DCUM Weblog

My loathing for Cheap Plastic Crapis well established, but there’s some plastic crap that’s rather expensive and which I’ve considered necessary. Things such as baby monitors, for example. That belief was thrown into question today when a friend from Mexico held up our baby monitor and asked, “What’s this for?”

His child is the same age as ours, his house is the same size as ours, and yet he and his British wife find they can manage quite well, thank you, without the tons of plastic crap – baby monitors included – that takes over American homes.

Something to think about.

-- Lynn

Copyright OrganicMania 2008

Anyone who has a kid, heck, anyone who drinks water has done a double-take on the hermaphrodite fish in our waterways. Um, are egg-producing male fish swimming around in my iced tea water? I'm just askin'.

Hermaphroditism isn't just rampant in the Potomac River here in the nation's capitol. Intersex fish are showing up in waterways all over the country. They're not sure why (birth control pills and chicken farm runoff are two top candidates),and most wastewater treatment plants are doing exactly, ah, nothingabout it. My local councilmember emailed our water and sewer authority

“They’re shaped like real Hot Wheels,” my son breathlesslyexplained, “and they say, ‘Hope you’re right on track for ValentinesDay!’” By this point, dear readers, you know what’s coming, don’t you?

“Mama,” he pleaded, “please, please, I don’t want to make my Valentines this year. I want Hot Wheels Valentines.”

I was scandalized. After all, there I was, telling the entireblogosphere about the joys of making home made “Green Valentines” andmy own son was begging me to buy commercial Valentines cards!

Fortunately, I’ve been a parent long enough not to say “no” rightaway, so I told him I would “think about it.” And think I did. Ithought about how he was the kid at summer camp who told the othercampers that their tunafish sandwiches were poisonous because of the

I learned an important lesson this week. My husband is a parent too.

Okay, I'm exaggerating. My husband is actually a great parent. A wonderful parent.He adores the kids and they adore him. But, after a year of intensivehome renovations, it had gotten to the point where I felt like I wasparenting solo. Many nights he would get home from work with a quickkiss for us and then disappear into the construction zone. Sometimes hewould come back in for a quick dinner only to disappear again,sometimes he'd just pop his head back in for a goodnight kiss. Now,some of you may be thinking, what's the big deal? Allow me to respond:no daddy from the hours of 5pm to 8pm? Prime dinner, bath, andbed-time? With two toddlers? Do you now have teenagers and just notremember what 7pm is like for a 2 year old?

It’s hard to believe Valentines Day is next week. Soon it will betime to run out and buy those cutesy Valentine cards so popular withthe preschool set. Wait a minute - they’re packaged in boxes shrinkwrapped in environmentally unfriendly plastic. Plus, who ever remembersto buy them until your little darling reminds you the day beforeValentine’s Day? By then the odds are good that you’ll need to make anextra trip to the store just to pick up the cards – wasting gas.

This Valentine’s Day, get ahead of the curve with an approach that’scute, eco-friendly, inexpensive, and fun. Go retro and make your ownValentine’s cards!

You can get fancy if you want, but I’ve gotten rave reviews from thepreschool teachers with just the simplest of Valentines. Before my soncould even cut out a heart shaped valentine, he cut circles, squares,

Diary of a Date Night

By Sarah Pekkanen

6 p.m.: Date night officially starts in 45 minutes. Plop Trader Joe’s pizza in front of kids, plop kids in front of television, and sprint to shower. Husband is already in shower. Yell, “Are you almost done?” He yells back, “Just got in.”

6:08 p.m.: Husband still hogging shower. Turn on sink water to brush teeth, causing him to squeal as shower water turns scalding hot (love these old Chevy Chase homes!) Say innocently, "Oops." “You did that on purpose,” he accuses. Date Night not off to rip-roaring romantic start.

6:17 p.m.: Ask husband to get the kids some juice. “What kind?” he asks. Impatiently bark, “What do you think? That they’ve suddenly started swigging pomegranate juice or apricot nectar?” He responds huffily, “No need to be sarcastic,” as he gets the lemonade. Date night still sorely lacking romantic ambiance.

I made a disturbing discovery the other day almost by accident.

When I first put some family pictures up on Flickr, I thought it would be a good way to share pictures with family and friends especially since some of the grandparents are always on me to "send pictures!" My parents thought it was a little weird to post pictures in a public forum, in particular the 3 shots of the kids swimming naked in the mountains.

Hey, dude, I'm a hippy. We swim naked. Big deal.

To appease them, I made the 3 nudie pics "private" for family only and didn't think any more of it.

I happened to be clicking through my flickr album noticing for the first time that flickr records the number of "views" per picture when, like a cold bucket of water on my head, I noticed that the three private, naked, family-only pictures had over a thousand views each.

My immediate reaction was shock and disgust. I immediately deleted the pictures. Then I had some questions. Who viewed my kids 1000 times? How did they gain access to my private account? How did they even find these three pics among more than 100 non-nudie pics? I had not named them in any obvious way- I think they were called something like "img 0048". Who? What? How? My mind did not want to go to WHY.

I have asked these questions to Flickr via their online support (they do not offer phone support) and they have offered no satisfactory answers. Their reply was that maybe I needed to check my privacy settings. I wrote back, insisting on a more substantive answer. I have not heard back.

Kids are meant to be naked. Their bodies are beautiful and I mourn their growing body-shame. I went to art school where we deconstructed essays decrying Sally Mann and her supposed exploitation of her children and their beauty, their nakedness. We debated what should and shouldn't be sacrificed for the sake of "art". We agonized over the tension between the artists "intention" and the viewer's "perception".

And now I am agonizing over my own intention to take beautiful photos of my beautiful children so that when they're regular buttoned-up adults they can catch a glimmer of a memory of what it was like to splash and play in a mountain stream, to feel the chill water on their skin, to warm their whole bodies in the sun without a single notion of embarrassment or fear or shame. It's clear to me that perception, in this case, trumps intention.

The whole notion of public and private is shifting in the age of the internet. I understand why my parents (and many others, to be fair) have concerns about privacy and safety, and I too will now be more cautious. But I can't say that this will drive me to join the ranks of the deadbolting, paper shredding, alarm-setting, password touting fear-mongers who try to sell us on the illusion of security. That's just not who I am.

The pictures are down, the children are snug in their beds. I'm doing my job as best I can.

Today was a milestone day – I finally got Baby Boo his first real haircut, since far too many people were calling him "her." So by rights, I should be thinking about that happy milestone. But instead, I left the salon steaming mad about one of the most egregious examples of greenwashing I’ve come across – an “all natural, organic hair care for children” line of lice treatment products called Fairy Tales Hair Care for Children.

I happen to really be in the market for an organic lice treatment – in fact I even included it in a post called “Humor Me Not: The Top 10 Organic and Eco-Friendly Products Moms Really Need.”