Advice Under the Influence

Dear ILBAB,

I follow your blog and just came across a posting about your daughter wearing glasses and an eye patch. My youngest daughter just turned 1 and now has to wear glasses and a patch, but she hates it. How did you ever do it? She started wearing contacts at 8 weeks old but can no longer wear them so glasses are our only option now. She hates the glasses. She was born with cataracts in the right eye so she has no prescription in one lens and a very heavy one in the other. She wears a Pez brand of glasses with cable temples, not the type with a band that goes around her head. She uses the Ortopad patches, they are the only ones that don’t rip her skin off but she can peel them off so it’s a lose-lose situation. We have tried the no-no arm bands but no luck…

Thanks!

Beth


Dearest Beth,

Argh, sister. Welcome to the land of toddler piratedom. So it sounds like you have the most comfortable glasses possible. The Quiet Contemplator has the cable-style ones and they just stay on the best. Plus, she doesn't always look like she is heading out for a game of racquetball. No matter what you do though, she may just choose to hate them. We found that praising the crap out of the Contemplator while she was wearing them helped. Telling her how proud we were, how cool she looked, etc. Kids are just natural born narcissists, after all.

As far as the patch goes, we tried the stick-on ones until I found out there were alternatives. TQC either pulled them off herself or they just fell off due to the sweaty disgusting mess that is a toddler. Then I found Eye Mateys. They rock: www.eyemateys.com. They are made of felt and just slip around the arm of the glasses and onto the lens. They have a dark backing so no light gets in and they also have sides to protect from peeking. Plus, it is one of the only brands I found that offer infant/toddler sizes.

If your little girl still won't tolerate the patch, have you talked to your Dr about the drops? They dilate the good eye so your child is forced to use the bad eye to see, thus strengthening it and correcting the amblyopia.

In our case, the patching helped improve my daughter's amblyopia greatly, though it did nothing for the strabismus. Hence, her surgery. More to come on that in the future. Hope this helps.

Smooches,

The Beer Bitch

Advice Under the Influence

Not sure of whether to go with Playtex or Dr. Brown's? Looking for a way to keep your toddler from shaving your cat again? Want to know what to do when your husband pees on the toilet seat again? Well, the Dr. is in. Email me your query and I will put on my thinking cap and publish your question, along with my answer. 

The Quiet Contemplator's Sugrery

The Quiet Contemplator has her stabismus surgery today so I will be off this week. I hope to have a full post soon on how everything went so I can help those of you that might have a child with amblyopia and strabismus.

Love you, Dolls. Talk to you soon.

Things I Want to Teach My Daughter

 We all know the posts about what we want to teach our daughters. Love, dance, stop and smell the flowers, etc. That is all fine and good, but I need my daughter to learn a few more lessons that are a little less puppy dogs and rainbows and a little more true-to-life. Such as:


Cigarettes are gross.

Herpes and babies are forever. Use protection.

Stick up for yourself, even if you think it makes you look like a bitch.

Don't take shit from a man.

Don't let anyone make you feel like you aren't good enough.

Sex won't make anyone love you. Love will.

Don't be afraid to take life by the balls.

Don't be too proud to become a wife or a mom.

Never think you are better than anyone else.

Don't judge those you don't know.

Never bully those you feel are weaker than you.

Looking like a hooker never impressed anyone.

Bottom lid liner weaves a fine line between crazy goth girl and well made up. Be careful.

Remember to look up from your phone/computer/television screen every once in a while.

Don't be afraid to show your weaknesses.

Cigarettes are gross.

Never start sentences with the word "like" or end them with "so…". Just don't.

Don't hide your intelligence to make a man happy. If he is smart enough for you, he will think you being smart is attractive, not intimidating.

Don't gossip. It only hurts people and makes you look immature and childish.

Think before you speak. Diarrhea of the mouth runs in the family.

The pounds will come and go. Don't waste your life worrying about them.

Use your vacation time. They give it to you for a reason.

It is ok to smoke a joint or two, but anything harder than that is going to end badly. Trust me.

Never ditch your girlfriends because you have a boyfriend.

Seriously, cigarettes are gross.

Dear Victoria's Secret Models

Dear Victoria's Secret Models,

Please stop having children. Seriously. Stop. Stop wearing bikinis when you are 40 weeks pregnant. Stop saying you gave birth naturally in your bathtub and it was pain-free. Stop posting pictures of yourself breastfeeding. Stop saying bottle feeding should be illegal. Stop saying you did nothing to lose the weight but breastfeed. Stop running the catwalk six weeks after you give birth. Stop giving your idiotic opinions on child rearing.

Just stop.

Let us normal gals retain just a shred of our dignity after we have a baby by shutting the fuck up about your pregnancies and post-birth experiences/bodies. We get it. You have the genes of a God, never gained a pound while pregnant, shot the baby out like it was a fart and put on your size 0 jeans to go home from the hospital (oh wait, you bitches don't believe in hospitals). Us real women gain 50 pounds, go through hours of grueling labor just to end up with c-sections and pour ourselves into our PajamaJeans to head home from the hospital. So there.

From now on, stay at home with your Tom Bradys and Orlando Blooms from the minute the sperm meets the egg to about a year after your genetically blessed little darling hits high school.

Signed,

All the real moms who want to punch you in the vagina when you go out in a bikini at four weeks postpartum. Bitch.

The Confessional

Confession from a fellow Boozehound

In a public restroom, my son was looking at my tattoo of my husband's name (located just below my belly button) and announced very loudly, "Mom, that's your PENIS." The lady in the next stall started cracking up. I wanted to flush myself down the toilet.

ILBAB says: Your husband must be stoked that you are badass enough to tattoo his name on his penis. Yikes! Ha!


The Confessional is now open. Have something you need to repent for? Feel free to send me your sin and I will help your purge your demons.

Tainted Love

The Cool Cucumber has a new friend. He REALLY loves his new friend. We call his new friend Humpy Bear. Humpy Bear is a bear The Quiet Contemplator was given when The Cucumber arrived. She dons a pink t-shirt that reads, "I'm the big sister."

Humpy Bear has been violated. A lot. Though The Cucumber can not even Army crawl yet, if you put Humpy Bear across the room, he will get to her in two seconds flat. Then proceed to pin her down and suck on her face.

Help me!

I was trying to get The Cucumber to crawl to me the other day and he just looked at me with feigned interest and stayed planted. Then, ADD Daddy put Humpy Bear in front of me and The Cucumber raced to me like I was on fire. Once he got to me, he crawled on top of Humpy Bear and forgot that I existed.

So, to sum it up, in a mere six months, I have been replaced by a stuffed animal that is constantly wet and smells of vomit. Nice.

The Hunger Games

Dinner time at our house generally makes me want to stab myself in the thigh with a rusty fork. One day, The Quiet Contemplator LOVES fish sticks. The next, she acts like I filleted our cat and served it up to her on a plate made of bat wings when I offer her fish sticks. What gives? Is it just me or is my toddler bi-polar when it comes to eating?

I try to feed The Contemplator a balanced diet of fruit, veggies, grains, dairy and meat--mixed with a healthy dose of cookies and goldfish crackers, of course. The thing that kills me is I have no idea when sitting down to dinner if the plate I have prepared for her will result in her asking for seconds and thirds or her crying, "I don't like this! This is yucky!". It is like setting myself up every night for a terrifying game of culinary roulette and it drives me insane in the membrane.

I have tried all the tactics, hell I even tried to help one of you with your own cuisine crimes. It doesn't help. She is a toddler and most toddlers have an undiagnosed eating disorder called toddlerexialemia. One day they won't touch food, the next day they binge like they haven't seen food for a year.

I am going to start a support group for the parents of toddlers where we all get together and gorge on cupcakes while complaining about how our toddlers eat. Food allergy mammas are welcome, too. I am going to call it Asshole Eaters Anonymous. Feel free to join. We meet every third Thursday at the American Legion. Bring wine.

The Confessional

Confession from fellow Boozehounds

I was heading home from a 4 hour trip out of town with my 7 yr old, 7 month old, dog and cat...  I had already suffered a flat tire which resulted in me having to unload EVERYTHING to get to the tire (100 degree weather) and it took a solid hour to get back on the road. My 7 year old decided between towns to inform me he was STARVING and I promised him at the next town I would get him McDonalds (a real treat for him). As we came into the town I thought had one, it turned out it didn't. My son went on and on about me promising it and saying "you said" like 15 times. I tried and tried to lovingly explain I was wrong then I snapped...  I turned to my poor son and said, "Well, here's a news flashing for you... I don't f$&@ing know everything." I felt better. He sat stunned :)

ILBAB says: He was probably more stunned at the fact that you don't know everything if you were able to survive the rugged conditions of fours hours in a car with two kids and two animals. Fuck McDonalds. That shit is intense.


When I was five, I poked my babysitter in the boobs with my index finger and said "Ding Dong! Avon calling..."

ILBAB says: Ding Dong! Child protective services calling. Ha!


The Confessional is now open. Have something you need to repent for? Feel free to send me your sin and I will help your purge your demons.