As for your mother, I know enough evangelical Christian homeschooling crunchy granola mothers from La Leche League to know that plenty of religious conservatives don't believe that extended breastfeeding makes you gay, but rather, strengthens and nurtures your family. You need to get some of those ladies to drop in on her.
Yeah, our assistant pastor's wife is a La Leche mucky muck (milky milk [sorry, rough day already]) of some sort or another, because her pre-recorded message on their home answering machine gives some sort of instructions for people calling for La Leche breast feeding assistance. Too bad I can't turn her loose on your mom.
My family didn't give me a hard time about the extended nursing but strangers gave me bad looks. This could be because my 2 year old looked 5.
We had that with Ben—not with breastfeeding, but just in general. He looked about 3 when he was 1 year old, and people would just see him acting his age, and you could tell they were thinking, "What's up with that?"
Laura, do you find now that people expect more maturity from yoru boys, because they're tall? I still see that with Ben. He's smart, and he's good, and he's tall (although not as big as your sons) and so people expect him to be mature to a degree I believe is beyond most ten year old boys (and is beyond them, as far as I can see from watching his friends).
I have to share this bit that I got from my parents:
Teacher Arrested at Kennedy Airport
President George Bush announced today that an individual, later discovered to be a public school teacher, was arrested trying to board a flight in New York while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set square, a slide rule, and a calculator.
At a 12:45PM press conference, President Bush said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement. He is being chared by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.
"Al-gebra is a fearsome cult", Bush said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country." Bush then warned that "the Greek philanderer Isosceles, and early founder of Al-gebra, used to say, 'there are 3 sides to every triangle'." Bush admitted he wasn't exactly sure what that meant but Pat Robertson had told him anything done in threes was bad...very bad!
Bush went on to say, "If God had wanted us to heave better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes." Bush further stated he had heard the Al-gebraists had issued a fatwah and declared Ji-ahmetry on all of America's best and brightest students.
Corwood, I'm betting you could easily get your hands on some La Leche literature (I'm betting they have PDFs on the web) that specifically addresses Dobson's dubious advice. Actually, from what I hear, Dobson hasn't a single bit of good advice to offer....
Laura, do you find now that people expect more maturity from yoru boys, because they're tall? I still see that with Ben. He's smart, and he's good, and he's tall (although not as big as your sons) and so people expect him to be mature to a degree I believe is beyond most ten year old boys (and is beyond them, as far as I can see from watching his friends).
My parents had neighbors for a while with Marfan's (?) syndrome, which makes them really tall. It was weird (and really hard for the kids), because the kids seemed nearly retarded until you could put it together how old they actually were vs. what they looked like.
Casper is big for her age - we had a friend over yesterday who is 5 months older and weighs about 15 pounds less than she does - but she's also talkative for her age, which helps some. We had some problems with other kids (3-4 years old) expecting her to be more mature than was age-appropriate last fall, though, when she was barely 2.
We went to see PoTC last night, and took the Dillo (who slept and nursed, as was appropriate) but left Casper at home, to me obviously. (I mean, with a sitter, not Home Alone.) But there were a ton of little kids in the theater - next to us a family with 1 and 3 year olds, and I saw several 6-8 year old girls as we were leaving. WTF? Not a film I'd take most kids under 12 or so to - there are scary and gross parts!
I saw lots of small kids at PotC: DMC, too. It sort of weirded me out because it was awfully scary for young children but a lot of people just don't seem to care anymore.
Corwood, sorry for the family trauma and drama. Yeesh. I'm so lucky I didn't get any shit from my in-laws on child-rearing issues (even if they didn't always agree with us, they kept their traps shut).
Seekrit message to Cash:
Seekrit message to Aillean:You. Bet. Email me the times you want to go see it and I'll check the schedule.
Laura, do you find now that people expect more maturity from yoru boys, because they're tall?
All the time. When they were babies people expected them to be talking. Now the 14yo is 6'4" and people think he is a man. Not at all manly, just oversized kid.
On the Hemingway cats item above, I love that place. Even though they say there are all those cats you really don't notice. The house is open to the cats, but they are in the trees and around the property. I don't know what they do when there's a storm. No doubt they have a safe spot hide out.
