ll follow along the same hairy path. The article was about an issue that no matter how I try I just can’t seem to understand.

I’ve mentioned before that I tend to lean a little to the right on some issues & I am more conservative than some other bloggers I read. I also have mentioned how I wish the issue of gender stereotyping with children would die, but since it hasn’t I reserve the right to talk about it again & this time I asking for those of you who feel strongly about it to help me understand.

I enjoy being a woman very much. I am happy with the traditional roles that my husband & I play in our home. I’m not interested in chasing out lizards, dumping the garbage or hunting down the mysterious smells coming from under the sink. I don’t mind the laundry-well I do mind it, but there are a lot of things I’d mind more. I enjoy making him dinner & serving him when he’s home. Even though I prefer playing the role of a 1950′s housewife I am no Michelle Duggar. He is not my king, lord, nor my master. I am his equal & his partner. I get my way, he gets his, I get mine twice, he gets his a half. There is no “Well he said it, so it is so” in my home so please understand that.

I wouldn’t necessarily consider myself a feminist. And so maybe that is why when the issues come up about not raising our children within the confines of gender I tend to be a little confused. When I hear things about not wanting your daughters to be princesses I scratch my head. I don’t understand why we are putting so much insistence that men & woman are the same, because in case you haven’t looked down below lately we aren’t. We move differently, we speak differently, we act differently. Women push babies out, men push sperm. Women can bring peace to a situation with one assuring glance while a man can bring confusion. Men are stronger than most women. Women are stronger than most men.

Why are we putting so much focus on trying to be like men, when we can put focus on being the women we were created to be. When did it become a shameful thing for a little girl to want to put on a pink dress or a little boy to want to play with a truck and not a stupid baby doll? 

I understand the idea behind all of us being equal because we are. We should have equal pay, equal rights, and be respected equally. But I just feel that to continue to say we are the same is ridiculous. We really aren’t the same in various ways. Woman we’re given such special gifts, things that only we can do, feel & understand. I don’t want to be able to do every single thing my husband can, I don’t think I’d be as good as he is. I want to be the best I can at what I was designed to be. He can never be me, I can never be him. Our strengths & our weaknesses are different. 

Those of you that believe in living outside of the “gender box” do you ever wonder what kind of message it sends to your children? I am asking honestly here. Do you ever feel like if your daughter hears you ranting & raving over these issues do you ever feel she may start resenting being a woman & instead desiring to be men since make them out to be so damn cool?

As 2012 closed and 2013 started to open I, like most humans, started thinking about what my new year’s resolutions would be. For the 4 years of this blog {which was apparently two months ago and I forgot} I’ve written pretty much the same thing every single year. Be more organized always tops this list and I never, ever seem to make any kind of dent. This year I even made a list of 13 things in my small apartment that I wanted to de-clutter & have not touched ONE THING. I’m just not good at time management. I never really have been, but I have a 7 MONTH OLD that only sleeps in two-hour increments so instead of organizing cupboards I take a nap. And no I don’t feel any guilty about it.

 Back to my resolutions.

I have lived in LA for almost three years now & I haven’t met any people & this is very, very sad. This year I was determined that I was going to crawl out of the deep & dark shell I call home & actually do things. I am proud to say that now with 3 months of the year behind me I have accomplished just that. I joined Meetup.com back before Christmas and since I go to some type of playgroup with Caspian once a week, if not more. We go to Yoga, music classes, playgroups at people’s homes & the park, and cute themed parties. I go and I chat & mingle & chat & mingle & smile & laugh & coo. This is huge for me. I’ve touched before on my extreme social anxiety, but I got really fed up with fear dictating my life. I’m a grown woman and it is time I act like one. Every time I don’t cancel or “accidentally” get lost on the way I want to give myself a gold star. I admit that I still hang back & observe a little more than some of the other moms but I’m making progress.

Being home with an infant day in and day out is really lonely & if you are like me & have a husband who isn’t always available it can be even more isolating. I have great built in friends with my sisters & my Mom but sometimes you want people who can relate to the vomit on your clothes, the husbands who have occasional jackass slip-ups & understand why you loathe Caillou. Enter Mom Friends. So I am on the prowl for some good quality girlfriends. 

I have a pretty different parenting approach than many do. Shawn and I are extremely laid back & don’t stress over some of the things other parents do {honest to God you should see some of the questions that get asked in one of the mom FB groups I’m apart of}. Admittedly there are some downfalls to this, but it’s a style/approach that works best for us & we continue. But because I have been trying to meet moms I’ve been a little sensitive about our parenting style. It could be just that it’s my social anxiety taking over, but I often wonder if when I off-handedly mentioned that Caspian fell out of the bed if all the moms shock & awe was for poor Caspian’s bad nighttime luck or his bad luck to be saddled with such an irresponsible & sleep parent. Would being friends with a strict granola eating hippie make me feel like a shit mom every single time we are together because instead of kale chips as the park snack I grab juice boxes & good old Goldfish. Would they think me particular lazy if I tell them some days we sleep until 9 {if we are really lucky} instead of being up at 6 AM and making arts & crafts out of used toilet paper rolls?

Do you think it’s important to be friends with Moms who are like-minded? Who won’t judge you if your kid knows the Disney Jr. evening schedule? Moms who can sit with you and commiserate about how much they fear when their children say “Hey Mom, why… {insert random question you can here}“. I want to look for moms who are similar to me because I don’t want to have to worry if Phoenix will lose a playmate if we let him bring out one his many toy guns. I want to feel comfortable to joke that Phoenix can be an asshole sometimes instead of being chastised that I used my child’s name & ass in the same sentence. I want to sit & talk sometimes about things other than my children! 

Will the long leash I extend my children be clipped by the helicopter parent, my ankles bitten by the tiger mom?

Attachment Parenting Dropout found at the  Huffington Post is what got me thinking about this particular topic.

You guys I am really afraid I have bit off more than I can chew. Finding the time to blog every single day has been really tough and today is only day THREE. But I’m not going to quit. I always quit things, but I will prevail!

I have been going to a lot of playgroups with Caspian the last several months & pretty much all the moms I have met are first times moms so I am like veteran smart mommy of the group {ha! never thought I’d say that!} with my brood of two. I certainly in no way have all the knowledge of parenthood but I think I have a few words of wisdom that I can pass along to new parents.

1. If you can pick a sleeping baby’s boogers without them flinching then, and only then, is it safe to lay them in the crib.

2. Silence makes the heart grow fonder.

3…it also makes the house messier.

4. Never under estimate the power of the proper dosage of Dimetapp

5. Not all children’s shows are created equal. Some are created just to make us crazy.

6. A fragrant baby lotion can cover a multitude of smells.

7. Never count out a sick child. Just when you think they are the sickest their energy will rival that of a puppy on speed.

8. No matter how much you spend on Christmas, the toy from the happy meal will always be better.

9. Nothing will ever seem fair so don’t even try to make it.

10. 20 Questions is a preschoolers version of waterboarding. 

Boom. 

I don’t make it a regular practice to air my marital dirty laundry, but I’m going to need some good material for 30 days of straight blog writing so… I have only blogged once about something my husband wasn’t happy about & it did lead to a disagreement in which I had to apologize. However, I don’t think he will be too mad if I blog about our fight this morning and if he is, well then…show the police this.

Caspian is a really tactile baby & has Benjamin Button syndrome. Instead of sleeping longer his nighttime sleep is still that of a small infant as is his nursing schedule which is something close to “nurse every time I see Mom” literally. He looks at me, I smile, he smiles and starts his cute crawl my way & crawls up my lap. It still makes things really hard to do & I have to be extra good about accomplishing things when he’s sleep.

Today, Shawn was home in the morning & after watching an episode of The Borgia’s, Caspian was asleep and I grabbed a quick 15 minute catnap {getting up at 6:30/7 has been a huge adjustment & more on naps later}. Once Caspian was up {9:30} I nursed him on both sides & took him to his Dad. I grabbed a quick shower, popped my head out of our bedroom & told Shawn I was going to be cleaning the bathrooms & our bedroom. With Shawn on child duty I knew I only needed 30 minutes & I could whiz through all of the most neglected chores in our apartment.

But this didn’t happen because within 5 minutes of me closing the door all I hear is Caspian’s velociraptor yell/cry & open the door “Uh, what’s wrong?” “I think maybe he wants to eat.” “I just fed him, not even an hour ago.” “Well maybe he’s hungry again. Just try.” “Shawn he isn’t, he just wants me and I can’t take him now. You deal.” “Really I think he wants to eat.” by this point Caspian is crawling to me with red bulging teary eyes so I scooped him up & stormed off in a insulted wife huff.

The morning precedes with him trying to clean the bathrooms and me yelling that I need him to help more when he’s home & he needs to figure out what Caspian needs without coming to me every 5 minutes ect, ect, ect. It ended with his rendition of “I go to work, this is your job.” HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALT. I gathered up my iPad & EIGHT magazines that I had started & stopped since February, grabbed my keys & headed to the pool & closed the door by saying “I won’t be back until I finish every single one of these magazines” and I didn’t come back until I had. And when I got back the house was clean, including the bathrooms, Phoenix was occupied and Caspian was asleep. See you can do it without my help. 

I took ME time by force, but I also was so steaming mad that he actually implied that he doesn’t need to help because this was MY job that I had to get out of the house. Let me add that my husband is wonderful. He’s a great husband & a really fantastic father. But we certainly have some issues to iron out.  Maybe he just said this because he was pissed at me, but maybe there really is a little bit of “But this is your job” attitude he has.

I’m happy being a SAHM. I feel completely blessed that we are financially solid enough that I don’t have to put the babies in daycare or send them to my Mom while I go work some mind-numbing job, but HELLO being a Mom is hard & being a SAHM is even harder. Just because I’m home & he works outside of the home that doesn’t give him carte blanche to ignore any responsibilities of home does it? Just nursing a baby is a full time job, waking up with said baby every 2 hours is a part-time job, cooking & cleaning up all the meals is another full-time job, laundry is a job & half, than there is a 4 year old and all his needs, the chores, the management of the schedule and remembering where the wallets, belts and shoes get tossed at the end of the day. Aren’t I out working him at every given moment?

You know when you want to stop doing something but you know that the moment you do you’ll regret it? That is how I feel about blogging right now. I feel like stopping, not because I want to, but because my time lately is not what it used to be. I’ve never been as good with my time as other people or other bloggers. I’ve tried the editorial calendars & set aside time to dedicate to thinking about new ideas but it never seems to work. In order to be a “successful blogger” {by the way what is a “successful blogger”?} you have to offer your readers something they can’t get somewhere else, your blog needs to serve a purpose, you need to Tweet, Facebook, Instagram, Pin, comment, read, attend, monetize, network, dance, skip, hop & jump and then you will be “successful”. But honestly folks I’m just not getting there and I don’t have time to continue to do that blogging dance all the time. I like curling up and shopping on my iPad at night while watching Game of Thrones with my husband. I don’t want to be on some kind of marketing blitz for a less than stellar post or an even super stellar post. My interest has started to wane…but I don’t want to stop.

Although I’m ready to give up the intense BE A “SUCCESSFUL BLOGGER” dance I don’t want to stop blogging because I like telling stories, I’ve always liked telling stories {ask my Mom about the time I lied to my kindergarten class the Monday after the Superbowl and told them my house was robbed while my Dad was out to sea & I had my Caboodle & Barbies stolen} even if I never reach the point where people are paying me big money to write about juice & laundry detergent or re-purposing old post into a book I still like doing this so I don’t want to stop.

I need to get back into the habit of blogging. I need to dump my brain hourly, daily, so better ideas can come forth. So although I rambled on about not having time to blog because of my self-induced iPad shopping time or infant duty hours, I have decided to blog every.single.day* for an entire month. I don’t know if my ideas will make much sense, be interesting, or fill any kind of need but I know I have words to say, stories to tell but I need to clear out the dust before anything else will come forth. Also I’m thinking this will help force me to carve out some me time to actually blog and if I decide I want to get back on the blogging carousel I’ll have the time to do it.

This is going to be really, really hard to do because already Day 1 and I’m only sitting down to write the first draft of this post at 5:30 which means it’ll publish a few minutes before midnight to make the every.single.day for a month cutoff.

Wish me luck.

*every.single.day to me means Monday through Friday is that a copout?