I’ve been feeling sort of out of place recently – both on the internets (where, let’s face it, I spend most of my time) and in real life – when it comes to where I fit in as a mother. I’m not afraid of being a bad mother or a neglectful mother or a lazy mother. I’m comfortable with my choices and don’t feel guilty for making them. I’m worried I’m going to be a lonely, friendless mother because it is hard to maintain friendships with people who disagree with your parenting decisions, no matter how well you get along.

On the one hand, I’m a breastfeeding, babywearing, co-sleeping attachment parent. I feel very strongly about breastfeeding and end up talking about it a lot, mostly because it’s hard not to talk about something you do 12 times a day. Other things I believe in: making my own baby food, feeding on demand (even at 2 am. And 3 am. And 4 am), sharing a bed (or bedroom) with my baby and carrying Baby Evan more often than not.  In general, my view of parenting is that kids weren’t meant to be easy and if raising an independent, well-adjusted child means I don’t get to wear non-nursing clothes or see a movie in a theater or get eight hours sleep for a year or two (or eighteen), I’m OK with that.

But on the other hand, I loved my hospital birth, complete with epidural and pitocin. Really, I loved it. We chose to circumcise Baby Evan. I’ve followed a standard vaccination schedule so far (I can’t resist linking this article on the importance of herd immunity my friend Lareign posted on Twitter). We don’t cloth diaper, although if someone wanted to offer me a lifetime supply of BumGeniuses and a diaper service I’d certainly make the switch. And the moms who agree with everything in my first paragraph are absolutely totally anti-EVERYTHING I JUST SAID in my second paragraph. To them, those decisions are all risky and uneducated. I’m clearly blinded by Big Medicine and Big Pharma and hate fresh air, trees and puppies. My child will get autism, penis cancer, mercury poisoning, male pattern baldness, early onset puberty, and incurable diaper rash and it will be all. my. fault.

I think the key to mommy friendships is to not comment on anyone else’s parenting. And “not comment” doesn’t mean not saying anything to someone’s face but loudly ranting about the dangers of cesarean sections within earshot of someone you know had one. Or “not comment” by saying “Oh I would NEVER…” Or “not comment” with my biggest, hugest pet peeve smack-down, “Just educate yourself on all the facts and then make a decision.” No one ever uses that phrase unless what they really mean is YOU’RE DOIN’ IT WRONG AND SUCK AT PARENTING AND HAVE UGLY HAIR TOO. “Not comment” means seriously don’t talk about stuff you know is going to lead to someone being uncomfortable and stick to safe topics like trying to remember the last movie you saw in a theater or how annoying it is that all little boy clothes have footballs on them. And I can do that for about 20 minutes. But then I start talking about how exhausted I am since the baby started rolling and kicking me in bed and the co-sleeping comes up and then suddenly the conversation is back to sleep training and feeding on demand and boobs and oh look this isn’t a beach it’s a minefield.

I just wish there was a place where I could meet other moms with my half one kind, half the other parenting approach. It could be the “I vaccinate my breastfed baby who wears Pampers but doesn’t use a bottle” club. Maybe we should get lapel pins. Or a secret handshake.

One of the great things about having kids is the excuse to do kid-related stuff you’re technically to old for. You don’t have to be the sad/creepy/weird/childless person attending a “Family Day” at the ballpark or aquarium. You can also go to petting zoos, get a balloon at the fair, have you face painted, show up at Harry Potter events, go to children’s museums…and take part in the ten million Halloween parties held during the month of October. Oh you have free candy? Let me just take one for my kid. No, no, I’m eating this candy FOR HIM, you see. He gets it later, direct from me.

Today at church the kids had a costume parade over to the nearby retirement home, where the kids sang Sunday School songs for the old people. Since Baby Evan is too young to sing, I sat on the floor with him and held him where everyone could watch him chew on the paper with the lyrics on it. He really liked “Jesus loves the little children” but wasn’t such a fan of “5 little pumpkins”. I think it needed more salt.

Last night we finally carved the pumpkins we bought up in Massachusetts, so no we have a little orange family on the front steps. I think Baby Evan’s pumpkin is my favorite, and looks surprising like him.

I don’t normally open chain emails, let alone resend them. All those “Fwd:Fwd:FWD:Fwd’s” in the subject line just scream “Crazypants crazy stuff contained within! The world is going to end because of missing 12 year old dogs who poison you with their fur and socialism and the government doesn’t care!” But this email from my mom (who got it from my grandmother) is fantastic. It’s not really a chain letter, just a list of helpful tips and stuff I hadn’t heard before. I’ve been walking around for two days randomly shouting “Did I tell you that thing about peppers yet?” or “Check your lint filter!”so I thought I share it with you instead of startling any more strangers in Target.

Did You Know?

Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.

Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!

Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating. Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.

Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef. It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.

To really make scrambled eggs or omelets rich add a couple of spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and then beat them up.

For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed. Melt Andes mints in double boiler and pour over warm brownies. Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.

Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste of garlic and at the end of the recipe if your want a stronger taste of garlic.

Leftover Snickers bars from Halloween make a delicious dessert. Simply chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!!  Serve alone or with vanilla ice cream. Yummm!

Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.

Easy Deviled Eggs:
Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done easy clean up.

Expanding Frosting
When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and calories per serving.

Reheating Bread
To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.

No More Weeds!
When putting in your plants, wet newspapers and put layers around the plants overlapping as you go. Cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.

Broken Glass
When you break a glass, use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards you can’t see easily.

No More Mosquitoes
Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.

Squirrel Away!
To keep squirrels from eating your plants, sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn’t hurt the plant and the squirrels won’t come near it.

Flexible vacuum
To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.

Reducing Static Cling
Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing pantyhose. Place pin in seam of slacks and … ta da! … static is gone.

Measuring Cups
Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don’t dry cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.

Foggy Windshield?
Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car When the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth!

Re-opening envelopes
If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside,just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Viola! It unseals.

Conditioner
Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It’s cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It’s also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn’t like when you tried it in your hair.

Goodbye Fruit Flies
To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass, fill it 1/2′ with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid; mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!

Get Rid of Ants
Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it ‘home,’ digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works and you don’t have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!

INFO ABOUT CLOTHES DRYERS
The heating unit went out on my dryer! The gentleman that fixes things around the house for us told us that he wanted to show us something and he went over to the dryer and pulled out the lint filter. It was clean. (I always clean the lint from the filter after every load clothes.) He told us that he wanted to show us something; he took the filter over to the sink and ran hot water over it. The lint filter is made of a mesh material .. I’m sure you know what your dryer’s lint filter looks like. Well …the hot water just sat on top of the mesh! It didn’t go through it at all! He told us that dryer sheets cause a film over that mesh that’s what burns out the heating unit. You can’t SEE the film, but it’s there. It’s what is in the dryer sheets to make your clothes soft and static free … that nice fragrance too. You know how they can feel waxy when you take them out of the box … well this stuff builds up on your clothes and on your lint screen. This is also what causes dryer units to potentially burn your house down with it! He said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time (and to keep your electric bill lower) is to take that filter out and wash it with hot soapy water and an old toothbrush (or other brush) at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long! How about that!?! Learn something new everyday! I certainly didn’t know dryer sheets would do that. So, I thought I’d share!
(So there was, like, three more pages of testimonials from people who tried this and OMG IT WORKED THE INTERNET IS A MIRACLE but I’ll summarize here: I did it, my dryer ran cooler and dried the clothes faster. OMG IT WOOOOORKED!)

Baby consignment stores are scary, scary places. The faded plastic toys. The car seats with no manuals or instructions. The cheap nappy stuffed animals. And of course, the racks and racks of old, slightly smelly, scratchy polyester baby clothes.

And yet, I cannot resist a good deal on baby crap, so I always always stop. It’s part of my furniture-on-the-curb-free-books-OMG-A-YARD-SALE-STOP-THE-CAR disease. My case comes from my mother’s side of the family and is very severe and totally incurable. E handles my condition very well for the most part, indulging me sometimes but preventing the house from filling up with wobbly end tables, dressers to refinish, and broken chairs I’m going to recane just as soon as I learn to how exactly one recanes a chair.

During my pregnancy, my disease totally reversed itself and I suddenly hated anything that had been touched by hands other than my own. I wanted things totally new, straight from a box, wrapped in bubble wrap and smelling like plastic chemicals. If I could have gone directly to the car seat/stroller/crib/exersaucer factory and done the actual production myself I would have, just to make sure no one else’s germs every got on my stuff. Who cares what it costs? Nothing is too good for my precious snowflake! (My only exception was a Craigslist crib and changing table, barely two years old, for only $100. I figured the hundreds of dollars I saved on furniture would come in hand for buying other stuff. Like baby hats. HUNDREDS OF BABY HATS.)

But now that I already own every baby gadget known to man, I’ve realized “new” only lasts an hour and pretty much anything your baby can get on their stuff washes out. A baby swing used by someone else’s kid for three months works just as well as a new one and costs a quarter of the price. Until a kid is mobile their clothes are mostly decoration – adorable decoration, yes, but at the rate these little monsters grow you better take a picture the first time they wear something. We’re quickly reaching the Playskool age, where giant plastic monstrosities in primary colors begin to breed and multiply across our house until we’re left cowering in a corner with the dog frantically trying to take the batteries out of anything that makes music or talks.

Unfortunately, those Playskool toys don’t actually breed – you have to buy them (or get them as Christmas gift from your mom. Hi Mom!) – so I’m on the hunt for a quality baby consignment store. The one I’ve been to already is…not quality. That doesn’t mean I haven’t bought stuff, I just haven’t hauled away a car full of amazing bargains. So far I’ve stuck mainly to lightly worn clothes and stayed away from the gear, but this past week I picked up an umbrella stroller for $7, and that d0ggie-eared hat in the hat fashion show for $2. I’m really excited about the stroller, which came with the owner’s manual and is BRIGHT ORANGE, which will make it easy to find in the black hole pit of blankets, empty cups and baby toys that is the back seat of my car. Plus it matches my little ginger’s hair and I am all about making him look as red-headed as possible.

I’m going to check out our local Goodwill and I’ve heard good things about a consignment shop down in Mystic and of course I check my local Craigslist regularly (E: What are you doing on Craigslist? We don’t need any more STUFF! Me: But what if it’s a really really good deal? I mean, look! A real wooden rocking horse for only $100!!! E: NO NO NO NO NO) but I’m afraid that stroller might be my greatest find.

No really, hats. I don’t mean it as a metaphor. I can’t resist a baby hat.

Nice hat head, kid. Hey at least he has some hair now.