Similac . . . From Hell!

They've found melamine in baby formula. Here, not in China this time. Yes it's trace amounts, but who knows how ingesting trace amounts of an industrial cleaner for a year will affect a child down the line? Just another reason to breast feed.

I know not everyone can breast feed. Some women have to work in service or retail jobs where pumping isn't a viable option. Some women are post-mastectomy breast cancer survivors. Some women are, knowingly or unknowingly, given medications that compromise or decrease their milk supplies. But then there are the women who just don't feel like it, and those are the ones who tend to piss me off.

Yeah, I know. Mothers have the right to parent however they see fit, and even more they have the right to use their breasts however they see fit. But for now let's assume I have the right to get pissed whenever I see fit. Okay?

Women who look down at their infant babies and say to themselves, "It's only second best for my baby," bother me with their sheer incomprehensibleness. But even worse, infinitely worse, are the ones who make us pay for it. The ones who go to WIC or who use food stamps to buy the formula. It's like (exactly like) if I went to your employer and said, "I have a baby and I want to buy that baby bottled water, and I want you to take money from your employees' paychecks in order for me to do it. Now, I have superior water at home in my tap. It is nutritionally superior to the water I want to buy. It has over 100 nutritional compounds not included in the water I want your workers to pay for. But I don't feel like using it, so hand over the money."

Yes, yes, people have choice and they can feed their kids whatever they damn well feel like. But I can hold it against them if they let their kids eat chocolate all day long, and in the same vein I can pass judgement on those who electively formula feed.

And what would you like for Christmas little girl, a mass spectrometer?

When I was a kid, my mom would ask me to start my Christmas Wish List sometime around the first of November, and I would hand her a list 3 feet long in about a week, and continue adding to it right up until Christmas Eve. As I got older, my list went from Barbies and teddy bears to cassettes and clothes, but I always had my list, and plenty of catalog pages with the corners turned down too.

I asked my ten year old what she wanted for Christmas and this is what she said, "I don't know. Science stuff." She can't, or won't, elaborate, and the only addition she's made to the list of one is "Habbo cards". Spending real money on toy money, it seems dumb to me. SO what do I get her? She's not the average ten year old. She'd hate me if I gave her anything Hannah Montana, and she's never even seen a high school musical before. So . . . what? I can't give her a box full of gift cards, and I can't afford to get her the kind of science stuff she wants (think the Mythbusters store room plus a full forensics lab), and she's already told me in no uncertain terms how much she detests girly things like jewelry and make-up.

Ugh, Christmas was so much easier before she outgrew Barbies and teddy bears.

Yes, he did!

We won! Okay, not me per se. But Obama won. Tommy will grow up having absolutely no memory of a time when people wondered if this country could vote in a black president. Tom was about his age when Martin Luther King was killed for daring to dream that this could happen, and now Obama's been elected. Cool.

Probably I've lost it.

Tommy's only 3 months old, and he's getting bigger and cuter and smarter every day. But I'm starting to get that feeling whenever I see a pregnant woman, or a cute maternity top, or watch A Baby Story on TLC. I want another one.

Yes, I'm enjoying Tommy. And yes, I realize that 2 babies will be a huge undertaking. And yes, I know that I will have a lot fewer memories of Tommy's childhood than of Ryan's, in part due to lack of sleep and also due to jumbling his childhood up with the next baby's. But I still amd starting to look forward to my next baby.

Is this natural, do you think? Or have I just completely lost it now?