Betsy Bailey

Over at Parenting.com, Alina is wondering if parents should be required to buy seats for their babies on airplanes.

My thoughts: I don’t know if it should be a law, but I wish more parents did it. We not only buy a seat for our little guy, but we schlep the car seat on board, too, and strap him right in (as you can see in the photo below).

There is no debate that this is the safest, most conservative choice. But I’m not going to argue that it should be forced upon every parent – I don’t have enough data to make that kind of call.

Safety and cost factors aside, there’s also the consideration of… being considerate.

Every time we’ve flown with Jake (two times), we’ve had the three-seat row to ourselves. But I was just on a long flight last week (3.5 hours) where a mama and her VERY restless 18 month old shared a seat in the row in front of us. It turns out that – for once! – the flight wasn’t fully booked, so mother and child ended up in separate seats anyway. (There used to be a day many years ago when you could usually count on more spaciousness like this, but that is incredibly rare on flights these days.)

The toddler was adorable and the woman they shared the row with was the easily-infatuated grandmotherly type. I was glad it was comfortable for all of them, but it did cross my mind that if that pair had been sharing the middle seat on a more crowded flight it would have been perfectly, 100% miserable for all parties concerned!

Three people sardine-canned into a row is bad enough. Adding a squirmy, restless fourth sounds like a whole new circle of hell to me. Ugh!

So I’d advise parents to keep that in mind when making their decisions about whether to purchase an extra seat, especially on longer flights with older babies. How much worse is the flight going to be for you if you’re trying to keep your little one contained and not kicking or sprawling themselves across the perfect strangers you’re scrunched in with?

Jake, now 3 years old, loves to hook up whatever toy vehicle he can to the rear axle on his tricycle and pedal around (a skill he has just recently caught on to) exclaiming, “Look! Look! I have a trailer!”

Today he tried to hook up his miniature red wagon. I was pretty sure that would not work and I told him so. Bailey wisely counseled me (she and her sisters do that a lot), “You should just let him try, Mom. Let him figure it out for himself.”

He DID figure it out – and proved me wrong. It totally worked. He also managed to get three trailers going simultaneously.

I should just stay out of these matters about which I know nothing. ;-D

I was just porting this old entry about parents taking their young kids into rated-R movies (Knocked Up, in this case) over from my archives and I had to laugh at the irony. Particularly the part where I said:

Sex, drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, profanity – you name it, it was in there. I can’t sit through quite a number of PG-13 movies with my teenage stepson. When so many PG-13 movies are so much on that edge of being too uncomfortable to watch with your kids, what are people THINKING taking an under-13-year-old to a rated R movie????

Not that the following incident was nearly so heinous, but… still.

First, some background. We are a family that caught on to the Dr. Who craze just this year. We started by Netflixing the first disk in the Season 1 set. Immediately, we were hooked. The kids like watching and re-watching the episodes, so Scott went online and purchased Seasons 1-4. And we devoured them in less than six months with no self-control whatsoever – all 140+ episodes and the DVD extras.

We were all a little melancholy a couple weeks ago as we watched the final episode of Season 4 (especially when we learned that Season 5 is all a mess. Three Dr. Who specials in 2009, but no full season until 2010!).

But we consoled ourselves with the plan of watching various Dr. Who spin-offs, like the Sarah Jane Adventures. And Torchwood. Maybe check out some of the old Dr. Who episodes from the 80s that Scott remembers with fondness.

It was with this in mind that Scott purchased the Torchwood Season 1 DVD and presented it to me as a gift on Christmas Eve. The kids were so excited! Dr. Who has really captured their imaginations – they talk about the episodes obsessively. The read about them online. They write fan fiction. Even my 16 month old toddles around the house singsonging the Dr. Who theme. True story.

So it was with much anticipation that we settled down to see the story of Captain Jack Harkness resumed in our lives. Boy were we in for a surprise.

(This is what happens when you don’t vet your children’s programming!!)

Where Dr. Who is sunny and bright – with a lot of day time scenes, I realize in hindsight – this first episode of Torchwood was dark and gloomy – a lot of nighttime, a lot of drenching rain. Where Dr. Who stops short of gruesome violence, Torchwood let’s the blood spurt (vividly). Where Dr. Who is rated G for language, Torchwood dropped the F bomb at least a dozen times.

Not that my kids have never heard the F word in real life, goodness knows. But I guess we’ve sheltered them adequately, because they are NOT used to it on TV. They aren’t even allowed to watch most PG-13 movies until they are 13. So they were visibly flinching with every instance of profanity.

So, yeah, obviously kids are not the intended audience here. We were chagrined. Bailey and HM were berating me for letting them watch such a horrible show: “Maaahhhhm. We are not OLD ENOUGH for this yet!”

I wasn’t planning to let them watch any more of it for several more years. But they caught the preview for the next episode. Whoa, there goes Captain Jack running NAKED across the screen. The girls erupted with squealing. So I don’t think they heard the part about how the aliens in that episode are somehow activated by the sexual act.

Yep, okay, this is NOT Dr. Who. No mistake about it. Oops.

The episode was great, though. Scott and I really enjoyed it (and the girls enjoyed the storyline, too, actually) and are looking forward to watching the rest. It’s just not gonna be family TV night is all.

The Sarah Jane Adventures it is. (After we watch the first episode ourselves and read up a little on the reviews first, just in case.)

I just finished the Twilight series two nights ago, specifically vetting it for my 12 and 11 year old daughters who were hot to see what all the fuss is about.

WARNING: There are spoilers ahead.

HM finished the first two books and she’s done (for now) – she says Bella needs to get a life and she thought it was boring and that’s that.

Bailey also thinks Bella needs to get a life – she thinks Meyers wrote her WAY too hormonal (heh, an advantage to having a so-far non-boy crazy preteen reading it) and makes very bad decisions, including doing reckless and dangerous things in defiance of parental authority for very unhealthy reasons.

It’s already inspired some very spirited conversations in our household!

If you read amazon reviews, you’ll get the gist. It’s very much the stuff of fairy tales. As a theme, it really has this troubling inherent problem that underlies many of its other problems: To fulfill her dream (which is to become a vampire so as to be with Edward forever without physically aging beyond HIS physical age of 17) means sacrificing Bella’s very humanity. There is no way to turn that into a healthy decision.

Reminds me of the problem with The Little Mermaid. But at least Ariel has a talent – some aspirations. Bella has… NOTHING. She has no ambition, no dream, no aspirations whatsoever. I don’t understand why Meyer did that. I don’t understand why the editors didn’t suggest this simple improvement which would have given Bella even more to weigh when considering what she’d be sacrificing to be undead with Edward.

Ultimately, I kept turning the pages because Meyer IS a good storyteller. I wanted to see what would happen next – how this would all end. I wanted to see vampirism through Bella’s eyes (and that WAS cool in a fairy tale wish-fulfillment kind of way). But, damn, I was also frustrated because it could have been SO MUCH better in hundreds of different ways.

Back to values… There aren’t many values Bella represents that you’d want your daughter to emulate. Bella has no respect for her parents (nor does Meyers, nor does the reader), she is not a good friend – she is quite the user. She is attracted to Edward, but it seems to be a purely chemical thing. When Bella finds a good friend and Meyer paints a picture of relatively healthy companionship based on more than physical attraction and infatuation, Bella doesn’t pick that boy.

I think it’s a fun read, escapism and wish fulfillment galore, but it’s really important to help our daughters read with a critical eye, IMO. Just like we try to savvy them to all the unhealthy values expressed in media.

Ultimately, I think it’s a shame that Bella got everything she wanted without really sacrificing anything. The whole series really is about gratification of your desires, even at the expense of others, with little sacrifice required. I would say it’s definitely a mirror of much that is wrong with our society and its most superficial of values.

Read this series just a couple months after reading Reviving Ophelia like I did and it’s pretty chilling actually.

One friend of mine also made a good point about the unrealistic portrayal of having a baby in the fourth book. Bella becomes a vampire after having a baby, so she is immediately in perfect physical form and has superhuman strength and wants to have hot sex constantly. The birth – definitely not glorified, but problematic in its own ways. The postpartum period is beyond glorified, though, lol. Perhaps not the message you want to send teen girls about what having a baby is like.

Early last week, I was shut up with Jake in my MBR/office. The stupid door was shut, but it doesn’t completely latch. He managed to get it open, sneak out and crawl into HM/Mira’s room before I even noticed he was gone. (The door is around the corner from my office and I never thought for a second he’d get on the other side of the door!!!)

Thank goodness he didn’t head for the stairs instead.

There’s still more.

HM was having a snack and she came upstairs, went into her room to read on her bed. Suddenly, she shrieked! She heard baby sounds emerging from under her bed. She peeked below and sure enough, Jake had crawled under there and was playing with various choking objects.

He’s on the tail end of a cold, plus the dogs spend the night in the girls room. So when HM brought him to me, he was wiggling and gurgling with delight. And his face looked like it had been tarred and feathered, except with snot and dog hair. He was totally pleased with himself, though.

Isn’t he too young for these shenanigans??????

So if awards are being handed out today, I think I win for most neglectful, yet luckiest mommy. Wahhhhhh and PHEW that he was safe.

Ironically, I was researching baby gates when this went down.

And this weekend, my amazing husband solved some of these problems! We now have a master bedroom door that latches again AND we have gates. He also spent a significant amount of time in the attic yesterday dropping cable so he can rewire the network (the cables for which are currently snaking around Jake’s room, where he is never left to play unattended, but someday he will be).

This gate is on the landing hallway, blocking Jake from the balcony and stairs:

Gate #2 – this one traps Jake in the master bedroom/office when that’s where I am. By far the most childproofed and child friendly space in the house.

The bear represents Jake, who is taking a nap right now.

We’re putting this same gate (Kidco Configure) at the bottom of the staircase. Will post that photo when it’s installed!