Into the Fray

To this point this has been a benign little blog primarily about comings and goings at The Pink Victorian. I have avoided political controversy and tempered my parenting ideals with reality. Today I will cautiously raise a topic for discussion which is apparently a very volatile matter, for the sake of gaining understanding and becoming a better peacemaker. To protect the children involved, I will call it the

Organic Oatmeal Issue.

Let me explain:
The holiday season was peppered with citations by my contacts, which are many, and of multiple generations, that Christmas gift-giving and receiving has become more manipulative than loving, especially when the recipients are young children. Instead of a gift being a surprise for all present during its unwrapping, lengthy negotiations are held long before the day about the acceptability of the gift or oblique threats are made that certain forbidden items might be revealed at the foot of the tree just for spite.
For example, a grandparent receives notice that only unpainted toys are to be given to the grandchildren, presumably to eliminate the risk of lead paint; or a father-in-law hints that he is wrapping a cap gun for little Jimmy for the sake of his developing manhood, fully knowing that Daddy and Mommy don't intend for Jimmy to play with artificial firearms. Power Rangers dvds are given to children who don't watch TV and parents retaliate by enforcing their ban on red dye #40, only to have Christmas M&M's added to their organic oatmeal...you get the idea.
I am curious. Is it just me or has gift giving become territorial? What do you think? Are parents at the mercy of the mandates of Christmas Morning Magic and impotent to confiscate the contraband? Are they asserting their rules and convictions out of a sense of insecurity in breaking away from the ways of their upbringing? Is this a subtle rebellion with the offspring being used as weapons? Are grandparents today of the mistaken notion that they are co-parents with equal jurisdiction over the kiddoes? Have parents abused the luxury of the innate quality low-cost childcare to the point that the lines between parent and child have been blurred? Do they fail to "leave and cleave"? Are the grandparents just so limited in quality time and desparate to be the "favorite" that they are willing to undermine the authority of the parents? Do they feel unappreciated for all that they feel they have already given? And perhaps most importantly, have we become so child-centered that little Jimmy's Christmas morning bliss is the objective and pinnacle of the holiday season? I am curious.
What are the potential solutions to this problem which lies dormant year-round but is one more thing that internally threatens the family, which is already under seige from external forces?

What say you?

****DISCLAIMER: I reiterate that this post is strictly for informational and discussion purposes. Let's keep it clean, folks. And please know that I can only speak of other families' challenges vicariously because my children and their cousins have four utterly perfect grandparents who would never, say, let a 2 year old watch STAR WARS because, well, he wanted to. I'm just sayin'.

"Chin Hair Friend"

This is a phrase I coined about 10 years ago when I attended a ladies' Christmas lunch with my grandmother's church. I really didn't know many of those spunky senior saints very well, so I was relieved when I found an acquaintance of mine there who was the guest of another congregant. She was not much older than me, nicely dressed, hair neatly done, makeup in place. We were not long into our pleasant conversation when it caught my eye. Sunlight was shining through the window behind her, illuminating her jawline and spotlighting an inch- long wirey chin hair. This was no stray coarse hair, it was a verifiable whisker.

As I tried to maintain eye contact I pondered my options. If it were me, would I want to know that a Brill-o pad transplant had appeared on my chinny-chin-chin overnight? Well, of course I would. The question was not whether she would want to know, but rather would she want ME telling her so. I decided in that moment that while we knew one another and had genuine affection for one another, we were not yet Chin Hair Friends.

A Chin Hair Friend is a rare find, a specimen that takes years, even decades to evolve, and which few of us have the extraordinary opportunity to discover. This is the kind of friend with whom you share so much history that verbal language is no longer necessary to communicate, and at times is merely a formality, because you already know one another's thoughts, intents, and motives. The kind of friend that houses your auxiliary brain, requiring a phone call to access some of your fading memories or the best comebacks in the midst of a marital spat. She tells you what she would do if she was you and then reminds you of what you ought to do. It is helpful if you and your Chin Hair Friend each have enough dirt on the other that in the unlikely event that one of you loses her mind and considers betrayal, said dirt will restrain her until sanity returns. Shared memories and self-deprecation remove all potential of humiliation in the case of say, a chin hair.

If while in the company of a Chin-Hair Friend an actual chin hair should appear, she will not bother to interrupt the conversation at hand, but rather casually grip the offending hair betwixt two fingers and give it a yank and carefully tuck it into a Kleenex so that she can later add it to a scrapbook page to chronicle your very first chin hair.

This week one of my very few, and my oldest Chin-Hair Friend will cross an important chronological milestone. I won't say how old she is, but I will say that when I attended her Sweet Sixteen Party a while back, we all had shoulder pads built into our sweaters. After decades of memories, volumes of notes and hours and hours of phone calls, I know that I can still reach out to her at any hour with a crazy idea or outrageous question. We may not make it to Italy for this birthday as we had once planned, but I pray for many more that we can postpone to. I hope that for many more years she can count on me to watch her back...and her chin. Happy Birthday, Sweet Friend!

Spiritual Caffeine

For all of my friends who are feeling a little droopy today.

You know who you are. Consider yourselves hugged.

Another Susan

I have a growing collection of Susans. Susans are just lovely and useful friends. I already posted Miss Sue, there's my stylish and Southwest-fixated sister-in-law Susan, my California-grown froo-friend Susan, Susan of Narnia, and I could just go on and on, but today meet my friend Susan a.k.a. Suzy homemaker.

Gingerbread biscotti and homemade marshmallows.

I'm not kidding.

She is priceless, authentic and completely unedited. Last week at our MOPS Christmas Party, hosted at our home, she was making strong anti- fake fruit and flower statements and I could hardly contain myself as she dug herself in deeper and deeper, sitting just feet from my 2-foot tall pillar of fake-as-they-come cranberries. Not to mention a monsterous silk flower arrangement next to that. There was no recovering when we pointed them out to her. "Oh, I don't mind them in other peoples' houses, just not in mine!" She didn't say what she thought of my all-natural white Christmas tree in the dining room.

Susan puts all of us to shame with her organic everything, her from-scratch recipes and professional cake decorating. The Italian Mother in her is spoiling her beautiful boys for their future wives, no doubt. She is a great cyber-friend, too, discovering the most beautiful blogs for me to check out. One of these days she will start one of her own and put Martha out of business!

What makes everything she does so beautiful is that it is all laced with 100% pure affection.

I love you, Susan! SO glad you came into my little world!

Susan with the thrifted plastic Christmas arrangements that I bought just to decorate her MOPS table this week. She probably broke out in hives from contacting them and will mix up a homeopathic remedy!

Lily Blessings

Miss Lily Grace was born on Friday and our prayers for time with her have been granted! Go to lilyblessings.blogspot.com to hear her life story.

A Birthday Shout Out

This birthday shout-out goes to our Kansas buddies Carri and Brian.

They are great with child, anticipating a birth day of their own in less than a week. A bunch of us were invited to celebrate Kym's b-day with takeouts after church and wanted to take an opportunity to remind them that we care.

Brian and Carri, we want y'all to know that your Jersey friends are thinking of you and praying for a joyful delivery. Can't wait to hear all about that little one!

Todd and Holly with sympathy shoulder pain.

PS- Carri: Had a rushed morning...not exactly Texas hair! How do they keep up with it?!

Consider The Lilies

This banner and these flower pins are a gift for a dear friend of mine and I hope you will visit her beautiful blog here.

My recently broken toe has blessed me with a little down time to spend with my stash of vintage fabrics and hankies. Earlier this year I saw a sweet pennant banner like this in a Pottery Barn catalog and hoped to replicate it for some special occasion.

Baby Lily's precious life is just such an occasion! Her name's origin and her parents' great faith which you will witness through their posts will make you want to wave a banner and celebrate life just to spite death.

As I stitched and pondered the passage from the book of Matthew, I also considered other people I've prayed for whose seemingly insignificant lives ultimately impact eternity. Consider the Lilies.

Matthew 6:28-34

"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all of his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?" or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'. For the pagans run after all of these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."