Self-inflicted sterilization on 500 channels

Just like your mother always told you whenever she wasn't trying to use the TV as an unpaid babysitter, TV will fry your brain cells. But beyond that, it seems, it might also destroy any hope you have of growing your family larger than it already is.

Or at least that's the hope of the Indian government:

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Less sex, more TV idea aired in India

On World Population Day this year, India's new health and welfare minister came out with an idea on how to tackle the population issue: Bring electricity to every Indian village so that people would watch television until late at night and therefore be too tired to make babies.

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While they just might be on to something here, I have to point out that we Americans are having no problems increasing our population at what's traditionally been considered a reasonable rate.

Sure, a lot of that increase might come from illegal aliens jumping the fences to get a better look at our monstrous TVs, but still, we keep the Labor and Delivery nurses on their sensibly supported toes all by ourselves.

If the Indian government's logic was as sound as they seem to feel it is, can you imagine if someone took away America's national average of 8 hours a day of television time? Or, worse yet, our additional 7 daily hours of dicking around on the Internet?? Three billion of us would be packed in here like a typical American backside in a Chinese airplane seat!

We might even, through exposure, manage to grow past our Puritan repression and resulting obsession with sex as something illicit and get back to doing something meaningful with ourselves! I mean, besides making more selves.

Anyway, I tend to agree with this heroic 24-times-a-father from Uttar Pradesh:

"After watching TV," he says, "when we look at scintillating things, we will probably want to make more children."

Yep, that's pretty much how it works, buddy-- you're ahead of the curve!

Even if he's wrong, it's worth noting that although the poor are only getting electricity, at long last, in an attempt to trick them into abstinence, they will eventually learn that it can be used to do other helpful things like light one's house and refrigerate food. They might then feel so happy and hopeful they'll have a few more kids just to celebrate. Jai ho!

BlogHer notes from an outsider

Since I'm still seeing other people's BlogHer recaps popping up every day, I don't feel so bad about procrastinating this long. For those who don't care, this is one and done.

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It probably says a lot about me, especially during my current phase of life, that when a convention comes to town that has HER in the title, I just can't wait to hop on the train and head downtown.

But when you blog about your kids as much as I do, you tend to read and be read by bloggers who also write about their kids. The world being what it is, that means I hang with chicks most the time. Online, anyway.

But BlogHer coming here to Chicago meant that I had the rare opportunity to meet a lot of these people in person, which was at once exciting and terrifying. If I was the kind of person to throw myself into social situations with people I don't know very well, then I probably wouldn't sit by myself writing on the internet so much. I'd probably be running some company that made popular things for popular people. And I'd have a lot more money. And I'd sit on my ergonomic toilet seat staring at magazines with my own face (and abs) on the cover, wondering if I'd ever stop shitting solid gold bricks.*

But whether that's a more desirable life than mine or not is neither here nor there. The fact is, I spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday a couple weeks ago showing up with my wife at the Chicago Sheraton without conference passes, and without knowing what venues would be available for us to meet people without accosting them at cabstands and bathroom sinks.

And you know what? It was awesome.

Except for that pesky day in the middle on which I actually wondered if I might die on the bathroom floor at a fancy hotel, just like a life-conquering celebrity but without the drugs or success.

So if you saw me on Friday and wondered why I looked so surly and distant (sorry Neil and Suzanne), it's only because I was intently trying not to vomit and/or internally debating the best position in which to lie in case I got a choice moments before death's icy finger tagged my soul out to send some fresh meat into the Diarrhea Olympics.

Before all that, though, I got to spend some quality time with Middle-Aged Woman (Unmitigated) and Muskrat, meet Black Hockey Jesus and Tanis (Redneck Mommy), and then wonder how the hell I was going to find anyone else in the mass of humanity who wasn't introduced to me by someone else. Heck, we spent well over an hour at the SociaLuxe party playing with customizable name bracelets without meeting a soul I knew. Sure, I saw Jenny the Bloggess and Kristen Chase (Motherhood Uncensored) but was too timid to interrupt their respective series of conversations with nothing but an awkward introduction, but that doesn't really count.

While waiting for the People's Party later that night, I recognized Miss Grace, who introduced me to Matthew from Child's Play x2 among others. Then once the party started I rejoined my wife, who'd spent an hour or two packing swag bags with Middle-Aged Woman, only to find out that she not only had met Jenny the Bloggess (and Nancy W. Kappes!), but she got a Bloggess sticker she was specifically forbidden to give me.** I figure since I was meeting Black Hockey Jesus at that time, it kind of evens out, cosmically.***

I somewhat redeemed myself later by saying hi to Momo Fali, Kristen, and Brittany (Barefoot Foodie), but overall I was so overwhelmed I missed far more opportunities than I seized, which was made especially tragic by Friday's aforementioned chaos. So much for getting my feet wet on Thursday and making the most out of Friday.

I convinced myself on Friday afternoon that despite some stomach pain, I felt okay enough to soldier through the evening as long as I didn't risk eating anything. I hadn't thrown up yet at that point and I figured I must be suffering no more than the effects of eating at IHOP at 2am the night before, instead of battling some kind of flesh-eating virus hell-bent on liquefying my insides, as my foe was later to be revealed.

My late arrival on the scene Friday is the root cause of numerous missed connections with awesome people like Maggie and Mike Adamick, and my lack of organization and outgoingness is the cause of my missing out on dozens more people I should have met somewhere, somehow in the crowds.

After being turned away from the MamaPop party by none other than Mrs. 4444 herself (just doing her duty as the lady with the checklist), I took that as a sign I should give up defiling the absolutely vacant bathrooms (but I bet the lines at the women's bathrooms were epic) of the Sheraton and call it a night at the relatively early hour of 10pm. That hour is for me, unfortunately for my overall health, much like 6:30 is for normal people.

Turns out, of course, we missed the best party of the conference, and a unicorn cake. A unicorn cake!

But the rest did me good (specifically the sporadic series of naps in a bath/shower and the patient nursing of my wife), as did the tentatively resumed ability to absorb small amounts of fluids for the first time in over 12 hours. Fluids make the hallucinations go away! Well, most fluids do, anyway.

So we showed up Saturday evening in time to meet longtime readers MamaNeena and Andrea (Sweet Life) and have a good talk (wishing we'd had more time to hang out that night and earlier in the weekend) before heading over to Quartino for dinner [picture] with Middle-Aged Woman, Vodka Mom, Sprite's Keeper, Stiletto Mom, DeeMarie, Shopgirl, Amo, and Jill-- we hadn't been here before but we definitely want to come back. J- because she wants more of what she ordered, and me because I'd like to go there when I can actually eat food.

We then headed to the bowling alley for BowlHer, which, due to the brain-squashing noise, was not good for meeting people you didn't already know. However, it was very good for getting stuff, since it was co-sponsored by several numerous companies. How can you go wrong with free cupcakes, wine, chocolate, and gift cards?

After deciding we'd had enough of the noise, we headed back to the Sheraton to check out the CheezeburgHer Party, which would have been 10x better if I was better able to eat by this point. We mostly just sat on a very comfortable couch in the presidential suite realizing how tired we were, but we were happy to get the chance to meet Elisa (Unlikely Housewife) after trying to coordinate a meetup all day. We then headed the 32 floors downstairs, where I met Backpacking Dad on my way to the bathroom.

I passed on sticking it out any longer in case tiredness made me relapse, and we reluctantly headed for home with about 30 pounds of swag (thanks largely to all those wine bottles people flying home had to give away). How strange we must have looked to non-blogging civilians on our ride home-- good thing we left the pink feather boa from BowlHer at the CheezeburgHer Party.

Still, with all the tote bags filled with food and pink or leopard print odds and ends, I might as well have been wearing my new blogging shirt and singing at the top of my lungs.

Anyway, if we met you there, we were glad to meet you, and if we didn't, we were sad we didn't. I don't think we'll make it out to New York next year, but that's not for lack of desire. Here's hoping against hope anyway that we'll see you all there!

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* Or maybe eggs, more likely, because I'm pretty sure people like that don't have to put up with inconveniences like sharp corners.

** And then she goes and taunts me by just leaving her leftover stickers in the bathroom for normal people to be confused by.

*** Except that I'm still pathetically devastated I never got to meet Jenny.

Momma's lieutenant

You know, I could pad this out by going on and on, beating around the bush by saying the same thing several different ways and not taking the time to edit at least half of them out before clicking Publish, as I am wont to do, but I think one paragraph* is really all that's needed:

I've decided that it says something important about my current lifestyle that at only 19 months old, M- has already been pressed to develop the ability to say something as complex as, "Eyem hun-gree! ... Wanna eat somethin', Daddy. ... Ged-dup, Daddy... please! Ged-dup and get food for [M-], please. Ged-DUP!" as she tugs on my hand when I'm just trying to blog in peace.


* Hi there! Welcome to my little hideout-- everyone knows footnotes don't count as part of the body, so I can say whatever I want without regard to my previous statements, common courtesy, or international treaties. I just wanted to note that in true hyper-little-kid form, she said this like so many other things lately almost in one breath, as if time somehow moves more quickly for her than for everyone else, and she'd finally given up asking nicely after 400 human milliseconds.

It's a good thing kids can only starve at the same rate as real people, or my "Dan-minutes"** and I would have gotten me in pretty big trouble long ago.

** I don't think I need to explain how this term came about, but I'll just say that many of my friends, family, and casual acquaintances have bonded deeply while discussing it.

Eat me: A preschool mastermind

When D- doesn't want to eat something, he's adopted the polite phrase, "That's not my favorite" to kindly let you know this. Our response is of course that not everything can be your favorite, and you still have to eat the other things in the world.

This usually has about the effect you'd expect for a 4-year-old.

Imagine the protests we faced last night when we had a delicious salad (with chicken) for dinner-- he has a pretty good memory for things he's declared he doesn't like, and a horrible memory for stuff he gobbles up when smothered in ranch dressing. This ridiculous concoction we dared to offer him was comprised, as far as he could tell, of at least 72% of things he "does not like," which of course taints those few things he does like.

Anyway, early on in the meal, the starvingly (my word) hungry boy we invited to the table changed course and announced to J- that he was full, though willing to acknowledge he was only full of salad. J- responded that he would be eating this salad for his next meal, whether that was right then, tomorrow's breakfast, or Christmas brunch.

This approach worked well in her family and pretty well in ours, so far, though D- has pushed us to comical lengths at times. Given our experience thus far, I expect M- in a couple years to be found once every few weeks immobilized from hunger on her bedroom floor, weakly chewing on a few wilted lettuce leaves in an effort to build the strength to take just a few sips of water.

For the time being, though, it's only D- that suffers this method every so often (it's only employed upon unjustified refusal to eat rather than normal fullness and such), and in his wise old age, he has learned a few tricks. Unfortunately for him, none of these include keeping his cards close to his vest, as evidenced by his (mostly nonchalant, only a touch defiant) response to J- last night: "But if Daddy doesn't know about that, and gives me something else, then I can eat that instead."

Now, seated to his immediate right, I felt the need to speak up and point out just a short list of flaws in his argument. After a quick talk in his room, he came back out slightly deflated, but with his spirit somehow still intact. We'll have to change that one of these days, like all good parents must.

We were eventually able to get him to finish his bowl (emphasis on the "eventually"-- he was in jammies by that point) by covering it in a serving each of ranch dressing and what he identified as "ketchup," a.k.a. Catalina dressing... not that actual ketchup would be so far fetched.

Thus was I deprived of an opportunity to spend my entire morning torturing a small child by withholding all but the most undesirable food from him, and letting the music of his whining lull my ears to sleep, the way we all love to do. Oh well, there's always tomorrow's dinner, and every one after that for a decade or so...

An additional child

I've come to the realization that even when I put down M- and D-, I'm still carrying our other stubbornly clingy toddler, Belly. I mean, 20 pounds roughly equals one toddler, right? So I'm going to start thinking of it that way, to provide myself with a tiny, weak, easily vanquished, and non-intimidating enemy.

Belly is a stubborn and demanding child, though he does keep me warm. Still, he's always known I hate him, so there's no point in pretending anymore that he's imagining my whispered snide remarks and double stink eyes anytime I feed or care for him alongside the other kids. He is most definitely my least favorite child, and in fact I consider his paternity highly in question.

I suppose you may find it disturbing, then, that after personifying this lil fella, I plan to ramp up my efforts to starve him and crush him into oblivion day by day. After months of walking even more than before, I feel like I can walk anywhere without tiring. Luckily our neighborhood has grocery stores, convenience stores, hardware stores, restaurants, and the library all within a few blocks, so it's pretty easy to just walk everywhere.

Hundreds of pushups and crunchers have also helped rebalance my body composition, and they have left little Belly on the defensive, wondering what he ever did to deserve this treatment. Soon he'll be like one of those poor, emaciated, swollen little children on one of those charity commercials, but unfortunately for Belly, there will be no creepy bearded man gratingly badgering and guilting people into sending money to allegedly help him save the waif.

Little Belly will instead stand like Oliver Twist before the Master, pleading for more pizza and junk food, but he shan't receive a crumb beyond his allotment, and so shall I hang him for his insolence. I swear by the benevolent gods Mozzarella and Canadian Bacon, Bellicose J. Tumtum shall perish from this Earth by the close of a fortnight!

[Editor's note: Okay, more like several months, since I take a relaxed approach to most everything, and because I don't want to die, but I'm trying to really scare him here.]

A guest blogger: Advice for kids!

For any 3- or 4-year-olds out there who read this blog regularly, my son D- has a little tip to share with you.

If you really want to hurt your parents, I mean reeeeally, really hurt them, try the following:

When you're playing with toys, and you feel like getting a bit rough, or not sharing, or generally giving in to anti-social/inadvisable impulses, just go for it! If your parents dare to protest, simply put down the toys, fold your arms, work up a big pout, and then coldly declare, "I don't want to play with anything."

Your rejection of participation in normal society and renunciation of childish things will unnerve them and render them like Play-Doh in your powerfully petite hands. With your icy glare slicing through them like a righteous scimitar of justice, they will surely fall to your feet and beg, just beg you to take up the toys once again. They'll probably even promise you can do whatever you want with them.

You may have to sit around and wait a little bit, to show them you mean business, and they may even try such deceptions as shrugging and going back to what they were doing, in an effort to hide their fear and pray you won't make good on your threat. But you will, ohhh you will!

And then won't they be sorry.

Eeeeeeeeee!!

Building on her success in signing for "more" to get what she wants, M- has moved on into attempts at speech, in a big way. When she's concerned we're not getting her 20-time-daily-feeding message, or when she wants to celebrate that we got her message, she will smile and say "Eeeee! Eeeeeee!!" (for "eat") as she steadily approaches us or the food source:
And in case you were wondering, yes, she does quite resemble a zombie repeating a single syllable as she toddles over, rocking from side to side in that "leave me alone, I'm still learning to walk" way that 1-year-olds do.

Meanwhile, J- and I are stuck watching in horror, feeling an oppressive wave of impending doom, knowing we may be destined to live the next year either in front of a high chair, allowing a child to feed herself from the floor (because that's where all food ends up when M-'s in charge of it), or strapping a feed bag to said baby's face and hoping Child Services isn't making surprise housecalls that day. It's a tough situation to be in, but I know I'll make the right call.

I'm just not sure which call that is at the moment.

A public service announcement

This is a banana:

This is a banana that made the mistake of lingering in a grocery bag in the same kitchen as a near-starving baby on the hunt for num-nums:

Any questions?

Going out to eat

Do you know what doesn't make a good piece of note paper, even when struck by an idea in the middle of the night? A diaper.

As best I could tell after trying to trace my intended chicken scratchings the next morning, I think I wanted to write an entry about something that happened to us the other day at the library.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, M- seems to be trying her best to double her weight each day. She took this to an extreme when we were at the library last week, waiting for D- to be finished with his storytime. M- was very cutely sitting at a little computer to play a Dora game some kid had abandoned. I only wish I had a picture of this... maybe I'll remember to bring my camera next time we go and I can stage a picture. Anyway, after a few minutes of happily clicking and smacking away, she noticed a lady near us was feeding her son some leftovers.

M- then did what she always does when food is within her gravitational range-- she began loudly smacking her lips and saying "Mmmmmm!" Little did she know (or did she?), this lady was a classic Mediterranean mother, and she immediately decided that based on M-'s antics, I must be a single father who, out of sheer ignorance, limited M- to one meal a day, and she would soon die without some substantial home cooking from someone who knows what she's doing.

After being prompted to fetch a spoon from M-'s diaper bag, over the next 10 minutes, we moved from a few dainty spoonfuls (of what I was told was "cooked rice, beans, and... sheep meat?") to a constant flow from this lady's dish to M-'s mouth. I had no way of knowing, at the time, the limit of this lady's generosity, seeing as she had been trying to feed this food to her son (who was maybe 6 years old and totally uninterested in cold leftovers), so I foolishly kept assuming each spoonful was the last. This made for a long, awkward 15 minutes or so.

Finally, I suggested we should get going since D- would be done shortly, so she suggested I needed to manifest a Tupperware container to take some food home with me, since "she so hungry" and "she need good food to make her strong like [unintelligible]." I ended up dumping the corn flakes out of M-'s Snack Trap cup and into a very narrow empty bottle (easier said than done), so she could pack it full of this food, which I will say was quite good.

The lady was so nice, though aggressive in that Greek/Italian way I know well enough to not be offended by, that it only occurred to me after my daughter had ingested roughly a lamb shank's worth of this stuff that it might not be a good idea to take ambiguous food from strangers. For all I know, this lady and her son had spent their lives building up an immunity to iocaine powder, all so they could lure wandering morons into ingesting it so they could rob them and pose their bodies in ridiculous positions for their own amusement. Or something like that.

Anyway, both D- and I later managed to wrest some away from M- at lunchtime that day so we could try it too, and none of us have died yet. Now, obviously that lady had no way of knowing that M- frequently subsists on various bits of cereal when Daddy's in charge, but I can't help feeling that M- somehow traitorously communicated this fact to her. Furthermore, having gotten such an exotic treat in the middle of the afternoon, I think I see M- dying inside just a little bit each time I drop a bit of bread (or whatever other boring food I happen to have on hand) into her mouth when she's desperately tugging at my pant leg in the kitchen.

Now that I think I'm moving past the rejection, it might actually work for me to let M- outsource her feeding to the diverse international community that is our neighborhood. She could be a food snob by kindergarten! And I could be even lazier until then!

I've got to go rip some holes in that baby's pants.

Eyes on the prize

I have reason to believe that my daughter, M-, may be desperately trying to eat her way to a forward-facing carseat.

She is an extremely willful child, but I'm happy to say she seems to be learning that tiny balled fists being what they may, she can't scream her way to getting what she wants. So now she eats.

The backstory: In the chaos and confusion of trying to install two carseats in my parents' car on our way to the airport a few weeks before M-'s first birthday, I accidentally installed her carseat facing forwards instead of backwards, as recommended before age 1 and/or 20 pounds. This didn't strike me until we started driving, but given that we didn't want to risk missing our plane and that she looked pretty safe in the seat (not like a 16-inch softball on a sack of sugar with a Jell-o neck, like during the first few months), I let her be.

I cannot do justice to the looks of wonder and unexplained giggles that frequently radiated from that seat during the magical 20-minute ride, so I won't even try.

Since we got back from our trip, she has resisted being set into her usual backward-facing seat by any means available to her, including crying and stiffening her body while arching her back. Whenever she gets a glimpse (usually upside down) of the front seat, she shouts with glee, attempting to address anyone she sees up there.

After several trips starting like this when we got back, she began eating voraciously, essentially not ceasing all day to cram anything she could find into her cry-hole. This is because shortly after we got back, she turned one, but since she was sick for over a week around that time, she is still shy of the required 20 pounds. (We plan to make her wait till she's safely over that level, but don't tell her that.)

She has been plowing through her remaining baby formula, downing jars of food, shoveling in baby cereal, and even licking her hand and dunking it into piles of grownup cereal, for more efficient stuffing of said cry-hole. It's all I can do to get in a couple hours of videogames a day.

I've just got to get her feeding herself more reliably and less messily, so I can set up the baby gate in the kitchen and leave her there with the pantry door open for a little while each day, so D- and I can read and relax..... and play more Super Paper Mario.