Beta Mom

Just like Daddy

BetaBoy is learning to use the potty. Finally.

His cousins were over and he was proudly wearing his Bob the Builder Big Boy Pants (see above) and approached his cousin (female, 5 years old.) He grabbed his uh... toolkit... and asked her:

"You want this? You want Bob the Builder? You want my big boy pants?"

I think we are going to have to pay for her therapy.

Our Handy Dandy Notebook

These Knock Knocknotepads are hilarious and really, really useful. There are a few people who need a cellphone citation...

Pink Toys Suck

I recently took my 4 year old BetaGirl to the toy store to buy a toy. Not to buy a birthday party present, just for fun. Well, actually I bought BetaBoy a truck and BetaGirl figured it out and now I had to even the score. I should have known I would get caught.

Anyway, we wander into our local toystore, run by our local Crochety Old Man, and start looking around. BetaGirl walks down the aisle of microscopes, fighting dinosaurs and things to throw without looking at a thing. I know where this is headed. Pinksville.

It's the section BetaMom dreads most. It's the section of the toystore that caters exclusively into turning your little girl into a pre-skank. It is the gateway drug to BetaMom's sworn enemy, Bratz. The pink section features two kinds of toys, all packaged in the same dreaded color. The toys are either jewelry related, such as beading a bracelet or beading a necklace or beading a bracelet, oh I already said that, or they are about dressing a little doll in tiny clothes.

Let's examine the vast selection of the latter category. You can dress Polly Pocket in an evening dress or a sundress. You can dress Barbie in a wedding dress or a mermaid costume. You can dress Ariel in any of the above, so she really is the most versatile.

What lesson can we learn from these toys? We can learn that it is important to change your clothes many times a day. We can learn fine motor skills as we try to insert Polly's tiny foot into Polly's tiny shoe. (There's only one shoe. BetaBoy ate the other one.) We can learn to string a bead and accessorize. Well, she certainly won't learn any of these things from BetaMom, who wears jeans and a t-shirt every day. Sometimes the same jeans and t-shirt. Sometimes also a sweatshirt. See? Mommy is just like Barbie.

Besides the fact that the pink toys suck, my BetaGirl is passing up GREAT toys. There are really good toys out there, but they are not on her radar because they do not come in pink boxes or come with a matching tiny comb. Let's remember the non-pink toys from our BetaChildhood that our own chainsmoking, vitamin popping, westla BetaMom of our own bought us... I always liked the Chemistry set. When I finally got the one that had like 100 experiments, I knew I had hit the bigtime. I also liked Breyer horses, any inflatable pool toy, whether it was in the pool or not, and my microscope. OK - maybe I was nerdy, but I knew that there was something to the world besides miniskirts and high heels.

As an experiment, I bought BetaGirl a PollyPocket to satisfy her need for pink, and then bought some toys she expressly wasn't interested in - pieces that you snap together to make bugs and a bag of plastic dinosaurs. As soon as Polly's tiny shoes and alternate hairstyles were lost (about 5 minutes) she moved on to the other toys. To my releif, she loved them!

So it seems to be a packaging issue. What is the power that the color pink holds over our girls? Should I buy "boy" toys and put them in pink boxes? Should I stop taking her to the toystore because her addiction to Pink clouds her decision making process?

I will destroy you, Pink. This I vow - I WILL destroy you.

Snip Snip Snip

This made me laugh so hard I peed a little.

Go read it at The Random Muse

MySpace vs. MomSpace

Betamom read an article last week in the L.A. Times about myspace. As the mother of an almost 13 year old immersed in westla culture, you have to comment. The myspace article in the LA times was a fake, sanitized version of what the mystakes and the mybattleground is really like. Any mom who actually has a child in middle school right now knows that. And thus, we thank the blogging gods -- to create a space where people could actually say the things that they can't print in the LA Times.

Here are a few of the things that come to mind:

If your child is a minimum of eleven years old and lives in westla, and has access to the internet, or has ever been allowed to go on a playdate without you, then he or she is very likely to have a myspace account. If not, then he or she -- WITHOUT A DOUBT - has several friends and at least one "best friend" with myspace accounts. Sixth graders are on myspace already. By seventh grade, more than half of your child's class has a myspace site. Many have had them taken away and have new ones. Many have more than one account. Many change their name every week, so their parents can't track them. Even the ones who have been busted are back, sometimes with "My mom took myspace away" as a user name. Most likely, these are a few of their site names: Promiscual Sex. Sexxxx. Your Weenis is Small. Sexi. Chillidoggin. Orgy. Actually, those are all already taken -- by seventh graders at the most elite private schools in town.

If you go online, you will learn that school "Suxx Ass." That the name "Reed rhymes with weed." And that "there's nothing wrong with a good whore every once in a while." Seventh graders are full of wisdom in that way. You will also see thirteen year olds photographing mostly their butts, hair, and boobs. Giving away personal information about where they live (Pacific Palisades) where they go (rockin the Nod and buying sexi bras at Victoria Secret) and who they hate (their parents, who now don't let them rock the nod but that's okay because they can still get dropped off at Century City and get high at that place they all get high that moms haven't figured out yet.) They'll also totally dish on other seventh graders in a weird way that lets you know they don't really understand that anyone in the world could be reading what they are writing. Including the person they are ragging on. Including their moms. Including the school administration worried about "the myspace issue," the police worried about the child predators issue, and, let's not forget, the child predators themselves.

There is literally no exception to the rule. One account holder shares a gene pool with the founder of modern physics. One is the daughter of a respected local judge -- who probably had no clue when the kid's survey asked "Will you f___ me...do oral/anal on me" on her site. The children of the CEO of myspace attend a school where they would actually be suspended for even having a myspace account, since it is an elementary school and there are thus no actual fourteen-year-olds (the minimum age for myspace) attending. None of us are immune. Alphas and Betas alike.

It's out there, and you probably can't stop it, unless you are planning on home-schooling, cryogenic freezing, and/or hermetically sealing your child into a yard-waste size Ziploc baggie. All of those options sound pretty good to me, yet time consuming, somewhat impractical, and expensive. The larger issue becomes, where is this generation headed? What is the fallout from developing your identity along with your aggressive, promiscuous, semi-autobiographical / semi-fictional online personalities? If the world is made out of words - in some way or another - what are they making, and where is it all going?

And should we give up trying to stop them? Or to stop even our own child? The woman who wrote the online safety page for myspace compares it to "premarital sex" and says abstinence just won't work. But we are talking about eleven, twelve, thirteen year olds. And they can't get to the mall if we don't drive them there. They can't get online if they don't have a computer in their room. And everything they are doing is in the public domain, if you know where to look.

And trust me, even a beta mom will be able to find out what is going on in her kid's life if she just bothers to go online and find out.

Who needs that much space, anyways?

My Space (the enemy)
Google - to find your kid, search for kidsname+school+myspace...

Easter Schmeaster

Happy Easter! Or, in the red states, Happy Resurrection Day!

If they change the name of the holiday could we be let off the hook and not celebrate it? Could we not have to walk past the protesters with signs with sad faced piggies on them to get a honey baked ham? Could we not just skip those five pounds all together?

Did you survive? Did you really mind when Alpha emailed you to say that her children were dying shredded coconut for making easter basket shaped cupcakes, and had already finished not only dying their easter eggs, but also making their multi-colored jello easter eggs?

When you asked Alpha the next logical question -- how does one make a jello easter egg -- she says to you, forget it. You don't seem like the kind of person who has jello molds. (Beeyotch!) (But she's right.) (You're not.) (You don't own one.) (Is that something to be ashamed of or proud of?) (Why are you still on this?)

Your children dyed easter eggs while your big kids rolled their eyes and the little kid was so Into It she had to destroy everything around her. You ask, do you want me to boil a dozen more eggs? Your betabigkids scream NO!!! while babybeta screams YES!!!

And you realize how boring the easter egg dying must have become when you next walk into the room and see everyone has had their Easter Make Over. Blue eye glitter, red lipstick, ninja harujuku hair.

You helped your nephew stuff his face with drooly jellybeans because you thought it was funny. You ate everyone's candy from every basket from the nastified Snickers eggs to the excellent Sees Scotchmallow eggs. The only proof in the universe that there Must Be A God. Hallelujiah. Scotchmallow. Let us Praise Him.

You now have an Easter Hangover. And by that, you mean, it's hanging over your pants.

So you get up this week and decide to work out. You contemplate putting on your workout pants except for the sausage-tastic effect they have on your butt. So instead you drive down the street to have your jungle brows waxed. When it turns out the friendly neighborhood wax lady isn't in today, you pull over next to the Mystic Spray Tan shop and ask if they take walk ins.

That's right. Spray those jiggly back butts orange. See if it helps.

Roll the montage. As they say in American Idol, You had a bad day...

Daniel Powter
Weight Watchers
Peeps

Barefoot in LAX

You're going skiing, which you have mistakenly imagined was a cheap and easy alternative to Prague / Salzburg / Vienna -- where you could have been celebrating Mozart's 250th birthday, by the way -- and the Fairmont Orchid on the Big Island, though you could have stayed the fifth night free. But no, you're headed up to see the grandparents (one alpha, one beta) and let the kids have some fun in the snow.

You put off packing the night before because it's Tuesday, so the kids want to watch American Idol. Then you take a Lunesta to deal with the sleepless stress of not having packed (not visiting your parents...?) By the time you get up to pack, you have an hour left before you have to leave for the airport. As you debate whether or not to take the piano music and the recorder for the four year old (you do -- WRONG ANSWER!) you try to find all the cords for the various phones, laptop, dvd player, psp, ds (which you jam into your bag, only to discover the phone isn't turned on and the wireless doesn't work in your parents house because they don't know their own code.)

Feeling competent, you manage to find the special spray that the twelve year old HAS to have to brush out her hair. You even deduce that a rough draft colonial report is due upon your return and a flash drive with all the magical information needed may or may not be missing. And finally, you have three kids rolling their own bags through LAX and you think - you're not THAT beta of a mom after all...

Which is when it all falls apart. Your bags explode on the security screening. Your four year old freaks about taking her shoes off. You leave your boarding passes on the wrong side of the gate. By the time you get your belt scarf sweater jacket shoes off - everything you couldn't fit in your bag because of all the cords, hair conditioner and musical instruments -- your kids are wandering away from the other side of the gate. You finally get through, run after them, with your belt in your had, dropping your computer, arms full of sweaters and giant Oprah's pick furry boots, not to mention your daughter's funny pippi longstocking ski hat stuck to your head -- and your twelve year old turns around, rolls her eyes, and booms as loud as only a seventh grader can --

"MOM! PUT YOUR SHOES ON MOM! YOU'RE WALKING AROUND THE AIRPORT IN BARE FEET! THAT IS SO DISGUSTING!"

And as you look up from the middle of the terminal -- realizing that yes, the screening area is pretty far behind you now and you still haven't managed to get those furry boots back on -- you see Alpha Mom Extraordinaire, from an old family of alpha moms, the kind with buildings named after their families -- and she says, "I wish I had my camera."

Ah, Springtime in LA.

Uggs
Mozart Festivals
Lunesta
Fairmont Orchid

BetaBrain

Forget bone density. You are losing some percentage of your brain mass. That is a scientifically proven fact. What the doctor actually said to you went like this: "There's nothing wrong with you, you just have the brain of a fifty year old woman." O.K. THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT, BUT YOU STILL HAVEN'T BROKEN 40, BUTTWIPE! Actually, your diagnosis rates right up there with the time your groovy overpriced hollywood hairdresser who also does Cameron's hair thought your husband was your son. Or the time your doctor who was giving you a chest x-ray asked you if you were interested in breast implants, "since you are a viable candidate, and this is, you know, L- A."

B-I-T-E M-E. As betachild would say, doc thinks he's hot snot on a silver platter when really he's cold boogers on a tin plate.

How to get more brain?

1. Forget Sudoku. Betahusband and now even betachild and the boy she once had a crush on are doing it, but to you, it looks like the mathematical equivalent of a voluntary root canal. If math is how you are going to develop your brain, try to remember your children's birthdays, in order, with your eyes closed. If you can do that, proceed on to your mother, father, siblings...and when you can't actually recall any of those, try to devise creative plans to get them to tell you each other's birthdays without confessing you don't know any of them. If you can do all of that, I assure you it will be the equivalent of one line of a beginner Sudoku puzzle. Once you have this mastered, try to remember the day of your last period, the month of your last highlights, what to pay the piano teacher, when you last took those advil, or the last time you had sex. If these challenges are all still too advanced, try to remember to check the seventeen messages on your voice mail, or even your own name.

2. If you can't do any of the above, just start making things up. It's very creative, and nobody really minds getting a birthday card, even if it's out of season. And look on the bright side. It's possible you had sex this morning, and you just can't remember it.

3. Read a book, preferably a slightly smutty one about Henry the VIII probably written for sixth graders. If you can't read a book, break down and get reading glasses. If you can't even stand to get the cute green sparkly kind, because let's be honest, they're still reading glasses, go to Barnes and Noble and buy slutty magazines, and read them in this order, from most illiterate to most words: start with the clone of Celebrity Living, which is itself a clone of In Touch, which is itself a clone of US, which is essentially Cheaple without all the words. Words are bad when you have to conserve brain matter, so you need to read that one last. Star is OK since they upgraded the paper, and you can slot that one in right before US if needed, but don't ever, ever, stoop to National Enquirer unless you are actually getting on a plane. Betamom still has to have standards. Some standards. Some very low standards.

4. If looking for an added challenge, try to compare all the shots of Nicole Richie and DJAM and see how many angles of the same shot you can come up with. Award yourself 5 points for the same outfit, 10 points for the same day, and 15 points for conflicting headlines about the same subject: TomKat is together, TomKat is broken up, Brangelina is together, Brangelia is broken up, Vaughniston is together, Vaughniston is broken up...and so forth. Make sure to skip all the articles about Star Jones, Tara Reid, and Desperate Housewives. When you really are a desperate housewife, there's just something unfunny about the details of Marsha's perfect engagement or Terri and Ryan's fake romance or how Felicity (who Cheaple readers know to call "Flicka") and her doting husband still make time for their toddlers. Skip skip skip.

5. Go online. Check www.pinkisthenewblog every day and explore every link about every celebrity in the above paragraph. It's like reading all the magazines without having to wait until friday.

6. Try to remember which day is Friday.

7. Try to remember number 7.

8. What???

Pink is the New Blog
Sudoku

Narmal

Narmal?

That is how my four-and-three-quarters-years-old daughter says it. Narmal. As in, nice and narmal. As in, taco bell family dinner is narmal.  As in, staying up to watch American Idol when you are four is narmal.  As in, not having anyone to sit next to at the birthday party is narmal. As in, your mom being so lazy that she takes you to Disneyland instead of throwing you a birthday party with all those kids who won’t sit next to you…is narmal.

But growing a kid up in westla can quickly make you lose your grip on narmal.

At Gymnastics last weekend, one especially Chatty Dad in the class explained, and really just out of boredom because who can watch another one of these classes (except for the psycho dad who screams at his daughter to run faster around the the obstacle course that not even the teacher cares about) that his son was going to take an extra year in preschool.

No big deal. The “Gift Year” is fairly common for boys (and really, girls) in this town who are considering going to private school. At the same time, Chatty Dad casually dropped a few classic Mom-Bombs – the kid is being tutored in another language (BAM!) is a gifted musician (BAM! BAM!) reads chapter books (BAM! BAM! BAM!) and truthfully, his children – who like to read to each other (KABLOOEY!) are so advanced they have had to call the school to complain about the slacker workload.  (Reload...) Oh and did I mention Chatty Jr. is a jazz aficionado?

At the same time, I happened to look through the glass wall into the gym just in time to catch my own little four-and-three-quarters-booger-genius picking her nose and sticking her fingers into her mouth. Narmal-style. Lovely. (Let’s review the basics on the way home. “Stick your fingers in your nose you get a germ. Only babies stick their fingers in their nose…”)

Turning back to my successful and truly sort of nice-ish Chatty Dad who Has it All -- or MIA -- Most of It All -- (Do you want details? Of course you do. But they're boring. Shorthand: blah blah blah entertainment guy, and blah blah blah chipper ivy league wife no longer Has To Work but I digress – the point is, can you blame the guy? He has to get his kids into Dye or Mirman or Brentwood so they can get into Harvard-Westlake or Marlborough or Brentwood so they can get deferred and then outright rejected from Harvard and Stanford but possibly accepted into Brown or Penn or Columbia or into not quite as good of an ivy league school as Chatty and Chipper went to...so Chatty jr. can meet his own Chipper law-school bound wife...so they can have 2.0 children and be able to afford Karate...ah, the circle of westla life...you see Simba, we eat the antelope...

Can you blame the guy? He’s, after all, just a narmal guy, hoping for the chance to pay sixteen to twenty grand for kindergarten, not counting annual giving, the capital campaign, and the completely optional yet mandatory twice-yearly teacher holiday and end of the year supplication?

Narmal for this town. All boogers aside.

Hooked On Phonics
Kumon