Random inflammatory thoughts on the perplexing prevalence of TMI

Rebekah’s last post reminded me of something I’ve had occasion to ponder:

Great icebreaker: Joking about being out of the baby business, two being enough birth control for me, etc.—the more vehement, the funnier.

vs.

Instant conversational freeze: Declaring, however gently (even nonverbally), an openness to an unknown, “unplanned” quantity of children.

I have a few quarter-baked thoughts on the topic of TMI. Just a couple of crackpot theories, people. Consider the source, remember your blood pressure, and try not to get unduly exercised. :)

1) Overmuch protesting? Most larger families I know are simply living their lives. They don’t feel compelled to issue public statements on private matters.

2) Less action, hence more talk. (<:-O!) 3) Oblique natural law? Perhaps there’s some instinctive connection here: once marital integrity has been breached,* once a wall of the temple has been compromised, sacred things become vulnerable, exposed, common. . .

*Just in case our standard disclaimer hasn’t been issued lately: Of course I’m not referring here to those who have grappled earnestly, and reached a place other than standard-issue CSPP. (Recall that your humble blogresses generally consider themselves to be temporarily avowed, and on good days at that.) I don’t think the folks who have sincerely struggled with their decision to avoid conception are the ones who think that oneself or one’s spouse should be discussed with vocabulary that could also refer to the family dog’s inability to have young. In fact, the people who so proudly announce not only their Doneness but the precise mechanisms thereof are probably not aware that they may be causing pain to people whose decisions are not so lightly made. (To say nothing of the even deeper pain that such hilarity may cause women who’d give anything to have just a few years of the fertility that is so wantonly destroyed.)

More good times:

standing around awkwardly pregnant while every other mom shares the approach she took to ending her fertility, and that approach's advantages, disadvantages, and hilarious moments.

Despite my fogginess over where I fit into this jocose exchange of shockingly personal information, it was quite informative. There are tricks out there I'd never heard of before our little chat. I also know now why I keep running into people who took an epidural for the first time on their last baby. Silly me.

More pie, please

Sing it with me: Just another manic Sunday. . .

The question of properly dividing the pie of maternal attention and energies is a subject of some angst for me, particularly when I foolishly try to peer into my murky crystal ball. I have only a few children at the moment—I can only imagine the mathematical difficulties that arise when the clamoring hordes increase while the pie’s size remains constant.

I’m not sure whether it comforts or frustrates me to know that kids devise their own plans to avoid feeling neglected. ToddlerDude, like any 18-month-old worth his salt, has a couple favorite strategies for getting Mom all to himself: 1)Rise early and loudly, and 2)Schedule a fit of impressive dimensions for the sermon. Not particularly creative, but always effective.

Again we must turn for consolation to poetry. Original submissions encouraged. Submissions of actual pie also accepted.

Word search

Shouldn’t there be a single word to express the phrase “pregnant woman”? I realize that pregnant is an adjective, but once we’ve established that a person is pregnant, isn’t woman kind of redundant?

Prepositional objection

What is with the weirdly garbled prepositional and phrasal verbs in children's books? Don Freeman (Corduroy dude) is the worst offender I've noticed, but I'd say it's pretty common throughout kid lit. It sounds unnatural and serves no linguistic purpose. Its overuse renders it aesthetically impotent, and it teaches kids to write in a similarly affected voice. Drives me nuts.

Over she tabbed to Publish Post! Up, up, up she rose from her chair! Toward the freezer she lumbered, slowly, slowly. Out she took the ice cream and into her 25 week old wombling she shoveled it!

Contemporary philosophers on cultural dress

I should have known Flight of the Conchords could handle the issue addressed a few posts south far better than I.

Update on Motherhood Prayers

I am sorry to report that the CPH's new edition of Starck's Prayer Book does not include the Motherhood Prayers. This means that if they are still on your wish list, you'll need to get Emmanuel Press's edition of Starck, in which they are included. While I am grateful to Emmanuel for making the Motherhood Prayers available, the volume is bulky and unwieldy since the Motherhood Prayers are appended to the larger collection of Starck's prayers, and as I conceded before, some of the language is pretty outdated.

Whereas the Motherhood Prayers are bleeping fantastic, I encourage all interested parties to write to CPH as I have done and ask that Starck's Motherhood Prayers be considered for an updated, freestanding edition. In case I haven't sung their praises enough, one of the best things about the Motherhood Prayers is that they are truly devotional and do not degenerate into self-indulgent autobiography on the part of the writer as so many women's devotionals do, and as so many readers of women's devotionals are sick of (thank you, Kelly of the eponymous blog). And while they are thoroughly Lutheran in piety and theology, they are not so dogmatic as to exclude other Christian readers. I would give a copy of the Motherhood Prayers to a Roman Catholic, a mainline Protestant, or an Evangelical-type and expect her to find them thoroughly edifying, accessible, and ecumenical--it would not be in the least a sneaky maybe this will Lutheranize you! attempt. This is one of those rare resources that transcends denomination and serves the whole Church.

It would be great to have the Motherhood Prayers available in a small, gift-able volume requiring only one hand, such as that to which mothers often have access. CPH could also offer this blessed hypothetical volume in a package deal with the new Starck edition. It could be great, just great. Let CPH know, if you're in the mood.

You can think about that until Saturday night

I've always got songs stuck in my head, but ever since Dr. Seuss became a big part of my life again, I find the same thing can happen with rhymes. I wake up in the middle of the night to my brain rumbling, . . . had to pick a peck of Snide/In a dark and gloomy Snide-field that was almost nine miles wide . . . . If I were ever called upon to perform extemporaneously in a talent show, I'd just get up and recite The Cat In the Hat without the merest pang of anxiety. One Fish Two Fish, though--tricky. Too episodic.

Why is it?

Resources, haphazardly recommended

Thus far in my parenting career, I've come across a few schooly materials that stand out from the rest. You deserve to know about these materials, just because you're so you.

I don't have the wherewithal to offer up a gushy review of each, and I'm sorry about that. Suffice it to say, these puppies are pick of the litter. At least give them a run over at your library, if your library is cool enough to stock actual books on actual shelves. Some people's libraries are not so cool. I won't mention any names.

The ABC's and All Their Tricks by Margaret M. Bishop, for all those times you wish you knew whyfore W or whyfore J.

Geography Songs Kit from Rainbow Resource Center, because singing "TURKMENISTAN! TAJIKISTAN! UZBEKISTAN!" is sure to make your kid a hit at birthday parties. No, really.

Family Math, by Jean Stenmark, et al. This thing is overflowing with really good ideas for turning everyday activities into math lessons. I'm a math dropout myself, and I really appreciate some hand holding when it comes to mathy topics. But I daresay even the math geniuses among us might enjoy shaking a few math things up a bit. Look, I'm just saying . . .

Handbook of Nature Study, by Anna Botsford Comstock. Everything you never knew you wanted to know about just about everything in your backyard, the neighbor's backyard, and that guy's yard over there, with a few facts germane to the local byways thrown in for good measure. I don't know what I'd do without this lovely book, and I'm serious. It's great. A tiny, tad bit Darwinist in it's initial approach, but even Darwin can't make a mess of everything.

Finally, the eponymous Tom Brown's Field Guide to Nature and Survival for Children, because everyone deserves to know the best way to stalk a coon. This book is really fun, especially if you've a few cubs in your pack that need serious lostproofing.

I'll post more as I come across it. And if you have some treasured resource in your parenting coffers, please, please, please, please tellums all about it. Please. Thank you.

The best way to make sure something gets done

Tell the kids you're going to do it.