Stupid Thing #1: Switching Website Hosting Myself 

I like things to be simple and easy. I moved the web hosting on Mom Nation from one company to another myself. Well, not really by myself. The new hosting company did the move for me. I thought everything was done and magical.

Stupid Thing #2: Not Reading the Entire Email

The hosting company sent me an email saying that the hosting was moved. That’s as much as I read. Apparently, further down the email, they had instructions on changing your name server. As I didn’t read the full email, I didn’t do this.

Stupid Thing #3: Fix the Immediate Issue

Turns out, if you don’t move your name servers on hosting, you really screw things up.

The Mom Nation homepage started showing a 404 ‘Page Not Found’ error.  Once I stopped paying the old hosting company, the website went down with it. *sigh*

I contacted my new hosting company and they walked me through changing the name servers. The homepage was back within hours and all was good in the world again.

That is until…..

Stupid Thing #4: Being Stubborn

I went back to check out the website after the homepage came back up and noticed that all of our posts since September had disappeared into thin air. They weren’t in the admin dashboard or in our cache.

I called the new hosting company and they said that I needed to access the database from the old hosting company. By not changing the name servers, we had been posting all of our blogs to the old host database.

I was peeved about having to pay my old hosting company for another month while paying my new hosting company as well. I got upset. My heart rate started going up and a terrible headache started.

I made the stubborn and silly decision to wait until I had calmed down to deal with the issue.

Stupid Thing #5: Waiting Too Long

When I finally decided to talk to my old hosting company to get access to the old database, it was already deleted. All of our posts were gone. Gone…..

Why am I sharing this with you?  I hope you never have to go through this with your own website. I’m hoping that you will understand why our website reverted back to the Summer. I hope our bloggers will forgive me for losing such awesome content.

Most of all, I’m hope you will continue to read Mom Nation and forgive our stupidity now and then.

Alas, there is a silver lining in this mess. Our new hosting solution will have less down time and our website is already more than 3x faster than it was before. Yay!

So the other night when from the other room I heard a HUGE GASP and subsequent Oh MY GAWD! I was somewhat shocked and ran into the living room. Seems as he was perusing his usual before bed news websites, he came across this.

Cue, HUGE GASP number two from me!!

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. This is a picture of 4 year old Maddy Jackson on the TLC show Toddlers & Tiaras in a Dolly Parton costume. Complete with ‘C-cup’ padded boobs and a padded butt too! The clip of her mother explaining the ‘costume’ is even more disturbing and uh, yeah, her “enhancements” are hysterical—NOT!!.

This story has been the lead headline all week all around the world. Some people have said that this kind of behaviour, outside of being just plain wrong, is criminal. Is it? I don’t know. What I do know is that this type of pageant lifestyle and the big hair, big make-up, half-shirts, high heels and “look at me I am so pretty, please give me the big-ass crown and the $500.00 cash to fan out for the cameras” teaches our baby girls one thing and one thing only.

YOU ARE ONLY HERE AND ONLY VALUED FOR YOUR LOOKS AND YOUR FAKE SMILE!

Good Gawd people! Are we really no further along in our views of girls and women and the females of our species that THIS is what we teach our young?

Now yes, I realize that this pageant crowd is a small percentage of the world and to each their own, and yadda-yadda-yadda…but, these people have a television show and an international viewing audience and it is ALL over the interwebs. This story has been picked up by news sites in the UK, in Africa and in India too.

Pageant mothers will defend their decisions to put their children into pageants because it teaches them poise and gives them confidence. Others are quoted as saying “”She learns skills such as going out in a crowd, not to be shy, and to be herself while people are watching and focusing on her.” (1)

And even other moms are more blunt and will just tell you, ”My daughter looks like Barbie. I tell her to exploit it. This is your life; you take what you have and run with it.” (1)

BEING herself? She looks like BARBIE? Since when do hair extensions, fake eyelashes, a pound of make-up and a fake spray-on tan, not to mention the fake teeth (because God forbid one happened to fall out right before a competition), constitute being oneself?  I’ll say it again, all of these things teach our girls just one thing…

Being yourself is NOT good enough.

It is a line that is pushed and then crossed over and over and over in the pageant world, but even in every day life with our children, is one that we need to be aware of and ready to address at any moment. Our little people are inundated with media and fashion images and insidious marketing messages daily and we need to be there to help them interpret these and understand what is being said or portrayed.

Take my daughter for example. She is a month away from her third birthday and as of late has taken a keen interest in my morning make-up routine. She insists on putting on ‘her’ make-up too and emulating what I am doing (this mostly involves taking one of my brushes and doing whatever I am doing, sans the actual make-up). And even though she has not directly asked me any questions about ‘why’ I wear make-up, she does ask what the products I am using are for. “What’s this one for Mommy?” “That one is for your cheeks.” “What’s this one for Mommy?” “That one is for your eyes.” I tell her what I am doing, but nowhere in the conversation do I say anything along the lines of the make-up ‘making me beautiful”. My daughter, and my son for that matter too, are learning from my husband and I that true beauty comes from within. Your heart, your mind, your soul-these are the things that make one beautiful. Make-up and even clothes are only things that can help you feel beautiful. And even then, truly feeling beautiful still has to come from the inside and shine outwards.

Why is it so hard for these pageant parents and the judges and organizers for that matter, to set new guidelines for kids in pageants? Why can we not celebrate individuality, their true personalities, their authentic, unadorned little selves? Are we so far gone that we can not even see true beauty in our own children anymore? Bare mid-rifs, botox and now boobs and butts….I for one am afraid to ask what’s next!

And….uhm…helloooo….did any one of these people ever actually SEE ‘Little Miss Sunshine‘?

Can you pick the real beauty here?

Frustrated and flabbergasted (and not really digging TLC these days),

Natasha~

1. The whys and woes of beauty pageants. William J. Comrie. Harvard University Gazette.

2. Toddlers and children beauty pageants – Risk factors for severe psychological turmoils. Dr. Lucia Gosaru. Psychology Corner.

I’ve found an investment opportunity that I want to share with you.  It’s the surest thing on the market today. This market I’m talking about won’t ever crash. No brokerage fees, no SEC worries, just pure, guaranteed return.  It’s a get-rich quick scheme, but I promise – it works!  AND you’ll find yourself reaping long-term wealth as well.  Ready to write a cheque?

It’s tough to balance our lives sometimes, and often we struggle to find what balance even means within our busy lives.  Part of this balance is financial and to dig down further, part of the financial aspect is investing.  I want to give you some investing advice, from the perspective of a fellow parent.  And in the process, perhaps we might find a parallel or two between the investment world and parenting itself.

Virtually any investing you can do is a gamble – which stocks do you dump money into?  When do you get out?  Which funds do you go with?  Do you go with riskier portfolios or stick with the conservative slow-growth ones?  I don’t have answers for these questions, but I can tell you this – it is no gamble whatsoever to invest your time by spending it with your kids.

When you make investments, you want to see a nice balance between short-term rewards and long-term wealth gain.  Pour the time into your kids and you’ll find both.  Want to talk about short-term gains?  Sure – you won’t have to look far nor wait long.  It starts with the looks on their faces – tell them you’re going for a bike ride with them, or to the Farmers Market, or on a camping trip – even if it’s in the back yard.  If the lit-up faces aren’t a great reward, you should probably have your eyesight checked.  And your pulse.  And on that note, we also know kids that barely acknowledge their parents when they come home.  Why?  Probably because their parents barely acknowledge them.

How about medium-range payouts?  You’ll find them everywhere!  My kids know who I am, they know exactly what I’m about and where they stand with me because I spend time with them.  They come running into my arms each and every day after work, and it’s all I can think of when I’m driving up the driveway.  There are other little dividends you’ll find as well – for example, Abigail, my 7 year-old, keeps a journal at school, writing into it what she feels is important.  Her teacher showed me how often Abigail refers to the time she spends with me.  “I love when my daddy plays hockey with us on the driveway.”  “My favorite thing is reading with my daddy every night before I got to bed.”  “I can’t wait until we go for a family bike ride again.”  If your kid is journaling those things, you can bet they’re important to them.  And guess what – none of these things take a lot of your time.

You want to hear about long-term dividends and growth?  If nothing else, your kids will remember the times you spent with them.  And hopefully they will pass this on their kids.  My dad was my best friend.  Although I lost my daddy 17 years ago, not a single day passes where I don’t think about him.  And I never, ever think anything bad.  My dad was a very busy man, and he made a lot of money.  But I never think about that, or the money.  What I remember is that he always took time for me even on his busiest days – this remains with me to this day. When I think about my role as a dad, I want to be like my dad – and much of that is because of the time he invested in me not because of how much money he made.

I live in an area where the average house size is probably 4000 square feet and we have more Bentleys, Porsches, Ferraris and Lamborghinis than you can shake a gilded stick at.  But let me tell you, friends, being wealthy is not being rich and for the most part, these $400,000 Bentley drivers come home from work at 7:00 PM – I might not have a fancy car, but I see this sad rift between show and what really matters because I’m outside, hanging out with my kids, when all these people come home.  Every single one of them has a nanny, and you can see that their investment strategy is about material goods – so evident at our yearly block party where you can see that these parents barely even know their kids’ names.  But they sure like talking to the adults about their club memberships and their cars and houses.  Though these bank accounts might swell to huge numbers, I see that many of these folks are bankrupt with their own children.

It’s important to many people to leave your children some wealth.  Financial investments can help secure that.  But there are no guarantees here.  People have often lost every dime they’ve invested through bad luck, violent market fluctuations, you name it.  Invest time in your kids, however and it is 100% guaranteed that you’ll be leaving your kids with wealth – a wealth of memories with their parents, and a wealth of role model material to pass on to their kids.

Invest as much as you’re comfortable with – if you have to work two jobs to get by, and can’t spend as much time as you want to with your kids, please don’t see this as criticism. You do what you can.  And your kids know that.  They are much, much more insightful than we ever give them credit for, and it starts much younger than we think.

When it comes to investing, it’s important to contribute regularly.  Sure, if you just won the lottery, it’s easier to come up with a lump-sum to invest somewhere.  But let’s say you’re like the other 6 billion people in the world.  You work, you get by, you do what you can.  In that case, investing and building your wealth is done by contributing to your portfolio on a regular basis in smaller chunks.  Just like kids.  You don’t have to spend every waking minute making quality time and living astounding adventures with your kids.  It’s about balance, and they will appreciate the time you have for them.  Do it often, and in smaller chunks – they’ll appreciate it just as much.

I believe investments should be reviewed quite regularly and you need to make changes as they are needed.  For example, when you have kids, or get a promotion, or you retire, your investment abilities and needs will change – obviously you’ll flex your investment strategy around this to make it work for you.  The same goes for kids.  Review the time you’re spending with them regularly.  I know someone who has been taking his son to tennis lessons for over 10 years.  The son has never enjoyed the lessons – not one single time.  Yet the time with his dad is so important, he chooses not to tell his dad about it and just considers the lessons the price he has to pay to be with his dad.  If his dad would take the time to review this investment and actually ask his kid, he might have found out that it’s not the best way to spend time with him.  Likewise, be willing to change things up.  Your idea of quality time with your kids isn’t always shared by your kids.  The most important thing is not to take that personally, and to remember that the time with you <strong>is</strong> what’s important – it’s just that they might prefer to do something else – be willing to try different things with your kids.

Markets go up and down.  Heck, other than wives, they might be the most volatile things out there.  (cricket sounds)

Tough crowd, tough crowd.  Soooo, where were we?  Oh right – volatility.  If you are interested in building your wealth, you eventually learn to ignore the market’s day to day, month to month up and down activity.  What you learn is that the markets inevitably come to an even keel and inch upwards over time.  So if something seems to go sideways, don’t ever panic – it could end up costing you more than you think.  Volatility is just as evident in parenting.  And you’ll see it all the time – some days, you might feel as though you’ve seen more volatility than stability – especially if you live in my home.  But that’s my point.  That’s just the kid-market temporarily sorting itself out and finding its way.  It doesn’t stop the growing-up process and it certainly doesn’t change the fact that our kids, just like the market, will soon be “up” – as in grown up.  That’s the mature market you’re headed toward and you just need to weather the occasional storm between now and then.

Finally, investment is often about making sacrifices elsewhere in life to come up with the money to put into something else.  When you invest your time in your kids, you aren’t making any sacrifices at all.  Those shows on your PVR you’re itching to watch?  They’ll be there tomorrow.  That quiet bath you want to take instead?  Take it later, and enjoy it with your partner.  The golf game you wanted to play with your buddies?  You can join that group another time – but your kids will never be this age again.  If you think you are sacrificing a lot to spend time with your kids, consider those couples that would do absolutely anything to have their own child to spend time with, and can’t.  You signed up for this parenting thing – make sure you’re not ripping off the stars of the show in the process.  They need you, and they need your time.

So, as I come to end of this post, I ask you this – was I way off when I said we might discover some parallels between investing and parenting?  I think it’s obvious that I didn’t write this to give investment advice, but here’s the thing – when I sit back and consider my family life, my role as a husband and father and the short amount of time I’ve been given to make a difference in my childrens’ lives, I often consider my time and I hope I’ve invested it wisely.

Do the same, and enjoy a bounty of wealth that no amount of legal tender will ever bring you.  You’ve only got a short amount of time to get in on this deal – shorter than you might think!  Good luck investing, and have fun!

If you enjoyed this post, I would encourage you to read the other ones on his website as well. He’s one of my favorite writers. You can also follow him on Twitter.

Thanks again for letting us feature this amazing post! 

]]> http://momnation.ca/2011/08/15/investing-the-parenting-edition/feed/ 1 http://momnation.ca/2011/08/04/here-we-go-again-with-the-momifying/ http://momnation.ca/2011/08/04/here-we-go-again-with-the-momifying/#comments Fri, 05 Aug 2011 06:47:28 +0000 NatashaChiam http://momnation.ca/?p=1941 Every few months this conversation gets going on Twitter and EVERYONE has something to say about it.

You know the one.

Goes something like this.

A MOM-preneur and a MOMMY  blogger walk into a bar….. (’cause we are allowed to go out you know!!)

…cute guy hits on said MOM-preneur and asks what she does for a living.

What do you think she says?

I am pretty darn sure that nowhere in that conversation is she going to mention the word MOMpreneur to said cute guy. I can guarantee that it would be more along the lines of, “I run my own e-commerce site, I am a professional writer, I am a jewelery/fashion designer. I am an ENTREPRENEUR!”

I admit that this whole “mompreneur” topic is a total hot button for me and this morning I crashed a twitter convo that @MOMMagRocks, @Chris_Eh_Young and @Modern_Mama where having about it. I personally do not like the terminology and the MOM-ifying of everything related to women in business who also happen to be moms and said as much. To which Connie replied:

And she is not wrong.

I come from a corporate sales and marketing background and have worked in retail and pharmaceutical sales for most of my adult life. I admit that I never had any aspirations to become an entrepreneur before I had my children. Having them and then being at home with them became a priority for our family, one that we did not quite anticipate. So yes, I left a very lucrative position, a nice salary, a company car and multiple other career perks for life as a stay-at-home mom. (And just so you know, I would do it again in a heartbeat!)

But I soon realized that part of me was not being fulfilled. Part of me needed to take what I was doing and what mattered most to me (being a Mama), combine it with what I was VERY good at (sales and marketing) and come up with a fabulous business idea.

I would like to tell you that it was as easy as that and POOF! my business came to be and was an instant success. But that is not quite the true nature of entrepreneurialism (sheesh, try to say that 5 times fast)! And it is simply not true.

The Webster’s Dictionary definition of an entrepreneur is this:

: one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise

(and FYI–the word mompreneur is NOT in the Webster’s dictionary)

My point about the whole terminology is this. I truly feel that melding the two together demeans both roles. Perhaps not in the eyes of the #proudmompreneurs out there, and trust me, there are quite a few of them on Twitter tonight, but in the eye of the general public, the mainstream media, and the people who are not in the inner circles of the “mompreneur” world. And I think we have to remember that these people are often our target audience or potential customers and in business, perception is very much reality!

I was reminded on two separate occasions this week about something that I think is very important. At least it is for me at this very moment. Often in our lives, whether it is personal or professional, we can get caught up in our own drama, our own little worlds and our own social or professional circles. And in doing so I believe that we limit our potential. Our potential for growth, our potential for success and our potential for new and even bigger opportunities.

I went out and spent $130 on a Tassimo. I put it in the back of my vehicle and went to buy coffee for it. I could not believe how much it cost. $10 for 12, 8 ounce cups of Starbucks coffee. Being that I drink a Venti at a time, I would have to go through 3 of these T-Cups a morning. It ended up being the same cost as going to Starbucks.

I was also really excited to be able to make Starbucks Cappuccino at home. Turns out, the cappuccino wasn’t what I had expected. Although it did foam, it did not taste like a regular cappuccino would. I blame this on the super-pasteurized milk disks. Making Cappuccinos was also really loud. I couldn’t make one in the morning as it woke up my family. I was disappointed.

I used my Tassimo for a couple of months because I didn’t want my husband to blow a gasket about spending so much money on something I never use. It now sits in a cupboard in my basement.

Once I started talking about how disappointed I was in my Tassimo, I found out that the bloggers who started the buzz had gotten theirs for free. It also turns out that a lot of them weren’t impressed with the coffee makers, but because it was free, the felt like they needed to talk positively about it.

Is this the truth? Can opinions be bought?

When I look at reviews for cell phones or cars, I expect to find an opinion on what a person likes about the product, what they would change and an summary of their findings. I expect objectivity.

Should I have read through more objective reviews of the Tassimo? Yes. Should I have researched the cost of coffee before buying it? Yes. Do I feel silly for being influenced to buy a product based on buzz? Yes.

My point is this – be genuine in your reviews. Show objectivity and don’t sell your opinion for free. There are a lot of people like me who read your posts and respect your opinion.

The pictures that are splashed across the news are sickening. I don’t know how the media can do it. If it was their kids would they change their tactics. For a city to not have any violence since World War 2 was incomprehensible. After reading and hearing the survivor stories, I could not let my children go from my sight.

My four-year-old sneaks up on me and gives me a big bear hug. “Mommy, why are you sad?” she asks. With my heart in my throat I tell my oldest the thread of results of the world news. All the while, I don’t understand it. I explain that a bad person got angry towards innocent children. Now they can’t go home to their parents. My girls know what grief is all too well.

Her face crumbles in thought. “Then he should go on a long time out.” No truer words have been said. But really, will there ever be justice to those families?

For all my worry about leaving my girls, like my mother did in cancer, I never imagined the possibility of having my girls leave me through trauma or tragic circumstances.

I strive to live through each day letting my girls know the truth on how much I love them. I might be grumpy through no fault of their own and at the end of the day, live life as there is no tomorrow.

Here is my answer to that….

I am going a little crazy and I think the kids are too. During the year I have my own routine, just like the kids, and to be honest I am having a hard time reworking that routine for the kids. I work late and so I am a little slow in the morning and that can be hard for the kids. They get up in the morning and are ready to get out there and do things but Mom just isn’t.

I need to get better about organizing things for the kids to do. I need to plan some field trips with them but frankly it is hard to do when I work until 12:15 am and don’t get home from work until 1 a.m.

Here is the other challenge – I am committed to not spending a fortune on this summer entertainment for the kids. I want to see if I can keep the spending to a minimum. So how do it stay motivated myself while keeping the kids entertained and occupied  without breaking the bank?

How are all of you managing the summer with a house full of kids? What do you do with your kids to keep them busy?

I’ve always put off certain styles because they wouldn’t suit me, I wasn’t thin enough to wear that, or people might judge.  Now, obviously, dressing to your size and shape, as well as being age appropriate, IS important to look our best.  I think this goes further in really accepting and embracing  who I am though, at this point in my life, and how I truly envision myself.

I remember choosing my wedding dress and the vision I had for what I’d look like on that special day. I wanted barefeet, flowers in my hair, and a flowy, gauzy, bohemian type dress.  When many of my family members shot that down, I opted for a more traditional gown with a beaded circular headpiece.  It’s not that I didn’t think the traditional gown didn’t look good, or that I didn’t feel good IN it, I just didn’t feel like it really best represented me.

Like most of us, in highschool I wore what everyone else was wearing.  In University and College,  living on my own and paying my own way, I didn’t have the money or the time to care about what I was wearing and comfort after late nights out was often the first thing I grabbed.  Fast forward to working full time in a daycare, which again required comfort and durability over style, and then a home daycare with children of my own.

Lately, I’ve been working out pretty hard and watching what I eat, and while I’m at a weight I’ve been for many years off and on, give or take 10 lbs (which is by no means my ideal) I feel like I’m starting to come into my own.  I’m starting to embrace, finally, how I’m built and what I like-fashion gurus and critics be damned.

It doesn’t mean you’ll start seeing me in totally off the wall fashions, though. My style still runs from urban bohemian to casual preppy, to a more sporty trendy look. So, all over the map.  I think the steps forward will be in figuring out how to blend those styles for different moods, and have them really encompass who I am inside, on the outside, while still being conscious of looking my best.

Maybe it’s almost being 40 and not worrying anymore what “people think of me.”  Maybe it’s just finally getting to a point of embracing all that I am and wanting to portray that on the outside.  It could be that I’m finally nearing a point where I’m reaching acceptance of all that I am and what that looks like.

Whatever it is, it feels good, and looking good is part of feeling good.  Fashion might seem a silly path to enlightenment, but being true to yourself, in all aspects, is never shallow.

Wow, last week was quite a learning experience for me. After writing my last post asking if I should be focusing more on losing inches or weight, I took the conversation to Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

After more than 25 responses on Twitter, 13 on my Facebook page and 8 on Google+, I soon realized that it make more sense to pay more attention to inches lost than weight lost. I also realized that I may be looking at the whole journey the wrong way.

Jessica Zapata from Infinite Fitness got so fired up from my questions about weight loss or inches and if people saying “A pound of muscle weights more than fat” is BS that she wrote a blog post.

Yesterday, one of my yet-to-meet-in-real-life twitter-friends, @JenBanksYEG, tweeted her recent post which started with the question: “Is it better to focus on losing weight or losing inches?”. This tweet got my attention very quickly and not much farther down the stream came a second tweet: “Muscle weighs more than fat. True or BS?”. That statement alone was enough for me to start furiously typing on my iPhone. (Just in case your not sure, but totally not the point of this post, no muscle does not weigh more than fat! A pound is a pound. BUT muscle is much more dense than fat, therefore taking up less space than fat. If we were to look at someone who was 150 pounds and 30% body fat their body shape would seem much larger and different than someone who was 150 pounds and 20% body fat).

Okay, this makes perfect sense to me.

When I was on Maternity leave, I decided to go back to the gym to lose weight and get healthier. When I started, I my body fat was 47%. The trainer turned to me and said, at least it isn’t 50%. Wow! Thanks Buddy. At the end of my training, I was down to 38% fat. I hadn’t lost any weight, but I felt better and smaller I guess I should have this analysis done again. I find it funny that I had forgotten about this until Jessica brought it up.

My biggest Aha! moment in Jessica’s post was:

“I only lost a pound and a half this week.”

Only a pound and a half!! Really?? You are disappointed with only a pound and a half!! Safe, realistic, maintainable weight loss is 1-2 pounds per week!! Of course, this way of thinking is not Jen’s fault. We live in a society where instant gratification is the only way. We watch unreality television where people lose 10 to 30 pounds in a week. We are conditioned to believe that is success and therefore if gratification is not immediate, we must be doing something wrong! The world is full of infomercials, misinformation and contradicting information. We are at an all time high for obesity and un-wellness across all ages and demographics, yet our role models for health and beauty are grossly underweight and far from fit themselves.

My mind was set on the “Biggest Loser” mentality.  I wanted to see really big numbers off of the scale every week. I wanted to reach my 20 pound weight loss goal before my estimated 9 weeks just to say how easy it was and to start on my long term goal of losing an additional 30 pounds after.

I let my weight define this journey.

I now have another way of looking at this journey. I am going for a bigger, healthier goal. I am going to focus less on my weight and more on how I feel. I want to wear smaller clothes because I know I worked hard at it. I want to wear shorts in public, showing off legs that help me run in the morning and after Little T.

Last but not least, my new long term goal is……

Wait for it…….

Taking Burlesque Classes!!!

Beautiful Capital City Burlesque Girls in My City!

I want to get up on stage and strut my stuff! I want to be confident enough to pull off feathers and fishnets. I am going for it!

But hold up….

She is also incredibly funny (ask her about her knock, knock joke!), intelligent, curious, and has the most amazing imagination of any two year old I know. I am talking imaginary baby dragon friends and different voices for all the members in her doll house family. She also sat down at the (very rarely used) piano the other day, put both her hands up on it just like a pro and started to ‘play’. And I don’t mean the usual toddler bang on the keys play the piano, she actually played individual notes and it did not sound bad. She has a very artistic side to her that just seems to be begging to be nurtured!

And in my mind all of these things add up and make her even more beautiful. Yes, I am her mother, so that bias does exist, but still, she is pretty darn incredible.

So when I read Lisa Bloom’s article in The Huffington Post on ‘How to talk to Little Girls’, I was all over it. I have a daughter and I am somewhat of a feminist and damn straight you should talk to girls about their minds over their appearance!! I posted it all over Twitter and on my Facebook page and I am pretty sure that everyone who has a daughter re-tweeted and re-posted it too.

And then I started thinking about it a bit more….

It is really so bad to tell girls that they are beautiful?

Here’s the thing. I never thought I would have a girl. Don’t ask me why, I just thought I would have boys and was convinced for both my pregnancies that they were boys (I was right the first time!). And then L came along and with her, my life’s ULTIMATE karmic twist.

At first I rejected all things girly.  I believe one of my first status updates on Facebook the first week that she was born was “I HATE PINK!”  I made an extra effort to find her clothes that were feminine, but NOT pink. She wore a lot of her older brother’s hand -me-down baby sleepers and baby clothes and that was just fine with me.

I can pretty much pin-point the exact moment when L realized that she had her own sense of style and the days of me choosing her outfits were drawing near. That moment was the day of her first haircut. It was a tough milestone for me (as you can see from the picture!) and the (re) birth of Princess L.

L's first haircut. Mommy cried, she did not!

EVERYONE complimented her on her new haircut, how cute she looked, how pretty she was and she just soaked it all in! And really, she did look adorable! It was right around this time as well, that she finally wanted and would let me put barrettes or clips in her hair. She called them her ‘pretties’ and the word has stuck and ‘a pretty’ is now the name for all hair accessories in our house.

At times I worry about this. I worry that she will associate having to wear something or have something in her hair to look pretty and then this will further translate to her feeling pretty. But then I realize that she is two and the clip or headband or whatever, is in her hair for a grand total of about 20 minutes and then usually completely forgotten about as she goes about her day playing with her brother, reading her books, or creating more funny voices for all her little toys.

So what is my point with all of this? Do I agree with Ms. Bloom and her “don’t talk to girls about their looks” stance? Granted, I have not yet read her book (it is ordered and on it’s way), but here are my thoughts on the whole argument.

I think that establishing a sense of self-esteem can not be done in a box. It really is about the whole child, male or female, and involves helping them to know themselves, have a strong sense of self-worth and know that they are valued and loved for their own uniqueness and I believe that part of that includes how they look.

Lisa says in the article that “…teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything….”, but what she fails to say is that a person’s appearance really IS the first thing you notice about someone. Maybe the fine art of accepting a true compliment from someone, is something that girls (of all ages) are lacking these days. Perhaps we need to work more on teaching them to say a polite and sincere thank you and then move on to more interesting topics like books or traveling or art or animals or whatever it is that they are passionate about! We need them to know that how they look is NOT the most important thing about them, but at the same time, I do think that it is unrealistic to not acknowledge it at all.

My daughter LOVES to dress up in her princess dresses. She has a trunk full of them in her room. She thinks she looks ‘bootiful’ in them, and frankly, she kinda does. And if I am wearing a dress that day, then I too am a ‘bootiful’ mommy (and yeah, it makes me feel good when she says it to me). And I think I am good with that because often we are taking our ‘bootiful’ selves out to the museum, or the park, or the grocery store or the library and really, who doesn’t want to dress up like a princess some days AND go out and do all kinds of other cool things that enrich our minds too!!

The Princess, her "pretty" and the ever present puppy!

I am pretty sure I am not going to stop telling my daughter how beautiful it is, and also how smart, how talented and how funny she is too!

Perhaps the solution is for all of us to truly redefine what beautiful really means….