Just varia

More to remind myself than anyone else.

I don't know if I posted it here, but it's been elsewhere (Husband's blog, Facebook, the old-fashioned telephone, announcements by my mother) that we're expecting a girl come October, no later than the 19. Elizabeth Christina is, according to ultrasound, a little on the small side but not so much so as to engender worry. Otherwise everything is textbook and problem-free. Aside from having twenty extra pounds strapped to my abdomen, that is. Roughly ten more weeks to go.

I've read two books in the past month. The first was Robert Spencer's Religion of Peace?: Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't. It's a delightfully un-PC romp through the history and current status of two of the world's biggest and most influential religions. He doesn't ignore the wrongdoings of Christians, but points out that if you have to go back to the Crusades (which, if I may point out, were a defensive move to begin with--and not a pre-emptive one either) or Galileo to cite them, perhaps a more modern examination is in order. Followers of a certain other monotheistic faith are daily making the papers, and not for their missionary work. I got this book of his because I have the feeling his other stuff would keep me up at night.

The other was for my birthday last Wednesday, and I finished it over the weekend. Lenore Skenazy's Free Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry is a breath of fresh air. Her writing style reminds me a lot of Vicki Iovine's (another one of my favorite reality-check writing moms). She takes a common-sense approach to motherhood and protecting our children. She's pro-car-seat, -bike-helmet, and -sunscreen but thinks playgrounds where tag is outlawed are ridiculous. So she ridicules them.
I remember during my first pregnancy I picked up What to Eat When You're Expecting. I figured I had a pretty healthy diet; this would just be refining and a few tips. Whoa, was I wrong. Two chapters in or something and the discussion on the evils of white flour had me feeling like I was abusing our child and she hadn't even been born. I wept; the book went.
Here's a sample:
This is a mat you put on the bottom of the tub. Turn the water on, and if the words TOO HOT! magically appear in a bubble near the duckie's head, you know that the water is, indeed, too hot! Because who can trust her own wrists anymore?
Oh wat a sec. We all can. Dip a wrist in the water, and you yourself can tell if that water is warm, cold, or boiling hot. (Key word: YEOW!) So why on earth is there not only this heat sensitive bath mat for sale but also a competing turthle you can put in your tub that will indicate TOO HOT! too? (Not a real turtle, who would indicate that by turning into soup.)
She cites statistics, anecdotes, and real-world experiences. I laughed my way through this one and intend to lend it out to friends.
Dear husband, though, did have a quibble with her point. Where yes, stranger kidnapping is exceedingly rare (noncustodial parent being far more common), our society now has sexualized children more than in the past. The steady pornification (I think I made that word up) of the general population has made it more possible, or even acceptable, for the perverts.
He may be right, but that doesn't change the fact that a child is 40 times more likely to die in a car accident, ten times more likely to die in a fire at home, twenty times more likely to drown in a pool, and eighty or ninety times more likely to be molested by someone they know than kidnapped and murdered by a stranger. (Those are her stats, not mine; I'm cribbing from page 184.)

So now you know what else I've been up to. Gestating, reading, keeping the other kids alive. Now your turn--go. Read.