Browsing Category: Parenting

Things I don’t want to do to my kid

We all make rules to live by, and most of us eventually break them. I was SURE that I would only date a certain kind of guy, that I would only want a certain kind of marriage, that I would only be happy going to work in specific places. Basically, all those decisions I made as a teenager or in my early twenties have now totally disappeared, and I’m sure in many ways, the same will be true for motherhood. I’m trying to be pretty relaxed about the whole thing, and I’m not making anything set in stone but mostly built around whatever turns out to be best for Harley when she’s born. If she wants to suck her fingers, cool. If she prefers a dummy, that’s fine, too. I’m not too stressed about those things.

There are some things that I think I know for sure, though, and I reserve the right to unabashedly change my opinion many more times on the subject matter. I have strong ideas about stimulating her as a baby, about how to raise her to be a good person, about how to raise her to know about the world around her. I want to teach her how to read at an absurdly young age the way I was, so that she can find her love of reading early on. I want to be a good role model for her as a woman, and make it clear to her that she can do anything she wants, that her gender doesn’t play into it. I have all sorts of cool plans for things I want to do, but I also have plans for things that I never, ever want to do. Continue Reading

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Pregnant in a bikini

I like to think that I’m a fairly confident person. I have no problem speaking in public, meeting strangers, and I’m mostly comfy enough in my own skin to wear what I like and flaunt what I’ve got. At the same time, I’m still a woman, which means that I have my own obsessions about how I look and plenty of days when I think I’m too fat to wear anything other than certain dresses or whatever that I’m comfy in no matter what (every person needs those outfits). Being pregnant, and more specifically pregnant with a girl, has made me need to reevaluate a lot of my own body issues, and get over myself.

I have always had a round figure. I’m fortunate enough to have round “squishy bits” as my husband likes to call them (I hate when he calls them that, of course), so I tend towards an hourglass figure… although that cinched in around the middle bit isn’t generally as small as I’d like. In particular, I hate my stomach and I always have. Even at my thinnest/fittest/healthiest, I have found my stomach to be my least favorite body part. Now, though, it’s filled with a tiny human, and that makes it better, but I plan to do even better with my body image stuff. Continue Reading

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3 Comments Parenting, Pregnancy

When I plan to introduce my kid to Skylanders

I recently reviewed Skylanders: Superchargers for my day job over on Lazygamer.net. I was expecting to be bored by it seeing as it’s developed to be a kid’s game, but I actually really enjoyed it. Plus, it made me even more excited to get to play it with Harley one day – there is fun co-op so that we can play together, and I think any kid will get a kick out of the humor and adventurous experience. Also, the characters show a lot of empathy, even for the bad guys, and it’s nice to see some cool ideas of friendship and cooperation reenforced in a game. I already explained some of the reasons why I want Harley to be a gamer when she grows up; from mapping and problem-solving skills to decision-making alacrity and an interest in mythology, gaming helps with all of that. But there’s always the question of how old she needs to be to start video gaming, and if all that screen time is good for her.

I started looking into this, especially after discussions this weekend where I was seen as a bit odd for being so intent on having specific kinds of stimuli for Harley from birth. I know what I want, and I want her to learn about all kinds of things from before she can walk or talk. There is so much that happens in a kid’s brain so very early on, and reading to her and playing games together will be a big part of that. But mostly these were based on experiences without a screen because so many people rant and rave that screen time is dangerous for every human. Well, not so much. Continue Reading

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Comment Gaming, Geek, Parenting

On raising a girl strong enough to be called a dumb woman

It was a bit of a difficult weekend for me. I had fun and it wasn’t something on my mind the whole time, but there was some drama at work. The joy of my work being on the internet is that the whole world can see it. Over on lazygamer.net, I wrote a review of NBA 2K16. It’s a really great game when you get to experience the cool basketball action, but it’s also primarily locked behind online servers, so if the severs are down, the gameplay experience is seriously less than optimal. I wrote about the good and the bad in my review, the way I have for countless games, but the response I got was filled with quite a lot of vitriol. I’m used to this, and have come to expect it, but it affected me in a new way this time.

I often joke with the guys at work about being the only woman, about how my opinions are automatically seen as less valid because I have a vagina. The reality is that when people agree with me, they generally don’t even notice my gender. When they disagree, the easiest thing to do is blame the fact that I’m just an idiot woman who shouldn’t be writing game reviews. We laugh at the comments like that, and often joke about feeding off the hate. But now I’m bringing a little girl into the world, and even if she is the smartest person alive, she will be criticized for what she thinks because she’s a woman. Continue Reading

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6 Comments Gaming, Parenting

Who needs heritage anyway, right?

Yesterday was heritage day in South Africa. It’s basically used an excuse to braai (grill/BBQ) because that’s the only thing that everyone in South Africa seems to share as common heritage. Some people embrace their individual heritages, with Afrkaans people delighting in an excuse to eat Melktart or English people… um, colonizing all the room in the shopping centers? I’m not 100% sure, but basically it’s one of those public holidays here that everyone happily takes advantage of as an excuse to make fire, hang out with friends/family and generally enjoy a day off.

People have been asking me and Dean about how we will raise Harley, though. I mean, she’ll grow up here in South Africa, so she’ll probably have a South African accent with the exception of the odd words that she only really hears from me. But heritage is about more than an accent, it’s about knowing where you come from. Of course, with international parents, that’s a bit more complicated. Continue Reading

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2 Comments Parenting