Peggy Ornstein is a blogger and author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture. She wrote a piece for the New York Times Opinion Page titled Should the World of Toys Be Gender-Free? that I’ve been mulling over recently. In the piece she addresses the new girl-focused Lego sets that come with blocks in pastel hues and svelte looking characters to replace the classic blocky figurine. Lego advises they’ve done their anthropological research and it shows that boys and girls play differently, they’re only trying to be fair to girls by offering them more “girly” sets. Ornstein points out that preschoolers are at a very impressionable age and it’s at this time they assimilate things like gender roles. She asserts that by buying these gender specific toys there may be a “negative long-term impact on kids’ potential”.

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Ramblings

I turned 24 today! Today was like most days, I hung out with the kids and did some work. The kids were very nice to me and were peaceful and quiet all afternoon.

Logan was a bit iffy so he napped the afternoon away. While Claire decided to forgo her late nap (she took a morning nap instead), she did sit and quietly draw and play for nearly two hours. Behind her on her bed you might be able to see that she did tuck Teddy and Violet into bed, and every time I came to check on her she shushed me and told me to be “quiet for the baby”. Crap that kid is growing up too fast.

When Andrew got home from work he ran some errands for me that I didn’t feel like doing, then we all went to the best Chinese buffet by our house, King Buffet. I love Chinese buffets, they’re definitely my guilty pleasure. I usually don’t get to go to them unless my older sister is around, we’re buffet buddies, but Andrew was super nice on account of my birthday and all and let me drag him out. Logan munched on cantaloupe and a ridiculous amount of lo mein noodles, and Claire enjoyed spring rolls and sweet and sour soup. Chinese buffets are one of the few restaurants we can take the kids to and actually sit and enjoy our food. Usually we’re asking for boxes as soon as the entrees arrive and then rushing out the door after leaving a 50% tip as condolences to the wait staff for the horrible mess the hellions left for them. Just goes to show Chinese buffets are magical, wonderful places I should be allowed to visit every day.

I didn’t get a cake, and that’s because I completely forgot about a cake until Dez mentioned it on Facebook. My bad. I did eat an insane amount of those little donuts at the buffet, and that’s all I really need.

Life

I don’t know about all y’all, but I love Valentine’s Day! Seriously, what’s not to love? Pink, chocolate, super cute Valentine cards and gifts, an excuse to guilt trip someone into watching the kids so Andrew and I can go and see a movie that doesn’t feature animated talking animals. Deep sigh, perfection.

Last year Valentine’s Day was rather hectic. Logan was just getting out of the hospital after nearly three weeks and our move from northern Virginia to the New River Valley was finally underway after being postponed during the hospital stay. This year we’re moving again, back up to northern Virginia, but I intend to be completely moved and back to work and the kids starting daycare by the second week of February. Which means I can actually celebrate with cupcakes and stickers and crafts and Valentine’s Day Greeting Cards for every kid at daycare! It’s embarrassing how excited I am, but Tinyprint’s Valentine’s Day pinboard is just getting me even more pumped. Oh yeah, Tinyprints is on Pinterest. I bet I just made your life more awesome.

Picking out cards for the kids at daycare is definitely going to be the hardest part. I mean, how ridiculously adorable are all these cards from Tinyprints? How to choose just one? Or three? Or five?

To get even more awesomeness, like Tinyprints on Facebook or follow them on Twitter.

Holidays

Pinterest, an online pinboard, is pretty darn awesome. Polyvore, an online tool for creating fashion/interior design sets, is also awesome. Together they present a pretty huge time suck in my life, and I love it. Lately though I’ve been noticing an upsetting trend with the Polyvore sets being pinned on Pinterest. Maybe it’s just me but I feel it’s very important to say this: monochromatic is boring. Even dichromatic is a waste of the 4.5 million color percepting cone cells the human eye possesses. You don’t have have to choose one color, and you really don’t have to choose just one neutral and another color. Now, I’m no fashion designer, I just think sharing my opinion would be fun and might inspire someone else. There are option peeps, let’s explore them!

First and foremost your outfit doesn’t need to match head to toe, but it should go together. There is difference between matching and going, and the difference can be pretty awesome. Let’s use neutrals to explain this.

The common neutrals are white, black, brown (khakis and tans included), blue (not always just navy) and gray¹. These colors pretty much always go together and go with other colors, and in most situations can be used interchangably. Let’s take a look at an outfit made up entirely of neutrals.

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1. Some people suggest olive as a neutral, which I suppose could be true, but I’m not a big fan of olive. Sometimes looks good, sometimes looks dank. Go with what you feel. [↩]

Ramblings

I’m a sucker for sick kids, it just seems so unfair that a child should have to suffer through something that I know would crush me if I had to go through it. At the beginning of last year I came across Courtney Roth’s blog, EBing A Mommy, about her son Tripp’s battle with junctional Epidermolysis bullosa. Epidermolysis bullosa is a devastating skin disease that causes the skin to blister – inside and out – at the slightest touch or friction, and junctional EB is the worst of its kind. Tripp had just turned two when I started reading, an amazing feat as doctors didn’t suspect he’d make it past the age of 1. Courtney and Tripp’s story was heart wrenching and uplifting, they were amazing and strong in the face of the greatest adversity.

Tripp passed away on Saturday, January 14^th. I bawled when reading Courtney’s blog entry. This little boy I had never met had a special place in my heart, in thousands of hearts, he was just an amazing little guy.

S. 606/HR 3059, the Creating Hope Act, is set to help children with rare diseases. Here is the official summary:

9/23/2011–Introduced.Creating Hope Act of 2011 – Amends the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to
revise the priority review voucher program for tropical diseases to:

1. include rare pediatric diseases;
2. allow unlimited transfers of vouchers under the program;
3. require a sponsor intending to use a voucher to notify the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) at least 90 days (currently, 365 days) before submission of the application.

Revises provisions regarding the priority review user fee, including to make it payable upon notification of the Secretary of intent to use the voucher. Authorizes the Secretary, upon request of the manufacturer or sponsor of a new drug, to designate that a new drug is:

1. for a rare pediatric disease;
2. an eligible treatment.

Requires the Secretary to deem a rare pediatric disease product application to be incomplete if it does not contain a description of the sponsor’s plan to market the product in the United States. Authorizes the Secretary to refuse to issue a priority review voucher upon the approval of a rare pediatric disease application if the Secretary finds that the sponsor lacks a good faith intention to market the product in the United States. Directs the Secretary to issue a guidance document setting forth the evidentiary support necessary to demonstrate such a good faith intention. Requires sponsors of applications under the priority review voucher program to report to the Secretary within five years after the approval of the application on the demand and distribution of the product within the United States.

Simply put, this bill will help to encourage companies to put time and money into researching rare diseases that normally don’t receive such care. It’s a pretty big deal for kids like Tripp who suffer from diseases that most of us know nothing about¹.

You can follow this link and put in your contact information to automatically look up your local representatives and send them an email asking them to support the Creating Hope Act. I was able to quickly and easily send a message to Senator Jim Webb (D-VA), Senator Mike Warner (D-VA), and Representative Morgan Griffith (R-VA-09). I’m asking everyone I know to do the same. Speak out for those who can’t.

1. I had never even heard of EB before stumbling onto Courtney’s blog. [↩]

Ramblings