Mama Bloggers Show Motrin What Pain Is

If you're not on Twitter, you might possibly still not know about this phenomenon (I didn't until yesterday).

Motrin released a snarky anti-babywearing ad in the hopes of garnering more pill-popping consumer support. What the company got was a big dose of mad mamas. Women started Twittering about the condescending ad in droves.

Here is a story about the flap in Ad Age Magazine that references Silicon Valley Moms Blog, the parent (?) mother group of the DC Metro Moms Blog I write for under Claire Jess.

There's another story (and the video) at Marketing Pilgrim. Check it out!

My take?
1) Disheartening that a company would come up with this ad.
2) Inspiring that so many mamas would rally to shoot it down.

Crossposted at Inexact Science: Raising Healthy Families

Moving Closer to a Bed

Nothing happens fast around here. But things do happen eventually.

Yesterday we put together the frame of E's new bed, the Vikare extendable bed from IKEA. Well, E's dad did it while E tinkered around and I finally installed a sort-of safety plug cover for an outlet that is newly exposed, behind where the changing table used to be. Apparently I, too, can use a screwdriver effectively.

The idea is to use a cut-up layer of the latex king mattress we're not using (long story), but the dissection has yet to be done. We weren't sure if we'd want the smallest, middle or regular twin size of the bed. I think we've decided on the smallest, because the kid is pretty small. But that will really put an end to one of us coming into his bedroom and lying down with him to get him back to sleep.

We've been going in rather than have him come in our room. Sometimes I fall asleep, sometimes I get back up after a few minutes, as my husband is more likely to successfully do. Whenever I write about this I feel like it sounds mean and that we should just be a happy family in a family bed forever.

But he was sleeping through the night, so it seemed like a fine time to give ourselves the space to be able to turn a light on before going to bed if we needed another pair of socks. Yes, some clothes are in the third bedroom, but that's getting annoying. If he hadn't gotten that cold and started waking in the night again, maybe we'd have moved faster on the bed.

But I do really want to create a Waldorfy-calm oasis in his room since the rest of our house is so cluttered. I'm even trying to sew him some curtains (putting in a darkening layer and dividing up the two panels that each cost me $2.50 on sale at Bed Bath and Beyond into four panels. I'll let you know how that goes). The idea is to create a softness that is subtle and harmonious with natural, organic forms. The curtains are linen, and I might at at the bottom as decoration (or to complete the length if they are too short!) a bit of gauzy cotton curtains we inherited with the house. First I'm going to try to use onion skins to dye them. Wish me luck!

I'm not sure that the snazzy rainbow silk I got him with a canopy in mind is going to work for this aesthetic. I got it from a Waldorf-friendly site with the hopes of making him want to lie and look at the pretty colors washing into each other rather than get out of bed to find another book to read. But now I think its coloring is too dramatic for the pale yellow and blue look we're going for (or rather I'm going for, since LJ would prefer funky modernist bubbles everywhere).

We're still not sure if we'll have the boy sleep on the new bed in our room for a few nights to get used to it or if we ought to put it straight in his room once the mattress is all set. He already has a new quilt in his room (pale yellow cotton from Target), but I'd like the curtains to be done and for me to try out the rainbow thing first, without him around. Maybe we're looking at December.

Breastfeeding and the 2008 Election: Will they really end soon?

Well, that's a first.

My son got up and went out into the world today without nursing.

Is this the same kid I had yesterday?

Since he had a mild cold a few weeks ago, we've regressed with the night waking. When he asked to nurse in the night then, I indulged him but whispered the rule change even in the darkness of his room at 3 a.m.: "Okay, because you're sick and I want you to get healthy." Now, a few weeks later, he's still waking once or twice during the night instead of sleeping through as he was doing before. We help him get back to sleep without anyone lifting a shirt before 5:00 a.m. After that, if he wakes and asks to nurse, I typically go into his room, nurse him, and then fall back asleep for a bit longer.

This morning, he called out "Mama" at 6:30 and didn't whine or come charging down the hallway into the bathroom when I said I'd be there after I peed. I should have known something was up then. He was taking it in stride, standing up when I entered his room. He explained in the clearest prose you could imagine from a 31-month-old that he needed to get off his pajamas and put on new clothes because he'd peed. His jammies were dry, but the diaper was super wet (which I hope is a sign that we're ready to move to tackling #1 on the potty. For #2, he has mostly left the diapers behind, so to speak).

Still groggy and looking for a slower start to the day, I gestured toward the bed. "Well, do you want to snuggle? Or just get up?" "Just get up!" he declared and proceeded to tell me about how he had to get ready to go to his sometimes-babysitter and her grandson's house where he knew he was headed today.

Okay. But really?

The morning continued down the path of its smooth start. We read The Peace Book while his dad tried to drag himself out of bed. Then I made breakfast while my son played well, having nary a pre-food meltdown when I tell him to get out of the refrigerator. What is going on, I thought?

Should I point out that we'd forgotten part of our routine? "Don't offer, don't refuse," my La Leche League books say as one pre-weaning strategy. I've pushed off his requests before, sure. I've also refrained from offering other times even though I knew he might get upset when the easy window had gone by leaving him instead to beg for mama milk just as we needed to get out the door. My husband said the other night, after I left for a tutoring job without a just-before-dinner or just-before-bed final nursing (though a plenty long one at 4:00 p.m., thank you very much), my son realized his chance was gone. His eyes got big as the lightbulb went off with a poof and sad, with a sad frown, "I wanted to nurse!"

But today, on this Election Day where I'm already holding my breath, I didn't say a word about what my son was missing.

Neither did he.