Outrage day

Yesterday was outrage day for me. Which contributed to (or maybe was helped along by) my lack of Christmas spirit.

First, a friend who is in my Unbalanced Mommies group sent out this article to the bunch of us, with the e-mail subject line: "an article to make u feel guilty about 'cry it out'."

I should have stopped at the headline, but nooo, I read the stupid article. And it was a bunch of bull****. There's one line, for instance, that says that a child who was forced to endure CIO "may spend a lifetime trying to fill the inner emptiness." Inner emptiness? Really??
Which, under normal circumstances would have been merely irritating, but likely forgettable. But this came from someone in my mommy-support-group!! WTF? Why would she send that out to us?
First of all, most of us are hitting the year-and-a-half, 2-year-mark with our kids. Why on Earth would we need to feel guilty about parenting practices from early infancy? Moreover, why on Earth should we feel guilty about ANYTHING we did or didn't do, or do or don't do, as parents? We're all trying our best here, winging it half the time, attempting to raise little people the best way we know how. There is NO room for guilt imposed on us by outsiders. None. We saddle ourselves with enough guilt and anxiety as it is!

Also, up until her e-mail, our support group has been just that: a support group. We encourage one another. We help one another. We do advise one another from time to time, but always with the caveat that none of us really knows what the hell we're doing. But we're all doing a good job! In our own ways. Some stay home, some work part-time, some full-time. Some do daycare; some have in-home sitters; some have relatives to help with the babies. Some of us breastfed, some of us did not. You get the picture. Regardless of our parenting choices, so far, I'd say all our kids are pretty damn awesome. And isn't that the true barometer?

Anyway, most importantly, in our Mommy group, the one thing we never, ever do is judge. Ever.
There's enough judgment in this world, especially where women are concerned. I choose to surround myself with people who would rather lift me up than tear me down. So I was HOT about that e-mail. HOT, do you hear me?

One Mommy-group friend told me she just ignored it. And another -- the woman who invited the rogue e-mailer into our group -- said she was also offended but was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she meant to send the article sarcastically? Like, "check out this bull****?" Perhaps. Who knows. So she said she would find out. And that meant I could not send the e-mailer a flaming response. So I just raged on the inside. Grrrrrrrrrr!

Then, later on in the afternoon, my sister dragged me into this "If I Were a Poor, Black Kid" madness -- which I had been trying to avoid.
I won't even go into the details of it; it's just such a rabbit hole of arrogance and racism and bad grammar.
But suffice it to say that the original commentary by Gene Marks and the online brouhaha that ensued made me think a lot about the fact that people like Marks are representative of the "ruling class" in this country (as evidenced by the fact that his commentary ran in Forbes, not some random blog). And so that means that these are the people who are setting policy in this country. These are the people who will be evaluating and legislating my own three Black kids (two of them Black males, just to add to the pile) some day.
My heart is sick thinking of the prejudice and ignorance and condescension and judgment they will face.
And how, in many cases, I will be powerless to protect them from it.

And so my outrage turned to sadness and worry. (Of course).

I went to bed last night without washing the dinner dishes or cleaning the kitchen or straightening the bedroom which had been torn to pieces by Cary and Dean earlier that morning. That's how wiped I was.

Then, this morning, Cary looked at Dean's pajamas and pointed to the fire truck. He said, "fraratruck!" and then, "Dean!"
I said, "Yes, Dean has a fire truck on his pajamas, baby! That's right!"
Then...he pointed to his own pajamas (he was wearing the same ones) and said, "Fraratruck. Dary!"

He knows he's CARY! He said it!

Then they both commenced to running around upstairs destroying things, all the while making fire truck sounds, "Woo-woo-woo!" and singing made-up, gibberish songs with their loveys on their heads. Dean pointed to a wedding picture of ours and sang, "Ma-Ma, Dah-dee! Ma-Ma, Dah-dee!," and did a little dance. He kissed me good-bye at the front door without me asking!
They both waved to me, happily, and said "Bye-bye, Ma-Ma!"

Inner emptiness my a**!

(I'm over it, really I am! I just had to get that last jab in.)