Girls are not Chicks

My all time favorite birthday prezzy is an awesome girrrl power coloring book Sagezilla got from her friend, Ella, called Girls are not Chicks by Jacinta Bunnell and Julie Novak. Every page is hilariously to the point, and a refreshing antidote to the over Barbiefication of America.

It's been a balancing act, trying to raise a strong little girl without letting my anti-princessy bias overpower her childhood. Last birthday, Grandma gave her two giant Barbie heads with make up kits to apply on them, and a Barbie horsewoman. Inwardly I cringed, but Zilla managed to spend her 1st 5 years on earth Barbie free. And we had the "Not Chicky" coloring book to counter balance.

I survived having Barbies as a child, and grew up to dismember them and use the parts to make giant Feminist artworks on canvass with titles like "For Women With Pointy Little Feet" and "With Fully Opposable Limbs and Realistic Eyelashes". Sometimes you have to experience a negative cultural stereotype before you can grow up to overthrow it.



When our other Grammy gave Zilla a craft box of Disney Fairies last week, I encouraged her to say thanks, but she wrinkled her nose in disgust and said, "Yuck. Disney fairies." The Barbie Grandma was over as well and in surprise exclaimed, "What? We don't like D.I.S.N.E.Y.?"

"Her MOTHER doesn't like..........." my own Mother declared, while my MIL nodded knowingly.

"I like woodland fairies and stuff from nature. Disney fairies are lame," my pint sized punk rocker declared. I backpedaled and justified all over the place, explaining that I just had an issue with images of girls imprisoned in towers or sleeping their lives away, waiting to be rescued by prince charming.
I reassured the Grandmas that I'd rented all the princessy classics once, so Zilla wouldn't have a total disconnect from her Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, Tinkerbell, Ariel obsessed classmates. But, I explained to them that we OWN strong, independent girl films like Matilda, Harriet the Spy, and a whole host of excellent films by Hayao Miyazaki like Kiki's Delivery Service and Spirited Away.

The day after the Tinkerbell craft, I had to grit my teeth again. We went to see The Chicago Blackhawks play and met up with a whole Ice Crew of Barbies who gleefully urged Zilla to come pose with them and excitedly chirped about her being a future Ice Girl. Of course, my husband thought that was hilarious and eagerly snapped off a few shots, because he knows how I feel about "The Shovel Girls".

My otherwise supportive husband loves to tease me about my aversion to the shovel girls. I just think it's demeaning to have them skate around in skimpy little shorts, doing a token bit of ice scraping, while fat former frat boys wolf whistle at them mercilessly. I'm all about girls having choices, and sure nobody forced them to be Ice Girls, but cultural stereotypes that value that kinda thing.

The ice shoveling guys are old farts in full jumpsuits. I just think the Shovel Boys should be Chippendale Dancers in g-strings or the girls should get to bundle up. Fair is fair. My husband argues that women fans get to see all the guy hockey players. Sure, I like to see an excellent athlete in action, but they're in full pads and helmets, so what's to see. And even the hot ones are mostly missing their front teeth--and not in cute little kid way.Still, I think I'd rather have a goalie for a daughter, than a shovel girl! Girls are not Chicks is available in Chicago at Quimbie's Queer Store and at etsy.com.

The Tooth Fairy Dukes It Out With The Puke Fairy

Ah........The Tooth Fairy. One of those childhood rights of passage. In our house, she's a geologist who brings slices of Agate and carved Onyx animals along with gold dollar coins. In my childhood, she brought 2 dimes and a nickle (since 3 coins seemed like so much more than one quarter). At least she stopped short of loading me up with 25 pennies! When I got older, she brought doll house miniatures.

Sagezilla has been dying to loose her baby teeth since her brother started 3 years ago. In fact, she was so distraught when he began receiving "magical creature visits" that she fashioned a fake tooth from clay and got a "sympathy quarter" and a few geology goodies of her own over the years.

Du-Jay lost one tooth on New Year's Eve, which is also his Gramps' birthday. He was concerned the Tooth Fairy wouldn't be able to find us in Ohio, but she did. That was a big night. Then there was the week of double Tooth Fairy visits during Lollapalooza music festival. Dugan was thrilled to lose his first big front tooth on the first day of the fest (after months of wiggling) and proudly showed everyone his new grin.

One day later, at Lollapalooza, he caught a giant ball from the audience and was rolling around and jumping on it with Zilla. They popped up from opposite sides and accidentally crashed at the top.

















I heard an anguished wail, and Du had a mouth full of blood, and another front tooth in his hand!




















Not everyone can say they got a front tooth head butted out at Lollapalooza, in a crowd of 75,000!
This past December, Sagezilla finally lost her very first tooth. That night The Puke Fairy also graced us with her presence and a not so nice gift for Du-Jay. The kids share a twin over full bunk and often choose to share the big bottom bed. So Zilla and her tooth loot had to be evacuated to the top bunk in the wee hours of the morning. Of course she woke up. So we spent 4am cleaning bedding, comforting the sick boy, and admiring Sage's sparkly fairy packet of geologic treasures and coinage.

When I posted about the ordeal, in an online hip parenting group, I was amazed how common this experience is. One friend remarked that the Tooth Fairy and The Puke Fairy are mortal enemies. Yet, at least 4 families said the two arrived at their house on the same night, sometimes gracing the tooth looser, and sometimes a sibling, with a lovely case of stomach flu. Ms. Puke Fairy is one mythical creature we've seen quite enough of.

When Zilla's 2nd baby tooth began to be a tiny bit wiggly, my husband had a nightmare that she determinedly yoinked it out months before it was ready. She's that type of kid. She excitedly showed us the tiny movement and declared it would come out on Du's birthday (a few weeks away).

I explained that Du wiggled his for nearly half a year before it was ready and then waited till it literally fell out on his lip, when he opened his mouth to see it better in the mirror. I told her it wouldn't be ready to fall out till it was horizontal in her mouth and that a more realistic out date would be late summer or fall.

Then that dratted Puke Fairy showed up and Zilla got sent home from school the day before Du-Jay's birthday with a stomach virus. She made good use of her unexpected vacation day to wiggle that little puppy mercilessly. At one point she popped up from her sick bed spitting blood and I almost freaked out and rushed her to the doctor, thinking it was something internal. She swished and spit, got a tissue and happily exclaimed that her tooth was now horizontal like I'd said and ready to come out. One swift twist and pull by Miss Sagezilla, and she had a beautiful new checkerboard smile, just in time for big bro's birthday.

That night, Du-Jay got a gold dollar coin from the Tooth Fairy, too, in honor of his birthday. And the Puke Fairy, and head-butting little sisters, stayed away.

Hair Babies

She was born with lots of curls and before her 1st birthday, she had tresses long enough for small pony tails. I have fond memories of my own childhood French braids, buns, pony tails and lots of creative variations on ribbons and bands. After our first born was a boy, I only half jokingly told my husband that if our 2nd (and last) child should happen to be a boy, too, he'd better like braids!











From age 1-2 we had such fun with her hair, and amassed an embarrassingly big collection of what she affectionately named "hair babies". The nickname started with wooden headed pony tail holder dolls with knotted limbs and cloth dresses. H & M carried a wide variety of colors and styles of hair babies and eventually we had collected them all.



















Then the terrible 2's set in and Sagezilla loudly and frequently declared, "NO HAIRBABIES". I kept trying to entice her with all the cute clips, scrunchies, butterflies and bows. I'd give it a rest for a few days, then try again, figuring it was a phase. Well, the phase lasted an entire year! "NO HAIRBABIES." became her second favorite phrase after "NO".

I never forced the issue and told her, your hair is your own and you can decide what to put in it "within reason" or not put in it. She still had to wash, brush and take care of it. In fact it took more brushings to keep it looking presentable when she insisted on wearing it down every day. But, the No Hairbabies policy was firmly in place.

There were days when the wind whipped her long hair into her mouth or the sweat ran down her roasting little neck. I'd appear with a plain band and plead with her to consider at least one low, non ouchy band in the back. But she never went for it. And the hair babies sat in their bin for 12 whole months.


Then she turned 3 and after a few months, one day she brought out the hairbaby bin and asked to have some in her hair again. Then we were into the year of "NO 'KIRTS" wherein she staunchly refused to wear any skirts or dresses. But Zilla has never again wavered in her love of hairbabies and creative looks. She may be a tomboy in a tutu, but the kid has style!

I heart faces entry for no flash in the adult and childrens categories

Northpark Nature Center 28th Annual Maple Syrup Festival

23 familiar faces

11 deer in the woods

9 sausages (which Zilla recently discovered contained her name)

6 pancakes with hot maple syrup

5 Fuji apples from the fruit stand

3 drips of sap tasted directly from the Maple, which we thanked for sharing

3 bottomless cups of delicious coffee and a cup of hot cocoa with DIY whipped cream (and two brave guys, playing great tunes, who handed over the whipped cream to a 5 yr. old)

2 dream catcher bracelets for $5--one of which is lost already

2 Rastafarians, who waved us into line in front of them, for syrup tasting--hot off the fire

2 birthday coincidences, from a family of our friends, where we discovered not one, but two sets, of our kids have birthdays 1 day apart from each other and all on the 11th or 12th of respective M. starting months!


















2 Hipfamilies

1 Other child with Sagezilla's name--dubbed "Big Sage" or "Winter Sage"-- who we run into a few times a year

1 very cool dress for an early b-day present for Mama

1 spicy packet of cajun pumpkin seeds and 1 bag of honey candy

1 story teller in the woods who took Du and Zilla's request for the Native American Skeleton Woman tale, from Polar Adventure Day, which spawned months of creepy voiced "HONEY HUNGRY............" quotes at home.

1 warm and gorgeous Spring Sunday

Equinox Egg Balancing is Balderdash and Boisterous Bellowing of BICYCLE's Best

Happy Spring Solstice! Winter is on its way out the door at long last. I looked up the ubiquitous egg balancing trick which we have successfully tried on other Spring and Autumn Solstices, only to find out we've been tricked, bamboozled, duped. Philip C. Plait claims roughly 130 million Americans have heard of or tried this trick, so we're in good company.

Our favorite myth busters, Snopes, agree the magical, egg balancing, alignment properties of March 20th are a legend. Though they give it a yin yang kind of metaphorical balancing twist I find symbolically appealing. This year I think we'll forgo the upended egg farce and go climb a newly budding tree instead!

This weekend, we are again heading for the Windy City Roller Derby, on Sagezilla's poster winning tickets. This time, we're bringing a crowd of 56 with us under the name, Sheik Yerbouti's Harem! The bout is Sat. night from 6-9:30pm at UIC Pavillion. The kids are ecstatic.

Sunday we'll be at Northpark Nature Center for the eagerly anticipated annual Maple Syrup Festival. The kids love to taste sap right out of the tree and sip cups of hot, fresh syrup directly off of the wood fires, where it's boiled down to its concentrated form. OK, I'll admit it, the adults dig it, too. I love the smell of a campfire offset by the sweet scent of sappy goodness. We know it's spring when we can eat an outdoor pancake breakfast in the woods!


Du, Zilla, and their friend, Ella, enjoyed a 72 degree taste of things to come, under the still bare willow tree, on St. Patrick's day.

We had our car windows open for the first time in half a year. When we passed at least 20 people biking, on our way to school, I couldn't help belting out the Queen song, Bicycle Race and the kids took to it like urban pigeons to an underpass. Later in the day, I found the iPod and burned Queen's Greatest Hits to disc for them, so they could hear Freddy Mercury do Bicycle Race justice, instead of just lyric impaired, Mom.

The Youtube vid linked above, is a fun collage set to the original song, since the unedited Queen video features naked bikers. Not that you can see much, or that we're opposed to birthday suits, but I'll leave showing that one to the kidlets to individual parents' discretion. The most kid- inappropriate thing in the link I posted is a couple of characters flashing "the finger". It still might not be what you want your preschooler demonstrating for show n tell. But the song rocks, nonetheless. Here is another excellent G rated version of Bicycle Race.

By dinner time, they taught it to their friend, and the madness spread. When we drove Ella home, all 3 kids got the biggest kick out of belting out BICYCLE....BICYCLE............I WANT TO RIDE MY BICYCLE........I WANT TO RIDE MY BIKE...........at top volume out the open car windows. I had to explain to Ella's Mom that I inadvertently created a 3 headed, lyric screaming, back-seat-riding monster. But the kids made a whole lotta bike riders smile, laugh and wave.

Green Dogs and Funnel Cakes

Nothing says Happy St. Patrick's Day like green dogs and funnel cakes. Even if you're only Irish for a day, or 1/16th of your heritage, everyone can use a little luck.

My Grandma had the uncanny ability to find 4 leaf clovers. And Sage won a lucky Irish house blessing and a plant at our friends Eric and Karen's wedding, before she was old enough to sit up. The winning card had a shamrock laminated inside and said, "May your roof never fall in and may the friends gathered beneath it never fall out." It's been over five years and so far, so good on both accounts................

So, here's wishing you a tail waggin, Irish eyes smilin', green and orange wearing good day. It's going up to 72 degrees, so pot o' gold or not, I'm grinning and doin' a happy jig.

Green Girl Welcomes Spring

She is fond of telling people that she has a green name, green eyes, and her favorite color is green. So far, her sage eyes match her name with apt precision.

This time of year, thoughts turn to green. We saw 3 green dogs at the St. Patrick's Day Parade. The Chicago River ran bright green all day Saturday. And the kids can forgo their navy and white school uniforms for green tomorrow.

Although the leprechaun and shamrock frenzy will soon pass, green shoots are optimistically pushing through the ground in our flower beds. Soon all the trees will glow with the unmistakable bright green of early spring. And my spring Sage will dance and play among Russian Sage and May Night Sage, flourishing and green in our urban yard.

This is my first entry on the photography blog, iHeartFaces, under the topic of green.