Mostly mommy stuff
I made this cake for Matilda’s birthday! Its a savory cake containing smoked salmon and other goodies. She didn’t eat it, but she enjoyed helping me decorate it. Recipe: 1 load of white sliced bread smoked salmon 4 boiled eggs sour cream cream cheese capers honey dijon mustard mayonaise carrots cucumber parsely Make stacks of [...]
I highly recommend the book Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein. In it, she explains why manufacturers of toy and baby gear make stuff in pink and blue. And the answer (no surprise) is that it causes us to buy more stuff. For instance, my daughter got a gift of blocks in pink. The [...]
Last night I let the kids hang out with me in the bathroom while I did some self grooming. I waxed my eyebrows, upper lip and legs and gave myself a pedicure. Both kids found this to be fascinating, especially Matilda. She started pointing out places on her body that had hair and needed to be [...]
Great article on Today.com about a Canadian couple who is keeping the sex of their newborn child a secret. They would like their child to have the freedom to develop his/her own identity and not have to be concerned about whether it is conforming to gender norms. They have 2 older children (both boys) with gender [...]
Followers of my blog have read my many stories about helping Matilda avoid being a girly girl … and failing. Interestingly, Mateo is also entranced by the world of princesses. As I write, he is wearing a ballerina skirt over his clothes and is playing with an Ariel and Barbie doll. Who can blame him? [...]
Potential Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee made comments on Michael Medved’s show last week about the fact that Natalie Portman is pregnant and not married. HUCKABEE: You know Michael, one of the things that’s troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, ‘Hey look, you know, we’re [...]
I caught Matilda this week staring at this advertisement. She asked me who the “girl” was, what she is doing. Matilda was just fascinated. She tried to pose like the robot woman and I nearly lost it. I just hustled her past the ad. But its not the first time that she has noticed ads [...]
On Monday, we met with Matilda’s nursery school teach to discuss her progress. Let me start by saying that I don’t worry a lot about her academic progress as she is only 3 years old. But her teacher had some interesting insights in to her personality. The teacher says that she is not very confident. [...]
Parents, you have to read this article about Chinese mothers in the Wall Street Journal. The piece is by a Chinese woman who, like me, grew up in the USA and has a non-Asian husband. She is raising her kids in the way I was raised. Basically, it boils down to: Focus on academics — [...]
9-11 is used so often by people that I do not agree with politically as a justification for hate and war. Often, the people who talk about 9-11 the most are not New Yorkers and really have no idea what it was like for us. I was working downtown, just a few blocks from the [...]