I want to say a few things about bananas today. Just to be random. And perhaps because I've been a tad crabby lately here at Crabmommy. I mean, I like to be crabby, I do. After all, if I'm not making you smile or getting you all ticked off about something then tell me, why bother to read me at all? Anyhoo,  it's not crabbiness all the time here at Crabmommy, as those who know me well can attest.  Sometimes I am downright silly, and that's where the bananas come in.

I have never liked bananas. Nor does Crabtot. (But who doesn't like banana bread? I love banana bread. It is one of the few things I can make well, thanks to British bombshell cook Nigella, whose recipe I waxed lyrical about here.) But today I want to talk about some unusual banana products.

Ladies, let me introduce you to the Banana Bunker, which I discovered right about the time I started my personal blog. Ever worried about keeping your kid's banana in good shape for his school snack? Me neither. But apparently there is a gap in the market. For those of you who like a nice fresh banana, then this handy banana-shaped storage container is sure to be mighty useful. As its creator says, the Banana Bunker "protects the delicate fruit from bruising when placed in your backpack, nap sack, soft carrying case..." In short, the Banana Bunker protects from a dizzying array of potential threats to the banana itself. Interestingly, the list doesn't include STDs, but I'll wager you'd be safe from ALL HARM (except, perhaps, merciless ridicule) with this bunker on your banana!

The BB comes in a choice of colors. I prefer the au naturel look, as in the photo.

Here's another banana-inspired creation. It's a plush version: a "bruised banana" made by genius artist Heidi Kenny of My Paper Crane (a really cool website showcasing her hilarious plush art). Here's how she describes her creation:

This tender banana has been bruised and left to ripen far too long. He does not realize what a wonderful banana bread he could make, and so he cries. Approx. 6 inches tall each banana is hand dyed and can vary in ripe spots and bruises. The banana comes out of his peel is you wish, and is not meant for children under 3.

I don't know...Bunker or plush banana? A tough, tough call.

If you were to put one of these on, say, a registry (for wedding or baby or any other occasion in which you're trying to get people to give you stuff), which banana would you choose?

This one goes out to all of you who registered for your babies.

I've been biding my time on this one, not wishing to offend 80% of the moms I know, including some in my innermost circle, but frankly I think baby registries are tacky. As for "second baby" baby showers, don't even get me started. Wait, I think I did mention getting ticked off over that one too.

So what's my beef with registries? Let's start with presumptuous and impersonal: if you can't trust your peeps to find a few agreeable things for your babe then why are they even coming to your shower? Seriously, if SO MANY people are involved in this thing that you have to register for it like a wedding, then isn't the shower a tad out of control? Maybe I'd be more understanding if your kid was going to, say, succeed the Dalai Lama or something really big. But if he or she is just a mere mortal of a child coming into this world, do you really need a detailed list up there at Buy Buy Baby?

I realize I may sound harsh, but it's my sincere feeling that in a world of overconsumption and diminishing resources, baby shower registries are wildly out of line. And I think asking your friends, their mothers, and everyone you work with to visit a website on your unborn baby's behalf is just plain bad manners. To me, registering for a baby shower smacks of an entitlement among preggie ladies of our generation: we want only the best for our babies and the best means brand-new and custom selected by Mom (gives new meaning to "expectant" mother, I say). Remember: your baby is the most precious gift you've ever received, but she's your gift, not everyone else's. With that in mind, why are you suggesting your husband's college roommate ought to purchase said baby's bottle warmer?

Sure, I get it: baby gear is pricey and it's practical to ask for what you really need. But if you can't afford the basics, should you really be having a baby? Look, I know it's "practical" to ask for things you need in life, but hey, it would be practical for me to buy a house but I know it's not right to ask my friends to help me get one. In my never-so-humble opinion, it's inappropriate to ASK your friends to foot the bill for the essentials of your life. Like hemorrhoid surgery. Or a breast pump. That said, if your pals want to club together for the Medela or the Maclaren or some other much-needed item of your own choosing, great, but let them ask you about it, not the other way around.

When did we get to be so particular about our children and their paraphernalia? In my mom's day showers involved giving used things from one mom to another. But would any of us arrive at a shower with a used baby rattle or a series of our own baby's outgrown oil cloth bibs as an offering? If more of us did, then these pesky registries would disappear, or at the very least be given out only to close family, like the parents, aunts, and so on who really want to get you the very thing you'd find most useful. More to the norm, it's the spinster or single gay guy at your office who really couldn't give two figs about your wee one and yet has to club together with the others in your workplace to get you that Baby Bjorn carrier in the Synergy series. If you're that specific about what you want, get it yourself! Sheesh!

As for being given the wrong color item or something you don't like: most of these things are easy to return and I think it's nice when people feel they can take the initiative and choose something for your baby without feeling that the fetus already has a color, pattern, and style preference.

But that's just me: crabby and crustaceous all over. What do you gals think? Are baby shower registries out of line or, gasp, could it be me?

I'm all about telling kids the truth, even when it comes to uncomfortable questions, such as those about babies and where they come from. You have to tell kids the real deal right from the get-go: babies come from magic baby seeds that you swallow, and then when they're fully formed, they fly out of your belly-button.

Okay, so I'm a prude. I'm totally into teaching kids euphemisms for sexual anatomy, and I shun truth and reality as much as possible when it comes to exactly how that anatomy functions in reproduction. I understand the impetus behind those who believe in honest answers for curious kids, but I just can't bring myself to be honest with my own child.

I always planned to be the sort of hip mom who could talk about babies and sex and periods and whatnot in a cool and effortless way with my daughter. Back when I was teen I pictured my future self as an Ideal Mom: I'd be lounging on the floor of my daughter's bedroom having frank discussions about the mysterious world of men and women. As Ideal Mom, I'd know exactly how to make my daughter feel comfortable discussing anything with me, while also maintaining a line between her privacy and mine. As Ideal Mom I would ever squirm at any question or be stumped for an answer. I'd be so easy to talk to and such a good listener. I'd also be totally cool with my daughter wearing ripped miniskirts and white lipstick (yes, this daydream occurred in the eighties).

I planned to be unfazed by sex when it came time for me to discuss it with my kids. But here I am already squeamish about the birds and bees and my kid is only in preschool! I guess I just wasn't prepared for her recent round of questions about babies and how they are made and delivered. I thought I had more time to figure out the right answers, but apparently kids want the info pretty early these days. And so, whether it's because I was ill-prepared, especially prim, or both, I recently spun Crabtot a yarn about magic baby seeds. I second-guessed myself even as I spun my story, wondering whether it might not be better to simply deliver the truth when a kid is too young to freak out over it.

Shortly after that conversation, Crabtot's idiot mother watches a Netflix of Juno while Crabtot's in the room, and I find myself fumbling for words yet again, only, this time I decide to be more honest. "How old is that girl?" Crabtot quizzes me, during a scene where preggers Juno goes to visit the future adoptive parents of her baby. "Is she a grownup?"
Where before I might have answered "Why, yes! Absolutely!" about knocked-up teen Juno, I decide to try out truth instead. "Not quite," I say. "But she's almost a grownup."
"She's got a baby in her tummy," Crabtot observes. "But she's a kid!"
"No, she's not a kid, she's a bit older."
"I thought only grownups could eat baby seeds!"
"Sometimes younger people eat them too." 

Gulp. To cut a long story short, I've now got a preschooler who tells me that when she grows up she wants to be "a pregnant teenager"! Way to go, Crabmom!

What about you? Have you attempted to discuss the facts of life to your little ones? If so, did you opt for truth or fiction?

There's nothing quite like maternal instinct. You know your baby the minute you see her, and maybe even before she arrives you've dreamed of her and know what she will look like. And the cry! You know her cry the first time you hear it. Or so I was told. Except that my entire pregnancy I dreamed deeply and intuitively of a boy and had a girl, and after labor I couldn't even pick out my own baby in the nursery, much less identify her cry.

A close childhood friend just emailed me a pic of her newbie and I had a flashback to my first day with my own babe in hospital. My Perfectly Natural Childbirth plan did not go according to plan, or anywhere  close to it. Dire warnings from my Perfectly Natural NYC unbermommy childbirth class had cautioned against putting new babes in nurseries for fear of disturbing the mother-child bond, but I handed my newborn over without the slightest compunction. The baby nurse was an incredible genius with infants and I was not. This lady swaddled my Crabtot to within an inch of her life and whisked her to a place where she would be safe, warm, and fed EVIL FORMULA while her drug-addled post-C-section mother clicked on that morphine drip like nobody's business. It was fantastic!

I had been told I'd want to get up and walk out of that hospital within mere hours of my natural childbirth. Instead I asked my insurance for a fourth night and whooped with joy when I got it. I'd dreamed that my baby would slip out of me "like a bar of soap." I actually dreamed those words (as well as "like a sardine"). But bar of soap? Not so much. Maybe I got the dream wrong. Maybe my dream oracle voice said like a barge through a moat, and I just heard it wrong...?

Anyhoo.

The arrival of Crabtot was, in other words, not what I expected. But the moment when it all became clear to me—that I knew nothing, had no head start on motherhood, and would have to learn all of it—was when I cooed at the wrong baby in the nursery. "Hi, my baby," I said to a precious little dark-capped bundle.
"Actually, that's not your baby," the neonatal lady said.
"Oh!" I laughed. Must be all that morphine! I moved on down the line and spotted my child. "There she is!"
"Nope, Baby Bernstein," the nurse replied, referring to the baby of a friend who so happened to be having her baby (a boy) in the same place and on the same day as me.

I finally did find my baby, third time lucky, but you can be sure I did not simply follow the sound of her cry with that fierce conviction that is maternal instinct. And maybe you think I'm seriously kooky for not knowing what the heck I was seeing or hearing when it came to my own child, but come on: it's like asking someone to recognize their innards in a lineup! Okay, maybe a babe isn't quite so anonymous as one's internal organs, but I still think the comparison stands, because to me babies come in types, and while mine conformed to the dark-capped almond-eyed type I predicted, I still didn't know her a whole bunch better than I'd know my own pancreas if I met it.

So, yes, I was one of those who thought she'd be "a natural mother," whatever that is. In that first moment I'd expected recognition and instead I was in the presence of newness: a mysterious, entirely  enthralling newness, but someone as foreign to me as I was now to myself in my new role.

Now that the early days are behind me and I'm a total mommy pro and know all there is to know about being amazing and perfect at motherhood in every conceivable way, I keep myself in check by remembering Crabtot's first couple of days. Sometimes I just laugh and see that initial confusion as my entirely sucking at new mommyhood, slapstick-style. Other times it seems less to do with me and more to do with the idea that shared genes and parental love aside, children are born their own people, which makes them harder to recognize as belonging to you (an idea, I might add, that doesn't belong to me). In this way, my child is not mine; she just passed through me. And, thanks to her hospital ID bracelet, I get to keep her for a bit.

And you? Instant natural mommy or...?

I was considering giving you moms one of my advice parodies today, in which I make fun of the incredibly stupid things experts tell us in the name of good parenting advice. Then I thought maybe I'd make you giggle even more if I offer you another of my sensational Million Dollar Mommy inventions: these being gadgets I myself have invented in the hopes of making myself into a wealthy mompreneur like Baby Einstein Mommy or that chick who invented California Baby shampoo. (Both of those ladies can now pop off to Hawaii whenever they like, and probably don't have to do their own cooking, much less cleaning. All the more reason for me to put my otherwise scarily empty Mommy-mind to work and hope that my Baby Bjorn Clip-On Food Visor, WhineNot, or PelletTracker will attract the attention of a corporate backer...)

And then I saw something on the web that, like lame parenting advice and my own gadget designs, is incredibly silly. Except unlike my own offerings, I don't think this product is intended as a joke.

Ladies, who would honestly cough up dollars for The Portable Parenting Package? What is it? I'll let the company itself do the talking:

The Portable Parenting Package is a brand new product that is perfect for parents on the go. It combines the Take Out Time Out Mat and the Star Stash Reward System for an easy travel companion. The Time Out Mat serves as a "think spot" for children, teaching them to take a break and think before they act and also serves as a place for a toy until children agree to share it. The Star Stash reward system enforces good behavior with positive attention given and tokens exchanged for privileges and rewards.

So basically the Time Out Map is this little rubber circle thing that you're meant to stick in your purse and whip out when the kids are mauling each other at the mall, in order to create an instant TO space. Or maybe bro and sis are finally listening up on the car trip? Well, good thing you brought your handy portable Star Stash pack to give out as a reward. Otherwise, how could you parent properly?

Maybe it's just me who finds this absurd. After all, the product has won a bunch of awards, so I guess someone's taking it seriously. But, come on. $19.99 for this? Cheapmommy says you can do the same for free: Reward? Off the top of my head, lollipops are free at the bank, Trader Joe's gives out balloons gratis, and the Dollar Store sells 1000-sticker packs for, duh, a dollar. Time Out? Try a restroom, car seat, park bench, piece of gravel, wherever-the-heck. It's called improvising, which is something we moms know a thing or two about. And LAWD knows Crabmommy doesn't need yet another thing to carry around in her filthy overstuffed purse.

Seriously, if Portable Parenting Mats are cracking it, shouldn't my MartyrMeter be making me millions?

What do you think? Is the PPP smart or stupid?

I lived out my perfect day today.

In my head, that is. As I do all too often.

This morning I woke up early, before my husband and child, grabbed an hour of power skipping with the skipping rope I finally purchased after talking about it endlessly, and received my family with good humor at the breakfast table, where I served everyone oatmeal (McCann's, the real Scottish kind that takes bloody forever to cook) in these swanky Ittala bowls.

After Crabtot and her dad vacated our unpretentious but incredibly stylish and tidy apartment, I applied myself diligently to a craft activity that has been languishing beneath my well-ordered desk. This consisted of my gluing felt to a small pillowcase made from the vintage fabric I bought when Crabtot was but a wee babe in arms. After so many years, at last I finished this small cushion for Crabtot's bed! A row of felt owlets on a hand-embroidered branch. Screamingly adorable!

As I went about my day in a casual but effortlessly chic outfit, I felt the glow that comes from knowing my life is finally looking like the life I always envision in my mind's eye, from top to toe: I have a good haircut and de-sloughed foot soles; I no longer compulsively eat Gummi bears; I have improved both my mood and my "mom-flap" through exercise; I have found the missing mates to both my favorite wool socks and my black winter driving gloves; I have figured out which keys on my key-ring are obsolete and recycled them accordingly; I have in my possession enlarged photo prints of Crabtot from a custom printer, rather than a junky online store, to place into the lovely wood frames I picked up at a thrift store. AND just prior to a productive session of novel-writing (because talking about it isn't the same as writing it), I made the time to take jars of pennies and dimes to the bank! I even sorted them first for expired foreign currencies from Africa!

On picking up my child after a morning of preschool, I went home to eat a lovely lunch with my Crabtot, a meal that included tomatoes and lettuce grown from seed in our small but delightful garden. We then engaged in some wondrous afternoon playtime, performing with homemade puppets from behind the couch. Then Crabtot helped me clean up, took a nice little nap, and woke up in a pleasant and chirpy mood.

Tonight I will go out for a date night involving sushi and my husband's choice of ancient foreign film re-run, which I will not argue about, but will instead accept with wonder and delight, appreciating his creativity and independent-mindedness for the gifts that they are.

You know what really sealed today's feeling of peace and accomplishment for me? I removed all Hello Kitty sticker debris from Crabtot's clothing (and mine), deleted all old bookmarks form my internet toolbar, and bought all outstanding books in my Amazon cart, from Francine Prose to Boris Pasternak. I also made several mixed CDs for my scattered friends and family. These CDs went into packages containing exquisite original presents, which these poor good people richly deserve and which are long overdue.

Today, I lived the life I keep meaning to get around to living. Today I was my other future-perfect self.

I wish.

Anyone else live a whole other life inside their heads? As in, imagining a better, more productive, aesthetically pleasing version of your life that you fool yourself into thinking might...just...one day...become real?

It's been a while since I posted on delicious but cheap kid-oriented gear, but LAWD knows when I'm not crabbing about motherhood, I love sourcing a cheap but beautiful and practical objet of design for your delectation. I also adore getting around those dull and pesky baby shower registries, and nothing says you care quite like the gift of oil cloth to a new mom. Oil cloth being that magnificently bright, sassy, and delightful material from which any spill, smear, smush, or otherwise unwanted substance may be cheerfully removed with the simple swipe of a damp cloth.

Now who wouldn't love a gift of gorgeous oil cloth bibs for baby, with that handy front pouch for catching stray food morsels? Land of Nod has a swell deal on them: 3 for $14.95 in floral or gingham. And then there are these lovely velcro-sealing reusable lunch sacks from Tatermash (for kids and adults), for $13:

For the ultimate in oil cloth, I don't think anything could be more beautiful or useful than a mat like this one, and HOT DAMN if this item isn't seriously gorgeous and useful and worth every penny of its $38 price. My mother-in-law gave me a mat exactly like it when I had Crabtot, and I used it every day for two years. It was my picnic mat, my under-the-highchair mat (indispensable when we lived in an apartment with a carpeted dining area); it was also a mat for painting on and doing smushy playdoh things...Genius.

And that, my friends, concludes what may well be one of my shortest posts ever because I've been quite wordy and heavy here lately, and so today I'll keep it short and sweet. May you shower yourselves and each other with oil cloth. It makes even a Crabmommy smile.

The following post contains what has come to be known as a Momocrite Moment. If you are offended by hypocrisy and faulty mothering, please read no further.

"So I can have my cookies before lunch today?" Crabtot asks, confused when I hand her a couple of vanilla wafers to distract her from something else. "Is it a special occasion?"

Consistency. Every mom knows that's the biggie. The numero uno. The scaffolding that supports all the rest of your parenting skills.

But consistency is for losers. At least that's what I feel today. Because like all moms (honest ones, at least), I may cleave to consistency but I do so inconsistently. Which is to say I try and I try and I try, and then sometimes I just, you know, don't. So when I don't, then I have to come up with excuses for my inconsistent behavior. Consistent excuses, that is. Ones that make sense. Like "special occasion" for small treats or privileges not usually extended but somehow deemed necessary to get through that particular day. And I tell ya, special occasions are happening an awful lot at our house at the moment. Because I'm lazy, tired, and a little bit at my wits' end this month.

When I first started mommyhood I was an absolute slave to consistency. Especially in matters of sleep. I had my sleep-training bible, Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child by Marc Weissbluth, and I believed in every single line of that rigid and exacting technique (except that one curious sidebar in which after teaching you to be the most insanely consistent human alive he says, mysteriously, something like "remember: flexibility is good"). Weissbluth's methods are complex and strict indeed, but they work. And implementing them was something I did oh-so-diligently in year one of my child's life. God help the Crabfamily if Crabtot wasn't in bed by sundown and put down exactly as the book stipulates! And even while I pretended to understand when fellow moms told me the book "didn't work" for them, in the back of my mind my judgmental mommy voice piped up "It doesn't work because you're not being consistent."

These days I find myself caving more, giving in to my inconsistent side. And I feel bad for sending mixed messages to my child. But apparently I don't feel bad enough. It's just that being "on" as a mom is too much work sometimes, ya know? Which is why I have decided to let Crabtot eat as much sugar as she likes, stay up until 11pm if she wants to, and run around parking lots. I'm not saying I do let her do these things all the time. I mean, that would be way too much for a three year old! But some days I just let it all fall apart around me.

Okay, so some of you have have a bee in your bonnet over the above paragraph. Run around in parking lots? Whaa? Relax in your slacks! It's a JOKE. Would Crabmommy be Crabmommy without a spot of irony now and again? I have to have some consistency in my life, people!

In all seriousness, though, I have come to see that maintaining rules (even and especially your own) is perhaps the hardest part of motherhood. There's picking the child up and going straight home as threatened after that very first tantrum in the park. There's the actually following through and not allowing a scheduled play-date as forewarned if said Crabtot sticks her tongue out at Mommy one more time. Yes, I've learned to confine my punishments to that which I would actually follow through on, but sometimes your brain just doesn't work that fast. Sometimes you say something and you don't follow through at all, and it may just be a little tiny thing but it looms large in your head because you are Consistent.

And so I give up my Consistency Queen Crown. It's too hard to live up to the absolute. The only consistent thing about me? That I am inconsistent (sometimes). Therefore do I say unto you: consistency is for losers. Because whenever I'm not doing something well as a mother I have to find the positive in the negative in my momocrite way. Maybe it's consistency that is, after all, the hobgoblin of small minds, as the saying goes. If we are consistent we teach our kids that life is always reliably logical and makes sense and is fair, and we know that's not true. Inconsistency: It's the spirit of spontaneity! It's human and therefore humane; it's imprecise and surprising, which makes it real and true to life.

Okay, so maybe that's a bunch of hooey. But doesn't it sound good?

What about you? Consistently inconsistent too? Please say it's true!

**On another note, stop by my personal blog later this week for a swagtastic giveaway involving handknitted, ethically-made cotton baby sweaters from Totoknits of Kenya. Fa-bu-lous.

Who doesn't find dinnertime with small kids a tad trying? Actually, I don't. Because I don't eat with mine. And I've recently realized that what how we do it chez Crabfamily is a little unusual: most of my breeder friends eat with their kids.

Call me Victorian but, while I adore my child and find her fascinating and delightful much of the time, I have no desire to eat dinner with her. And nor does her doting father. Call us intolerant, selfish, old-fashioned, but we just find dinner with tots, well, unappetizing.

But it's more than that. Our parents-only nighttime noshing started way back, long before Crabtot could sit up and eat solids. Back when she was a colicky infant, my husband suggested we attempt to maintain some grownups' time in our newly topsy-turvy world by eating dinner by ourselves. At a laid table. With wine glasses. Like grownups. This took some doing. Sometimes we ate very late. But once we made the decision we no longer had to wrestle with passing a fussy baby back and forth between us while we tried to shovel food down our respective gullets.

Part of the reason this ritual has made sense for us has to do with Crabhubby's schedule. He isn't home in time for Crabtot's 6:30 dinner. And actually it is he who makes dinner at least half of the week, so by the time it's on the table Crabtot is in bed. But even if we could eat as a family every night...the truth is we wouldn't want to. Not yet, at least. I know this because we eat dinner together on weekends sometimes, and when I have to get up from the table for the seventh time—in search of a moist cloth or to hurriedly rinse another fistful of cherry tomatoes—I look forward to the weekdays ahead, when I can park my butt in a chair for the duration of dinner, eat some seriously spicy food if I wish, and not have to reprimand anyone about using fingers as forks.

Yeah yeah, our system has its drawbacks. How is Crabtot ever to learn proper table manners and evolve her palate if she doesn't eat with her elders? (And how are we, her elders, going to brush up our slack table manners if not by setting an example?) Plus, yes, there's the hassle of making a separate supper for the little one. It's a drag.

But there's still something to be said for that table set for two. The unfiltered, uninterrupted, civilized, grownup conversation. A tiny bit of sanity in an otherwise nutty day. I'm not saying it's always scintillating convo at our house or that there's anything romantic about these dinners, but there's something swell about eating with someone who doesn't fire off skeptical questions about the "little black dots" on the lambchops. Like all good things, our grownups' dinner won't last, and that's as it should be. But for now, we're sticking with dinner for two, and I say  "chin-chin."

What about you, parents of small fry? Do you eat with your kids? If so, when did you start?