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?

A little over a year ago there was a big stink being made in the mom community about a mom publicly nursing her baby at Target. I read all the stories during that time & wrote out my own opinion here on BTBW. But now I have to come to you my dear friends & retract by original post.  I’ve done this once before & still believe that one of the greatest things about the internet is being exposed to many varying opinions & arguments for something. There have been many times where I feel I feel one way on a subject & after reading other articles or post I’m swayed to the other side.

Well now I have changed my mind regarding public nursing. If you follow me on Instagram you’ve seen me clutter my feed with nursing pictures of Caspian & I. And not just me sitting on my couch nursing, but me at the Drybar or the pumpkin patch nursing. Areola & all. When I was pregnant with Caspian I saw this funny commercial from Luvs Diapers & got where it was coming from but still felt that there was no reason a mom couldn’t cover up. Flash-forward to today & now I nurse whenever I need to & however I need to.

After Caspian was born I covered up at first but back when the space shuttle made its way through LA we took a trip down to see it. There we are outside with tons of people around & Caspian starts to cry. I get settled in an awkward seated position on the sidewalk & started trying to feed him. He kept pulling off, the nursing cover kept coming undone & finally I just pulled it off. I got Caspian latched properly & everything went smoothly. At his next feeding later that day I started doing the same thing, but again he wasn’t latching & I couldn’t see him. I nursed him open & exposed while a man in a black pickup truck stared. I’ll admit that I was little bit uncomfortable at first but slowly started warming up to it. I talked to Shawn about it & was surprised to hear he didn’t mind. And that’s when I made the decision to forgo the cover up.

Since I’ve decided to nurse in public & free of any cloth like obstruction I haven’t looked back. I proudly nurse my baby & dare anyone to say anything to me. My brothers find it uncomfortable to watch me nurse, but my brothers also where shirts with bikini clad women so I don’t see a difference. In public we have gotten our share of looks. Other nursing mothers have pointed me out to their husbands (?) & teenage girls have laughed. Yet, no one has been bold enough to say anything. The closest I have ever had to possibly considering a nurse in was at the doctor’s office. After an older man was called back for his appointment a nurse quickly ran back out offering me a sheet. I politely declined & went about my business.

My only concern when I’m nursing is if my stomach & or Spanx is showing because titty I’m sure people can handle, but stretch marks & a seal like skin covering my flab is what nightmares are made of.

Every so often you’ll come across something on the internet that is more than a funny story, catchy meme or even a salacious & controversial issue. You read. You comment. You blog & you may even discuss it around the dinner table. But what about when the stuff you see on the internet crosses the line & people’s lives are at stake?

Since becoming involved in the blogging community I’ve been a part of the Amazon pedophile scandal. I’ve watched twitter as people have threatened to kill themselves, jilted/abusive husbands wreak havoc with a wife’s blog & even once watched tweets about someone live tweeting the removal of their penis ::shutters::

Last week I was lurking over on GOMI {which I mentioned here about internet trolls} and started reading the story of a homeless or “houseless” couple & their baby who had just been removed from their custody.

The short story is Mom & Dad are homeless & live in their car & flitter from state to state. Their claim is that they want to live “off the grid” & be sustainable farmers etc. But they blog about eating nothing but junk food & I believe they even have collected or are collecting from the government. They’re doing drugs & based on some of the terms they use it’s not just weed. If it was just them it would be fine for them if that is how they truly wanted to live their life. But it’s not. They have a baby girl named Sunshine Rae who is in the middle of all of this.

They recently were arrested & had Sunny taken away from them because they say they picked up two hitchhikers ::RED FLAG:: that had 19 pounds of weed on them. As of the 31st they did not seem to have Sunny back. The mother is also bi-polar & currently pregnant with a second baby. If you want to read the longer version of the story you’ll need to hit the GOMI forums & sit back because those guys have done tons of digging.

Ever since reading the story I can’t stop thinking about them & especially the babies. I even had a dream about them a few nights ago. A few of the members of GOMI had talked about involving CPS but I’m not sure if anyone has.

My question though is if someone did call was that the right thing to do & if they didn’t should they/we have?

If we saw parents abusing a child or neglecting their child in our own communities we wouldn’t hesitate to call but when the only proof of this is an internet blog* what do you do? Do you move forward with being the protector of the child & deal with the possibility that it was a hoax later on or do you turn away & hope that someone IRL sees this stuff happening & does something?

We moderate our comments on our blogs, we unsubscribe & unfollow people who spew hateful things or vulgar things, but should we step in & moderate a situation like this?

*As of Friday the 31st the blog has been removed so there is no way to confirm if Checkers & Kayla have gotten the baby back or not. 

Among some of the popular ideas floating around the internet I usually find myself on the far opposite of everyone. I’m not a feminist. I don’t want a woman president. I don’t have a problem with calling your daughter beautiful or a princess. I’m a Republican…that proudly supported Bush & proudly did NOT vote for Obama. And often when I read things from the blogging community I find myself thinking “Is that really what you believe or are you saying that because you’re afraid of being flamed or just anxious to hop on the trend?” and one of the popular blogging ideas I don’t support is the idea of “trolls”

Yesterday morning I was checking Instagram & I stumbled on a website that bashes other bloggers. I was intrigued and while eating left over cheddar biscuits I got “acquainted” with the site. Some of the stuff I found was outright mean like a thread dedicated to the ugly bloggers but at some of the stuff I found myself nodding in agreement. After going back pages  I stumbled on a post that I had read in the past about trolls & was struck with the same feeling I had the first time I saw it.

If trolls bother you so much you should stop blogging.

How many times have I, how many times have you read a post or a FB stream or Tweet from a blogger who’s going on & on about a stupid decision from a celebrity or a parent in the news? Those post & streams garner all kinds of trolling. The Duggars break records whenever they announce a pregnancy & bloggers never, ever, ever shy away from publicly trolling them.

So why aren’t bloggers allowed to be the same target?

If you are a blogger & I a reader I have every single right to comment about something you have said/written good or bad. If you put something on the internet its open for public consumption. Why do bloggers get a right to demand the kind of criticism they get? There’s a “close comments” option on WordPress for a reason. Here’s a radical thought- if you don’t want opinions from others stop writing a blog & get yourself a pretty leather bound notebook & journal. Than hide that shit under your mattress circa 1999. Don’t threaten me with hunting down my IP address-which I’ve always wondered what will you actually do with it once you have it?

There are a lot of bloggers that I don’t like. I find them to be incredibly boring & narcissistic & the main goal seems to be being branded as “witty”. I get sick of hearing the buzz words “I haz…” I’m sick of seeing poster size pictures of their kid(s) ALL.THE.TIME I get it. They’re cute. Most of the stuff is boring dribble about what they eat & where they go. But still I read them because there are rare occasions that they post interesting links that take me away from them and to something a trillion times better & that’s OK. What bothers me though when I read these blogs is all of the comments that do nothing but encourage the blogger to be more narcissistic. And that buuugs me. And when there is a negative comment everyone gets all “white knight”. Political correctness bothers me.

Say what you mean. Say what you want, live unapologetically. 

I enjoy bloggers who don’t give a fuck. Two years ago there was a huge Twitter stink about a Bump blog contest & how one blogger was making fun of another blog. That blogger was MODG & you know what? I worship her. She says what she means & means what she says. I respect that. I don’t respect people who tiptoe.

Leaving a comment or having an opinion that doesn’t make you feel all unicorn & narwheels inside is not the same as bullying. Its apart of the job. 

Please let me know in the comments what you think. Should bloggers get tougher skin? Am I just a mean girl? Do you have commenting policy on your own blog?

via pinterest

Some point during or after the holiday season with the big green tree & blinking lights there was a controversy brewing over at Mecca Mom aka Target over some breastfeeding Mom.

My husband was the one who actually brought the thing to my attention & after reading it I thought Target acted unfairly & that had I had a nursing baby of my own I may just make a trip to Target to protest with the masses. Until a week or so later when I came across this article & picture about the sitch & had a slight change of mind.

I am a huge, huge, breastfeeding advocate. Liquid gold all the way baby. I cried when I started, I cried when I was told I couldn’t breastfeed, I cried when it felt like there was a lighter running over my nipples & I cried when I stopped. It was truly the most, blah, blah, magical moment ever.

I have always been a supporter of women being able to take care of their starving & screaming baby when the time called. And when I first read the story of the Texas Target mom I thought that Target made a big no-no. Here you have a mother sitting in Starbucks with her feet propped up on a chair nursing a bottle of water & an infant with her Hooter Hider…wait…or maybe not. And I changed my mind.

I don’t think I can support the notion that a woman should be allowed to nurse her child in public with her breast hanging out like in this picture. I just can’t.

Yes, if you are a nursing momma & the time calls to whip those puppies out you do the damn thing girl, but let’s do it with a modicum of respect for the other people around you. Would I be quick to call it gross or disgusting or unsanitary if I saw this? No, but would I think it was  & a tad bit inappropriate/rude, to be enjoying my hot chocolate & biscotti while having to take in some womans areola? Yes I would.

Just because one of the functions of a breast is to give life & nutrients to your child doesn’t mean you have to put it on display. My vagina also has a life-giving function. Next time I’m at Red Lobster {which is never} should I prop mine up?

Everyone has the right to eat, but its rude when diners around you eat with their mouth open. 

And also as I read the comments on this post & see that the original mother had 4 kids with her & was sitting in the middle of the floor I take back my “I’d support it” comment. If my 3 year old needed lunch I wouldn’t sit him in the middle of the aisle with a Happy Meal. Common decency. 

What are your thoughts on breastfeeding in public?