Silicon Valley Moms Blog

My Eddie Bauer Booster Seats Were Stolen!

I was so excited to finally be able to transfer my twins to booster seats. No more lifting them into their seats--they're heavy now! After doing research I settled on two Eddie Bauer Deluxe carseats. I like the straight seatbacks. Many of the other ones had curved seatbacks. I'm thinking that can't be good for my kids' backs.

I bought them on a Sunday, and by Wednesday they were gone! I dropped my kids off at preschool then went to Valley Fair Mall (I know it's new sexy name is Westfield Valley Fair, but I still prefer to call it Valley Fair) to have my Apple Powerbook looked at. I went back to my car and noticed that the front passenger seat was full of my kids' stuff and garbage. I knew I didn't leave it that way. I turned to look into the back seat to see if there were any other messes and to my horror both carseats were gone! I could not believe it! (No, I didn't lock my car....)

"Environmentally Conscious" or "Eco-Friendly?"

My husband and I do our best to help protect the environment and preserve it for both the animals and future generations. Thanks to the numerous "green" shows featured on NPR, we are definitely environmentally conscious. But are we eco-friendly? As I found out recently, there's a difference.
 

If you are "environmentally conscious" you share a concern for and desire to protect the "natural environment" from destruction. If you are eco-friendly it means you are not harming the environment. The difference between these two is where the rubber meets the road (that's recycled rubber...) when it comes to figuring out if you're doing your part for the environment and, hence, the world.

I used to think my husband and I were doing our part. Now I'm not so sure. Some of the things we do to help reduce environmental erosion are:

Shame on you, Ms. Gibson!

Jessica Gibson, ex-nanny for Rob Lowe, claims that he "sexually abused" her during her 7-year employment with him. Sighhhhh.....I am getting really tired of these nanny/employer "affair/sexual abuse" stories. I mean, it's getting as bad as politician/prostitute/mistress stories.

I'm not slamming nannies because I know most of them are wonderful, hard-working women who love the children they care for. I just want to know what the hell is going on. We need to hold nannies to a higher moral code. These women are affecting the psychological health of the children they care for and I, for one, am really sick of it! Therapist and other "care-givers" have a code of ethics that prohibits them from harming the people they care for through negligent behavior or sexual conduct. If they do, they can be "disbarred" from ever practicing again. I think nannies should be held to the same code of ethics.

The Rob Lowe/nanny scandal is just the latest in a string of nanny-daddy trysts. Just to name a few...Dr. Phil is "counseling" a fireman who had an affair with his teenage nanny, Ethan Hawke had an affair with his nanny who is now pregnant with his baby, Jude Law had an affair with his nanny and then blamed his wife for it, and Robin Williams divorced his wife to wed his nanny.

Are school buses a thing of the past?

When I was a little girl, I rode a school bus to school. It was fun. I felt almost like a grown-up because I was in another vehicle and not with my parents. I liked the big seats and the big windows I could look out of. I especially liked being with all my friends together in the same vehicle. I wasn't part of the popular group so I didn't get to sit with the "cool kids." But I wanted to. They were, after all, cool and seemed to have all the fun.

But what I didn't enjoy about riding the school bus were those few kids, and there were usually only one or two, who tormented the other kids (luckily I was never targeted...probably because I was so quiet they hardly knew I was there). I felt bad for the targeted kids and angry with the bus driver for not doing anything to stop it. I could never understand why he just ignored kids being hit or shoved, even when the bullies were standing up in the aisle.

Since those days I have noticed an ever-increasing surge of parents driving their kids to school in lieu of letting them ride the school bus. Part of this I know stems from the fear of letting their kids out of their sight lest a child predator abduct them. And part of it is in lieu of letting their kids walk to school. But part of it is also "the unknown." As parents, we don't really know what is going on when our kids are on school buses.

Last year, a couple of girls, 7 and 10 years old, reported that they were repeatedly sexually abused on their school bus by a group of boys and the driver did nothing about it. 

Hats Off to Dads!

I go to Starbucks pretty early on weekend mornings, usually around 7:30a, so that I can get some uninterrupted writing done and my family and I can still have time to spend together and complete all the chores on the weekend that didn't get done during the week. (You know what I'm talking about...the REAL cleaning that only happens a) if you have a cleaning service come to your house or, b) someone's coming to visit so you rush around like a cleaning dervish so that no one will know how your house REALLY looks most of the time--cluttered, undusted, piles of laundry, etc. or c) on the weekends.) And one thing that I consistently see every morning while I'm at Starbucks are fathers with little kids in tow, some as young as 18m and some still with their p.j.'s on. I've talked to a couple of them and found out that they bring their little ones out for a morning snack so that the moms can sleep in. Awwwwwwww. I mean, really. Way to go, guys. Coming from a mom whose little ones will accept ONLY her when they wake up in the middle of the night and ONLY her when they wake up in the morning, I know how impossible it is to be able to sleep in even on the weekends and even after a grueling night of being up 4-5 times (I have twins!). So, I really appreciate the effort these dads take to make sure their wives/girlfriends have even just a little time to themselves.

Get the damn guns off the streets!

Well, there was another gun-totin' outlaw (or outlaws) shootin' up the highway in Charlottesville, VA this past Thursday. According to USA Today, at least seven cars were hit and two people were injured. Authorities suspect at least two people as the snipers (Col. Steven Flaherty, the state police superintendent, doesn't consider these sniper attacks but "random firing." Ummmm....I don't think so. But nice attempt at trying to minimize the situation so people don't panic.)

My God, when are we ever going to learn that guns in the wrong hands cause devastation, horror, and death! And, guess what? Where guns are legal they will ALWAYS end up in the wrong hands! I don't care how many so-called "safeguards" gun lobbyists claim they are installing to "protect the public." You know what would protect the public? Taking the damn guns off the streets! This is America! It's not the Wild, Wild, West, no matter how much some may want it to be. Do we need guns in a CIVILIZED society? Or, are we really saying that we're NOT civilized? I mean, which one is it?

Pregnant women won't get disabled parking

Assembly bill 1940, which was designed to give pregnant women in their last trimester and new mothers in their first two months postpartum temporary access to handicapped parking in San Francisco, died this past Monday during a legislative session. The bill was aimed not only at expectant mothers in their 3rd trimester but mothers with newborns who also had other small children to care for and maneuver through the parking lots and was sponsored by Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine. A similar bill was proposed 4 years ago that also failed.

Major opponents to this bill were the California chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the National Organization of Women. They say pregnancy is not a disability and women should be encouraged to walk more, not less. Disabled rights groups protested that there aren't enough disabled parking spaces to go around as it is.

The Baby Borrowers

There's a new reality show coming to NBC on June 25 called "The Baby Borrowers." The show originated in Europe on the BBC (and was apparently a big hit) and is, in the words of NBC, a "riveting social experiment where five teenage couples fast-track to parenthood." The premise of the show is that five teenage couples (between the ages of 16 and 19) get a chance to "practice" being mommies and daddies by struggling to cope with the demands of parenthood to see if they have what it takes to be parents. You can view a clip to meet the couples.

The show is filmed in Boise, idaho. Each teen couple is given a baby aged 6-11 months old for 3 days and must take care of this baby by themselves. NBC says the parents of the babies and nannies are available to step in, if necessary. After the 3 days are up, the teen couple then "receives" a toddler for 3 days, then a pre-teen, next a teenager, and finally an elderly person. All of this to "complete the cycle of life" in this social experiment with the teenagers.

Guilty as charged!

That's what I say to myself whenever something goes wrong in my household. Well, okay, sometimes I try to pin it on my husband, but if he won't accept the charge then I revert back to my fallback position of "Mother's Guilt." I know I shouldn't feel guilty but it's so damn easy! (and second-nature). If I'm anything I'm a good student and I have learned the lesson of guilt well!

It isn't just around parenting that I feel guilt, it's annnyyyywhere....! Relationship with my husband not working out? I'm a nag--my expectations are too high--I'm ungrateful--I'm too controlling--I'm too fat. Kids acting up? I didn't give them enough nurturing when they were newborns--I didn't breastfeed--sometimes I yell when they get on my nerves--I don't spend enough time with them--I'm a bad mother. Didn't get the job I wanted? I'm not qualified--I was too assertive--I shouldn't have said that--I didn't wear the right thing.

Spitzer, shmitzer...I'm worried about our daughters!

Two "hot" topics were in the media attention this week: Spitzer's expensive romps with prostitutes and the results of a government study showing that 26% of teenage girls in America have an STD (48% of African American girls had at least one STD!). Guess which one got the most attention? Could this be part of the problem with our kids getting STDs at such an alarming rate? Because as a country we are more interested in titillating stories about sex scandals than on a national health crisis concerning our daughters' health? Well, now that we've harrumphed enough at Spitzer's adolescent behavior, let's talk about our own adolescents' behavior.

Over a quarter of our girls aged 14-19 are getting diseases that are caused by having sex (If girls are getting it, aren't boys getting it, also?). According to a 2003-04 government health survey (Dr. John Douglas, director of the CDC's division of STD prevention says the data most likely still reflects current prevalence rates), 26% of American female teens have at least one sexually transmitted disease." (SJ Mercury article). That's more than 3 million girls!!! Aieeeeee...maybe it's just me but--something's gone terribly wrong! As a mother (albeit of preschoolers), this concerns me. According to a report by the Guttmacher Institute, U.S. teenagers have higher STD rates than teenagers in other developed countries—for example, England, Canada, France and Sweden—because they have more sexual partners and probably lower levels of condom use."