The First Parents EVER!

A couple we are friendly with, J and W, had their first child in December. W spent her pregnancy lamenting and pontificating on her absolutely knowledge of being a pregnant woman. She changed OBs when her OB insisted she take the mandatory gestational diabetes test and her new OB took her word for it that her blood sugar was fine. After all, she had done her research on the Internet that said that the test wasn't necessary and could and should be skipped.
Their daughter, C, is two months old and they have pronounced that she is speaking all ready. Yes, C can say "Dad." She also ready for potty training. They are going to begin that directly. C is going to be the smartest, most beautiful little girl ever.
It would be funny in the 'look at the newbies' way if it wasn't for the fact they advertise their lives on social networking sites and in one of those minute update diary things. J and W have lamented the fact that they don't sleep because C wants to be awake every thirty minutes. That C will demand attention when they are trying to eat or get things done. And they are positive that they are the only parents in the world that have ever had this problem.
Of course, they haven't asked any of their other parent friends - including Husband and I - if any of their sleep deprivation is normal. Mostly because they don't want to hear 'get used to it' as an answer rather than sighing and saying that it will all get better soon. It's easier for them to stay in their microcosm than have to look out at other seasoned veterans of the wars and see that their are varying levels of how to deal with a newborn.
I wish it was just J and W who had this attitude but I seem to see it with every parent alive. I know we've been guilty of doing some of the first time parent comments. But we've learned from the mouthy Seasoned Parents that we have known/know to keep our mouths shut unless someone really wants to know our opinion. Newbie parents are sure they have the only child who doesn't sleep through the night/spoke their first word at one month/shown greater intellect than Einstein etc. We did not. We knew Boy wasn't the first kid who didn't believe in sleeping through the night. But we didn't know a whole lot of other parents who were struggling with three hours of sleep a night (my cousin's kids didn't sleep all night until they were in school which is just disheartening for me because I've got another two years for that to happen).
Behind their backs, friends are laughing at J and W who pontificate on how they will have baby C potty trained by her sixth month. They are watching carefully all her body language so that they can teach her to use the toilet rather than those filthy, germy diapers. This will cut back on their expenses on her so they can continue to eat out at Michael Mina or wherever they are pursuing the latest foodie fetish. (They proudly posted everywhere pictures of them lugging their baby bucket to French Laundry to show how C went to Thomas Keller's mothership before she was a month old) They better get used to eating at the local diner because potty training the way they want to do it is patient work and neither of them exhibit that talent.
New parents are amusing but they are a source of amusement for those of us who watch as they acquire that self satisfied and martyred tone in their world.
Good luck J and W.

Gossip girl

Since my life consists of chasing three year old Boy around and chauffeuring him to his various commitments, my life is pretty bland. I read gossip columns to make me laugh.
I just have to comment on the Brad/Angelina/Jennifer triangle that seems to be getting crazy out of hand of passing the buck on what happened. It all ends up that Brad left Jen for Angelina. End of story. How Brad spins it (that he just sort of had it happen over the course of the year that they filmed Mr and Mrs Smith which ended post Jen break up) or Angelina (that it happened during the filming of said movie and they waited until post divorce 'til they got busy) or Jen (it was all a huge shock to her that Brad wanted to leave her for Angelina) it still ends up that Brad and Angelina are living their lives together and Jen is dating John Mayer. This week.
In some ways, I was happier when NONE of them were saying a freakin' word about it. It let me believe in my own little reason that the marriage between Brad and Jen went south. But no. They had to all start this sordid vague reason to how it happened. Why doesn't it all just come out? Here is how I see it.
Brad and Jen got married with the best of intentions. They had a lot in common. They enjoyed each other's company. The staying at home and ordering in thing was probably a good thing considering how white hot they were in their careers at the time (her with Friends and he with his various movies like Ocean's 11). But you could kind of see things might have been less than optimal when you read about Brad's interest in landscape architecture and then, wanting to apprentice to Frank Gehry. Sorry, but I didn't see Jennifer Aniston being the type to want to read up on Bauhaus. Then when Friends ended, and you heard that she wanted to go out to the clubs but Brad didn't, you couldn't really blame her. She had been on that show for nearly a decade and then was shoe horning movies in her 'vacation' time. I couldn't blame the girl for wanting to go out and get some ya yas out. But, as she had said in previous interviews, Brad was a stay at home kind of guy.
As they both evolved, Brad started wanting to see the world in other ways. He started seeing the world as it is. Seeing the places that have some really nasty shit going down. Realising he had a position to Make A Difference and wanted to be involved in it. Like flying to Africa and meeting people to understand what the situation is. Meeting those in the know who could explain what is needed rectify the situation. And he was getting older and maybe, he was ready to start bringing a life into the world that he could mould to understand how to make things better.
Perhaps, Jen was at that point where she was ready to go full steam ahead in her career and play when she wasn't making movies. It wasn't time for her to be a Mom or fly off to Africa to meet with the impoverished. The whole architecture thing is one thing that Brad can do at home but this is different in a huge way.
So by the time he met Angelina, there probably was a schism between Jen and Brad even if Jen refuses to acknowledge it to the public or even herself. They had different designs in the world they were seeing. Maybe when they met, Jen had thought she would want to get pregnant and have kids sooner than later. But she changed her mind which happens.
There was the lush Angelina Jolie who was a single Mom with a trail of broken marriages behind her (once you're on your second divorce, it is a trail however short) and a trail of broken hearts. She is passionate about trying to save the world one child at a time. (A sort of new millenium Mia Farrow without the neurotic comic boyfriend.) Smokin' hot Brad Pitt with the emerging social conscience, meet formerly wild child Angelina Jolie with the UN approved social agenda. Can anyone not see this could get...volatile?
In some ways, after watching the Vogue magazine article sniping and evading accounts, I wish that all three of them would take the kid gloves off and stop protecting their images for a few hours to be honest. Even though they act as if they could run into each other on the red carpet and it wouldn't be awkward, they know it would be. Too much left unsaid. Too much said. They should all go to a hotel, be put on three different floors, to talk to three different journalists with a psychologist/psychiatrist sitting there about what happened. And I mean, really what happened. Jen needs to get past her America's Sweetheart facade long enough to say, yeah, I wasn't ready to give up Kerastace products to find out about the ills of the world. Brad needs to stop acting as if he had accidentally soul mate searched (when his soul mate couldn't stay in the same reality he was in) and say, you know, yeah, the whole Mother Earth thing with Angelina is great but she is really hot so how could I resist? And Angelina should just come right out with it and admit that Brad Pitt is really sexy and the whole wanting to save the world thing makes her a little damp in her thong.
Okay, sad as it is that I just wrote a blog about this, I have said my peace. Or piece. I hope all three of them get what they want out of their relationships.

Give the man a chance before you hate him

Enough already.
I've received more emails from the Obama haters than I want to talk about. People are already doggin' him out and the man isn't even in office. Even one of my favourite gossip columnists took an email from someone who asked why Obama hasn't done more to help the American people since he was elected. The gossip columnist said simply we should maybe wait until he actually took office before we started judging him.
A lot of the same people who are sending me anti Obama email are the same people who kept saying that there were WMDs to be found in Iraq. Yeah, listen, I found a pretty big WMD last week in my son's training diapers and no one from the Bush administration came to visit us. It's amazing that the Barack Obama hadn't even been in DC yet to settle his girls down to school and people were ready to say he was going to fail because this whole financial failure of the automotive industry and the financial sector and everything else wouldn't be salvagable easily. And that for some reason, we who believe that Obama might be able to change the way things are now are naive and believe this will happen in six weeks.
Sure, the believers are naive. We want to believe in a president that doesn't seem to have ties to big oil. Who didn't weasel out of military service when he was young but was willing to start a war to finish what his Daddy started way back when and put our youngsters on the line for a war about...what was it again? Who doesn't have a VP who threw contracts at his former company to rebuild two countries but at a ridiculous expense. By the way, Afghanistan is all perfect right? We got them all settled and running well with jobs, education for all and land that they can grow their own food on, right? Oh yeah. No.
Barack Obama has a huge mountain he's facing. When he started campaigning two years ago, he was facing the fact that we were in an endless loop of the war in Iraq. "Mission not accomplished." Both Afghanistan and Iraq are countries in turmoil. They cannot get on their feet for various reasons whether it's insurgents who are fighting the infidels who want to destroy Islam or because you have a bunch of tribes or factions of Islam who think the other guy is out to destroy them. There is limited or no infrustructure in either country. And what we send in the form of Halliburton is not helping. It's like asking Paris Hilton to build a grid for a country's energy. You know you are asking an awful lot for a someone who wants more money than they deserve.
No, naysayers, we do NOT expect Barack Obama to make this boo boo all better in a month. Or two. As he was elected, the financial world in the US was melting faster than a snowman in Vegas in July. It went from being a five pound bag of shit to a 25 pound bag of shit in a few short weeks. The realization of what he is facing is obvious because you can see his hair is already getting the requisite Presidential Stress Grey. I think that the vast majority of us knew before Obama took the stage back in November to say that this would take not one but two terms to possibly get us back on our feet again that was the case.
And for those of ou who are snidely saying that 'someone' owns Obama, let me just say this: someone owns all of us. Or something. For the chain smoking racist who is sure that a black man cannot rule because he is owned by someone, I want to tell him that he is owned by the tobacco company because he cannot stop sucking on those cancer sticks (even though he claims tobacco does not give you cancer since he doesn't have it). For the white Christian senior who sends me those emails stating that the government will raise our taxes to pay for things since it's all Democrats, I have to ask you something: where the freak do you think the money is going to come from to pay for the billions that are being thrown at the auto makers and to the financial sector? (Same goes for those moaning here in Cali about how schools are getting screwed and how this and that are getting screwed - bend over and accept that new sales tax or having our property taxes go up a couple of percent.) Do you seriously think that the money fairy is going to come along and make it all better?
Give the man a year to get a feel for the reins. He's got a lot to do and it's going to take awhile. Stop saying he'll fail. You don't seriously think that the arm candy of the Budweiser heiress and his Fargo-esque running mate were going to make this all disappear overnight either do you?