Rachel’s Tavern- Shakesville Comment on Whiteness and Racial Awareness
- Arrested for BAHWB (Being at Home While Black)
- John Hope Franklin Has Died
- Bottles, Breasts, and Mothering “Choices”
- NAACP Class Action Lawsuit on Subprime Loans
- We Have a Future Blogger
- I’m Afraid President Obama, Himself, is a Bit of Coward on the Race Issue
- Highly Skilled US Immigrants are Emigrating: What’s the deal?
- Troll Comments Galore
- Mark’s Spinach Face
Oct
2
Weekly Baby Picture
Filed Under Baby Blogging | 15 Comments
I think little Eli may be teething. If he is, it would be awfully young. He keeps chewing his fingers, and when I put my finger in his mouth he gums it. I tried to give him some teethers to chew on, but he’s not coordinated enough to hold them for more than a minute. He’s also been acting uncharacteristically needy, so I’m wondering….
Sep
13
Gender and Baby Boys Clothes
Filed Under Baby Blogging, Gender and Sexism, Original Essays and Analysis, Photo Blogging, Uncategorized | 39 Comments
This is baby blogging, but it’s also a post about gender. As most of you know by know, I have two little boys, and one thing I really like to do is dress them in cute little outfits. Over the past few months, as I’ve perused the baby departments at numerous stores, I came to the conclusion that I like the clothes made for boys clothes better than I like the clothes made for girls. It’s not that I don’t like frilly dresses and ruffles. What I like about boys clothes is the bright primary colors that are more common in clothes marketed for infant and toddler boys and the themes used in both boy clothing and gender neutral clothing. My favorite themes are usually animal themed clothes, and above all else I like ducks and frogs–probably because yellow and green are my favorite colors. In my view frogs and ducks are generally androgynous, but many animal themed clothes are marketed for boys. For example, dogs, dinosaurs, lizards, bugs, and turtles are often found in boys clothing. I’ve also noticed two other common sets of themes that I like in baby boys clothing–occupational themes and activity themes. As I was looking through my little guys clothes, I noticed several outfits that had themes related to predominantly male (and mostly working class) occupations. The outfits they are wearing above are firemen themed. In the first picture, Mark’s shirt has a firetruck on it, and in the second picture Eli’s shirt says, “Chief Fire Dog to the Rescue.” I’ve also see baby boy clothes with policemen, construction worker, mechanic, pilot, and soldier themes. Activity themes involve clothes the promote going on safaris, hunting, fishing, eating, playing sports, and one outfit my little guys have promotes making robots (which could also be construed as an engineer’s outfit).
What strikes me about baby boys clothes is how much they promote activity and paid labor force work. Even as infants, we start to socialize baby boys into occupations. You rarely find occupation themed clothes for girls. Little girls clothes often have flowers, frills, and some animals (i.e. butterflies), but they don’t have occupational themes. They also rarely have activity themes outside of shopping or cheerleading. In fact, to me the worst subset of little girls clothes are those that say princess or diva. Diva is oftten used in a derisive way to indicate that the girl is overly demanding, and unlike the fireman or construction worker a princess doesn’t earn her title–she’s born with it or marries into it. Princess themed clothes also seem to play up baby girls looks–looking like a princess means looking pretty. I’ve seen a few shirts that have messages about boys being handsome or cute, but those are much less common.
One of the reasons that baby clothes are so strongly gendered is that babies themselves are often androgynous. If you put them only in a diaper, it’s often hard to tell what sex the baby is, but that androgyny doesn’t fit well into our gender polarized society, so this is where the clothes come in. Those clothes have underlying and blatant messages. Baby boy clothes have subtle and not so subtle messages. They say–be active, be bold, enjoy the outdoors, and get a paid job. It doesn’t seem that baby girls clothing has similar messages.
Sep
1
Mark Met Someone He Likes
Filed Under Baby Blogging, Uncategorized | 9 Comments
One of the neat things about having infants is that they reach developmental milestones almost daily. My little Mark is really good with his eyes. He loves to follow things, and last week he found someone he really likes….
himself.
Aug
30
I just love this picture. It has to be one of the best ones I’ve taken of my little guys. That’s Eli on the left and Mark on the right. I think you can really see their differences in this picture. It’s the first time I really noticed how dramatically different their jaw lines are.
Aug
25
Is this an Obama Baby or what?
Filed Under Baby Blogging, Family Issues, Photo Blogging, Politics | 7 Comments
My little Eli is really growing fast. He’s been making talking sounds for a long time, and he tries to imitate people who talk to him. He kept saying some word that sounded like okra, so we tried to get him to make a long O sound. Here’s my husband trying to get him to say Obama. He comes pretty close to saying it. Of course, according to my mommy ears he actually said Obama. He also likes to say uncle, good, and his favorite made up word is “enguh.” 
Aug
15
I’m Back…Sorta Kinda!
Filed Under Baby Blogging, Blogs Blogging Blogthropology, Family Issues | 9 Comments
Over the past 2 months I’ve been inundated with baby care. My life has revolved mainly around feeding and diapering 2 little ones, so needless to say I haven’t had much time to blog, but I promise I haven’t given up blogging. I haven’t checked my email or my site, so if you wrote me, I’m just now getting it.
A few weeks after the little guys were born I pledged that I would get back to blogging when they started sleeping through the night–that hasn’t happened yet. But I figure I can put up a couple posts a week until they actually sleep more than 3 hours at a time.
In the meanwhile, here are a few pictures from their first week. The first picture is of Eli in the hospital. We spiked his hair. I think it helps to get a perspective of how big/small they where when you look at them next to their Daddy’s hands. Like most babies, they lost weight in the first few days of life, but what’s more amazing is how much they have grown since then. In this picture, Eli weighed around 7 lbs, and in the picture at the bottom Mark weighs a little less than 6lbs. They were really big for twins, and I admittedly was really happy when I looked at them in the nursery and they didn’t look any different from the singleton babies. That was a great relief for me, because, being a mom of twins, I was at a greater risk for pregnancy related complications, which lingered in the back of my mind throughout the whole pregnancy. I was very fortunate to give birth at 38 weeks and have two big boys. I’ll add more recent pictures over the next few weeks.
And finally, Daddy, Babies, and Mommy want to thank everyone for their well wishes.
