Posted in Parenting and Random Shit

Just Sayin’

Posted on by queenofthecouch

Things that puzzle me:

Who coined the phrase “slept like a baby” to describe a restful, fulfilling night of sleep? Did they not have a baby? Had they never met anyone with a baby? Based on my experience with four babies, the phrase makes, absolutely, no sense. “I slept like a baby” should be used to describe a restless night of sleep, that occurred in 2 hour increments that has resulted in complete exhaustion.  I move that we change the meaning of that phrase, immediately!  All in favor, say “Aye”.

My son had told me he wanted a toy vacuum. Has anyone else ever noticed that all of the cleaning toys are in the girls’ toy aisles? Up until recently, Number Three’s favorite toy was a baby doll and a stroller. He loved his baby and loved pushing her around in the little stroller. Others would shake their heads in disapproval and say, “that’s a GIRL’S toy”, to him. A statement directed at me. I know, I know. Letting my SON play with vacuums and baby dolls could have dire consequences. I mean, he could grow up and—dare I say it?–Hold a REAL baby or *GASP* vacuum!?!?! What would become of society?

Then, there is my husband. He showers for any and every plan and event. I mean ANY AND EVERY. If he is going to the store, he takes a shower.  If we are going out to dinner, he showers. If he is going outside to do lawn work, he takes a shower. If he is going to run or to the gym, he showers first. After the doing the yard or working out, he will shower again. Okay, so I get showering before going out and I get showering AFTER working outside or exercising. I have always been thrown, though, by the pre-yard work/running shower. Can anyone explain this to me? Bueller? Bueller? Even though I know it is stupid, when the batteries are going dead in the remote control, I just try mashing the buttons really hard for days, rather than take the time to just change them.

Why are people so grossed out by the very idea of tasting milk that came out of a human being but don’t think twice about guzzling liquid that came out of a cow’s tit?

Now you’re all up to date on what has been running through my mind these last few days. Anyone else have random thoughts like these?

Author:

I am a stay at home mother with 4 children. I drink a lot of wine and curse like a sailor.

57 thoughts on “Just Sayin’”

  1. In my gender class we have talked about the gender specific toys issue a lot. It makes no sense to me. If my kid wants something that isn’t for their gender then screw it- i will let them have it. If it makes them happy and hurts no one then there’s no issue as far as I’m concerned.

    And in that picture that suggests that they wait 6 months and then get him help? As a future child therapist that scares the crap out of me that people are that concerned about what TOY a child plays with. As if somehow a toy will determine their child’s adult decisions/actions/sexuality/gender identity.

    And so what if my future son tells me one day that he’s gay or my future daughter tells me that she’s a lesbian or that she thinks that she’s really supposed to be a boy? Or anything else? I will tell my kids that that’s great and I’m glad that they were open and felt safe enough to tell me about that and that I will be there for them and support them and love them in whatever choices they make in life.

    And yeah, the babies that I used to babysit didn’t sleep perfectly. I hate that phrase. And I too am convinced that the remote will work if I hit the buttons hard enough. That, or the remote suddenly comes back to life while I’m in class and my fiance is at home. It’s a conundrum.

    Thanks for the laugh.

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    1. Number Two used to carry a purse everywhere. You should have seen the looks people would give me or what they said to me or about me for allowing my son to carry a purse. I would have been judged less harshly if he had been carrying a weapon, I swear.
      Unlike too many people, I know that I can’t “make” my child gay but, even if any of them came to me and told me they were, I would feel exactly like you.

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  2. I couldn’t agree more about the dolls and the milk! My husband keeps telling our 7 month old son (7 MONTHS!) that he needs to be tough…I hate that! I’m going to buy him a doll, and a truck, and see which he chooses. I’d be fine with either choice, but my husband would flip if he chose the doll… (eye roll).

    I often have the same thoughts about milk! I know what I eat, I know that I am not injected with growth hormones, and I shower daily, yet MY milk is gross!!

    I love your blog! It’s so refreshing! Thanks!!

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  3. For one..AYE! Thank you for making me laugh once again! I am beginning to have random thoughts like these, visiting your blog!!! LOL

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  4. I laughed so hard at the showering part because my boyfriend is like that, and I’ve *never* been able to figure it out. But, hey, better a clean guy than a dirty guy. 🙂

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  5. We discussed that gender-thing I-don’t-know-how-often during the last terms at university. Geez, they are children, let the girls play Cowboys and indians, let the guys play with dolls, who the hell should care about that? My goddaughter (6 years old) takes ballet lessons, loves them, can’t wait to dance en pointe. Her dreamjob? Fighter. So, according to this pinkgirl/blueboy-thinkin’, what will she be as an aduld? homosexual? heterosexual? All rubbish, if you ask me. Everyone’s screaming for equality – why don’t start it then?

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    1. I have this glorious mental image of a prim ballerina in a fancy pink tutu elegantly beating the crap out of a big butch action-hero looking guy. It’s made my day.

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  6. Good Point! I grew up a tomboy and guess what? I now can do things that both boys and girls can do. Who would have thought it possible? I guess people are afraid of men growing up to be good fathers! The audacity of a little boy pretending to be a good daddy. How dare him!

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  7. The kind of people who gasp at the idea of a boy playing with a vacuum cleaner or a doll are the kind of people who think it is ok for a husband to buy his wife an iron for her birthday present.

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  9. “Who coined the phrase ‘slept like a baby’ to describe a restful, fulfilling night of sleep? Did they not have a baby? Had they never met anyone with a baby?”

    Maybe they’re talking about those first two weeks, when the baby sleeps deeply and easily in order to lull you into a false sense of security? (Never trust a sleeping baby. They may look all cute and innocent, but it’s just a ruse. They’re up to something nefarious.)

    “I know, I know. Letting my SON play with vacuums and baby dolls could have dire consequences.”

    This sort of thing makes me completely crazy. Like, stabby-crazy. Kids want what they want. The get interested in whatever they get interested in. End of story.

    Also…

    “Number Two used to carry a purse everywhere. You should have seen the looks people would give me or what they said to me or about me for allowing my son to carry a purse. I would have been judged less harshly if he had been carrying a weapon, I swear.”

    Because allowing a boy to do “girl stuff” might “make him gay”? (As if.) I sometimes wonder if I don’t have it backwards: if maybe it isn’t that they’re afraid of people who violate gender roles because they might be/become homosexual, but rather than they’re afraid of homosexuality because it violates the prescribed gender roles.

    “Anyone else have random thoughts like these?”

    Are you kidding? My whole blog is devoted to random thoughts. As is my Facebook page. And my Twitter feed. And most of my real-life conversations!

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  10. I think we should change the “slept like a baby” phrase to, “slept like a teenager”. I teach high school and I think teenagers could sleep through a nuclear bomb!

    My daughter loves Toy Story and Mickey Mouse, do you think Disney markets any of those toys for girls – no! You can’t get girl undies in Mickey, Woody or Buzz. I guess she will have to sport boy undies if she ever decides to sit on the potty!

    This past weekend my hubby showered at 9PM only to go to bed, wake up 8 hours later (in freshly laundered sheets) to take another shower. Maybe he wanted to keep the sheets clean???

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  11. Haha, I’ve thought of all of those things at one point or another. Except for the boyfriend showering, as I haven’t met anyone like that yet. (Although my whole family stakes a lot of importance on being clean).

    Also your point about gender-specific toys and the kids who don’t play with them reminded me of this blog called “Raising My Rainbow” (http://raisingmyrainbow.com/). I think you’d find it interesting.

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  15. I am going to apologize in advance, because even though I know your questions are mostly rhetorical, my Aspie-with-a-side-of-OCD wants to answer them all, in sequence, as if asked literally.

    One thing about human babies, and kittens, is they have this tendency to just suddenly plotz right in the middle of what they are doing. Maybe the person coining the “slept like a baby” phrase never looked any further than that. Maybe it was the same clueless person who coined “like stealing candy from a baby” to describe an easy, smoothly executed, peaceful task.

    So, that gender-toy-spazz thing people are still having in the 21st century, well, maybe it’s a backlash of the conservative, against the strong current that is the gay civil rights movement right now. But, I gotta ask ya, just how old is that Ann Landers column clipping you have there? It looks vintage. I read Ann Landers every day starting when I was 7, and kept up with her over the years until her death in 2002. She did evolve in her thinking over time – and the tone of that column definitely looks like the “old” Ann Landers to me.

    When I was single-digits age, my two closest playmates were boys – dysfunctional boys at that. One had a scatological fetish, and liked stealing fruit from backyard trees, as well as hiding behind the bushes and throwing rocks at passing cars. The other was a charismatic kleptomaniac, who also liked to set things on fire, and who melted his little green army men with a cigarette lighter. Naturally, these guys were a LOT more interesting to hang out with than the little girl down the street who liked to play with Barbies and plastic horse figurines. My parents were worried. They urged me to play with the little girl with the plastic horses. Was it the pyromania, vandalism, and playing with horse poop that bothered them? Nah. They were afraid I’d turn into a lesbian. Funny thing, though – I am a lesbian.

    It is a personal hypothesis of mine that people who shower a whole lot, when they don’t need to, have a self-esteem problem, and perhaps were somehow shamed as children about their bodies – you know, made to feel “dirty.” This mind trip is mostly placed on girls and women, but I have known men like this as well. They are ashamed or repulsed by their own natural scent.

    Or, could be as simple as, your husband perspires a whole lot. Once you’re sticky from that, it’s hard to feel comfortable. I know I can’t sleep without a shower before bedtime. Doing it before exercise – for comfort, and perhaps a courtesy to the rest of the people in the gym. Some people can really taint the atmosphere of an entire gym when they work out. Anyway, I’d say that having a spouse who showers too much is infinitely preferable to having the opposite problem. ‘Cept for the water bill.

    A better question to caption that “BUSTED” poster would be, ask yourself why your wife even needs a “favorite vibrator,” and why she keeps it in tip-top running condition. Maybe you need to watch less TV. But, I’m just a lesbian. What do I know?

    I know why I would gross out at the prospect of drinking another human being’s milk. We are the same species. It’s sort of like cannibalism. The more genetically similar two creatures are, the greater chance of transmitting disease. For that reason, I’d instinctively gross out at drinking a gorilla’s milk, too – but probably not yak’s milk. I mention the latter, because one might argue we only gross out at that to which we are not accustomed. I would try yak’s milk if it were offered. But not gorilla milk, and not lady milk. I wouldn’t be surprised if we were wired this way at the primal level. Yes, your baby drinks your milk, but that’s by design, and there will come a time when it no longer appeals to him.

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    2. The idea of cannibal babies suggests some very interesting story ideas, though.

      …Now that I come to think of it, I’m pretty sure that some of the early vampire legends presented the vampires as babies.

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    3. Kathryn, this is going off on a tangent, but if you are “Aspie with a side of OCD” you have to read Steve Martin’s novel “The Pleasure of My Company”.

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  16. I was just complaining about gender-specific roles yesterday! My son likes the build a bear toys from mcdonalds. A lady actually gave me the stink eye cause she overheard me ask him if he wanted the bear toy or the avatar toy. Then they accidentally gave her kid the girl toy and she rushed back to the counter and said ‘my son doesn’t play with GIRL toys’ and glared at me. Is this chick serious? My son can play with whatever the hell he wants. Sometimes he wants a truck, sometimes he wants a pink bouncy ball. So what.

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    1. Does she think her son will catch vagina? I wish I didn’t know what you mean, though. I let my kids play with what they want to play with and like what colors they want to like. People seemed genuinely concerned when he carried a purse and loved pink. I could not have given less of a fuck. That seemed to concern people more.

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  17. The thing that always makes me giggle…. “This tastes/ smells awful…here, try some”

    Why? Why would you try and feed me something that either, by your own admission, smells or tastes repulsive? Meanie.

    **Disclaimer…the “you” in my posts is the figurative “you”, not the literal “you”…for your readers who can’t tell the difference 😉

    Keep on writing Lady. Your posts make me crack up everytime.

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  19. Finally! Someone who also has issues with the ‘sleep like a baby’ thing. I have never been in the presence of any baby that didn’t sleep fitfully. That has always been a wtf phrase for me along with ‘fool me once shame on you, twice shame on me’. Shame on me? No, you’re just an asshole. I’ll take no blame in this.

    Fuck that whole ‘boys toys’, ‘girl toys’ thing. I played with He-Man and Skeletor and Transformers. Barbie normally got decapitated and was a Decepticon sacrifice. And I turned out the perfect old lady. Anyone who makes a big deal out of ‘gender toy’ swaps can kiss my ass.

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    1. LMAO! I played with Barbies but they were always having sex. I had more fun playing with my brother’s cars and He-Man stuff (specifically, the Grayskull castle with the voice changing microphone.).

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  20. I think your Husband is showering so much just to have alone time. No children allowed. How nice to have the time to spend taking long, hot, steamy showers many times each day. Dude I’m on to you.

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  21. I second TClop’s suggestion on the ‘sleep like a teenager’ thing. So much closer to reality.
    My best-hated coinage is of course ‘morning sickness’. How many times did I want to kill the guy (it surely couldn’t have been a woman) who invented this term! And I was only pregant once so far.
    Oh and don’t get me started on gender roles. I am having the hardest time here in the UK because in winter I am putting tights on my little boy like almost everyone does back home in Germany. I even wrote a post about it back in December.
    Also, I am supremely happy that I have a son because it is virtually impossible to buy girls clothes that are not pink or purple. Urgh.

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  22. Dear Ann Landers: What ‘Problems’ are you speaking of?

    Couch- You are FUNNY. Not funny weird, funny haha.
    Love it.
    And I HATE when my husband showers before he works in the yard and cleans the garage. WTF?

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  23. My brother played with dolls because he had three older sisters and we wouldn’t play trucks with him. If he wanted to play with us, he had to play our girl games. He had two dolls of his own because we wouldn’t actually let him touch ours. One was a Barbie, the other was a Power Ranger. Now he’s 20 years old and in the seminary to become a priest and take a vow of celibacy. Go figure. I can’t decide if it was the dolls or us older sisters who scarred him the most.

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  25. OOOH, so many things to comment on!!

    First… “Does she think her son will catch vagina?”

    BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!! Best line EVER! So adding that to my repetoire.

    Second… Stabby crazy is on my new vocab list too. Love it.

    Third… as for the human vs. cow milk thing – what lewd, depraved individual first looked at a cow and said, “Hmm, those dangly things down there that look like penises…wonder what would happen if I laid under that cow and sucked on them? {sucking ensues}. Hey Wilbur, c’mere, you gotta try this stuff!”

    OR, perhaps they were thinking, “Well, that cloven-hooved,four stomached animal drinks it and is growing, maybe I should try it.” Umm, following that logic, we could have been drinking any random animal’s milk all this time, like elephant or raccoon milk, since it makes baby raccoons and elephants grow. The fact that the Western world is hell-bent on this ‘get your dairy from cow’s milk’ dogma just mystifies me, because it seems so randomly chosen. And when cow’s milk is placed against breastmilk, (the only food designed by the human body FOR the human body),and it’s *breastmilk* that is gross and wrong and, oh yeah, go breastfeed your baby in a public bathroom because it ‘makes people uncomfortable’, then I’m really mystified.

    And last time I checked, unlike a Holstein, my nipples weren’t hanging six inches off the filthy ground, while I’m walking through a steaming pile of cow shit. They might someday, but not yet. 😉

    Keep blogging, my Queeny friend. Your posts make my day.

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  26. That kind of gender stuff makes me crazy too- thank gawd that Ann Landers thing was written a long time ago but you’re right- there are PLENTY of narrow-minded douche-canoes that still think this way. Like, oh I don’t know.. my SISTER-IN-LAW!?! Her youngest (my niece) wanted so badly to dress up as Spiderman for Halloween but her mother wouldn’t let her. I over heard the convo. Refused to buy her a Spiderman costume. But guess who surprised her with one a few days later?? Auntie Rach! 😉

    http://www.rachriot.com

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  27. The gender-specific toys thing really bugs me. My almost-four-year-old son loves, LOVES, Ariel the Little Mermaid. So he has an Ariel lunchbox and an Ariel towel for his swim lessons, among other Ariel things. So far, the only comment I have heard about it was from a kid at his preschool who asked me why he had a girl’s lunchbox. I said, “It’s not a girl’s lunchbox. Ariel is for EVERYBODY.” But I’m so sad to know that the day may come when he ignores some things he truly likes for things he is “supposed” to like.

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    1. Molly, tell the questioning preschooler, “He likes Ariel because she’s a pretty girl. Don’t you like pretty girls?” and then give his mother the hairy eyeball, as if you suspect her son isn’t quite…right.

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  28. I once questioned the cow milk thing too. Specifically, I wondered aloud why we wouldn’t rather drink chimp milk, since they are genetically our closest relative in the animal kingdom. Oh, the looks I got for that! Of course I was kidding. I knew that a lady chimp has too much self respect to allow herself to be strapped to a milking machine as the cows and I myself have done. She would rip your face off.

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  29. My hubby showers before such things also: You never know who you will meet in the yard or at the gym.
    I also use that technique with the remote to avoid battery changing.
    I guess you don’t mind milk out of a tit you aren’t likely to put your own mouth on??? You got me on that one.

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  30. THANK YOU!!! You’re “slept like a baby” commentary could not have come at a more appropriate time. If by “slept like a baby” you mean it takes you at least an hour to fall asleep and you do so ONLY after throwing a hissy fit the size of which was matched only by the previous night’s hissy fit or the one you are throwing right now as I try to put you down for a nap (cause they tell me babies sleep better at night when they’ve had good nap time during the day). And I’m impressed that you can even write rationally about the whole gender thing – I have to keep myself from punching the tv/computer screen. On that subject, have you/your readers seen the new LEGO Friends for girls – I actually get nauseated just thinking about it.

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    1. YES! Because, OBVIOUSLY, girls wouldn’t be interested in building things with legos unless it’s a cute little pink house for their pretty little lego dolly friends with great hair and fabulous outfits. *cue vomit*

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  31. Accidentally drank breast milk in my coffee one morning after our son “slept like a baby”…it was in what looked like a glass, in the fridge, and, to be perfectly honest, it tasted pretty good, even mixed with coffee…so good, in fact, that if I could have talked my wife into it, I would have been using breast milk in my coffee as long as she was nursing…Wonder if anyone has tried making frozen snack products with Breast milk?

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    1. My friend’s husband was making pancakes one morning and realized they were out of milk, so he used her breast milk and he said they were the best and fluffiest pancakes he ever had. It cracks me up to watch him tell people the story because, if you were going by the looks on the listener’s faces, you would think he had told them that he had eaten dog shit.

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