Happy Tuesday kittens. I hope you all enjoyed a long weekend with your young ones. Mine tromped around the beach in her adorable new swimsuit and sun hat. To my surprise, she actually only ate sand when it was coated in watermelon – by her own doing.
Almost like a coconut glaze over a shrimp. She carefully would coat each side of the watermelon piece and then happily eat it. I was OK with that seeing as how I was actually envisioning fist-fulls of sand going into her little mouth. I’ve seen the mud beard from the spring. I know what she is capable of.
But she is older and wiser now. She’s much more worldly now than she was in say March – or maybe she’s finally past the oral phase?
Speaking of oral – somehow that word conjures up images of Hohan or Paris in my mind. And you?
Anyhoo….speaking of my daughter and celebrities, I was a little alarmed when I read the piece on tweens and celeb gossip in Sunday’s NYT Style section. Did you read it?
It made me realize there is a whole additional realm of example setting behavior that I am responsible for, that I never thought of until Sunday.
Curbing my appetite for celeb gossip?
GASP.
C’est vrai?
As parents, we all have standards we need to uphold in front of our children. There are the obvious: watching your words carefully (anyone picturing Vince Vaughn in “Old School” right now – “Earmuffs!”), treating others with respect, saying “please” and “thank you,” the list goes on and on.
I was prepared for all of this.
I’ve been working on cleaning up my mouth for months now, sort of, in preparation for speaking like a Catholic nun in front of darling daughter. And the time has come. The other morning my husband said “Oh no!” and two seconds later, out of the mouth of our young babe came “Oh no!”
Except it sounded way cuter when she said it.
But back to the point – celeb gossip. Do I need to curtail my voracious appetite for celeb gossip as my daughter gets older?
The Sunday Styles section discusses how today’s tweens, as early as second grade, are well aware of what the celebrit’ho’s are up too in Hollywood. And they are even passing judgment on them.
Fortunately for parents everywhere, at least the tweens interviewed in the piece, were busily judging the celeb’s for the right reasons. Even more sophisticated reasons than moi.
I don’t know about you, but when Brit shaved her head, I wasn’t wondering why she didn’t give her hair for cancer patients, like the sweet girl interviewed in the piece wondered.
Hell, I was too busy laughing at what a freaking idiot she is and thinking about how much fun this was for the rest of us.
Whoops…my bad.
OK – so my morals and judgment need a little cleaning up along with my mouth. But seriously – this had never occurred to me.
I will need to curb my gossip rag purchasing and discussions while at home. Sure, my darling daughter will hear it other places and will learn all about it at school. But at home, does she really need to know that mommy will drop everything to get onto tmz.com and learn what the latest celeb gaffe is?
And then obsessively email her friends about it?
Is this something she really needs to know about moi?
I’m thinking – not so much.
Nothing like the NYT Style section giving me an invaluable tip on parenting, right?
throw expecting-to-be-mommies-any-second a bone and give an age limit… how will i deal unless i get hand-me-down ‘in touch’ magazines every once and awhile? can’t this rule be for mommies with little ones 1 and older? GOSH.
i want some watermelon.